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Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action: Moral Conciousness and Communicative Action (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)

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Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action is the primary anglophone source for Habermas's writings on "Discourse Ethics." Written in the early eighties, this translation, which was published in 1990, provides a developmental perspective. The focus of the essays moves from Habermas's statements about the role of philosophy today, in "Philosophy as Stand-in and Interpeter, to his writing on reconstructive social science in general, to his program for a discourse ethics in particular. The final papers address criticisms of this program. The volume suffers a bit from the fact that Thomas McCarthy's introduction is keen to locate Habermas's position vis a vis various contemporary moral-philosophical standpoints, but does not go very far toward locating the whole initiative in the broader canvas of Habermas's overarching social-theoretic project.

Put bluntly, the chapter on the philosophical justification for the theory of communicative action is probably the best explanation and justification Habermas gives anywhere for his work and project. It is a rich, well-documented, cogently argued piece that (no matter how much I might disagree with its conclusions) provides the reader with the full spectrum of where Habermas is grounding his thought and what is at stake in his project. As a whole, for both good and ill, this book offers a clarity and completeness in argument that can be difficult to find in any thinker. I consistently return to it as a touchstone (or perhaps Rosetta stone) for deciphering less than clear elements elsewhere in Habermas's writings.