A Critique of Foundations of Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action

Jürgen Habermas, as the best-known defender of Enlightenment’s ideals in contemporary times, thinks that any adequate defense of those ideals, particularly the ideal of emancipation from oppression and domination, depends on formulating a theory unbound by local contexts and capable of justifying a discourse ethics on universal foundations. In order to map out such a theory, he mainly appeals to metaphysically loaded notions such as “truth” and “universality”. On the other hand, he considers himself as a post-metaphysical thinker and counts his theory of communicative rationality as a consequence of the linguistic turn. In this essay, I would argue that the way in which he appeals to notions of “truth” and “universality” is not consistent with his post-metaphysical commitments and requirements of linguistic turn.