Benhabib_The Utopian Dimension in Communicative Ethics

7/29/2019 Benhabib_The Utopian Dimension in Communicative Ethics

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by Seyla BenhabibI. In his retrospectiveon WalterBenjamin, "On the ActualityofWalterBenjamin: Consciousness- Raising or Rescuing Critique," Habermasdiscusses an issue which for many has seemed to point to a lacuna in hisown understanding of moral progress and emancipation: "In thetradition that reaches back to Marx, Benjamin was one of the first toemphasize afurthermoment in the concepts of exploitation and pro-gress: besides hunger and oppression, failure;besides prosperity andliberty, happiness. Benjamin regarded the experience of happiness henamed secular illumination as bound up with the rescuing of tradition.The claim to happiness can be made good only if the sources of thatsemantic potential we need for interpretingthe world in the light of ourneeds are not exhausted."' In the semantic heritage of a cultural tradi-tion are contained those images and anticipations of a fulfilled life-history and of a collective life-form in which justice does not excludesolidarity, and freedom is not realized at the expense of happiness.Certainly, Habermas continues, it is not possible to achieve freedomand to realize justice without unleasing (entbinden)he hidden poten-tials of culture. In that sense, the semantic unleashing of culture andthe social overcoming of institutional repression are mutually suppor-tive. Yet the suspicion remains whether "an emancipation withouthappiness and lacking in fulfillment might not be just as possible asrelative prosperity without the elimination of repression."2

*This essay is a slightlyaltered and abbreviated section from my book, Critique, ormand Utopia:A Studyof the Foundations f CriticalTheory, orthcoming from ColumbiaUniversity Presslater this fall. It is printed here with the courtesy of Columbia Univer-sity Press.1. Habermas, "WalterBenjamin: Consciousness-Raising or Rescuing Critique,"in Philosophical-Politicalrofiles,F. Lawrence, trans.(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1983),p. 156. I have modified Lawrence's translation such as to render "Unterdrtickung"inthis context as "oppression" rather than "repression." Cf. "Bewusstmachende oderrettende Kritik- Die AktualitritWalter Benjamins" (1972), in: Habermas, KulturundKritikFrankfurt:Suhrkarnp, 1973), p. 340.2. Ibid.83


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Written a year before the LegitimationCrisis 1973) and four yearsbefore TheReconstructionfHistoricalMaterialism1976), this essay con-tained a programmatic anticipation of how Habermas proposed toargue not only against the tradition of counter-Enlightenment (Niet-zsche, Spengler,Jiinger and Heidegger) but againstthe messianic uto-pian strand of critical theory as well - Bloch and Benjamin in par-ticular."But these subsequent works have not dissipated the force ofthe suspicion which has been voiced. Increasingly in recent years,Habermas has pointed to the limitsof a theory of practical discoursewhich focuses on freedom while excluding questions of the good life;which concerns the validity of normative sentences (Sollsiitze)whileignoring the question of the integrityof values (Werte),which in short,concerns institutional justice but cannot say much about those quali-ties of individual life-histories and collective life-forms which makethem fulfilling or unfulfilling.4This questioning on Habermas' part is neither a coincidence nor ofmere philological interest. It reveals the intimate relation between"transfiguration"and "fulfillment," between the poles of utopiaandnormwithin which the discourse of a critical social theory unfolds. By"transfiguration"I mean that the future envisaged by a theory entails aradicalrupture with the present, and that in such a rupturea new andimaginative constellation of the values and meanings of the presenttakes place. The concept of fulfillment, by contrast, refers to the factthat the society of the future executes and carries out the unfinishedtasksof the present, without necessarily forging new, imaginative con-stellations out of this cultural heritage.These are concepts which I useto designate an essential tension in the project of critical theory andwhich can also be referred to as "utopia" and "norm" respectively.Since Marx's early critique of civil society, the project of emancipa-tion wasviewed both as the fulfillment and transfigurationof the exist-ing order. In developing an immanent critique of capitalism, criticalMarxism held this social order to its own promises, and required thatabundance, the betterment of human life, and an end to exploitationand misery be realized for all, and not only for some. This demand didnot call into question the Enlightenment projectof combining humanfreedom and happiness with the scientific-technologically based pro-gress of productive forces. The course of European history after the

3. Joel Whitebook, "Saving the Subject: Modernity and the Problem of the Auto-nomous Individual," Telos,50 (Winter 198 1-82), 81-82.4. Habermas, "Reply to Mv Critics," in Habermas: CriticalDebates, ed. byJohn B.Thompson and David Held (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982), pp. 166 and 262.


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beginning of the 20th century left little hope that the Enlightenmentcould fulfill its own promesse u bQnheur. ritical theory lamented thedialectic of an Enlightenment condemned to leave its own promisesunfulfilled. The project of emancipation was increasingly viewed notas the fulfillment, but as the transfiguration of the Enlightenmentlegacy. Their increasinglyesoteric conception of emancipation forcedthe critical theory of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Marcuse into a seriesofaporias. More and more, emancipation ceased to be a public projectand became a private experience of liberation achieved in the non-dominating relation with nature and in moments of revolutionaryeros.Habermas has attempted to reestablish the link between Enlighten-ment and emancipation, and to bring the projectof emancipation intothe light of the public by going back to the Enlightenment legacy ofpracticalreason. His project requires fulfilling the universalisticprom-ise of social contract and consent theories which, since the 17th cen-tury, have always limited such universalism on the basis of sex, class,race and status distinctions.Even when we concede that the realization of bourgeois univer-salism is a necessarycondition for emancipation, it seems hardlysuffi-cient. "Can we preclude," asks Habermas, "the possibility of a mean-ingless emancipatioln?In complex societies, emancipation means theparticipatory transformation of administrative decision structures."5If this were all that was meant by "emancipation," if indeed the goal ofcritique exhausted itself in the "joyless reformism" of a welfare-statistor social-democratic compromise, then indeed critical theory wouldhave established the link between Enlightenment and emancipationby forsaking far too much of its utopian tradition. Let me ask, there-fore, if the goal of realizing bourgeois universalism, of making goodthe unfulfilled promise ofjustice and freedom, must exhaust itself in a"joyless reformism," or whether, speakingwith Benjamin, one cannotsee a Jetztzeit,a moment of transfiguration,in thisvery process? Iwantto suggest that the seventh stage of moral development postulated byHabermas as a corrective and extension of the Kohlbergian scheme,thatis, the stageof"universalized need interpretations,"has an unmis-takeable utopian content to it, and that it points to a transfigurativevision of bourgeois universalism.

I will begin with a brief outline of the central theses of Habermas'

5. Habermas, "WalterBenjamin: Consciousness-Raising or Rescuing Critique,"p. 158.


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communicative ethics (II). I will then focus on the role of "need inter-pretations" in this theory (III). My thesis is that Habermas, followingMead, restricts moral autonomy to the standpoint of the "generalizedother," and does not do justice to the utopian dimension in hisown project.II. The theory of communicative ethics has been named by Habermasalso a "cognitivist ethics of language." The cognitivism of this theoryrestswith itsassumption that normative statements like"Child molest-ing is wrong," cannot be translatedinto a statement like"Idislike childmolesting," as the emotivists claim. The predicate "is wrong" in thisstatement is to be understood as a claim that there are good reasons toadopt the rule in our practicesthatchildren ought not be molested. Toestablish this meta-ethical premise Habermas develops the conceptsof moral rightness and wrongness by means of a theory of practicalargumentation. Basing himself on Stephen Toulmin's work in TheUsesofArgument, e maintains thatjust as the truth of theoretical claims canonly be established in light of an argument in which they are shown tobe warrantedwith good gounds, so too the validityof normative claimscan only be established via practicalargumentations in which they areshown to be defensible with good grounds.Arguments dealing with theoretical truth claims, with statementsabout what the case is, or with practical assertions, with statementsabout what ought to be done, are named "discourses." Discourses aredescribed as special argumentation procedures in which both factsabout what is the case and norms about what is right are challengedand no longer taken for granted. In discourses we "suspend belieP' inthe truth of propositions and the validity of normative claims that weordinarily take for granted in our everyday transactions.6The aim of discourses is to generate a "rationallymotivated consen-sus" on controversial claims. The concept of the "ideal speech situa-tion" is introduced in this context. The "ideal speech situation" spe-cifies the formal properties thatdiscursive argumentations would haveto possess if the consensus thus attainedwere to be distinguished froma mere compromise or an agreement of convenience. The ideal speechsituation is a "meta-norm" thatapplies to theoretical as well as to prac-tical reason. It serves to delineate those aspects of an argumentationprocess which would lead to a "rationallymotivated" as opposed to afalse or apparent consensus.

6. Habermas, "Introduction to the New Edition," Theorie nd Praxis(Frankfurt:Suhrkamp, 1978), p. 25. English translationby John Viertel, TheoryndPractice(Boston:Beacon Press, 1973).


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The four conditions of the ideal speech situation are:first,each par-ticipant must have an equal chance to initiate and to continue com-munication; second, each must have an equal chance to make asser-tions, recommendations, explanations, and to challengejustifications.Together we can call these the "symmetry condition." Third, eachmust have equal chances as actorsto express theirwishes, feelings, andintentions; and fourth, the speakers must actas zf n contexts of actionthere is an equal distribution of chances "to order and resist orders, topromise and to refuse, to be accountable for one's conduct and todemand accountability from others."7 Let me call the latter two the"reciprocity condition." While the symmetry stipulation of the idealspeech situation refers to speech ctsalone and to conditions governingtheir employment, the reciprocity condition refers to existing socialinteractionsnd requires a suspension of situations of untruthfulnessand duplicity on the one hand, and of inequality and subordination onthe other.This "cognitivist ethics of language" is viewed by Habermas as areinterpretationof Kantianuniversalism in moral theory in the light ofthe communicative foundations of human action. Indeed, one canilluminate some of the central theses of communicative ethics bybriefly comparing it to Rawls's project in A TheoryfJustice.There aretwo premises shared by Rawlsand Habermas.8 I will call the first the"consensus principle of legitimacy"and define it as follows: the princi-ple of rational consensus provides the only criterion in light of whichthe legitimacy of norms and institutional arrangements can be jus-tified. More significantly, Rawls and Habermas share the meta-the-oretical premise: the idea of such rational consensus is to be definedprocedurally.awls maintains that his theory ofjustice provides us withthe only procedure of justification through which valid and bindingnorms of collective coexistence can be established. Habermas arguesthat the "ideal speech situation" defines the formal properties of dis-courses, by engaging in which alone we canattain a rationalconsensus.The fictive collective choice situation devised by Rawlsand the "idealspeech situation" devised by Habermas are normativeustification ro-ceduresserving to illustrate the consensus principle of legitimacy.

7. J. Habermas,"Wahrheitstheorien,"n WirklichkeitndReflexion:estschriftflrWalter chultz,ed. by Helmut Fahrenbach (Pfullingen: Neske, 1973), p. 256. My tran-slation, abbreviated in the following as Wth.8. For a detailed discussion of this problem, cf. my article, "The MethodologicalIllusions of Modern PoliticalTheory:The Case of Rawls and Habermas," in NeueHeftefir Philosophie,1 (Spring 1982), 47-74.


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Despite these common assumptions, there are some fundamentaldifferences between communicative ethics and the Rawlsian positionwhich I would like to summarize around six points.First, although the theory of communicative ethics also proceedsfrom a counterfactual called the "ideal speech situation," this con-struct is not to be interpreted as advocating a "veil of ignorance" but isto be understood as defining certain rules of discourse which we havenogood reasons to want to deny.Second, such argumentations as take place in discourses continueeverydaymoral dialogue with other means. Whatmotivates the transi-tion to discourse is not some abstractdecision, but the fact that the self-explanatory character of our life-world often fails, and requires clar-ification and mutual reinterpretation. Discourses are continuous withthe questioning, puzzling, explaining, and negotiatingwhich form thematrix of everyday morality.Third, since discourses are not hypothetical thought-experimentsthat can be carried out by isolated moral philosophers but are in-tended to be actual processes of moral dialogue among real actors, wedo not need to predefine theoretically a concept of the person and theidentity of moral actors. Such persons need not stand behind a veil ofignorance or be ignorant about the specific circumstances of theirbirth, ability, psychological make-up, status, and the like. Discoursesonly require from moral actorsa reflexive attitude which enjoins themto settle normative controversies in a spirit of cooperative dialogue.Fourth, it is not necessary to place any knowledge constraints uponsuch processes of moral reasoning and disputation, for the moreknowledge is available to moral agents about the particularsof theirsociety, its place in history, and its future, the more rationalwill be theoutcome of their deliberations. Practicalrationalityentails epistemicrationalityaswell, and more knowledge ratherthan less leads to a moreinformed and rationaljudgment. Tojudge rationallyis not tojudge asif one did not know what one could know, as Rawlsmaintains, but tojudge in the light of all available and relevant information.Fifth, in such moral discourses agents can also change levels ofreflexivity, that is to say, theycan introduce meta-considerations aboutthe very conditions and constraints under which dialogue takesplace,and they can evaluate its fairness. There is no closure of reflexivity inthis model as there is, for example, in the Rawlsianone, which enjoinsagents to accept certain rules of bargaining before the choice of theprinciples of justice.Sixth,. if there are no knowledge restrictions upon such discourses,if the theory does not idealize the identity of moral agents, if reflex-ivity is encouraged rather than limited by the theory, then it also


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follows that there is noprivileged ubjectmatterof moral disputation.Moral agents are not only limited to reasoning about primary goodswhich they are assumed to want whateverelse they want. Instead, boththe goods they desire and their needs and desires can be legitimatetopics of moral disputation. By focusing on the role of needs in com-municative ethics, let me now analyze its radicaldeparture from otherneo-Kantian theories.III. As early as the essay on "Theories of Truth," we encounter theclaim that the appropriate language of morals "permits determinategroups and persohs, in given circumstances, a truthful interpretationboth of their own particular needs, and more importantly, of theircommon needs capable of consensus."" From the standpoint of uni-versalisticethical theories, whether it be Kant'sor some contemporaryversion of it, like Rawls's or Gewirth's, such a requirement wouldtransgressthe limitsof practicaldiscourse. In Kant'scase this would beso, simply because the requisite universality of morality can only beestablished byabstracting awayfrom, indeed by repressing, those veryneeds, desires and inclinations which tempt moral agents away fromduty. The disregard in contemporary deontological theory for "innernature"is more complicated, but ultimately, it seems to me, it is basedon the classical liberal doctrine that as long as the publicactions ofindividuals do not interferewith each other, what they need and desireis their business.To want to draw this aspect of a person's life intopublic-moral discourse would interferewith their autonomy, i.e., withtheir right to define the good life as they please as long as this does notimpinge on others' rights to do the same. "Againstthis assumption of Kantianmoral theories, Habermas drawsupon an insight of Hegel's that has both empirical and normativerelevance: this is the insight that the relation between self and other, Iand thou, isconstitutiveor human self-consciousness. Empirically,thisleads to a conception of the human personality as developing only ininteraction ith other selves." Normatively, this conception of identityimplies a model of autonomy according to which the relation betweenself and other is not external to the ego's striving for autonomy.In requiring that need interpretations become the subject matter of

9. Habermas, Wth, p. 252.10. Rawls,A TheoryfJustice(Cambridge,MA:HarvardUniversityPress, 1972), pp.24 and 513ff.11. R. DOibert,J.Habermas, and G. Nunner-Winkler,"Introduction," EntwicklungdesIchs(K61n, 1977), p. 12.


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practicaldiscourses, Habermas is underscoring both points. From thestandpoint of socialization theory, individual nature, while being"private,"is not immutable; individual need-interpretations and mo-tives carrywith them the marks of societal processes by participatinginwhich alone an individual learns to become an "I." The grammaticallogic of the word "I"reveals the unique structure of ego identity:everysubject who uses this concept in relation to himself or herself alsolearns that all other subjects are likewise "I's." In this respect the egobecomes an I only in a community of other selves who are also I's. Yetevery act of self-reference expresses, at the same time, the uniquenessand difference of this I from all others. Discourses about needs andmotives unfold in this space created by commonality and uniqueness,general societal processes, and the contingency of individual life-histories.The requirement that a "truthful" interpretation of needs also bepart of discursive argumentation means that ego autonomy cannotand should not be achieved at the expense of internal repression.husHabermas writes: "Internal nature is thereby moved in a utopianperspective; that is, at this stage internal nature may no longer bemerely examined within an interpretive framework fixed by the cul-tural tradition in a nature-like way .... Inner nature is rendered com-municatively fluid and transparent to the extent that needs can,through aesthetic forms of expression, be kept articulable or be re-leased from theirpaleosymbolic prelinguisticality."'' Egoautonomy ischaracterized by a twofold capacity: first, the individual's reflexiveability to question the interpretive framework fixed by the culturaltradition- to loosen, ifyou wish, those sedimented and frozen imagesof the good and happiness in the lightof which we formulate needs andmotives; second, such reflexive questioning is accompanied by anability toarticulate ne's needs linguistically, by an ability to communi-cate with others about them. Whereas the first aspect requires us toassume a reflexive distance towards the content of our tradition, thesecond emphasizes our ability to become articulate about our ownaffective and emotional constitution." In both instances, reflection isto be understood not as an abstractingawayfrom a given content, butas an ability to communicate and to engage in dialogue. The linguisticaccess to inner nature is both a distancing and a coming closer. In that

12. Habermas, "Moral Development and Ego Identity," in CommunicationndtheEvolutionofSociety, rans. by Thomas McCarthy(Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), p. 93.13. Habermas, Theoryf Communicativection,Vol. I, trans. by Thomas McCarthy(Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), pp. 41ff. Abbreviated as TCA in the following.


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we can name whatdrives and motivates us, we are closer to freeingour-selves of its power over us; and in the very process of being able to saywhat we mean, we come one step closer to the harmony or friendshipof the soul with itself.If the highest stage of a universalistic ethical orientation is this open,reflexive communication about our needs and the cultural traditionsin light of which they are interpreted, then a number of oppositions onwhich communicative ethics seemed to rest begin to lose their force:questions of justice merge with questions of the good life; practical-moral discourses flow into aesthetic-expressive ones; autonomy is notonly self-determinationn accordance withjust norms but the capacitytoassume the standpoint of the concrete other as well.It should emphasized howdifferenthis outcome is from that usuallyassociated with universalistic ethical theories. As the definition of stagesix in Kohlberg's moral theory reveals, the highest stage of moralorientation is the publicdiscourse of rights and entitlements. Neitherthe needs which drive the actions through which rights are exercised,nor the concept of entitlement which the ethosof a right-bearing andinvariableadult male implies, are called into question in such a moraltheory. Thus, the insistence that "universalizable need inter-pretations" move into the center of moral discourse is not simply afurtherevolution f such a perspective; itentails autopianbreakwith it, orwhat I have named its "transfirguration.""Inner nature is moved intoa utopian perspective," in the sense that its contents, our needs andaffects, become communicatively accessible; in psychoanalytic terms,the threshold of repression is lowered. The utopia of society in whichassociation (Vergesellschaftung)sattained without domination, namely,justice, and socialization without superfluous repression, namely,happiness, moves to the fore. Conceptions of justice and of the goodlife flow into each other.Discourses in which our needs and the cultural traditions shapingthem are thematized; in which the semantic content of those inter-pretations defining happiness and the good life are brought to light,and what is fitting, pleasing, and fulfilling are debated, are named byHabermas "aesthetic-expressive" ones." It is maintained that moder-nity institutionalizes not only the discursive evaluation of moral andpolitical questions, but those of aesthetic and expressive subjectivityaswell. Whereas practicaldiscourses are oriented toward what is publicand universalizable, aesthetic-expressive discourse is oriented toward

14. J. Habermas, "A Reply to My Critics," in Habermas:CriticalDebates,p. 262.


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what is semi-public, non-universalizable, and culturally specific. Ex-pressive discourses cannot be abstracted from the hermeneutic andcontingent horizon of shared interpretations and life forms.This distinction between normative and aesthetic-expressive dis-courses does not do justice, however, to the significance of needs andtheir interpretations in the moral realm. In fact, by confining suchdebate concerning need interpretations to the expressive realm alone,Habermas is making an effort to preserve the purity of the normativerealm which he has restricted to an analysis of the binding force of"normativeought sentences"(Sollsiitze).5Butthe veryfactthatneedinterpretationsalso become thematized in moral discoursesoncemore indicatesthat Habermas'constructionof the model of com-municative thics sambiguous.On theone hand, tshareswithdeon-tologicaltheories like Rawls's he desire to separate he public dis-courseofjusticefromthe moreprivatediscourseofneeds;on theotherhand, inasmuch as it is critical of theories of justice which do notextendto a critiqueof consumerist nd possessive-individualistodesof life, it hasto revert o the critiqueof needs, falsesocialization,andthe like.

I want to suggestthat Habermasdoes not thematize this utopiandimensionadequately,or,followingGeorgeHerbertMead,heassumesthe standpointof the "generalizedother,"of rightsandentitlements,to represent he moralpointof viewparexcellence.Meadformulatesthe idealof a communityof communicationas follows:"In logicalterms there is establisheda universeof discoursewhich transcendshespecificorderwithinwhichthemembersof thecommunity, n a specificconflict,placethemselvesout-side of the community order as it exists, and agree uponchangedhabitsof actionanda restatement fvalues. Rationalprocedure,therefore,sets up an orderwithin whichthoughtoperates, that abstracts n varying degrees from the actualstructureof society... It is a social order that includesanyrationalbeingwho is or maybe in any wayimplicated n thesituationwithwhichthoughtdeals ... It isevidentthatamancannotactas a rationalmemberof society, exceptas he con-stitutes himself a member of this wider commonwealthofrationalbeings."~'"15. Habermas, Moralbewusstseinndkommunikativesandeln Frankfurt:Suhrkamp,1983),and esp. the essay, "Diskursethik:Notizen zu einem Begrfindungsprogramm,"pp. 53ff.16. George Herbert Mead, SelectedWritings, s quoted inJ. Habermas, Theorie eskommunikativenandelns,vol. 2 (Frankfurt:Suhrkamp, 1981), pp. 144-145.


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In this sociological reformulation of the KantianKingdom of Endsof Mead's part, Habermas sees two utopian projections: he names thefirst the perspective of self-determination,hat is, of autonomous actionoriented toward universalistic principles; the second perspective cor-responds to that of self-actualization,he capacity to unfold one's in-dividuality in its uniqueness.17 "The ideal community of communica-tion corresponds to an egoidentitywhich allows self-actualization tounfold onithe basis of autonomous action." But whereas the perspec-tive of autonomous action correspondsto the standpointof the "gener-alized other," what, following Carol Gilligan, I would like to call thestandpoint of the "concrete other," cannot be accommodated withinthe rather ego-centered notion of self-actualization.The standpoint of the "generalized other" requires us to view eachand every individual as a rational being entitled to the same rightsandduties we would want to ascribe to ourselves. In assuming this perspec-tive, we abstract from the individuality and concrete identity of theother. We assume that the other, likeourselves, is a being who has con-crete needs, desires, and affects, but that what constitutes her moraldignity is not what differentiates us from each other, but ratherwhatwe, as speaking and acting rationalagents, have in common. Our rela-tion to the other is governed by the norm of symmetricaleciprocity:achis entitled to expect and to assume from us what we can expect andassume from her. The norms of our interactions are primarilypublicand institutional ones. If I have a right to "x," then you have the dutynot to hinder me from enjoying "x," and conversely. In treatingyou inaccordance with these norms, I confirm in your person the rights tohumanity, and I have a legitimate claim to expect that you will do thesame in relation to me. The moral categories that accompany suchinteractionsare those of right, obligation, and entitlement; the corres-ponding moral feelings are those of respect, duty, worthiness, anddignity, and the vision of community is one of rights and entitle-ments.The standpoint of the "concrete other," by contrast, requires us toview each and every rationalbeing as an individual with a concrete his-tory, identity, and affective-emotional constitution. In assuming thisstandpoint, we abstract from what constitutes our commonality andseek to understand the distinctiveness of the other. We seek to com-prehend the needs of the other, theirmotivations, what they searchfor,and what they desire. Our relations to the other are governed by the

17. Ibid., p. 148.18. Ibid., p. 150.


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norm of complementaryeciprocity:ach is entitled to expect and toassume from the other forms of behavior through which the other feelsrecognized and confirmed asa concrete, individual being with specificneeds, talents, and capacities. Our differences in this case comple-ment, rather then exclude one another. The norms of our interactionare usually private, non-institutional ones. They are the norms ofsolidarity, friendship, love, and care. Such relations require in variousways that I do, and that you expect me to do in the face of your needs,more than would be required of me as right-bearing person. In treat-ing you in accordance with the norms of solidarity, friendship, love,and care, I confirm not only your humanity ut your human individuali-ty.The moral categories thataccompany such interactions are those ofresponsibility, bonding, and sharing. The corresponding moral feel-ings are those of love, care, sympathy, and solidarity, and the vision ofcommunity is one of needs and solidarity.These moral ideals and the corresponding moral emotions havebeen separatedradicallyfrom each other in moral and politicalthoughtsince Hobbes. The institutional distinction between the public and theprivate,between the public sphere ofjustice, the civic sphere of friend-ship, and the private sphere of intimacy, hasalso resulted in the incom-patibilityof an ethical vision of principles and an ethical vision of careand solidarity. The ideal of moral and political autonomy has beenconsistently restricted to the standpoint of the "generalized other."while the standpoint of the "concrete other" has been silenced, Iwantto suggest, even suppressed by this tradition.'"As is evidenced by Kantian moral theory, a public ethics of prin-ciples entails a repressive attitude towards, "inner nature." Our needsand affective nature are excluded from the realm of moral theory.Thisresults in a corresponding inability to treathuman needs, desires, andemotions in any other way than by abstractingawayfrom them and bycondemning them to silence. Institutionaljustice is thus seen as repre-senting a higher stage of moral development than interpersonal re-sponsibility, care, love, and solidarity;the respect for rightsand dutiesis regarded as prior to care and concern about another's needs; moralcognition precedes moral affect;the mind, we may summarize, is thesovereign of the body, and reason the judge of inner nature.Byallowing need interpretations to move to the center of moral dis-course and by insisting that "inner nature be placed in a utopian

19. Cf. Carol Gilligan, In a DifferentVoice:Psychologicalheorynd Women'sDevelop-ment(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).


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perspective," Habermas comes close to subverting this bias of tradi-tional normative philosophy; but his insistence that the standpoint ofthe "generalized other" alone represents the moral point of view pre-vents this move. It is also inadequate to claim that aesthetic-expressivediscourse can accommodate the perspective of the "concrete other,"for relations of solidarity, friendship, and love are not aesthetic butprofoundly moral ones. The recognition of the humandignity of thegeneralized other is just as essential as the acknowledgement of thespecificityf the concrete other. Whereas the perspective of the general-ized other promises justice, it is in the relation to the concrete otherthat those ephemeral moments of happiness and solidarity are re-covered.A communicative concept of autonomy attains utopian and moti-vating force insofar as itpromises neither a merger nor afusion, but thenecessary interaction and confrontation of these two perspectives.20The ideal community of communication corresponds to an ego iden-titywhich allows the unfolding of the relation to the concretether n thebasis of autonomous ction. Only then can we say that justice withoutsolidarity is blind and empty.As this discussion may indicate, while endorsing the necessity of theparadigm shift in critical theory which Habermas's work has initiated,I am less convinced by the abandonment of the utopian-anticipatorymoments of critique. When communicative ethics, and the perspec-tive of moral autonomy and community it entails, are presented as ifthey were the logical and inevitable outcome of a normal sequence ofdevelopment, only carrying to its conclusion what is implicit in theprocess itself, one reverts back to the philosophy of the subject. Oneposits a fictional collective "we"that is not only the subject of evolutionbut the subject of history as well. Much like Hegel's PhenomenologyfSpirit, he theorist then begins to speak in the name of a fictional collec-tive "we"from whose standpoint the storyof history is told. This fictivesubject appears both as the subject of the past and of the future; it isempirical and normative at once. In Habermas's account, too, theempirical subjects as whose learning process the cultural evolution ofmodernity takes place, shift their status, and this process becomes arepresentativetale in which "we,"the subjects of the present, are to dis-

20. For a detailed account of the suppression of the "concrete other" in modernmoral theory and a discussion of the relationship of these two perspectives, see my"The Generalized and the Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy andFeministTheory," forthcoming inPraxis nternational,pecial issue of FeministTheory,S. Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell, guest editors.


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cover ourselves."' What is objectionable in this procedure is twofold.First,who is the "we "in the present such that reconstructions present aprocess of development with which all can identify? Why is it assumedthat one is already facing a collective singularity - mankind as stch?This shift to the language of an anonymous species-subject preemptsthe expereince of moral and political activity as a consequence ofwhich alone a genuine "we" can emerge. A collectivity is not con-stituted theoreticaily but is formed out of the moral and politicalstruggles of fighting actors.In the second place, this shift to the language of a hypostatized sub-ject has as furtherconsequence thatthe historicalprocess isnaturalized.History begins to appear as the semantic gloss on a structuralprocesswhich proceeds with necessityand invariablyfrom one sequence to thenext. Butwe cannot naturalize the historyof the species, forwe have nomodels of development to compare it. At this point, a certain antic-ipatory utopia, a projection of the future as it could be, becomesnecessary. Since the lines of development leading from present tofuturearefundamentally underdetermined, the theorist can no longerspeak the language of evolution and necessity, but must conceive ofherself as a participant in the formation of the future. By focusing onthe seventh stage of moral development, which in Habermas's con-structionconcerns universalizableneed-interpretations,I haveattempt-ed to render this utopian moment visible.

21. "Moreover, evolution-theoretical statements on contemporary social for-mations have a direct practical relation insofar as they serve for the diagnosis ofdevelopmental problems. Thus the necessary restriction to retrospective explanationof the historical material is abandoned in favor of aretrospectivehat sdesignedromactionperspectives:he diagnostician of our time takesthe fictional standpoint of the evolution-theoreticalexplanation ofa past lyingin the future"("Historyand Evolution," DavidJ.Parent, rans.Telos,4 (Spring1979),44). Onlyinsofaras we canassume thatempiricalsub-jects in the present can discover themselves in this presentation of the past can we saythat"theories of evolution and the explanation of epoch-making developmental leapsbased on them can enter those 'discourses' in which competing identity-projectionsare 'subject to debate' " (ibid.).My question is: whose identity? Of men or of women?OfJews or of Gentiles? Of Westerners or ofAfricans?While it is not incumbent upon asocial theorist engaged in explaining social evolution to necessarilyoffer an answer tothese questions, it is nonetheless necessary to specify if these theoretical constructionssucceed or fail when one attempts to mediate them with the formative history ofspecific groups. The problem will not go awayby distinguishing between history andevolution, because the suspicion remains that this evolution is really the logic of thehistory of one group alone.

Benhabib_The Utopian Dimension in Communicative Ethics

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