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

Rating:
Summary: Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action
Review: 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.