New Social Paradigm: Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action
New Social Paradigm: Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action

Summary/Abstract: The paper discusses the contribution of J. Habermas to the foundation of a new social paradigm in the form of the communicative action theory. The author first gives a global survey of Habermas's intellectual development, starting from Marx through the critical theory to post-Marxism that Habermas finally left behind since oriented towards convergence and integration of the social action theory, the system theory and the symbolic interactionism theory. Unlike Marx's paradigm of production and social labor as the basic category Marxist theory is built upon, Habermas has built a new paradigm of the communicative action focused upon the communicative mind, communication and rationality as well as the communicative community. The author critically points to the values as well as inner limits of Habermas's theory that reduced a complex and controversial class nature of the society to the "communicative community" thus promoting idealistic worship of the role of the rational discourse.

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