ABSTRACT

The principle of "universalizability" posits that an act is judged as "ethical" only if it functions as a general "maxim" or fundamental principle that can be adopted by all "rational" agents without assuming anything specific about their (phenomenological) experiences or about their (empirical) positions and relations. This chapter aims to critically examine Jurgen Habermas's post-Enlightenment philosophy of rationalist communicative action. For Habermas, each individual involved in communicative action is situated within his or her community of speakers on a par with the others. Habermas neither proves that there is a single public sphere, nor assumes that there was a single, self-conscious and unified forum for political critique and discussion. By using specific feminist theories to critique the potential exclusions that the articulation of "universal reason" depends upon, the chapter focuses on the implications of those critiques for the feminist analyses themselves.