ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Hannah Arendt and Alasdair MacIntyre, both of whom fundamentally concur with his re-orientation towards intersubjectivity. It builds upon insights firmly rooted in Habermasian critical theory. The chapter concerns Habermas's understanding of the good, an understanding that not only leads him to mischaracterize his project but also to undermine it. It covers his understanding of critique, whether the ideal speech situation' is an adequate conceptualization of the conditions of non-dominative interaction. The chapter explains the entwinement of universal and particular, the dependence of critique on experience and the multidimensionality of argumentative validity. It suggests that Habermas's project has a fundamentally ethical structure and that insofar as he subordinates ethics to a procedural morality he stands guilty of misinterpreting himself. This self-misinterpretation is exacerbated by a subjectivist reading of ethics that, in threatening a return to Weberian subjectivism imperils the gains of his intersubjective turn. The chapter presents opposition between purposive and communicative reason.
