ABSTRACT
Relating his position to the tradition of ordinary language philosophy from which it partly purports to be emerging, the chapter explores Habermas's account of understanding and validity. It is argued that Habermas's position suffers from an unresolved tension between a (Kantian) commitment to a universalist abstraction requirement and an emphasis on the ordinary (involving context-specific sensitivity in judgment) in the way it has been cultivated in ordinary language philosophy.
