ABSTRACT
Jurgen Habermas and other critics raised four objections to Michel Foucault’s work up to 1977. These are Foucault studies underlying practices rather than what agents say and do and thereby generates a kind of presentism; his approach is unreasonable because it violates universal validity claims; it is context-bound rather than context-transcending; and he does not account for the normative dimension of his analysis. According to Foucault, he and Habermas work within a general problematisation of the present comprised of, first, philosophical reflection on and analysis of the apparent limits of thought and action in the present and, second, reflection on and analysis of the forms of reflection one practises and their relation to the present. The ‘forms of rationality’ include Habermas’ ‘relations of communication’; the dimension of ‘signs, communication, reciprocity, and the production of meaning’. Conversely, rational ethical argumentation, associated with the third validity claim, is always context-dependent and non-universal.
