ABSTRACT
The reconceptualization of the normative foundations of critical theory undertaken by The Theory of Communicative Action has guided Habermas’ project of social enquiry ever since. According to him, shifting the normative reference of critical theory away from the frustrated aspirations of particular subjects onto an account of the unrealized potentials of a certain mode of interaction permits the de-transcendentalization of critical theory's philosophical roots. Critical theory, Habermas supposes, can now free itself from its former dependence on abstract descriptions of supposedly essential human motivations and position itself as a reflection on the normativity that concrete subjects themselves invest in a mode of interacting that occurs in their everyday acts of communication. The theory does not, thereby, forfeit its claims to objectivity. The standards of critical judgments are not to be turned over to the subjective tastes of empirical actors but are to refer to procedural norms whose rationality is implicitly affirmed by every interaction that aims at achieving mutual understanding. This account of the normative reference of critical theory implicitly democratizes ethics. A communicative ethics does not place concrete individuals as the passive recipients of judgments about how they might act reasonably in a complex and pluralistic social environment. It offers itself as a clarification of the wider significance of the norms of reasonable interactions that are, at least implicitly, present in the communicative practices of the everyday.
