Abstract
This article explores Jürgen Habermas’s critical employment of Noam Chomsky’s insights and the philosophical assumptions that motivate or justify Habermas’s early enrichment of his universal pragmatics with material drawn from generative linguistics. The investigation of the influence Chomsky’s theory has exerted on Habermas aims to clarify what Habermas means by universalism, reason embedded in language and the universal core of communicative competence—away from various misinterpretations of Habermas’s rationalist commitments and from reductive, conventionalist readings of his notion of consensus. Much against hasty and unexamined incriminations of Habermasian pragmatics, a turn to a neglected and scantly researched topic such as the philosophical affinity of some Chomskian and Habermasian themes (and to the philosophical justification of the points where Chomsky and Habermas part company) will retrieve the kind of depth and nuance that may lead us beyond facile and simplistic understandings of what discursively reaching consensus might mean from a Habermasian point of view.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
For such a questioning, see Nielsen (1993).
In that article, Bar-Hillel emphasized that ‘we certainly are badly in need of a conception that will synthesize Chomsky’s theory of linguistic competence with the theory of speech acts’ (1973: 11) but he downright rejected the plausibility of Habermas’s response to such a theoretical demand.
Contrast this, for instance, with Kivinen and Piiroinen’s view that ‘pragmatists manage just fine with an understanding of human beings as organisms that transact with their environment, cope, and adapt, forming ever new habits in the process’ (Kivinen and Piiroinen 2007: 106).
Much of what will crop up here reflects, amongst other things, the polemics between Habermas and Chomsky on the one side and the behaviourists on the other as well as the polemics between the traditional analytic philosophers and the theorists of ordinary language. Important as such polemics might have been at those times for the emergence and shaping of the theories in question, attention to them here would sidetrack us. Thus, I will presuppose some knowledge of the premises of such debates somewhat axiomatically. For a concise account of such debates and their relation to the linguistic turn, see Norris (1994: 375–387).
On how Habermas makes use of this specific point, see Habermas (1990: 68–69).
Here I should emphasize that this point does not imply that those who lack the ability to speak (babies or mute people) are not human beings or are not equipped with basic human rights like those of all other humans. The distinction between ‘performance’ and ‘competence’ shows that a property or a feature can be either actual or potential and thus resolves this problem. As concerns animals, the distinction between humans (speakers of a language of quasi-transcendental nature) and non-human beings by no means has negative implications for the discourse on animal rights.
As Allen and Van Buren (1971: ix) observe, for Chomsky, ‘a theory of language is to be regarded as a partial theory of the human mind’.
Although Habermas's later work is sometimes at variance with statements like those that I will be quoting, which in any case even then appeared tentative, I believe that they could be further elaborated (cautiously so as to avoid reductionism, naturalism, or apriorism) and even backed up with more recent research in developmental psychology as well as in speculative or realist philosophy. I see no compelling argument against any further research in such directions.
As Searle writes: ‘the weakest element of Chomsky's grammar is the semantic component, as he himself repeatedly admits’ (Searle 1974: 23).
Allen and Paul Van Buren give a detailed explanation of the transition from the Standard Theory to the modified one (1971: 102–105). The idea that the surface structure does not decisively affect the deep structure belonged mainly to Katz and Postal (see Chomsky 1977a: 22), and Chomsky seems rather reluctant to subscribe to this. As he writes, Katz believes that ‘linguistic theory provides a system for representation of meaning’. ‘My own view is more skeptical’ and further ‘it is also questionable whether the theory of meaning can be divorced from the study of other cognitive structures’ (Chomsky 1977a: 23).
This specific account of universals may prove to be untenable or inadequate to explain transhistorical semantic properties of language. Habermas himself has, throughout the years, appeared reluctant to promote those early ideas of his work and to give any substantive, that is, non-formal account of universality in language. But universal pragmatics as a linguistic theory does not stand or fall on the basis of a substantive linguistic component, because its force lies precisely in its formal properties and in the horizons it opens for a philosophical linguistic paradigm.
As early as 1967, Habermas writes: ‘When it became apparent to some scholars that empirical statements depend on theories, and theory in turn on paradigms, the strategy of reductionism had to be thoroughly revamped. This undermined the whole mind–body problem’ (Habermas 1987 [1967]: 356).
This objection is equally plausible when directed against theories that have radically different assumptions from the Chomskian, i.e., some postmodernist theories. For the latter also confront questions related to monological assumptions that introduce private language by the back door.
Internalism in the Chomskyan context concerns ‘all and only those constituent features of language that are capable of specification in speaker-relative but strictly trans-individual terms’ (Norris 2010: 109).
References
Allen, J. P. B., & Van Buren, P. (Eds.) (1971). Introduction. In Chomsky: Selected Readings (London: Oxford University Press), pp. iii–ix.
Apel, K.-O. (1984). Comments on Davidson’s “communication and convention”. Synthese, 59, 19–26.
Badiou, A. (1999). Manifesto for philosophy (N. Madarasz, Trans.). New York: State University of New York Press.
Badiou, A. (2001). Ethics: An essay on the understanding of evil (P. Hallward Trans.). London; Verso.
Badiou, A. (2008). We need a popular discipline: Contemporary politics and the crisis of the negative. Interview by F. Del Lucchese and J. Smith. Critical inquiry 34 (summer 2008) pp. 645–659.
Bar-Hillel, Y. (1973). On Habermas’ hermeneutic philosophy of language. Synthese, 26, 1–12.
Bhaskar, R. (1997). A realist theory of science. London: Verso Press.
Chomsky, N. (1964). Current issues in linguistic theory. The Hague, Paris: Mouton & Co.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Chomsky, N. (1966). Cartesian linguistics. New York and London: Harper & Row.
Chomsky, N. (1977a). The logical structure of linguistic theory. New York and London: Plenum Press.
Chomsky, N. (1977b). Essays on form and interpretation. New York: North-Holland.
Chomsky, N. (1988). Language and problems of knowledge. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Chomsky, N. (1993). Lectures on government and binding. Berlin: M. De Gruyter.
Cooke, M. (2011). Pragmatics in Habermas’s critical social theory. In W. Bublitz & N. R. Norrick (Eds.), Foundations of pragmatics (pp. 289–312). Berlin: W. De Gruyter.
Davidson, D. (1986). A nice derangement of epitaphs. In E. LePore (Ed.), Truth and interpretation: Perspectives on the philosophy of Donald Davidson (pp. 433–446). Oxford: Blackwell.
Derrida, J. (1989). Signature event context. In G. Graff (Ed.), Limited Inc (pp. 1–23). Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Foucault, M. (1991). The ethic of care for the self as a practice of freedom: An interview (J. D. Gauthier, Trans.). In: J. Bernauer, & D. Rasmussen (Eds.), The final foucault. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Frank, M. (1989). What is neostructuralism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Habermas, J. (1970). Towards a theory of communicative competence. Inquiry, 13, 360–375.
Habermas, J. (1984). Communication and the evolution of society (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Cambridge: Polity Press.
Habermas, J. (1987). Knowledge and human interests. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Habermas, J. (1990). On the logic of the social sciences. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Habermas, J. (1991). A reply. In A. Honneth & H. Joas (Eds.), Communicative action (pp. 214–264). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Habermas, J. (1992). Moral consciousness and communicative action. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Habermas, J. (1998) [1976]. What Is universal pragmatics? In: M. Cooke (Eds.), Habermas: On the pragmatics of communication (pp. 21–104). Oxford: Polity Press.
Habermas, J. (1998) [1996]. R. Rorty′s pragmatic turn. In: M. Cooke (Eds.), Habermas: On the pragmatics of communication (pp. 343–382). Oxford: Polity Press.
Harman, G. (2010). Towards speculative realism. London: Zero Books.
Hymes, D. (1972). On communicative competence. In J. B. Pride & H. Holmes (Eds.), Sociolinguistics (pp. 269–293). London: Penguin.
Katz, J. J. (1971). The philosophical relevance of linguistic theory. In J. Searle (Ed.), The philosophy of language (pp. 99–120). London: Oxford University Press.
Katz, J. J. (1998). Realistic rationalism. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Kivinen, O., & Piiroinen, T. (2007). Sociologizing metaphysics and mind: A pragmatist point of view on the methodology of the social sciences. Human Studies, 30(2), 97–114.
Lyotard, J.-F. (1984). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Lyotard, J.-F. (1993). Libidinal economy. London: Athlone Press.
Meillassoux, Q. (2008). After finitude: An essay on the necessity of contingency. London and New York: Continuum.
Nielsen, K. (1993). Skeptical remarks on the scope of philosophy: Rorty versus Habermas. Social Theory and Practice, 19(2), 117–160.
Norris, C. (1994). On the discrimination of discourse-theories: The “linguistic turn” in philosophical perspective. In H. Grabes (Ed.), Aesthetics and contemporary discourse (pp. 355–426). Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
Norris, C. (2010). Re-thinking the Cogito: Naturalism, rationalism and the venture of thought. London and New York: Continuum.
Papastephanou, M. (1997). Communicative action and philosophical foundations: Comments on the Apel-Habermas debate. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 23(4), 41–69.
Papastephanou, M. (2004). The implicit assumptions of dividing a cake: Political or comprehensive? Human Studies, 27(3), 307–334.
Papastephanou, M. (2010). Communicative utopia and political re-education. In M. Murphy & T. Fleming (Eds.), Habermas, critical theory and education (pp. 33–46). London: Routledge.
Rorty, R. (1980). Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Oxford: Blackwell.
Rorty, R. (1991). Objectivity, relativism and truth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Searle, J. (1974). Chomsky’s revolution in linguistics. In H. Harman (Ed.), On Noam Chomsky: Critical essays (pp. 2–33). New York: Anchor Press.
Steuerman, E. (2000). The bounds of reason: Habermas, Lyotard and Melanie Klein on rationality. New York: Routledge.
Wellmer, A. (1992). What is a Pragmatic theory of meaning? Variations on the proposition “we understand a speech act when we know what makes it acceptable”. In A. Honneth (Ed.), Philosophical interventions in the unfinished project of enlightenment (pp. 171–220). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Papastephanou, M. Exploring Habermas’s Critical Engagement with Chomsky. Hum Stud 35, 51–76 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-012-9210-8
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-012-9210-8