Abstract

Jürgen Habermas’s communicative theory is characterised by a postmetaphysical account of morality. This perspective stems from Habermas’s appropriation of Modernisation Theory, with the Weberian distinction between questions of taste, truth and rightness. In view of the “disenchantment of the world”, Habermas proclaims the autonomy of science and morality from metaphysical perceptions, and conflates substantive ethics with issues of taste. As I demonstrate, such distinction between ethical and moral reasons takes the validity of MT, along with its epistemological assumptions, as a presupposition for the requirement of universal and impartial normative claims in discourse acts. However, this aprioristic validation of MT is at odds with Habermas’s own view that particular linguistic schemes of reason determine epistemological and truth standards of validity – as in accordance with a Pragmatic Theory of Meaning. Thus, by challenging Habermas’s differentiation of ethics and morality, I argue that communicative rationality should allow for a substantive account of normative validation, which in my theoretical framework combines elements of Alasdair MacIntyre’s theory of traditions, reconfigured into a universalistic project of ethical learning. Furthermore, I contend that once the validity of MT is brought into question through PTM, metaphysical reasons can be rehabilitated for the justification of metaethical principles of communicative action.