Understanding Habermas: The Ideal Speech Community

Dr Hercules Bantas

A Reluctant Geek Academic Guide

Published by The Reluctant Geek

Smashwords Edition

Melbourne, Australia

Copyright Hercules Bantas 2012

Author's Note

A shorter examination of Habermas's concept of the ideal speech community appeared in Habermas and Deliberative Democracy. While there are similarities between the two, this essay is more specific and contains more material sourced directly from Habermas's work.

The Ideal Speech Community

Júrgen Habermas's theory of the Ideal Speech Community is a combination of speech act theory and Kantian moral theory. An aspect of discourse ethics, the 'ideal speech community', is a purely theoretical concept that outlines the conditions under which a community would reach consensus on moral problems and norms without the taints usually associated with self-interest. In formulating the Ideal Speech Community, Habermas continues a tradition of German enlightenment thought that includes philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, and Marx. He is often described as a 'critical theorist', a term which is used to describe a rational branch of philosophical theory that is associated with the Frankfurt school that was founded in 1923 by a group of intellectuals at the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt (Held, 1980 ). Habermas is considered one of the second wave of critical theorists carrying on the intellectual traditions of the school after the rise of fascism in German saw the school closed and moved to New York (1980, p. 114).