Abstract
The aim of this article is to critically evaluate Habermas’ concept of communicative rationality. This concept is an expression of the far-reaching attempt to rehabilitate rationality, which would then make possible a theoretical grounding for the practical project of a just society.
Communicative rationality, which has been a part of Habermas’ considerations of politics and society from roughly the mid-seventies up to today, is the result of his attempt to adopt the pragmatic turn in analytical philosophy (and at the same time to go beyond this turn). Formal pragmatics, in the framework of which communicative rationality is formulated, draws above all from the theory of speech acts of John L.
Austin and John R. Searle and from – primarily Dummett’s – pragmatist semantics.
It is with the help of the concepts articulated by these authors that Habermas attempts to reveal “the validity basis of language”, presenting a specific linguistic normativity which is characterised by a basic emancipatory dimension.