MEANING IN HABERMASIAN COMMUNICATIVE RATIONALITY

Abstract

Over several decades, meaning has been crafted in many ways such as logicality and scientificity, but meaning as sense seems to be rifer than any other sense of meaning. In contemporary times, a new formulation of meaning has been presented by Jurgen Habermas, who rejects the other systems of meaning (logic and empirical science) as defective and artificial. Communicative rationality or reason (a theory or set of theories that appreciates human reason as an indispensable product of successful human communication), as his substitute system, claims to break away from the weakness of the past systems except its adoption of meaning as sense in ordinary language such as in a sentence. This paper demonstrates that communicative reason in which meaning functions as natural or ordinary language fails to avoid the pitfalls of the artificial systems. It makes clear that Habermas' rationality, though apparently detached from the symbolism and artificial constructs of logic and empirical science, is but founded on the presuppositions of those systems he tried to fault; and challenges the logical possibility of social life, particularly as epistemic intersubjectivity.