Life Story Dialogue and the Ideal Speech Situation Critical Theory and Hermeneutics

Abstract

In this paper we suggest that agents engage in life history dialogue prior to discourse as a way of enhancing mutual understanding and overcoming impediments to genuine consensus. We furthermore claim that life history dialogue fits well with Habermas’ concern regarding the hegemony of technical rationality. Habermas asserts that norms and normative institutional arrangements are just or valid if and only if they represent genuine consensus arrived at in discourse under ideal speech conditions. A requirement of genuine consensus is that discourse participants understand each other and have a shared understanding of normative terms. Three impediments to understanding threaten genuine consensus. We propose that encouraging participants to engage in life history dialogue prior to discourse will diminish these impediments. As a form of hermeneutic dialogue, life history dialogue serves as a model for how we come to understand ourselves, know each other, and may serve as a forum for cultivating understanding.

Keywords

dialogue Habermas hermeneutics ideal speech situation life history narrative power

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Benhabib, S. (1992). Situating the self: Gender, community, and postmodernism in contemporary ethics. New York: Routledge .

Berlin, I. (1982). Does political theory still exist? In H. Hardy (Ed.), Concepts and categories: Philosophical essays by Isaiah Berlin (pp. 143-172). New York: Penguin. (Original work published 1961 .)

Bernstein, R.J. (1998). The retrieval of the democratic ethos. In M. Rosenfeld & A. Arato (Eds.), Habermas on law and democracy: Critical exchanges (pp. 287-305). Berkeley: University of California Press .

Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .

Erikson, E.H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed.). New York: Norton .

Gadamer, H-G. (1975). Truth and method (G. Barden & J. Cumming, Trans.). New York: Crossroad; London: Sheed & Ward . (Original work published 1960.)

Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in the late modern age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press .

Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice: Psychological theory and women’s development. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .

Habermas, J. (1970). Toward a rational society (J.J. Shapiro, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon . (Original work published 1968.)

10.

Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action: Vol. 1. Reason and the rationalization of society (T. McCarthy, Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon . (Original work published in 1981.)

11.

Habermas, J. (1990). Moral consciousness and communicative action (C. Lenhardt & S. Weber Nicholsen, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press . (Original work published 1983.)

12.

Habermas, J. (1993). Justification and application: Remarks on discourse ethics (C. Cronin, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press .

13.

Habermas, J. (1996). Between facts and norms (W. Rehg, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press . (Original work published 1992)

14.

Habermas, J. (1998). Richard Rorty’s pragmatic turn. In M. Cooke (Ed.), On the pragmatics of communication (pp. 343-382). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press . (Original work published 1996.)

15.

Hermans, H.J.M. (2002). The dialogical self as a society of mind: Introduction . Theory & Psychology, 12, 147-160 .

16.

Horkheimer, M. , & Adorno, T.W. (1972). Dialectic of enlightenment (J. Cumming, Trans.). New York: Herder & Herder . (Original work published 1944.)

17.

Jaggar, A.M. (1996). Love and knowledge: Emotion in feminist epistemology. In A. Garry & M. Pearsall (Eds.), Women, knowledge and reality: Explorations in feminist philosophy (2nd ed., pp. 166-190). New York: Routledge .

18.

Kohli, W. (1995). Educating for emancipatory rationality. In W. Kohli (Ed.), Critical conversations in philosophy of education (pp. 103-115). New York: Routledge .

19.

Lloyd, G. (1996). The man of reason. In A. Garry & M. Pearsall (Eds.), Women, knowledge and reality: Explorations in feminist philosophy (2nd ed., pp. 149-165). New York: Routledge .

20.

MacIntyre, A. (1981). After virtue. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press .

21.

McAdams, D.P. (1996). Personality, modernity, and the storied self: a contemporary framework for studying persons . Psychological Inquiry, 7, 295-321 .

22.

Meriwether, N. (2001). Discourse ethics and the problem of oppression . Telos, 119, 99-114 .

23.

Morson, G.S. , & Emerson, C. (1990). Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a prosaics. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press .

24.

Polkinghorne, D. (1988). Narrative knowing and the human sciences. Albany: State University of New York Press .

25.

Richardson, F.C. , Fowers, B.J. , & Guignon, C.B. (1999). Re-envisioning psychology: Moral dimensions of theory and practice. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass .

26.

Ricoeur, P. (1992). Oneself as another (K. Blamey, Trans.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press .

27.

Sarbin, T.R. (Ed.). (1986). Narrative psychology: The storied nature of human conduct. New York: Praeger .

28.

Steuerman, E. (2000). Bounds of reason: Habermas, Lyotard and Melanie Klein on rationality. London: Routledge .

29.

Taft, L.B. , & Nehrke, M.F. (1990). Reminiscence, life review, and ego integrity in nursing home residents . International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 30, 189-196 .

30.

Taylor, C. (1989). Sources of the self. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press .

31.

Taylor, C. (1991). The dialogical self. In D. Hiley , J. Bohman , & R. Schusterman (Eds.), The interpretive turn: Philosophy, science, culture (pp. 304-314). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press .

32.

Warnke, G. (1987). Gadamer: Hermeneutics, tradition, and reason. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press .

33.

White, S.K. (1979). Rationality and the foundations of political philosophy: An introduction to the recent work of Jürgen Habermas . Journal of Politics, 41, 1156-1171 .