Communicative Rationality - Three Kinds of (formal) Reason

Three Kinds of (formal) Reason

According to Habermas, the "substantive" (i.e. formally & semantically integrated) rationality that characterized pre-modern worldviews has, since modern times, been emptied of its content and divided into three purely "formal" realms: (1) cognitive-instrumental reason; (2) moral-practical reason; and (3) aesthetic-expressive reason. The first type applies to the sciences, where experimentation & theorizing are geared towards a need to predict and control outcomes. The second type is at play in our moral and political deliberations (very broadly, answers to the question "how should I live?"), and the third type is typically found in the practices of art and literature. It is the second type which concerns Habermas.

Because of the de-centering of religion and other traditions that once played this role, according to Habermas we can no longer give substantive answers to the question "How should I live?" Additionally, there are strict limits which a "post-metaphysical" theory (see below) must respect – namely the clarification of procedures and norms upon which our public deliberation depends. The modes of justification we use in our moral and political deliberations, and the ways we determine which claims of others are valid, are what matter most, and what determine whether we are being "rational". Hence the role that Habermas sees for communicative reason in formulating appropriate methods by which to conduct our moral and political discourse.

This purely formal "division of labour" has been criticized by Nikolas Kompridis, who sees in it too strong a division between practical and aesthetic reasoning, an unjustifiably hard distinction between the "right" and the "good", and an unsupportable priority of validity to meaning.