Introduction
Communication is one vital element
that keeps society intact or disintegrated.
It is by means of this that we came into relations with one another. We
cannot help but communicate with one another because man is a social animal, and he needs to relate with others. Not only that, but he is also a rational animal
wherein he is capable of reasoning and thoughts translated into air vibrations
are what we call words and are the basic element in communication.
Communication undeniably plays an important role in society.
When man first came into speech, he
has no other objective in hand than to be understood by the other. He needs to speak what he has in his head and
there is the need for it since thoughts are only privative to the one who
experiences but one wishes to share the same with the other. Sooner as
communication then developed, so too has society developed; and as evidence of
its marvel, here we have a modern society that has a bloom in culture, and with it, is science, technology, and also in the
realm of politics.
But even though communication is a
means towards our development and is a sign thereof; it is also a way towards
misunderstanding. Anarchy, political instability, and even basic relations are
also the products of the shortcomings of effective communication. But as how
the poet Holderlin puts it, “from where the danger is, grows also the saving
power.” Communication has helped us and also contributed to our demise, but
in its shortcomings, it is also the way wherein we can recover from such
circumstances.
Jurgen Habermas has a view regarding
communication as a vital element in society at large or even in simple matters
that concerns us. He is also aware of the atrocities it brings but he also
mentions its power to help in reconstructing society. His theory regarding communicative action is
his contribution towards the understanding of the existing dilemma of
communication and also his insights towards the development of communication in
everyday life whether in terms of macro-politics or to the basic or simple
relation with individuals.
I would like then to use Habermas’
Theory of Communicative Action in the sphere which is closest to me and that is
the realm of education. To be particular I am going to tackle the classroom
phenomenon i.e. the relationship between teacher and students. This is interesting for
me because I would like to show the shortcomings of communication inside the
ordinary classroom setup and the possible relation of Habermas’ Communicative
Action in matters concerning management and relations. Whether Habermas’
thoughts can give light on the problems inside the particular experience I have or expose the impossibilities of Habermas’
theory in this case.
But before going into the issue, it is necessary to know what is Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action before
jumping into the classroom sphere that I have.
Jurgen Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action
The Role of Reason
Habermas stresses the role of reason
and its importance in communication. In the early parts of his Theory of Communicative Action and Moral
Consciousness, he explicated the various theories that attack reason and
especially to that of the modernist flavour of it being objective. He invites
two master thinkers to elucidate the power of reason in their philosophies and
that is in the likes of Kant a foundationalist and Hegel as an Absolutist.
Although there are setbacks in their views on reason but Kant and Hegel aimed
at objectivity and simply truth. Habermas stressed these thinkers because once
we are in the realm of communication we always make it a point of obtaining and
speaking the truth in order to communicate effectively with one another. But
the problem set forth by those after Kant and Hegel was that of destroying the
ability of reason to be objective and in the sense they restrict reasoning only
to some levels. Meaning we rest truth in a certain framework just like in the
case of Marx and Freud reducing reasoning to class struggles and the
subconscious. But being objective is not to be only in that level and not only
to look from that lens.
Modernity is the “rejection of
substantive rationality, typical religious and metaphysical worldviews by a
belief in procedural rationality and its ability to give evidence to our views
in the three areas of objective knowledge, moral practical insight and
aesthetic judgement.”[1]
Although Habermas here is interpreting Kant’s idea of modernity and even
setting parameters that this is Kant’s project by overhauling the previous
schemes that dictates reason especially Kant was awakened by Hume’s scepticism
and for that he carries that scepticism to the previous ideologies that govern
thinking. Kant being a foundationalist will victimize himself in his modernist
call but then again the point of him being a foundationalist is that he calls
for a re-evaluation of reason in the sense it has gone misleading that why he
created the Critique of Pure Reason
to that very purpose. He espouses the ability of reason and reason corrected in
such a manner to obtain truth. Kant is scientific and he wishes that his
critique will pave way to the scientific kind of thinking. A kind of thinking
that rests not on evidences that are not there, but that of a meet of reason
and experience in which we can be objective to some point but never to be all
out objective because to be all out objective is to refer to the noumenon which
according to Kant is unknowable and what we can know is only the phenomenon and
that is what appears to us. Because only those which appears to us can be
subject to our thinking and reasoning but never can unlock its essence but only
to what it appears to us to be so.
At most we have a touch of the world
than to be so transcendental i.e. in the extreme sense overly lofty. Kant
mediates reason and experience and thus we humans as epistemological beings
functions according to such.
Next is Hegel wherein he is
absolutist by his claims of Totality and that everything will go there.
Totality or in his words the Absolute is the end of it all. Although he is
mysterious and prophetic in mentioning about an end but nevertheless he is
scientific and objective in the sense that he is claiming one reality and that
is the Absolute, although he did not differ from Kant’s noumenon but Hegel
expounded a process philosophy in which everything is governed in the
manifestation of the Absolute and that is his dialectics. But his dialectics is
not just a description of nature but it is how nature or simply how everything
goes; it is also a display of the function of consciousness or of the
individual’s perception of everything. Consciousness has a role in which it
interprets the world outside of it according to its fashion. “As consciousness
becomes conscious of itself, it destroys one form of consciousness of the
other.”[2]
Consciousness which is conscious of the other tends to substantiate itself with
the other that is in the sense of experiencing what is outside, but as soon as
consciousness becomes reflectory and tends to make itself as an object of its
own function then consciousness will correct or develop itself in other forms
in order to supplant, negate or re-evaluate itself in its functioning.
Consciousness has this penchant of
changing itself for itself for the better that is why; in Hegel’s dialectics it
has a major role of interpreting the world in its fashion and sees the
connections that are made according to its dictum. Consciousness is the seat of
which how Absolute manifests itself and it is also in this seat wherein
dialectics is at play. “What Hegel calls dialectical is the reconstruction of
this recurrent experience and of its assimilation by the subject
(consciousness), which gives rise to ever more complex structures.”[3]
These structures then are the basis of thought given to the outside world and
in so doing is giving a picture to the world by connecting the pieces of
experiences in the realm of thought. But the outside world is not at all then
purely that objective because there is the imposition of the specific
consciousness with its own structures that then redefines the object according
to the mould of the subject. Therefore consciousness being aware of its object
assimilates the object into the subjective realm thus is also dialectical and
to refer to Hegel’s title of his book it is therefore a phenomenology.
Reason as for these two master
thinkers is primordial to the shaping of reality and Habermas laid stress on
Kantian reasoning but not to the extreme like making the universal unknown, but
he does not stop there since he does not want to give up the modernist project,
even if Kant doubted pure reason and its capability to claim knowledge but
nonetheless although the universal cannot be attained, but still we can follow
maxims that can be universalizable. As with Hegel, Habermas saw the ability of
reason to merge two worlds into one, to which consciousness has this
synthetical tendencies, that is it resolves extremes. Habermas saw these two
ideas reflecting the mechanism of how his Communicative Action theory goes.
Thus he used Kant and Hegel to justify the rationality needed in communication.
Rationality is that element also to make us participate in discourse or in
communication per se.
Communicative Action
Rationality is the one key into the
participation in engaging discourse or into communication but there are several
kinds of actions that came from basic communication that is not what Habermas
means on Communicative Action. That is why Habermas has to distinguish four
kinds of actions that proceed from reason and in the event of communication.
This categorization was taken from an article by Roger Bolton entitled
“Habermas Theory of Communicative Action and The Theory of Social Capital”.
First is Teleological Action of
which this action is engaged into the achievement of personal interests. This
action is guided by maxims or ends specifically highly individualistic. Second
is Normatively Regulated Action of which it is an action that is “fulfilling a
generalized expectation of behaviour”[4].
This action is aimed at aligning oneself in the social sphere set by the morals
of culture. Third is Dramaturgical Action of which this is much like the first
which is Teleological Action but this one is stylized in the sense that an
individual’s interest embodies the interest of the public or the interest of
the individual favours a certain kind of public. Lastly is Communicative Action
wherein this is an action driven by interests of individuals but these
interests are placed into discourse in order to achieve mutual understanding.
It is also in “which actors in society seek to reach common understanding and
to coordinate actions by reasoned argument, consensus and cooperation rather
than strategic action, strictly in pursuit of their own goals.”[5]
Communicative action plays a vital
role in society since society needs to move in a manner wherein everybody
participates into discourse that will shape the course of it. Habermas is
proposing the use of communicative action or is he really describing such
phenomenon happening already in democratized countries. But nonetheless,
Habermas theory of communicative action is ideal in the sense that it involves
and requires everybody in concern to participate and only to which when issues
are raised. How discourse goes shall follow the Kantian light of
universalization of which is the gist of his moral philosophy. Habermas
conceives that in discourse we air out our interests so that everybody will
then have something to universalize so that it will then be the course of
action to take. Although there is no universal in the sense because truth is
always changing and depends on situation of the times but what is needed in the
moment is a certain truth that will be needed for an immediate action to
respond to issues at hand. Hegel then comes in wherein there is the ability of
reason to derive a synthesis from oppositional factions in order that there
will be a meet, not a compromise wherein one is subsumed by the other but a
compromise wherein one is neither subsumed nor forsaken in the majority but one
has an equal and recognized stance, that then we call consensus or a universal
agreement.
Classroom Set-Up in ACT and the Habermasian
Hypothesis
Upon giving little light to what
Communicative Action is, then it would be best also the apply it wherein it is
close to the one doing this paper. Let me particularize the situation I have in
my classes here in Asian College of Technology. Here I will just assume
everything I describe in my almost 2 years of existence in this job.
Mostly of the students I have
encountered have the same background of being enmeshed in the horrors of
today’s educational system wherein they
themselves are bereft of moral stance and even moral judgements to start with
at most of the times. I understand that I have yet to respect their lifeworld
but it seems that theirs is a difficult one to handle with when it comes to
dealing them inside the educational sphere. Moreso, it is hard to culture them
having that we have at most different orientations. But, to understand their
culture wherein mostly of them are poverty stricken and the results of the
backwaters of the educational system at the same time having been immersed for
too long inside a community of “miseducated” Filipinos of which they confuse
religiosity to superstition and most of them do not even know how cheating is
such a grave sin and that some in a most part of them are the products of mercy
“pasar-awa” that is why they have gone this far. Plus also a heavy note into
their traditional political orientation.
Although it is difficult to relate
with them but they are not exempted in the participation in discourse or in the
governance even inside the classroom. Even though that they have a certain kind
of rationality but it is difficult to relate with them and even give them power
to participate when their tendency is anarchistic. That is, all they could
propose is laziness and incompetency which even I think inside this era that
demands more than that to survive but not even survival but a kind of quality
living beyond the survival dimension of life is of grave importance.
The students have also their
interests and I too have mine and through communicative action we display our
interests in the first few meetings. But to thorough the process of deliberation
into what action to do is a waste of time considering the fact that we have but
roughly 5 months to comply for a semester and too lengthen the debate would be impractical
when certain issues are in question by the students. It is quite good if there
are no questions, to make the process faster. But herewith are the following
realizations from my suspicions if students are silent and simply agreeing with
the rules I have set. I do agree that students have rationality and they can
participate but their silence could mean that they are simply agreeing to make
things faster and thus forsaking their rationality for the sake of simply
agreeing. Or they are encapsulated by the fact that I as teacher have authority
over them. Although the problem of authority can be resolved by simply giving
the students emancipation and also by letting myself open to question and
diminish authoritative stance. But there is one problem that struck me and that
is the unwillingness to participate from the students’ side.
Emancipating
the students to participate is one difficult task. Habermas made a point that
everybody can participate due to their rationality. The task is to educate the students
well in order to make them realize unto themselves that they can participate
and not only in robust attitude but to participate in the sense that they are
will help in reconstructing society. Even in the basic classroom set up they
can practice such participation, rectifying their reason. What I am saying is
that the way how Habermas’ theory of communicative action should be applied in
the level of the classroom which then will be reflective in the society outside
the school once they will reach that level, will be in a matter or
democratizing society but not to the point of a senseless mob rule. We then
need a certain kind of education that will emancipate the students and at the
same time not to give them all out raw energy to just destroy the system but to
give them critical minds to contribute into the refining of society through a highly
cultivated reason that can further understand one’s own interest at par or in
relationship with other interests and for that to make the deliberation quite fruitful
or good.
Within my classroom, it is difficult
if these students are not readily at hand been immersed earlier by a critical
culture that is why my reasoning cannot be inclined to theirs and I am not in
the position to give away standard and that would be inauthentic. But let it my
task to open their eyes by broadening their knowledge and discipline in
critical thinking and also attributing to them a kind of progressive social
consciousness that then will be useful and beneficiary to society once they
will participate and soon once they will inculcate such in short time then they
can deliberately participate in classroom matters.
But for now, as how I started the
paper in Habermas’ exposition of the two master thinkers who highlighted the
role of reason, so as then be the stress of my paper, that my classroom dilemma
is a situation wherein democracy is but a tyranny of the ignorant, incapable
and incompetent masses due to lack of formation. Even though it be ideal to
understand their interest but their interests are deeply rooted on problematic
grounds. As for my students, giving them power is a danger to the ruling inside
my class, but it is quite a good practice to give them power but my interest
will also be at stake and that is the quality of my performance. Then again, we
are protecting interests, but the point is which perspective bears a greater
benefit? We aim at mutual understanding but there is also a risk in
compromising the greater good which again is yet unconceivable to the masses
and even to my classroom. Giving one the autonomy of equal voice also
presupposes that one bears a kind of rationality that can be at par and can
compete and even can contribute in event of discourse.
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