Journal of African Studies and Sustainable Development

This article is a critical examination of the meaning and role of communicative action in the political philosophy of Jürgen Habermas. Whereas communication action denotes the cooperative activity undertaken by individuals through mutual deliberation and argumentation, the political philosophy of Habermas considers mutual deliberation as a basis for democratic governance in the contemporary world. The question of whether Habermas’ theory of communicative action supports the exportation of democracy as the best system of governance across the world is quite instructive. Adopting the method of critical analysis, the article explicates integral principles of communicative action, such as mutual deliberation and argumentation, which in form Habermas’ political philosophy and extols deliberative democracy as a legitimate system of governance. The workings of individuals in the public sphere hold the ace to communicative actions in the democratic process when it is grounded on mutual deliberation. Accordingly, the article maintains that although deliberative democracy is a derivation from Habermas’ theory of communicative action, its integral principles could be applied across continents. Habermas saw reason as fallible, and as merely the product of imperfect human discussion and contemporary political debate. From this, this work sums up by averring that although, reason may appear to be fallible, it should not be jettisoned in human communicative political domain. Otherwise, the arena would be very chaotic. ‘Communicative action’ in practice especially in the use of language by politicians/statesmen at the national/international level requires systematic approach and high level of caution. Certain utterances can spark off or ignite socio-political and ethnoreligious violence.

Open Full Text (PDF)