COMMUNICATION AND LIBERATION Dr. James L. Marsh Fordham University,(N.York, U.S.A.) The basic claim in the paper is that communication and liberation imply one another. What I hope to lay out is an argument sketch that at least renders plausible the hipothesis-thesis of a necessary reciprocity between communication and liberation. Communication, understood as the free unfolding of communicative praxis covered by four validity claims of truth, comprehensibility, sincerity, and rightness, must complete itself in liberation, understood here negatively as the overcoming of unjustly imposed social constraint, repression, alienation, and opression and positively as the emergence of the free, human person in a just fully happy community. Liberation, on the other hand requires communication if liberation is to be fully just, non-arbitrary, and open to otherness(1). Both Apel and Dussel, it seems to me, have made important contributions to ethical-social theory and have influenced me greatly. With respect to both theories, however, I wish to argue the following: A) each needs the other, as stated above. B) Additional crucial, mediating concepts between communication and liberation are necessary. The concepts, I would suggest, are those of morality, understood as The Principle of Generic Consistency and Freedom as Self-Developement, and justice as articulated in four principles: provision for basic subsistence and security rights, negative freedom, positive freedom to fully participate in the economic, social and political decisions affecting our lives, and the difference principle modified to insure adequate self-respect and freedom.(2) My paper, then, inscribs a movement from formal right, understood as communicative praxis in Apel`s sense, to morality as content to justice as a unity of form and content to liberation. I will present this account in two stages: A) a dialectic between communication and liberation; B) a description of the relationship between communication and liberation. At the end of the paper I will develop the implications for overcoming various antinomies in ethical theory that flow from my account. Dialectic of Communication and Liberation Apel and Habermas have made an essencial, important contribution to ethics by showing how there is a minimum social ethic implied any time we converse with one another. Whenever I discourse with somebody, I imply as criteria the norms of clarity, truth, sincerity, and rightness. For these reasons I rightly object if the person with whom I am conversing is excessively obscure, says something that is false, lies to me, or tries to impose authority ilegitimately--"it is true because I said so". Implied also is the ideal speech situation in which every one is totally free to raise a question, offer and objection, express a feeling, or propose an alternative. Such an ideal speech situation functions as a regulative ideal in the light of which I spontaneously evaluate some conversations as limited, constrained, and arbitrarily restricted. Finally implied in such communicative praxis is a principle of universalization: that all concerned can accept the consequences and side-effects the universal acceptance of a norm can be antecipated to have for the satisfaction everyone`s interests (and that thoses consequences are preferred to those known alternative possibilities for regulation).(3) So far, so good! Yet Dussel has raised the question concerning those who may be factually in the everyday praxis of communication. What if I am to poor, badly educated, or hungry to effectively participate in communicative praxis? What emerges here is the issue of material deprivation that effectively contradicts the principle of universalization. Without such a provision for liberation from a debilitating poverty, unemployment, hunger, and homelessness, the universalization pinciple is effectively contradicted in practice(4). In the philosophy of Apel, we also note a problematic relationship between the right and the good. On the one hand, discussions of the good life are related to particular communities and are outside the realm of strict moral theory. On the other hand,deal consensus in the goal of communicative praxis, ethics aims at the progressive realization of real community, such ethics aims to make strategic action unnecessary, and such ethics aims at the solving problems like overpopulation, environmental pollution and North-South tensions. On these issues there seems to be a general linking of right and good at odds with the assertion of their general incompatibility.(5) Finally Habermas criticizes the pseudo-compromise between general and merely particular interests in late capitalism, and Apel admits the necessity of moving toward economic democracy and participation within states and overcoming of imperialism between states. Communicative praxis would seem to be incompatible with a national and international capitalist class domination that constrains communication illegitimately and causes some to be so unequal and materially impoverished in relation to others that there is a contradiction between formal universality and concrete, economic privilege, democracy and capitalism, legitimation and accumulation. Modern capitalist states are caught in the contradictory bind of institutionalizing democracy in such a way as to raise legitimation questions concerning the well-being of all, and accumulation to satisfy particular capitalist interests. Such a contradiction can be resolved in two ways: by relinquishing the imperative of legitimation and moving toward an administered society that is quasi-fascist, or by overcoming capitalist class domination and moving toward full economic, social, and political democracy. Full realization of the imperatives of communicative praxis would seem to imply the liberation, national and international, from capital.(6) If communication requires liberation, liberation requires communication. Dussel affirms the exteriority of the opressed other as a basic for this ethics. To develop this point, he uses aLevinasian phenomenology of suffering, powerfull and illuminating as it is, is insufficient without an appeal to comunicatively grounded norms and criteria that allow us to distinguish between suffering that is unjust and suffering that is not. Donald Trump or Somoza or Marcos marginalized in a fully liberated society suffer also. What is to distinguish their suffering from that of an African-American, woman, laborer, or campesino unjustly marginalized in a racist, sexist, classist society? Appeal to norms gronded in a communicative ethics seems essencial here.(7) A similar way of putting the point is to say that the face of the marginalized other whom I confront is an individual: this woman, this African- American, this worker, this campesino. Tacitly implied in such confrontation, however, is the universal, the norms or rights in the light of wich I condemn this particular suffering as unjust. Any universal norm, however, would have to be part of and grounded in and a product of the process of communicative action. I tacitly must appeal to the communicative rationality in the light of wich all can agree to the norm and consequences flowing from it as accepatble or rational. If not, then the norm is exclusionary and imposed and, therefore, not fully or adequatly universal.(8) A related way of putting the same point is to say any claim about the other being unjustly excluded or exploited is either rational or arbitrary. If rational, the claim is and should be one that can be justified in communicative praxis that is open to the better argument. If arbitrary or dogmatic, what is arbitrarily asserted can be rationally questioned or denied. Again Dussel discusses in a powerfull, illuminating way the virtues of a liberating ethic as compassionate, courageous, prudent, willing to take risks on behalf of the opressed. But what allows these to count as virtues is the tacit or explicit appeal to a universal rooted in communication. Why is compassionate openess to the opressed a virtue? Because the opressed are unjustly opressed? Because they are victims of a social order that violates universal, communicatively grounded norms. An ethics of radical liberating compassion implies an ethic of universal, communicative justice and vice versa.(9) Finally if in Apel there is a danger and a tendency to enphasize right or justice at the expense of the good. Dussel may at times emphasize the good at the expense of adequately thematizing justice. I gree with him that liberation is a goal and good aimed at by social praxis, but such a process of social liberation needs to be governed by communicatively grounded norms. The good of liberation requires and implies the norms and claims of communicate praxis if such liberation is not to be merely arbitrary, particular, and irrational. Liberation requires communicative ethics and vice versa.(10) Description of communication and Liberation At this point we have save shown that communication and liberation necessarily imply one another. At this point we need to demonstrate the content of this connection by phenomenologically sketching a movement from formal, communicative right, to a morality of content to justice as a unity of content and form. Communicative praxis as undestood by Apel is an essential, valid, and important starting point and basis for ethics. As a participant in communicative praxis I stand in a relationship with my human other, we both governed by the four validity claims, ideal speech situation, and principle of universality; and we cannot violate these without performative self- contradictions. Nonetheless, as we have seen already, it is possible that there are others who are excluded; they can direct interpellative speech acts to the community that express their awareness of this unjust exclusion. They wish to participate in the conversation but cannot because the material conditions for such participation are lacking: adequate food, housing , emploiment, education. Morality The Principle of Generic Consistency Now let us get down to cases. Let us suppose that a person in a communal context of action and inquiry decides "to do X for purpose E". We can infer from this claim that she regards. E as good in the sense of choosing it and striving to realize it. Let us also assume and presupose that the decision was made in such a way that the criteria of the ideal speech situation are adhered to and fulfilled. The judgement was arrived at in a discussion that respected the validity claims of comprehensibility, truth, sincerity, and rightness, and the content of judgement does not contradict these criteria. What are the necessary conditions for making such a choice? First, we may say that the agent necessarily wills her own well-being to be extent that she regards the object of the choice as good. Such well-being comprises certain kinds of goods. Essential are basic goods such as life, physical integrity, mental equilibrium, confidence, self-respect, and sufficient education to participate in the life of the community. Implied also are non-subtractive goods, her retaining whatever she up to this point has acquired and possessed as good, and additive goods, the intended increase in well-being implied in the act of chossing X. Since I regard X and E as good, then I must necessarily regard as good the basic, non subtractive, and additive goods implied in chossing X for purpose E. The agent thus necessarily wills not only X and E, but the generic aspects of purposiveness, here defined as the choice and realization of certain ends of action, and the means to those ends, as good. Scuh purposiveness is generic; we intend as good not only particular goods but also the generic features of purposiveness itself embodied in basic, non-subtractive, and additive goods. In deciding to move the East Coast from the Midwest to occupy a new professorship, I am sacrificing my life in the Midwest, but not the life, physical integrity, mental equilibrium, and education necessary to make the choice and carry it out.(11) The distinction made in the preceding paragraph between basic, non- subtractive, and additive goods needs further development. I strictly have a right only to those basic, non-subtractive, ands additive conditions and abilities necessary for action; abilities reside in the subject, and conditions reside in the objective social situation confronting her. The basic goods are the general necessary preconditions of actions. My right to a basic good life is denied if I am murdered. Non-subtractive goods are those abilities and conditions necessary for maintaning undiminished my level of purpose- fulfillment and capabilities for particular actions. If I am lied to, cheated, robbed, or subjected to extremely degrading conditions of labor, then my non- subtractive rights are violated. Additive goods are the abilities and conditions required for increasing my level of purpose-fulfillment and capabilites for particular actions. My additive rights are violated when my self-esteem is attacked, when I am denied sufficient education, or when I am discriminated against on the basic of race, sex, religion, or nationality.(12) Not only purposiveness but also freedom itself is willed as a basic good. By freedom here I mean my choosing in a non-coerced manner one good from among a number of possibilities as well as my long-range ability to make such choices and to carry out the projects issuing from them; freedom is both dispositional and occurent. Such freedom is violated not only by momentary violence or imposition, but also by long-range imprisionment and ensalvement.(13) Freedom and well-being in this generic sense are, therefore, necessary for the ideal speech situation to function in a formal sense. I cannot engage in the interplay of opinion necessary to arrive at the truth unless I am externally and internally free to choose among possibilities. To hold an opinion as true presuposes logically and psychologically its possible falsity; such possible falsity, however, presuposes a freedom whereby I am able to entertain contrary opinions with an open mind, not be determined ahead of time to either one a based fashion, and finally to adopt one as true.(14) Similarly participation in a speech situation presuposes that I am alive, healthy, competent to engage in such dialogue, possessed of self-respect. I cannot, for exaample, express myself sincerely and thus fulfill one of the validity claims without being embodied and alive. My living body, therefore, functions as the condition of the possibility for such dialogue to take place. Similarly I cannot engage in dialogue with others about philosophy, science, art, politics or the good life without the education to do that. Rawls intelletual talent is not enough. We could say, therefore, that undelying transcendental of form are transcendentals of content, the freedom and well-being that are the necessary presuppositions of action, discussion, and choice. If I am obligated morally to respect truth, clarity, sincerity, and rightness, then I am also obligated to respect the freedom and weel-being that are the existencial conditions for the fulfillment of these norms; if A, then B; At Therefore B. To deny the moral obligation to achieve the freedom ands well-being necessary to fulfill the validity claims is to say or imply that it is permissible morally to violate them; violating the validity claims is both morally legitimate and illegitimate. If A. then B; not B, therefore not A. Let us now become more precise. If we begin with 1), "Comprehensibility, truth, sincerity, and rightness are necessary criteria for right action," then the move to 2); " In conformity with the validity claims, I chosse X for the purpose E," and 3) "Freedom and well-being are necessary conditions for 2 and 1." Immediately we can infer 4), "I have a moral right to freedom and well- being, because they are necessary, generic conditions of content required for observing the criteria of form. To deny these pre-conditions would be to deny the pre-conditions for 1 and 2. If 1 and 2 are true, then so also 4. If 4 is not true, then neither is 1 and 2, in the sense that nothing can exist or be obligatory without its conditions of posibility being present. If 4 is true, however, then so also, by the principle of universalizability, is 5) "Others have rights to freedom and well-being". The principle of universability states that if X is true of A for certain reasons Z and Y, then it is for all other particulars to witch such reasons apply. I cannot without contradiction affirm 4 and deny 5. If I am an agent and have rights to freedom and well-being because I am agent, then so also do all other agents. If 5 true, then the final principle, 6, follows, "Act in accord with the generic rights of others as well as yourself". This principle is, in Gewirth's words, the Principle of Generic consistency, or PGC. Negatively it implies that I ought to refrain from coercing or harming recipients of my action; posivitively that I ought to assist them to have freedom and well-being whenever they cannot otherwise have these necessary goods and I can help them at no comparable cost to myself, then the PGC obligates me to do so.(15) The PGC is necessary in two ways: it is formally necessary in that any agent violating it contradicts herself, since rights she claims for herself because she has certain qualities she denies to others who have those same qualities. The PGC is materially necessary in that, in a way different from other principles, the PGC cannot be avaded by denying the contingent content of my choices. Whether I am choosing apples or oranges, celibacy or marriage, capitalism or socialism, I must will and choose my freedom and well-being as the necessary conditions of that choice.(16) Now it is clear how important Gewirth's argument is for this stage of my own work. In using his argument in this way, however. I might leave myself open to the charges that I have unwittingly succumbed to some of the various limitations that various critics have foud in his approach. The main one perceveid by the critics is the difficulty of moving from a merely prudential sense of right to a moral sense. Gewirth's initial claim that "I have rights to freedom and well-being" is prudential. If I wish to achieve X for purpose E, then I must will, necessarily and rationally in a prudential sense, that freedom and well-being are necessary goods for me. Morality enters in when I move to "Others have rights to freedom and well-being", argued for though the principle of universalizability.(17) Against his critics, I personally agree with Gewith here. The fundamental obligation is to follow the light of reason: this fundamental obligation is non-moral or pre-moral, underlying moral obligation as a basis. Im moving from the prudential to the moral thought universalizability, Gewirth has simply identified the form that the obligation to be reasonable takes in the realm of human action. Moreover I agree with him that critics often confuse prudence with regard to necessary freedom and well-being. It one makes that distinction, then the argument becomes much more cogent. I cannot without contradiction deny taht others have rights to freedom and well-being. The obligation to pursue, in conformity eith the requirements of consistency and universabizality, their necessary freedom and well-being as generic goods necessarily pressuposed in any choice or action is what we mean by "moral" here.(18) We could put the matter differently in making the same point by saying that any moral judgment must be universal in scope, prescriptive, oriented to the good of others as well myself, necessary, and determinate. The PGC has these components. It applies to all prospective human agents, prescribes moral oughts, is oriented to the good of others, is based on the necessary features of human action and has a specific material, moral content. The PGC, therefore, is a moral and not merely a prudential principle.(19) The attentive reader, moreover, will have noticed that I depart from Gewirth's argument in at least two respects. First, participants are already social in a way that Gewirth's are not; second, my participant is already in a moral context in a way that Gewirth's is not. Consequently my judgement 4, "I have a moral right to freedom and well-being." is already moral and socially involved in a way that Gewirth's is not. The movement of my argument is not from the prudential individual to the moral community, but from the formally moral individual in community to the substantively moral individual in com- munity. I claim here to have improved on an argument that is already very strong and thus to have avoided the main difficulties with that argument and objections against it. Equal Positive Freedom We have now reached a crucial point in the argument. We have shown that an agent cannot without self-contradiction deny the Principle of Generic Consistency. For if I deny that others have rights to freedom and well-being, then I must deny that I also have such rights. If I deny that I have such rights, then I must deny that I have necessary conditions for agency, expressed in the "I want to X for purpose E." But to deny such conditions is effectively to cancel out that judgement itself, since no one can or should perform an action without the necessary conditions being present for such an action. We have already seen that there is a distinction between negative and positive freedom and well-being. The principle of generic consistency implies an obligation not only to refrain from interfering with or harming some one else's freedom and well-being, but positively to secure those for others, when there is minimal cost involved to the self. Such a claim has implications, to be discussed later for the validity of the interventionist welfare state over the minimal state. Because both freedom, in the narrow sense of a non-coerced choosing between or among possibilities, and well-being are aspects of choice, we can talk about freedom in a broader sense as including both of these. Following Gould, I am going to name this "freedom as self-development", or FSD. Because freedom and well-being are both dispositional and occurent, any choice must necessarily imply the willing of the basic, non-subtractive, and additive capacities and dispositions that are necessary for the unfolding and realization of the pro- ject of being a self. We define self-development as "the freedom to develop oneself through one's action, or as a process of realizing one's projects through activity in the course of which one forms one's character".(20) This conception of freedom has several different aspects. First, it implies freedom as capacity, the ability to choose between alternatives. Second, freedom is exercise of this capacity, a process of self-creation over time. I become who I am though the choices I make. A habitual drunkard has clearly become some one different from a reformed alcoholic; a confirmed Don Juan has made himself a different kind of man from a happily married man. Third, such activity is intentional, purposive, conscious; whatever I choose, I choose purposively, I have not become a certain kind of person by accident. Fourth. Self-development implies not the realizationn of determinate nature, but the formation of new capacities and enrichment of preceding ones; examples would be growth in scientific or artistic or political ability. Fifth. self- development denotes the acievement of long-range projects or goals. Being a self-aware subject does not imply merely the ability to choose in the short run, ike deciding to go out for a drink, but to plan and realize long-range, even lifetime projects, like becoming a doctor. Sixth, self-development is social in different ways. We are dealing here not with a rugged individual, using others ore her way to Searsdale, but with a social individual internally related to and needing others. A) It is clear that many of my intentions and purposes are social in origin. The language I use, the customs I adopt, the techniques I employ, the values I choose are all influenced by society. B) Relations with others in joint or cooperative activity provide objective Conditions or means necessary for realizing his projects. In family life, economic activity, politics, and professional life, certain social contexts provide means of self-development. C) Joint or common purposes shared with others can become the motives and goals of my own activity; in this way, self-development consists in participating in such activity. If for example, I participate as a philosopher in The American Philosophical Association, then the goals of the group become part of my goals. D) Self-development depends on the recognition of others, employing the Principle of Generic Consistency, of the individual as free. In the broad sense such freedom includes uncocreed choice and well-being. Suche recognitions occurs in a context of reciprocity, in contrast to the non-reciprocity characteristic of domination. E) Mutual support is still another way in which individuals contribute to one another's self-developement. I will, value, choose, and love your freedom and well-being as an individual, not simply as generic or universal. F) Finally mutuality operates indirectly insofar as I am enriched by the contribuitions of anyone else who, like a Bach, Stravinski, or Picasso, makes a signifiant contribuitions in any human endeavor.(21) Such a view of freedom as sel-development is incompatible with activities that people engage in not to realize their own purposes or needs but to satisfy demands imposed on them by others. When I am constrained to act on behalf of another's interests or aims in such a way that mine are minimalized or sacrificed them I am dominated. Domination can occur directly, as in the case of kidnapping, or indirectly, as in the case institutionalized racism. Racism operates indirectly to the extend that a dominant group has control over acess to means of education or making a living. Social domination occcurs here through the control of means or conditions necessary to realize one's purposes.(22) G)Because freedom in the full sense is positive and not merely negative it implies the full capacity to realize one's choices, and because control by one group over the enabling conditions of self-development implies a domination incompatible with freedom, we arrive at the notion of equal positive freedom. Scuh a freedom includes the right of each individual to the enabling conditions, material and social, without wich such purposes cannot be achieved. Among material conditions are means of subsistence, labor, and leisure activity. Among the social conditions are cooperative forms of social interation, reciprocal respect for each one's free agency, and acess to training, education, and social institutions(23). Justice We have moved from right as form to morality as content. At this point we need to consider justice as a unity of form and content. What are the specific principles of justice that enable us to evaluate and choose and change institutions? What are the principles of justice that would be chosen in a situation or communicative praxis governed by the validity claims, PGC, and FSD? Here we can afford to be more brief. In contemporary societies in First, Second, and Third Worlds, there are four possible kinds of society that could be chosen: a laissez-faire capitalism, a welfare state capitalism, state socialism, or full economic, political, and social democracy, democratic socialism. If we rule out state socialism as obviously violating the validity claims, PGC, and FSD, then three candidates remain, laissez-faire capitalism, welfare state capitalism, and democratic socialism.(24) Nozick, in Anarchy, State and Utopia, has presented the most rigorous, thoroughgoing defense of the minimal state. Such a state is minimal in the sense that in merely supplies the legal and political conditions for free, economic enterprise; any positive intervention by the state is a violation of the individual's freedom. I think that there are many problems with this conception of society and state. A) Empirically or sociologically it is doubtful whether such a state is a real possibility. The state is intimately involved in the economy in so many ways, not only in market constituting mechanisms such as the system of law and market complementing mechanisms such a new banking laws, but also through market replacing mechanisms such as military spending and compensation for disfunctional consequences such as the mechanisms of the welfare state. The real choice seems to be not between government control and intervention in the economy, and its absence, but between democratic and undemocratic intervention.(25) B) Untrammeled freedom to invest and produce commodities compromises political democracy, because such freedom leads to huge concentration of economic power that distort, corrupt, or cancel out the democratic process. C) Nozick's principle that original acquisition is legitimate if I have put my own labor into an object is contradicted by capital's appropriation of the fruits of other people's labor. D) Nozick's conception of freedom is negative; such as it violates the prescriptions of the PGC and FSD for equal positive freedom and for acess to the goods necessary to preserve and enhance freedom and well-being. E) Nozick's freedom is individualistic and asocial; as such it misses the way both right and morality as I have defined them imply and internal relationship between individual and community. In the ideal speech situation, for example. I am internally related to others in that all are subject to the validity claims and the principle of universality. In the PCG I am obligated to seek the freedom and well-being of others as well as myself. Not do so is to violate myself, to bee unfaithful to myself, to be inauthentic.(26) F) Because Nozick's freedom is negative and individualistic, he misses the obligation of mutual aid. If freedom is positive and social, then I have a right to the freedom and well-being necessary to develop as an individual if these can be supplied without serious risk of life to the person helping. If as we have seen, a person is drowning in a lake and I can help her without serious risk of life to myself, then I have the obligation to do so. G) Similarly if a person or group is deprived of the basic conditions of freedom and well-being such as food housing, then the welfare state has an obligation to intervene. In modern societies, where mutual aid between individuals is intermittent, momentary, and insufficiently comprehensive, freedom and well-being require the positive intervention of the state.(27) At the very least, then, a positive, interventionist state as envisioned by Rawls is ethically required. Even this version, however, has problems. A) The difference principle, that social inequalities are permitted if they benefit the least adavantaged, is too vague and allows inequalities so great that they contradict the first principle that each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all. B) The difference principle allows so much inequality in wealth and income that one of the basic goods, self-respect, is compromised. C) There is a conflict between Rawls allowing capitalist class society as legitimate and his principle of fair equality of opportunity. For the empirical and evidence is overwhelming that class position frustrates such equality of opportunity, in such a way that it remains merely or mostly formal, not real.(28) D) There is a conflict between liberty and capitalist class society. Liberty, if it is to be effectively exercised, requires equal access to the means necessary to exercise it, political, cultural, economic. Yet capitalist class society systematically denies the majority of its population such equal access. E) In modern capitalist class society, there is a deep contradiction between capitalism and democracy, between accumulation ordered to the ends of capital and legitimation rooted in a universalistic orientation to the good all, between a system institutionally commited to being "of, by, and for the people" and one in fact "of, by, and for capital".(29) In Rawls there is a tension between empirical and normative assumptions that legitimate capitalism and his ethical theory that points beyond it and other forms of class domination. I propose to amend his theory of justice by arguing for four principles. 1. Everyone's security and subsistence rights shall be respected. 2.There is to be a maximum system of equal basic liberties, including freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of conscience and freedom of thought, freedom of the person along with the right to hold personal property; and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as defined by the concept of the rule of law. 3.There is to be (a) a right to an equal opportunity to attrain social positions and offices and (b) an equal right to participate in all social decision-making processes within institutions of wich one is a part. 4.Social and economic inequalities are justified if, and only if, they benefit the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, but are not to exceed levels that will seriously undermine equal worth of liberty or the good of self-respect.(30) An implication of accepting these principles is that democratic socialism emerges as the most just kind of regime. State socialism violates principles two and three, laissez-faire capitalism one, two, and three, and the capitalist welfare state three and four necessarily and one often factually, especially in the United States and England the last 10-15 years. Here I am accepting one of Rawls's arguments that a market socialism is an ethically defensible and empirical possibility. Unlike Rawls, however, I am arguing that class domination needs to be overcome in principle in order for such a socialism, full economic, social, and political democracy, to be ethically adequate. Again like Rawls, and Habermas as well, I do not think that a fully immediate socialism with no political representation or use of technical expertise is possible. The motto here should be: " as much representation as necessary, as much participation as possible."(31) Conclusion One implication of my account is a necessary reciprocity between right and good, justice and hapiness. Consensus is the good necessary for and implied by the ideal speech situation, self-development by the Principle of Generic Consistency, and democratic socialism by the principles of justice. In this way right, in a generic sense, and good reciprocally mediate one another. To argue for a modern, diferentiated, reflexive, democratic society as Apel and Habermas legitimately do is already to imply a conception of the good life. This universal, necessary, transcendental, conception of the good life is distinct from particular, contingent, hermeneutically diverse versions of the good life, which Habermas and Apel legitimately argue should not be legislated. Indeed to leave room for such particular versions of the good life to confront one another dialogically is one of the aspects of the good life universally, trancendentally considered. A respect for the play of difference is built into our conception of justice and its relationship to the good life.(32) Additonally we note a "preferential option for the poor" that can be argued for philosophically. Such an option is already present in Dussel's ethics of liberation and constitutes one of its strong points. Such a preferential option should lead to and flow from a radical political conversion that is at once existencial and political. Radical conversion is that wich the principles of right, morality, and justice lead up to and motivate, but which has to be achieved by the individual choosing herself in community. What are the implications for my life of theory and praxis of living in an unjust, racist, sexist, and "classist" society that systematically exploits the poor? Either I act and think on the behalf or I do not. If I do , then I exercise the preferential option. If I do not, then implicity or explicitly or explicitly I take the side of the oppressor against the opressed. My affirmation of their principles of right, morality, and justice remains merely abstract, inconsistent, inauthentic, and at odds with my existencial practice.(33) Next, because radical conversion needs to be rendered incarnate in the life of individuals and groups, a liberating ethic of virtue complements a universal ethic of right, morality, and justice. The universal ethic allows me to say what virtue is; the virtue realizes and renders effective and permanent the universal ethic. We have here the possibility of overcoming the antinomy between an ethics of duty and an ethics of virtues.(34) Again a phenomenology of the particular suffering other and ethical universal mediate one another. A phenomenology of the suffering other supplies the motivation, context, and goal of liberation: a universal ethic of right, morality, and justice supplies the method, norms, criteria, ands guidance for such liberation. Because of all of the preceding implications, we are in a position to overcome the possible antinomy in communicative ethics between generalized other and concrete other. Apel and Habermas already have resources for beginning to overcome this antinomy with their affirmation of a seventh stage of moral development in wich the needs of each concrete other are thematized and articuled in the light of a universal ethic. If, moreover, existential, radical political conversion, radical virtue, and a concrete phenomenology of suffering enable me to seek concrete good of the other, then this seeking is guided by right, morality, and justice. The full is the self as concrete individual in a community of other selves subject to the ethical universal. Concrete existencial choice, particular virtue, and universal norms mediate one another.(35) Finally a project for future work is to develop the possible global implications of the relationship between communication and liberation. If capitalism in unjust on a national level, then neo-imperialism is just an externalization of this injustice and a transfer of its structures abroad. Imperialism violates the universalistic tenets of right, morality, and justice. The problem is not, as post-modernists are wont to say, with reason as such, but with the violations of reason by an irrational capitalism and imperialism. One of the strong points of Apel and Habermas is to have developed the communicative basis for such a universalistic rsationality, in such a way that to deny it is to be performatively self-contradictory. For example, I cannot criticize western, etnocentrism as wrong whitout pressuposing a universal, communicativve basis for such a claim. Here I register a strong sympathy with Apel's orientation to universal, planetary ethic, but would insist that such a planetary ethic needs to have as one of its tasks the critique of capitalism and capitalist neo-imperialism. A communicative ethics having its origins in the western center needs to criticize a western ethonocentrism and imperialism. The critique of imperialism allows communicative ethics to transcend its own hermeneutic, western origins and become genuinely universal.(36) One of the strong points of Dussel is to have developed both in his early philosophy and in his own recent interpretation of Marx the international implications of a philosophy of liberation. If communication implies liberation and if communication and liberation are mediated by morality and justice as I have defined them, then communication implies liberations from capitalism and imperialism, which has recently taken the form of The New World Order and The Gulf War. One of Dussel's major achievements is to have recovered a liberating, revolutionary Marx that reminds us in the imperial center of the revolutionary heritage of critical theory. Liberation in the periphery should lead to liberation in the center. In becoming fully universal in an ethical and geo- political sense, an ethics of liberation becomes fully liberating. Footnotes 1) Enrique Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation, trans, Aquilina Martinez and Christine Morkowsky (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1985), pp. 58-67. Karl-Otto Apel. Towards a Transformation of Philosophy, trans. Glyn Adey and David Frisby (London:Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980),pp.225-85. 2)This account I am developing through several chapters in my forth-coming book on critical theory. Critique, Action and Liberation.Proximate sources and influences include Carol Gould, Rethinking Democracy(Cambridge University Press, 1988). Alam Gewirth. Reason and Morality(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1978). Kal Nielsen, Equality and Liberty: A Defense of Radical Egalitarianism (Totowa, New Jersey: Rowan & Lanheld, 1985) John Rawls, A Theory of Justice(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). R.G. Peffer, Marxism, Morality, and Justice(Princeton University Press, 1990). Habermas, of course, objects to the attempt to go beyond a formally universal, communicative pragmatics to a morality and justice of content. Such an account is less certain than a universal pragmatics, is particularistic in that it is rooted in particular forms of life, and runs the risk of authoritarianism, violence, and terror such as occurred in the Soviet Union. See Jürgen Habermas. Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews, ed. Peter Dews (London: Verson, 1986) pp. 170-71, 185-86, 210-12. I do not believe these objections to be cogent. Even if the principles of morality and justice are less certain than those of a formal communicative ethics, why should that fact make these principles less acceptable? Habermas seems to be valorizing certainty in a way that goes against the fallibilistic tenor of his whole theory. Concerning particularism, I am arguing that the ideal speech in communicative praxis presupposes a transcendental content of morality and justice that does not lead to legislating concrete forms of life. Finally, since the principles of morality and justice pressuppose formal communicative praxis, any authoritarianism and imposition of terror can be judged morally unnaccetable and ruled out. 3)Jürgen Habermas. "Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification". The Communicative Ethics controversy, ed. Seyla Benhabib and Fred Dallmayr(Cambridge: MIT Press,1990). pp.70-71. Karl-Otto Apel. Diskurs und Verantwortung. Das Problem des Uberangs zur postkonventinallen Moral(Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1988),pp.122,219. Anytime I use Habermas to complement and expand Apel's analysis I'm assuming agreement between Apel and Habermas on the point in question. 4) Enrique Dussel. "The reason of the Other: Interpellation as a speech Act," paper presented at a conference on Critical Theory and Liberation Philosophy, Mexico City. Feb.28, 1991, pp.9-28. 5) Apel, Diskurs und Verantwortung, pp.10-22, 134, 142, 184-85, 202-06, 299. 6) Ibid, pp.22,134, 142, 299. Jürgen Habermas, Legitimation Crisis trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), pp.33-41, 45-50, 68-75, 92-94. 7) Dussel. Philosophy of Liberation,pp.16-21, 39-66. 8) Dussel, of course, does recognize universal norms such as "liberate the poor"; see Ethics and Community, trans. Robert Barr (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1986). In El ultimo Marx (1862-1882) y la liberacion latinoamericana(Mexico; Siglo XXI, 1990), pp. 330, 359-60, 403, 440-443, 447, Dussel argues for the exteriority of living labor as an ethical norm allowing us to say that appropriation of surplus value capital is exploitative. The purpose of this paper is to build on, develop, and ground these claims, wich I think are fundamentally correct, by realting them more explicitly than Dussel does to a communicative ethic. 9) Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation, pp58-66. Filosofia Etica de la liberacion ,II (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Megalopolis, 1987), pp.107-27) 10) Apel also shows some of these concerns in his articulation of Ethics II: see Diskurs und Verantwortung, pp. 134, 142, 202-06, 267-69, 299. 11) Gewirth, Reason un Moralitity, pp.48-54. 12) Ibid.,pp. 54-58. 13) Ibid., pp. 52-53. 14) James L. Marsh. Post-cartesian Meditations(Bronx: Fordham University Press, 1988), pp.93-96. 15) Gewirth. Reason and Morality, p. 135. 16) Ibid., p. 135 17) Gould. Rethinking Democracy, pp. 69-70. Ibid., pp 63-82. Alan Gewirth. Gewirth's Ethical Rationalism, Ed. Edward Regis , Jr. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), p. 52-58. 18) Gewirth, Reason and Morality, pp.145-48. Gewirth's Ethical Rationalism, pp. 207-210. 19) Gewirth, Human Rights (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 45-46, 101-02. 20) Gould, Rethinking Democracy, pp.40-42, quotation from p. 40. See Gewirth. Reason and Morality, p. 248 for his discussion of self-development as a right requiring certain goods. 21) Gould. Rethinking Democracy, pp.45-50. 22)Ibid., pp.42. 48-49. 23)Ibid., pp.19,40-41. 24) My primary source for considering laissez-faire capitalism is Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Book, 1974). My primary source for welfare state capitalism is Rawl's Theory of Justice. In addition to the works by Gould, Peffer, and Nielsen mentioned in footnote 2, Walzer's Spheres of Justice, (New York: Basic books, 1983), is a good example of an argument for democratic socialism on communitarian grounds. 25) Nozick. Anarchy, State and utopia, pp. ix, 3-146. Habermas. Legitimation Crisis, pp. 33-41, 53-54. 26)Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, pp. 150-53, 174-82. Karl Marx. Grundrisse, trans. Martin Nicolaus (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), pp.293-326, 469-7l. Nielsen. Equality and Liberty , pp. 218-36. 27) Nielsen, Equality and Liberty, pp. 70-72. Gewirth, Reason and Morality, pp 272-73, 190-304, 312-37. 28) Rawls, Theory of justice , pp. 302-03. Nielsen, Equality and Liberaty, pp.49-60. 29) Nielsen, Equality and Liberty, pp. 49-60. Habermas, Legitimation Crisis pp. 33-41, 45-50, 18-75. 30) Peffer. Marxism, Morality, and Justice, p. 418. 31) Rawls, A Theory of Justice, p. 66. Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action , II: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Funcionallist Reason(Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), pp. 153-97. 32) Jürgen Habermas, Habermas: Autonomy and Solidarity, ed. Peter Dews (Version:London, 1986), pp. 206-16. Apel. Diskurs und Verantwortung,-pp. 154- 57. 33) U.S. Catholic Bishops. Economic Justice for all (Washington: National conference of Catholic bishops, 1986), p. 28. Dussel, Philosophy of Liberation, pp.58-66. Filosofia etica de la liberación, pp. 51-63, 136-37. In Dussel's work radical political conversion, ethical openess to the voice of the opressed other, flows from a philosophical opening to being that is itself a conversion, a break with everydayness. 34) Alasdair McIntyre, After Virtue, 2nd. ed. (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), pp. 51-61, 109-20, 256-63. 35) Seyla Benhabib. Critique, Norme, and Utopia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp.34-43, Jürgen Habermas, Communication and the Evolution of Society . trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), pp. 78-94, Apel, Diskurs und Verantwortung, pp. 304-17. 36) Apel. Diskurs un Verantwortung, pp. 16-38, 102-40. 37) Enrique Dussel, La producción teorica de Marx: un comentario a los Grundrisse(Mexico: Siglo XXI, 1985), pp. 371-413. Hacia un Marx desconocido: un comentario de los manuscritos del 1861-63(Mexico; Siglo XXI, 1988) 312-61. Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, Brave New World Order (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1992). 1