Varieties of Discourse Ethics in the Nineties: Habermas and MacIntyre

Comparisons about the book by Gergely László Szűcs

Abstract

The paper argues that despite the fact that past literature has generally overlooked it, there is a structural similarity between Habermas’s discourse ethics and MacIntyre’s ethics of enquiry. While MacIntyre mentions Habermas only in passing, Habermas discusses MacIntyre’s Whose Justice? Which Rationality? in detail. The paper offers a response to Habermas’s criticism of that book, and by doing so underlines the affinities between the two authors. The paper goes on to scrutinize three major disagreements between them, regarding the concept of truth, the status of human rights, and between ideal (or utopian) and non-ideal theories of politics. The end of the paper emphasizes the role of hope in rationalist political philosophies.