TEORIJA RACIONALNOSTI / JÜRGEN HABERMAS
THEORY OF RATIONALITY/JÜRGEN HABERMAS

Summary/Abstract: As can be seen, that which characterizes Habermas’ fundamental philosophical intentions is associated with the phenomenon of the communicative mind, which comprises not merely rebellious subjectivity. True, Hening Ottmann proposes the idea that Habermas’ injunctions of instrumental and communicative rationality are essentially too narrow to allow for yet another necessary and appropriate distinction between outward nature as a resource for us to use and nature as an end in itself. The first thing to strike us is the assumption that the human race is also seen as a product of human evolution, as natura naturans, to use Spinoza’s and Schelling’s phrase. Another objection lies in the fact that the analysis of the power of the mind is so posited as to allow, from this perspective, no possibility for a person who perceives and acts to encounter nature as such, nature delimiting his interest in the availability of some item. In Habermas’ view, Ottmann misses two features that he attempts to elucidate: the ethical, and the cognitive theoretical. On the one hand, for him the question of the environment is central, which means that additional significance is bestowed on the demands of nature as end purpose. These days, all this portends a planetary technological dynamic of progress. This is a “colonial war” against nature, a war that is waged by an aggressor. It is most clearly expressed in the natural sciences and technology, which change the world, its real circumstances, and the ways in which people coexist, and to some extent the state or structure of nature as well. But this “colonial war” against nature demands an ethics, a new ethics of responsibility, a cosmological ethics in a sense, that should curb rampant progress, in the wake of several centuries of Baconist, post-Baconist, Promethean euphoria. If one accepts a standpoint that advocates a non-utopian ethics of responsibility, one should be aware that “concrete new duties” (Hans Jonas) themselves are as yet barely visible in the confrontation with the “new facts of technological practice.” This means that it is impossible to incorporate them into some system. The “principle of responsibility,” not the hope-principle (E. Bloch) is a principle to which both fear and hope belong in equal proportion. It is more necessary to us now than at any other time, where there was to a degree a characteristic belief in a favourable outcome, a belief that the course of all human affairs and activities was good, a belief that the bond between man and nature was good. This belief, however, was merely the weakness of the discouraged and the fearful. People wanted to be on good terms with nature, but had become wholly alien to it. Nowadays, as a result, the exploitation of nature, alienation from its logos, the mastery, the deluding, the overpowering of nature, are lauded as the greatest good. Note: this article is taken from a study entitled Social Philosophy/Critic

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