RATIONALITY, DEMOCRACY, AND CRITIQUE: HABERMAS'S COMMUNICATIVE ACTION MODEL OF RATIONALITY, CRITICAL THEORY, AND THE RADICAL DEMOCRATIC DILEMMA

The dissertation provides a politically oriented reading of Jurgen Habermas's communicative action model of rationality, which attempts to assess the bearing this model of rational action has on critical theory and on radical democratic theory.;In relation to radical democratic theory it is argued that rationality is a constitutive element of a substantively democratic form of life and that, consequently, if one attempts to defend the merits of democracy on the basis of non-rational criterion one will find oneself in a dilemma. The dissertation argues that Habermas's communicative action model of rationality can provide a way of grounding substantive claims concerning democracy in a way that would allow radical democrats to avoid their potential dilemma but that, if this were to be done, radical democratic theory would have to adopt a more critical attitude towards its own beliefs than is presently in evidence.;In order to establish its case the dissertation examines the theoretical origins of Habermas's work, assesses the viability of his appropriation of the notion of the lifeworld from the phenomenological tradition, and explains Habermas's account of the nature of the problems of modernity.;In relation to the former the dissertation argues that Habermas's attempt to locate the grounds of critical theory in social relations (rather than in an account of consciousness) is a valuable contribution to critical theory. It contends, however, that his attempt to reconstruct critical theory can be only partially successful because it displaces, rather than overcomes, the paradigmatic limitations of theoretical claims which are pointed to by Adorono and the earlier critical theorists.