Habermas Since the Debate

Abstract

In his thinking after the formal debates with Luhmann, Habermas has developed his thought in many ways. Three of those ways are explored in this chapter. First, he grounds the necessity and authority of rules on the three speech claims of truth, truthfulness, and rightness. Second, he shows the progression of those claims as they evolved into the structures of the lifeworld and eventually into systemic media of communication. He describes the ideal lifeworld/system relationship and the actual relationships between them. Third, he continues to voice fundamental objections to social applications of systems theory.