Communicative Action II: Ethics and Communication

Abstract

Whenever labour unmasks distorted communication, it seeks to connect the world of work to communicative action and ideal speech which always means to also connect it to ethical and moral standards. Communication tends to be constructed as a technical tool such as a tube or a pipeline through which information is transferred until it enters the realm of ethics, morality and communicative ethics.³³⁸ Social and communicative relationships have strong moral and ethical connotations.³³⁹ The link between ethics and communication is nothing new. When human society moved out of the feudalist past, God and the Church were no longer able to define, create, use, and abuse moral standards.³⁴⁰ Once relieved from the metaphysics and mysticism of religion and church, modern societies had to find new modes of moral conduct.³⁴¹ Humans could no longer rely on the pre-constructed — and in fact invented — and as somewhat higher portrayed authority. They had to set up their own moral and ethical standards.