Ethics of communicative action and human rights in Habermas

Communicative versus Strategic Rationality: Habermas Theory of Communicative Action and the Social Brain

In the philosophical theory of communicative action, rationality refers to interpersonal communication rather than to a knowing subject. Thus, a social view of rationality is suggested. The theory differentiates between two kinds of rationality, the emancipative communicative and the strategic or instrumental reasoning. Using experimental designs in an fMRI setting, recent studies explored simi...

[Policy, management and participation in health: a reflection based on Habermas' theory of communicative action].

The article discusses the appropriation of the theory developed by Habermas to analyze health policies and management. The fundamental concepts of the discursive theory of democracy as a deliberative policy, procedural democracy, the public sphere and civil society are analyzed. An attempt is made to demonstrate that the concepts of deliberative policies are grounded on basic theoretical catego...

Medical ethics and human rights in wartime.

Action theory in Habermas and educational practices

In this paper I explore the potential for viewing education as an “unrestricted communication community” (Habermas 1990: 88), using categorisations from Habermas of different kinds of action as analytical tools for examining educational practices. For the paper, I pursue two main themes: 1) how the concept of communicative action in relation to the three forms of knowledge-constitutive interest...

Ethics and human rights in South African medicine.