Justice is recognising the dignity of being heard for all
7' min read
7' min read
Imagine a square. A populated place. A living agora, where citizens speak, listen, dissent, propose. For Jürgen Habermas, justice is born neither in closed courts nor in the silent chambers of power, but in places similar to this square: places where people speak on equal terms, where valid reasons are sought, where speech is a principle of order and not just an instrument of influence. Justice, in its deepest form, is the fruit of discourse. And institutions, in this perspective, are nothing but the pillars of a discourse that has become structure. What makes a norm just, therefore, is not its content, but the manner in which it is accepted. Validity is legitimacy obtained discursively. The link between justice and institutions emerges clearly: institutions are not mere regulatory apparatuses, but the conditions of possibility of public communication. They must guarantee what Habermas calls 'symmetrical conditions of participation' - equality of access, absence of coercion, transparency of argumentation. In our complex societies, these conditions do not arise spontaneously. They must be constructed, defended, institutionalised. This is where justice translates into civil architecture. Parliaments, courts, assemblies, public media, even participatory consultation processes, become spaces of discursive deliberation. When they function, they do not simply administer: they make law an expression of collective autonomy. "Law," writes the philosopher, "is only legitimate if it can be discursively accepted by those who are its recipients as co-legislators".
Justice, Habermas tells us, is the beating heart of social living, it is first and foremost communication. Communication understood not so much as a tool but as a foundation. Not as a means to influence the opinion of others, but as a way to facilitate mutual understanding. In this sense, communicative action, which we discussed in last week's Mind the Economy, should not be understood as an ethical luxury, but as a necessary condition for the very existence of justice.
In the second volume of his Theory of Communicative Acting (Il Mulino, 1986), Habermas extends this discourse ethics to the political and institutional level. He distinguishes between two fundamental models of human behaviour: 'strategic' acting, aimed at success, manipulation and control of results, and 'communicative' acting, oriented instead towards intersubjective understanding, the establishment of a sincere dialogue with the other. While the former dominates the structures of the social system, such as the market, bureaucracy and the administration of law, the latter inhabits the Lebenswelt (the world of life) made up of shared culture, informal norms, and historical identities. This distinction is for Habermas not only sociological, but primarily ethical. In communicative action, each speaker raises claims to validity - truth, rightness, sincerity - that can be criticised and defended. Authentic communication, therefore, is never neutral: it already represents, in itself, an act of mutual recognition. 'In the language of communicative action,' writes Habermas, 'it is not a matter of influencing the other, but of reaching an understanding with him'.
On the basis of this assumption, then, justice can no longer be seen as an algorithmic distribution of goods or rights, opportunities and resources. Instead, it must be thought of as the outcome of a discursive and dialogic process of convergence between free and equal subjects.
It is on this terrain that Habermas builds his Diskursethik, the discourse ethics that emphasises how the validity of norms cannot be deduced a priori, nor derived empirically. It, in fact, emerges as a result of the interaction between free citizens and participants, in public confrontation, in shared dialogue. When we ask, therefore, whether 'this norm is right', we cannot find an answer in either identity feeling or individual utility. Rather, we must refer to the possibility that this norm is accepted by those who inhabit the 'square', who participate in the public debate and become the protagonists of an informed deliberation free from any form of coercion. The 'ideal discursive situation', as the philosopher defines it, i.e. a regulatory fiction and not an empirical fact, thus becomes the moral criterion necessary to evaluate actions and institutions.
