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Journal of Curriculum Studies ISSN 0022–0272 print/ISSN 1366–5839 online ©2006 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals
DOI: 10.1080/00220270600607090
INTRODUCTION
Jürgen Habermas and education
TOMAS ENGLUND
Taylor and Francis Ltd
TCUS_A_160692.sgm
10.1080/00220270600607090
Journal of Curriculum Studies
0022-0272 (print)/1366-5839 (online)
Original Article
2006
Taylor & Francis
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0
0000002006
Professor TomasEnglund
tomas.englund@pi.oru.se
The German social philosopher Jürgen Habermas has had an enormous
impact on the ways in which scholars examine a range of societal issues. His
early works on the public sphere and on knowledge and human interests are
in the critical tradition of the Frankfurt school, but later he took a linguistic
and pragmatic turn. His two-volume masterpiece on The Theory of Commu-
nicative Action (Habermas 1984, 1987a) and his The Philosophical Discourse
of Modernity (Habermas 1987b), and his Moral Consciousness and Communi-
cative Action (Habermas 1990) have created what might be called the pre-
conditions for a paradigm shift on rationality. Moving from a philosophy of
consciousness towards a philosophy of language and communication and
the theories of procedural communicative rationality, and later to discourse
theory and deliberative democracy, he has positioned himself as a defender
of modernity—but a modernity of a certain kind. Habermas’ position
implies a critical view of the characteristics of classical modernity with its
technological rationality and colonization of the life-world.
Habermas’ position also implies a critical stance on post-modern refuta-
tions of all kinds of rationality as expressions of power. Habermas contends
that the project of modernity can be seen as unfinished, and that, through
communicative action, an on-going normative rationalization is possible.
The theory of communicative action that he develops is, thus, a theory of
social integration. His sources of inspiration include the inter-subjectivist
theoretical framework elaborated by the classic US pragmatist George
Herbert Mead (Heath 2001), speech-act theory, further developed by
Habermas into a universal pragmatics, Durkheim’s theory on social order,
further elaborated into Habermas’ theory on normative validity, and so on.
In some of his later works, in, for example, Between Facts and Norms (Haber-
mas 1996) and Truth and Justification (Habermas 2003), he has further
developed his discourse ethics into the idea of a self-regulating community
of law based on free and equal citizens, and returned to the implications of
Tomas Englund is a professor of education in the Department of Education, Örebro
University, S-701 82 Örebro, Sweden; e-mail: tomas.englund@pi.oru.se. His research inter-
ests centre on curriculum theory and didactics, curriculum history, political socialization and
citizenship education, and the philosophical aspects of education. He directs the research
group ‘Education and Democracy’ and is co-editor of the Swedish journal with the same
name (in Swedish, Utbildning & Demokrati). His most recent book is Skillnad och konsekvens
[Difference and consequences] (Lund, Sweden: Studentlitteratur, 2004).
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ENGLUND
the theory of communicative action for epistemology and metaphysics by
relating it to Putnam’s (2002) notion of internal realism.
There are real differences in the styles of writing of the classical pragma-
tist John Dewey and Jürgen Habermas as the pragmatist of late modernity,
but both emphasize (at least in the late phases of their writing) the socially
integrative force and constitutive power of communication. In that sense,
each of them develops a kind of social philosophy that may be seen as a
general theory of education. They also offer a similar view of a deeper, delib-
erative democracy, believing that ‘the essential need … is the improvement
of the methods and conditions of debate, discussion and persuasion’
(Habermas 1996: 304, with reference to Dewey 1988). In Dewey’s original
text, the sentence Habermas quoted continues: ‘that is the problem of the
public’ (Dewey 1988: 365), while Habermas (1996: 304) states more
precisely:
Deliberative politics acquires its legitimating force from the discursive struc-
ture of an opinion- and will-formation that can fulfil its socially integrative
function only because citizens expect its result to have a reasonable quality.
Through his theoretical framework, Habermas provides some basic
starting points for an analysis of the relationship between society and educa-
tion, especially within his perspective of normative rationalization (Englund
2000). However, the implications for education can be interpreted in differ-
ent ways (Coulter 2001). The following series of papers attempts to make
use of the later works of Habermas in the field of education in order to
pursue these implications. The theme in the first paper, by Englund, is that
of deliberative communication as a central form of activity in schools from
within the perspective of Habermas’ theory of normative rationalization.
The second paper by Carleheden presents, interprets, and discusses the
theory of normative transformation that can be found in Habermas’ theory
of law and democracy, supplemented with a comparison of Habermas’
(1996) three paradigms of law and the three educational conceptions devel-
oped by Englund (1986, 1996). The third paper, by Boman, discusses the
normative conditions of education that can contribute to the development
of a political culture with a plurality of forms of life. The fourth paper, by
Roth, on post-national education, argues that global transformation is
challenging the conventional use of national education, and analyses the
implications of this claim.
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INTRODUCTION
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