Habermas and the Project of Emancipation: Communicative Action, Emancipated Society and the Self-Constitution of Emancipatory Agenc

Abstract Habermas's conception of emancipation, as he claims, differs from Marx's, among other, in that societal differentiation, in the former, is preserved as an accomplishment of modernity, whereas in, the latter, dissolved into the lifeworld. Despite such claim, I argue that Habermas's concept of emancipation, if its premises and assumptions are logically stretched, implies or amounts to lifeworldization as an affirmation of the primacy of communicative reason which can take a variety of modi operandi from the "influence" of subsystems from the lifeworld to the communicative coordination of actions.;Habermas's popular prescriptions of radical democracy---influence and countersteering---contrary to the objectives expressed therein, imply de-differentiation as lifeworldization. Habermas's injunction of leaving the internal logic of steering media intact is indefensible empirically as subsystems including the economy, far from having the necessary logic, are historically contingent and, therefore, social construct; as well as normatively, as the injunction prohibits and preempts democratic participation and determination. Similarly, efficiency can be and ought to be reconceived postmetaphysically for radical democracy.;Moreover, Habermas's normative understanding of democracy and law as conceived and theorized as self-organization of a community and constitutional state and also explicated in terms of the proceduralist paradigm of law, along with the critique of welfare state, affirms the primacy of communicative reason, and also implies a specific and concrete form of life as constitutive of radical democracy. Habermas's comments on social power and factual equality affirm the necessity of egalitarian societal structure created not paternalistically but democratically. Interestingly, even systems-theoretic amendments of Habermas's "system" point to the possibility and desirability of democratization of action spheres and the entire society.;Habermasian idea of "new social movement" has a concrete implication on who the potential actors of the "new conflict" are. The idea of movement reconceived with reconstructed civil society also implies the necessity of a unifying and unified collective actor in the form of a radical political party as the self-mediation of civil society and public sphere. Moreover, Habermas's conceptual and theoretical concepts supply normative insights and resources necessary and useful for the self-constitution of such party as an agency of self-emancipation.