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Ideal Speech Conditions, Modern Discourse and Education
Author(s) -
BLAKE NIGEL
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
journal of philosophy of education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.501
H-Index - 41
eISSN - 1467-9752
pISSN - 0309-8249
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9752.1995.tb00365.x
Subject(s) - ideal (ethics) , agency (philosophy) , autonomy , sociology , modernization theory , scope (computer science) , modernity , relation (database) , discourse analysis , pedagogy , epistemology , psychology , linguistics , social science , political science , philosophy , law , computer science , database , programming language
Habermas's educational importance is usually misconstrued or underestimated, partly because the scope and implications of ideal speech conditions are generally misunderstood. These conditions are only relevant to discursive speech situations, but non‐manipulative teaching need not be discursive. And not even discursive teaching is an appropriate occasion for ideal speech conditions. They properly apply to discourse institutions, at the ‘epistemic centre of modernity’. Thus, the concept of ideal speech conditions impinges on the relation of school to higher education and on curricular change as an agency of modernisation, and illuminates the need for access to discourse institutions, if personal autonomy is an aim for school children, students or adults. Neo‐Marxists, traditionalists and progressives all misunderstand the importance of discourse institutions.