The Practicability of the Ideal Speech Situation

Critical reasoning is a core element of the P4C program. Yet, the appearance of postmodernism, multiculturalism and ethnocentrism casts doubt on the Western concept of rationality and demands that its claim of universal purview be justified. In this context, the desideratum of this article is to provide a concept of rationality that has the potential to serve as the theoretical basis of reasoning in P4C. This is an important task, because if we cannot defend P4C against the postmodern criticism of rationality, we cannot claim that it is a multicultural program in a true sense, nor can we defend it against the charge that this is just another attempt of “western colonization”.In what is to follow, I will discuss one possible solution to this problem by drawing on Habermas’ notion of communicative rationality. I’ll begin by showing that communicative rationality has the potential to widen our western-based concept of reasoning in P4C and thus, make it more applicable in a multicultural environment. Yet, one weak point in Habermas’ theory is that he assumes the illocutive ends of all communication participants and, therefore, fails to show the practicability of the ideal speech situation. Therefore I will argue to apply P4C to the discourse theory and communicative rationality itself (i.e. to foster such illocutive ends in young children in a C of I) and claim that P4C may provide the missing link. Last but not least, I will focus on the practical level and explore possibilities of applying Habermas’ notion of an ideal speech situation to the C of I.