Jurgen Habermas and John Locke

Paper Summary:

This study will explain and compare Jurgen Habermas's philosophy of communicative reason and John Locke's concept of the social contract, focusing on the roles of reason and the definitions of knowledge in both philosophies. The study will argue that Habermas is concerned with the process whereby communicative reason takes place between individuals, while Locke is concerned with developing a rationale for the construction and continuity of a society in which completely free individuals (in the state of nature) agree to form a society which relieves them of some of that freedom but gives them in return protection for their life and property.

From the Paper:

"This study will explain and compare Jurgen Habermas's philosophy of communicative reason and John Locke's concept of the social contract, focusing on the roles of reason and the definitions of knowledge in both philosophies. The study will argue that Habermas is concerned with the process whereby communicative reason takes place between individuals, while Locke is concerned with developing a rationale for the construction and continuity of a society in which completely free individuals (in the state of nature) agree to form a society which relieves them of some of that freedom but gives them in return protection for their life and property. Habermas presupposes an orderly but free society is which his communicative reason can take place, whereas Locke presupposes a state of nature--part free, part rational, part warring--which necessitates the social contract which, in ..."

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