The Fading of Habermasʹs Understanding of Communicative Action in an Informatized World: The Problem of the Dissolution of the Other

Abstract

Habermas argues that Enlightenment thought, which considers reason as strategic, instrumental and technical, colonizes the world of life. He claims that these forms of reason negatively affect the subjectʹs self‐construction and the possibilities of consensus. Against these understandings, he tries to reveal the subjectʹs search for communicative action through common sense, freedom and diversity. In this way, he wants to dethrone the narrow‐minded populism that has taken over the world of life by revealing the potential for influence in the public sphere. His main aim here is to position the world of life outside the ʺsystemʺ through communication. In this way, the relationship between self and other can be designed in the form of a common consensus, outside of manipulation and force. The fact that Habermas lived in a period when the means of communication were limited enabled him to defend the possibility of consensus on a common ground of agreement through the intrinsic rationality of the other. However, the problem at this point is, is it possible to establish the communicative act with the other in our post‐industrial age, where the digital network is decisive and at the forefront? In our age, in echo chambers and filter bubbles, it is getting harder to listen to the other, to hear the voice of the other, and the need to reach the other is disappearing. However, in the digitalization period, it is very difficult to have a certain inherent rationalization chance and find a common ground for discussion. The basis of this loss of ground is the problem of producing more information than the communicative action can capture. According to Hart and Negri, sovereignty has been created through communication with the informatization created by the post‐industrial economy, according to Stiegler, the colonizing effect of communicative action has occurred through the proletarianization of life knowledge, and finally, according to Chul Han, the meaning of the concept of communication has disappeared with the blurring of the other in this information bombardment. In other words, if identity, character and communicative action have disappeared or distorted without the other, the society of spectacle with spectators becomes meaningful.

Our goal in this article is primarily to focus on explaining how the relentless needles of routine and the passivity of the vast information network destroy communicative action in the absence of the other. Then, it is to discuss the consequences of subjects consuming themselves to death as others are blurred in the information epidemic. Finally, it is to consider whether the search for a common world will disappear as technical, psychological information tools replace discursive rationality and construct subjects that are far from factuality.