On jürgen habermas’s cognitive theory of morality

Abstract

This chapter is an elaborate examination of Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethics. Just as assertoric sentences used in constative speech acts are differentiated from normative sentences used in regulative speech acts, assertoric sentences constitute the truth while normative sentences constitute the rightness, although both types of sentences can be used cognitively in different ways. It is also suggested that no moral norms can be grounded in an absolute way (letztbegründet), if one assumes a meta-ethical theory of moral cognitivism without the presupposition of a moral realism; one can only say that for some moral norms there are just no alternatives (alternativenlos). And this lack of alternatives (Alternativenlosigkeit) manifests itself again and again through every moral argumentation.