Can Habermas be made consistent with AN Whitehead?

Possible Areas of Synthesis

Despite these differences, there are intriguing points of connection that could allow for a partial reconciliation:

1. Process and Intersubjectivity

   • Whitehead’s process metaphysics could provide a deeper ontological grounding for Habermas’s intersubjective rationality. If we interpret communicative action as part of a broader process of relational becoming, then we could integrate social discourse (Habermas) with a wider, non-anthropocentric field of relationality (Whitehead).

2. Expanding the Idea of Rationality

   • Habermas restricts rationality to discursive processes, but Whitehead’s notion of prehension suggests that rationality is embedded in all levels of reality, not just human communication. This would allow for a more expanded, ecological, and embodied concept of reason.

3. Beyond the Human-Centric Model

   • Whitehead’s metaphysics accommodates non-human forms of intelligence and experience, while Habermas’s theory of communicative rationality is largely anthropocentric. A synthesis could expand Habermas’s account to recognize non-linguistic forms of intelligence and normativity (e.g., ecological systems, AI, animal communication).

4. Truth as Processual and Justified

   • If we combine Whitehead’s processive, evolving understanding of truth with Habermas’s pragmatic and proceduralist notion of justification, we might arrive at a dynamic theory of truth—where truth is both emergent in discourse and embedded in ontological processes.

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A Tentative Model for Synthesis

1. Habermas’s discourse ethics remains intact as a model for communicative action, but it is embedded within a broader process-relational field, where communication is one mode of relationality among many.
2. Whitehead’s ontology expands the scope of Habermas’s intersubjectivity, allowing for pre-linguistic, aesthetic, and ecological forms of normativity to be included.
3. A multi-tiered model of rationality emerges, where communicative rationality is one aspect of a broader, embodied, and processual rationality that includes affect, prehension, and ecological attunement.
4. Instead of an ideal speech situation alone, we consider an “ideal relational field”, where ethical and epistemic legitimacy arises not just from discourse, but from relations at multiple levels of reality.

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Conclusion: A Productive Tension

While Habermas and Whitehead ultimately belong to different philosophical traditions, a synthesis is possible if we:

• Keep Habermas’s proceduralist ethics while expanding his view of rationality.
• Ground discourse ethics in a deeper relational ontology that includes Whitehead’s process metaphysics.
• Allow for non-linguistic and aesthetic forms of normativity, recognizing that ethics, truth, and justification exist within both communicative and processual fields.

Would this fully resolve the tensions? No. But it could open up a more dynamic, pluralistic, and process-relational vision of rationality and normativity, making Habermas less rigid and Whitehead more socially grounded.