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Particularity and Perspective Taking: On Feminism and Habermas's Discourse Theory of

Morality
Author(s): Charles Wright
Source: Hypatia, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 49-76
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Particularity and Perspective Taking:
On Feminism and Habermas's
Discourse Theory of Morality
CHARLES WRIGHT
Seyla Benhabib's critique of Jiirgen Habermas's moral theory claims that

is not adequate for the needs of a feminist moral theory. I argue that he
mistaken. I also show that Habermas's moral theory, properly understo
many of the conditions identified by feminist moral philosophers as n
an adequate moral theory. A discussion of the compatibility between t
reciprocal perspective taking found in Habermas's moral theory and t
Maria Lugones's essay "Playfulness, 'World'-Travelling, and Loving
reinforces the claim that his moral theory holds as yet unrecognized
feminist moral philosophy.
With the introduction of Carol Gilligan's concept of a different m

conventional, principle-based models of impartial moral judgment
on notice. Moral philosophers inspired by Gilligan's insight argue
inherited concepts of modern moral philosophy are indelibly mark
exclusion of women from positions of public authority and by t
devaluation of the work of caring performed by women in their f
local communities. Thinkers such as Virginia Held 1987a/b; Maril
man 1987, 1990; Annette Baier 1985, 1987; Susan Moller Okin
Iris Marion Young 1987 set themselves the task of exposing and e
residues of this legacy of oppression that remain embedded in the
moral philosophy.
Jiirgen Habermas's work has attracted the attention of feminist ph
and social theorists who have wondered whether their emancipat
Hypatia vol. 19, no. 4 (Fall 2004) ? by Charles Wright
50 Hypatia
might be aided by his theoretical insights.1 They have often been disappointed.
An unapologetic neo-Kantian, a resolute defender of the claims of impartial
reason, and distressingly disengaged from (if not oblivious to) issues of gender,
Habermas's theoretical work has appeared as much to embody the problems
to be overcome as it has promised to be a source of insight or inspiration.
Despite his efforts to ground fundamentally egalitarian principles of morality
and political organization and to identify the space in modern social structures
where they might be institutionalized, Habermas's concepts seem to many
feminists nonetheless to be too uncritically beholden to traditional gender
assumptions.
This suspicion seems especially true with regard to his discourse theory
of morality. On the one hand, feminist moral philosophers are drawn to the
thoroughgoing dialogical structure of his model of moral deliberation, to the
egalitarian principles embedded in his conception of moral discourse, and to
his emphasis upon the intersubjective constitution of social identity. On the
other hand, certain features at the core of this approach to moral theory-his
commitment to formalism, impartiality, and universalism-raise hackles. On
one occasion in particular, in his response to Gilligan's critique of Kohlberg's
moral psychology, Habermas appears to confirm feminists' worst suspicions.2
Here it seems clear that his egalitarian impulses are irretrievably compromised
by his steadfast adherence to traditional concepts of moral philosophy.
My aim in this essay is to show that such feminist worries are in fact mis-
placed. I shall argue that despite objections raised against Habermas's theory
as he has formulated it, his model of moral judgment, when approached
with sufficient interpretive care, can accommodate most, if not all, feminist
concerns regarding such matters as incorporating subjective and contextual
particularity into moral judgment, recognizing the full moral significance of
the personal domain of human experience, integrating reason and emotion in
moral judgment, and avoiding the traditional lopsided emphasis upon rights
and duties while at the same time recognizing the place for considerations of
justice in the family and other domains of personal life. Understood correctly,
in other words, Habermas's discourse theory of morality may be the vehicle
within which the care and justice perspectives can be integrated into a single
theoretical framework.
Toward this end I shall first briefly review the contours of Habermas's dis-
course theory of morality and the points of his response to Gilligan. Here I shall
try to be as brief as possible, since this exchange has already been examined by
a number of other authors.3 Following this review, I shall turn to essays by Seyla
Benhabib that focus on Habermas's moral theory in the context of his reply to
Gilligan. Since her analysis has been treated by other feminist philosophers as
an authoritative critique of Habermas's work,4 I shall subject her claims to par-
ticularly careful scrutiny. Here I will try to show that Habermas's model of moral
Charles Wright 51
judgment is not, as Benhabib suggests, constructed around a rigid distinction

between evaluative questions of the good life and matters of justice. I will
argue, quite to the contrary, that his model allows for impartial evaluation of
moral questions in matters of both justice and the good life as well as for the
coordination of reason and emotion in moral judgment.
In the second part of the essay I shall examine the perspective-taking
structure of Habermas's model of moral judgment. Here I will try to show how
participants in moral discourses are required to attend both to the subjective
particularity of other participants as well as to particulars of social, historical,
and cultural context. I will then try further to highlight the place of perspec-
tive taking in Habermas's moral theory by contrasting his insights with those
found in Maria Lugones's essay, "Playfulness, 'World'-Travelling and Loving
Perception."
This contrast will serve a number of purposes. First, consideration of the
shared features of their two conceptions will, I hope, lend further credence
to the claim that Habermas's moral theory may have more to offer feminist
moral theorists than has so far been appreciated. Second, an examination
of key differences between their approaches will highlight the plausibility of
a claim central to Habermas's theory: that the process of perspective taking
can reveal and help correct unexamined assumptions that shape one person's
understanding of another.
Thirdly, the juxtaposition of Lugones's and Habermas's thought will also
serve to reinforce the same hermeneutic insight guiding my analysis of Benhab-
ib's critique, that the full potential of Habermas's theory will best be recognized
once it is disentangled from unfortunate and distracting features of his presenta-
tion of this theory. In taking this approach I follow the lead of Jean L. Cohen,
who suggests that while many feminist criticisms of Habermas's work may be on
the mark, "the problem lies more in Habermas's prejudices regarding feminism,
and in his interpretation and application of his categorical framework rather
than in the framework itself" (1995, 57).
1. HABERMAS ON GILLIGAN'S DIFFERENT VOICE
Broadly outlined, Habermas's discourse theory of morality attempts to redeem

what he regards as the core moral insights of modernity, which in his estima-
tion received their first systematic, if inadequate, expression in Kant's moral
philosophy. He has two general aims in his theory. The first is to identify and
describe the conditions under which moral actors might achieve impartial
agreement on the validity of a proposed action-regulating norm. These condi-
tions he identifies with the "moral point of view." The second is to provide a
rigorous philosophical justification for the moral principle in which the moral
point of view finds both its ground and its expression.
52 Hypatia
The defining characteristics of moral judgment exercised within the con-

straints of the moral point of view are, on this account, as follows: First, moral
judgments possess a propositional content that can be assessed as being more
or less valid according to intersubjectively recognized, and hence reciprocally
binding criteria. Second, judgments formed under the constraints of the impar-
tial moral point of view aim to establish what Habermas calls "generalizable
interests"-norms, in other words, that possess universal validity. Finally, moral
judgment is construed as a formal procedure. That is, the constraints defining
the moral point of view are understood to embody formal characteristics of
reason that have been distilled from any particular system of beliefs, values, or
action expectations.
Given Habermas's close collaboration with Lawrence Kohlberg in developing
his moral theory (1979, 1990b, 1990c, 1993b), and given these general features
of his conception of moral judgment, it can come as no surprise that he would
have felt it necessary to respond to Gilligan's critique of Kohlberg's moral theory.
Habermas's own approach was, we might say, conceptually implicated in the
charges laid to Kohlberg's account. From the perspective of Gilligan's concep-
tion of moral 'care', Habermas's model of moral judgment would appear to suffer
from more or less the same set of critical shortcomings that were said to plague
Kohlberg's approach. First, the emphasis upon moral judgment as a cognitive
process would fail to account for the experience of many of Gilligan's subjects
that judgment was a matter of appropriate feeling in a particular context. Second,
the search for universal norms would seem to overlook the highly particular and
contextually nuanced characteristics of both the circumstances calling forth
a moral response as well as the decisions appropriate to the particular circum-
stances. Finally, the idea that moral judgment consists of an impartial formal
procedure supposes that moral actors must abstract themselves from the network
of identity constituting and affectively mediated interpersonal relations that
makes up the fabric of their moral lives in order to render a "just" decision.
Habermas replies to Gilligan's concerns by calling attention to differences in
the structures of moral judgment that arise in the transition from conventional
to postconventional moral consciousness. The former has its place in the context
of a particular form of life: a specific pattern of beliefs, value commitments, and
customary practices that define a community's conception of a good or well-
lived life. The constituent elements of this form of life enjoy at this stage a kind
of customary, or "de facto" validity. Conventional moral judgment relies upon
these basic beliefs, value commitments, and customary practices as the final
court of appeal in controversies regarding appropriate moral conduct.
The transition to postconventional moral consciousness is marked above all
by insight into the contingency of this received network of beliefs, values, and
practices by the understanding that they might be otherwise. Once moral actors
have achieved this insight, custom and tradition can no longer function as a
Charles Wright 53
final court of appeal. Indeed, custom and tradition now stand themselves in need
of justification. It is at this stage-one that can be reached both during the
course of individual development as well as in the evolution of cultural tradi-
tions-that the move to moral reasoning on the basis of abstract and universally
valid moral principles becomes possible and necessary. Postconventional moral
judgment presses beyond the boundaries of a particular form of life in order to
assess the validity of a particular norm from the impartial perspective made
available by procedures of universal justification.
On the basis of this distinction, Habermas suggests that Gilligan's objections
are misplaced, in the first place, with regard to the place of emotions in moral
judgment.5 When making moral decisions in the context of a particular form of
life, appropriate feeling can in many (if not all) instances be expected to provide
reliable guidance in moral action. A moral actor's motivational economy will
have taken shape within the network of beliefs, value commitments, and action
expectations that make up her inherited community. As a result, emotional
reactions to common moral problems and interpersonal conflicts will articulate
the particular value commitments and accumulated moral wisdom embodied
in that form of life. In some cases, little or no deliberation may be necessary
for a social actor to traverse the interval between the perception of a morally
significant situation and the impulse to respond in a particular manner.
Now advocates of feminist care ethics often have treated the capacity to
respond unreflectively to the need or distress of others as paradigmatic of the
"care perspective." This capacity to act in a morally appropriate manner without
reflection has been examined perhaps most carefully by Lawrence Blum (1987,
1991), who argues that such moral responsiveness cannot be explained in terms
of rule-guided or reflective action. Such moral conduct is taken as decisive evi-
dence for the inadequacy of narrowly principled or rule-based models of moral
judgment. It is not difficult to see, though, that there is no incompatibility
between this particular capacity and Habermas's model of moral judgment.
I have already noted that morally appropriate responses can, as a result of
socialization, become second nature. For Habermas, though, the crucial issue
would be that this capacity for unreflective action is no guarantee of morally
appropriate action. The specific responses elicited in individuals by particular
sets of circumstances will vary with the cultural and social circumstances of
that individual's upbringing. An individual's unreflective moral response will
enact whatever set of precepts, norms, and practices that she has incorporated
into her motivational economy.
Consider Blum's example in which one person offers assistance to another on
a crowded subway. His point, of course, was to highlight certain issues of moral
perception. The morally perceptive individual was the one who first noticed
and then acted to relieve the distress perceived in another, without needing to
consult any moral rules. Suppose, by contrast, that the perceptive individual
54 Hypatia
has spent formative years in the culture of an urban street gang. Let us also
assume, for the sake of argument, that the moral ethos of this particular culture
encourages quite a different attitude toward perceived vulnerability. Rather than
precepts such as "assist those in need," or "relieve the suffering of others when
it is not excessively costly to do so," this urban predator has internalized such
precepts as "ignore the suffering of others, if they aren't one of the gang," or
"those in need are easy marks." Upon perceiving the distress and vulnerability
of another, one raised with such precepts could be expected to have unreflective
responses rather different from the caring ones that Blum analyzes.
Morally desirable unreflective responses, then, are elicited in individuals
who have internalized morally desirable precepts, norms, and practices. Within
Habermas's model of moral judgment, such unreflective caring responses will be
a natural complement to moral rules, whether they have been inherited from
tradition or have evolved through postconventional moral reflection taking
place at the level of cultural institutions. Habermas's model thus also opens
the possibility that moral feelings can be shaped in a manner consistent with
rational insight.
From the perspective yielded by Habermas's distinction between conven-
tional and postconventional moral consciousness, Gilligan's objections also miss
the mark with regard to the kind of moral problems actors typically encounter.
Within the network of beliefs, value commitments, and action expectations that
make up an actor's inherited form of life, the moral problems an actor will usu-
ally face will not be ones requiring the justification of a contested norm, or the
resolution of a society-wide problem. In most circumstances, the validity of the
moral norms under consideration will not be at issue. Rather, the deliberative
task faced in such circumstances will be to decide whether a particular act or
decision violates an accepted norm, or whether a particular norm is applicable
under the circumstances at hand, or which among several viable candidates
would be the appropriate norm to apply in the circumstances. Much, if not most,
normative reflection and decision making in the personal realm addresses these
kinds of tasks, and so does not stand in need of the justificatory constraints
characteristic of postconventional procedures of moral deliberation. Moreover,
the scope of conventional moral judgment will often be highly circumscribed.
Most people most of the time will deliberate ethically about problems, conflicts,
and difficulties regarding their families, friends, neighbors, and co-workers. In
such circumstances, richly detailed and contextually nuanced knowledge will
be both readily available as well as appropriately brought into play as part of
moral deliberation.
By contrast, situations calling for postconventional moral judgment typi-
cally involve assessing the validity of a customarily accepted norm that has
been called into question or a newly proposed norm the validity of which
must be determined. The need for such deliberation arises typically in an
Charles Wright 55
unprecedented situation, where economic, cultural or historical circumstances

have thrown up a moral problem that members of one or more communities
have not encountered before. Such decisions typically will have consequences
affecting the action expectations for large segments of a community, society,
or nation-state.
In such circumstances social actors can no longer expect emotional responses

that have taken shape around inherited beliefs, value commitments, and action
expectations to be reliable guides to action and deliberation. They can also no
longer expect that the detailed contextual knowledge they possess with regard
to their everyday moral reality will have the same relevance to the problem at
hand. The locus of moral deliberation will have shifted away from the particular
and affectively mediated relations between the actor and her network of friends,
relations, and community members.
Thus, in a situation that calls for postconventional moral judgment, the
emotional responses, contextual details, and particular relations that comprise
a social actor's conventional moral consciousness will have to be bracketed and
set aside in order to achieve the impartiality required to resolve the problem
at hand. In Habermas's words, moral practical discourses "require a break with
all of the unquestioned truths of an established, concrete ethical life, in addi-
tion to distancing oneself from the contexts of life with which one's identity is
inextricably interwoven" (1993d, 12).
Thus we see that Habermas's model of moral judgment neither overlooks
nor excludes contextual particularity, affective dimensions of moral action and
judgment, or the significant place in the actor's moral life played by personal
relation to love and friendship. To the contrary, his model supposes that when
circumstances are appropriate-which is most of the time-these characteristics
will make up the very heart and substance of moral judgment.
2. BENHABIB'S REJOINDER
Needless to say, this reply will not satisfy many feminist moral theorists. While
Habermas acknowledges the place of emotion, context, and particularity in
human moral experience, he seems to relegate these dimensions solely to the
domain of conventional moral consciousness. This would seem simply to reassert
traditional bifurcations according to which impartial moral judgment is exer-
cised by moral agents acting in the public realm who are required to disentangle
their shared capacity for reason from their everyday emotional commitments,
and from contextual and subjective particularity. This division, in turn, falls
into an all too familiar pattern. The cultivation of emotionally significant and
particular interpersonal relations has traditionally been associated with the
private realm of social life, while impartial, dispassionate, and depersonal-
ized patterns of social interaction have been associated with the public. Add
56 Hypatia
traditional gender valuations to this set of associations, and the picture is com-
plete. In Joan Tronto's words, "What is male is important, broad, and public;
what is female is narrow, special, and insignificant" (1993, 246).
This is the pattern that Seyla Benhabib believes she has identified in
Habermas's reply to Gilligan. Given her long and intimate acquaintance with
Habermas's thought, her sympathy with his theoretical aims, and the apparent
care with which she engages him on this point, her rejoinder warrants detailed
examination.
Benhabib suggests that Habermas's construal of the moral domain posits a

undesirable and unnecessary distinction between personal matters and mat
ters of genuine moral concern. Moral issues, on the one hand, are narrowl
construed as "problems of justice in the economy and the polity" (1992c, 18
These are the sorts of problems that Habermas claims can be addressed throu
deliberative procedures subject to the strict constraints of deontological validity
On the other hand, the personal issues-understood as matters of kinship, lov
friendship, and sex-which are addressed within the framework of conventio
moral consciousness, are not, on Habermas's account, matters of justice. But
seems obvious to Benhabib that "the moral issues that touch [one] most deep
arise in the personal domain" (1992c, 185). How is it possible, she demands
know, that spheres of life so essential to every individual's well being can b
excluded from the domain of "morality"? By insisting that all genuine mor
issues must be "impersonal," Habermas's theory fails to capture fundamenta
characteristics of lived moral experience.
Benhabib suggests that Habermas's mistake is to "conflate the standpoint o
a universalist morality with a narrow definition of the moral domain as bein
centered around 'issues of justice"' (1992c, 185). He confuses, in other words,
moral standpoint with a particular arena of moral action. By contrast, Benhab
suggests that "how we define the domain of the moral is a separate matter th
the kinds of justificatory constraints which we think moral judgments, principl
and maxims should be subject to" (1992c, 185).
These are the principle criticisms that Benhabib raises against Habermas
moral theory. I shall argue shortly that they rest upon an insufficiently nuanc
interpretation of his thinking. But before proceeding to this discussion, i
will also be helpful to review her proposed alternative. The contrast between
Benhabib's and Habermas's two approaches will highlight the compatibility
of his model, when adequately understood, with a wide variety of feminis
concerns.
In what she regards as a corrective to Haberm

advances her own conception of a procedural moral
model of moral deliberation has three defining charac
mitment to the equal worth and dignity of every hum
recognition of this inherent dignity be demonstrate
Charles Wright 57
needs, interests, and points of view brought by each participant to procedures of

moral deliberation; and it requires a commitment to accept the validity of action-
norms established through deliberation in practical discourses. These conditions
represent necessary constraints upon deliberation that leads to the justification
of norms or rules of conduct. Benhabib argues that such a procedural conception
of moral deliberation can be applied to test the validity of judgments, principles,
and maxims in both the domain of "evaluative questions of the good life" as
well as "moral matters of justice." By distinguishing between the procedure for
evaluating moral judgments and the domain in which this procedure can be
applied, Benhabib believes that one can avoid "an unnecessary and unwarranted
narrowing of the domain of the moral" that "does not follow from a universalist
moral position" (1992c, 189). These, then, are the basic contours of her proposed
revision to Habermas's model of moral judgment.
Now there can be little doubt but that an adequate model of moral judg-
ment must differentiate clearly between domains of moral concern and the
standpoint(s) of moral judgment. On this point, Benhabib certainly must be
correct. She also seems warranted in her claim that Habermas does not attend to
this distinction as carefully as he might have in his reply to Gilligan. But rather
than pointing to a significant weakness in the theory itself, it seems to me that
what Benhabib really does is to call attention to shortcomings in Habermas's
presentation. As I indicated in the introduction, such failures sufficiently to
distinguish between core features of Habermas's theories and relatively extra-
neous features associated with his presentation of those theories seem to have
contributed significantly to feminist misgivings in relation to his thinking. In
what follows, I argue that a more charitable and contextually responsive read-
ing of Habermas's position will show that it in fact does not fall into any of the
confusions that Benhabib describes.
A fundamental reason why Benhabib's analysis misses the mark is that she
focuses on the distinction between "ethical evaluative matters of the good life"
and "moral matters of justice," rather than on that between conventional and
postconventional structures of moral consciousness. While Habermas accepts
and makes extensive use of this first distinction throughout his moral and
political philosophy,6 it is neither equivalent to nor used interchangeably with
the second. The distinction between the good and the just (or the right) is
between two domains of moral concern. The distinction between conventional
and postconventional moral consciousness, by contrast, is between two modes
of moral reflection, each constructed around a specific interplay between emo-
tion and cognition. That the two pairs of concepts are neither equivalent nor
interchangeable can be shown as follows.
A defining characteristic of conventional moral consciousness, as we have
seen, is that the social actor reaches judgments within a universe of famil-
iar, accepted, and trusted normative commitments. Habermas has tended to
58 Hypatia
emphasize that the shift from conventional to postconventional moral con-

sciousness involves a shift away from particular, local, and personal moral
concerns toward more general and impersonal moral issues, largely because
his analyses have been focused on processes of individual and cultural develop-
ment. But it is also possible for conventional moral consciousness to incorporate
highly abstract and relatively recently institutionalized postconventional norms
of justice. Suppose, for example, that a young person has been raised in a family
and community that have accepted as valid such normative commitments as
universal human rights and genuine religious tolerance. Having internalized
commitments to both the content and the presumed validity of these norms,
this person will think about and apply such concepts within the structure of
conventional moral consciousness. That is to say, her capacity to reach moral
judgments on the basis of and to act in a manner required by such postcon-
ventional norms will not require postconventional processes of deliberation.
From the perspective of conventional moral consciousness, these norms will
simply "feel" right emotionally, and their cognitive validity will seem intuitively
obvious.
Now if this person were to encounter a dissenter from one of these general
and universally applicable norms-an advocate of the so-called Asian values
model of social organization, say, who rejects Western concepts of universal
human rights in favor of neo-Confucian conceptions of family loyalty, social sta-
bility, deference to government authority, and subordination of the interests of
the individual to those of the community7-she would experience the shock of
failed normative agreement. At that point, when the accepted normative com-
mitments of her community had been called into question, she might undertake
the task of justifying their validity through the use of reasons. This would be to
make the shift from conventional to postconventional moral consciousness. In a
word, postconventional norms meeting the strict requirements of deontological
moral validity can be taken up by a social actor within the framework of either
conventional or postconventional moral consciousness.
This conclusion allows us to see how Habermas's account incorporates the
very distinction between moral standpoint and domain of moral action that Ben-
habib claims is missing. Just as a social actor can take up either a conventional
or postconventional orientation toward any particular norm, so we may also
suppose that she would be able to take up either orientation toward a particular
domain of moral action. Take the case of a young woman raised in a society
in which women's social roles are limited to those of wife, mother, sister, and
daughter. By adopting a conventional moral orientation toward the normative
expectations associated with these roles, this person will be able to take up
and apply relevant norms of appropriate female conduct either with regard to
personal matters of conduct within family, neighborhood, and extended kin
network, or with regard to public matters such as constraints upon women's
Charles Wright 59
opportunities for education, professional employment, and the holding of

public office. Should this young woman make the shift to a postconventional
moral orientation, she would then be able to (though she may choose not to)
demand justifications based on good reasons (not simply ones appealing to
custom and tradition) not only for the status and role opportunities for women
in the personal domain but also for the constraints on opportunity in the public
realm as well.
By taking the distinction between conventional and postconventional
moral consciousness, and not that between justice and the good life, as central
to Habermas's theory of moral judgment, it becomes clear that both personal
as well as public matters will raise questions of justice understood in terms of
equal freedom, mutual respect, and fair opportunity. Thus, on closer inspection,
we can see that Benhabib's analysis underestimates the capacity of Habermas's
theory to accommodate the feminist insight that questions of justice apply to
the personal as well as to the "political" domain. I shall be returning to this
point shortly below.
Before proceeding, though, it is worth considering how Benhabib might
have made this oversight. To be fair, it is not hard to see how she might have
been misled on this point. The difficulty arises as a result of the developmental
structure of Habermas's account. In human moral development, at least accord-
ing to Kohlberg's model, the shift from conventional to postconventional moral
consciousness is always accompanied by a corresponding shift in the social
actor's attention from moral perspectives belonging to a particular concep-
tion of a good life to moral perspectives subject to the strict requirements of
deontological validity. But from this feature of moral development it does not
follow that moral norms that have been justified according to the requirements of
deontological validity must always and only be taken up within the framework
of postconventional moral consciousness. But because the presentation of his
theory in general, and his reply to Gilligan in particular, both remain so closely
tied to Kohlberg's developmental story, Habermas does not call attention to this
further dimension in his account. By leaving it merely implicit, he would seem,
as a result, to have contributed substantially to Benhabib's oversight.
Apart from invoking the distinction between moral standpoint and domain
of moral action, we have seen that Benhabib raises two additional, and related,
objections. The response to one of these-her claim that on Habermas's account
questions of justice cannot arise in the domain of personal life-should by now
be evident and need only detain us briefly. The other-the idea that Habermas
is mistaken to suppose that a procedural theory of deontological moral judgment
cannot be applicable in personal domains of moral significance-will require
somewhat more detailed discussion.
Turning first to the claim about justice within the personal life: Benhabib
states that Habermas limits the domain of justice to the generalizable domains
60 Hypatia
of economic and political decision making, and that he considers the kinds
of issues and problems that arise in the personal realm to be incompatible
with the strict conditions of deontological validity. She considers this to be
an unsustainable division between conditions of justice and the domain of
everyday life and proposes her model of procedural moral universalism as a
corrective to this flaw.
This claim seems mistaken for at least two reasons. First, as we have seen
above, it is evident that norms that have been subjected to postconventional
procedures of justification can be integrated both into the moral commitments
made by individuals as well as into particular communities' conceptions of a
good life. That is, norms of justice in the strict sense can, on Habermas's model,
be expected to play a role in the domain of everyday moral life.
Second, we have also already seen that Habermas's model of moral judgment
is compatible with the supposition that a person can adopt a postconventional
moral orientation toward customs and norms regulating interpersonal relation-
ships in the family, the local community, and the extended kin network. This
implies that normative expectations that regulate social interaction in domains
of everyday life can be examined from the perspective of deontological valid-
ity. Though Habermas may not address the issue, it seems sufficiently evident
that personal realms of social interaction are not cut off from considerations
of justice.
Let us turn now to the second of this pair of objections. This, we recall, is
her claim that Habermas recognizes the need for postconventional procedures
of moral deliberation only in matters of public, and not in matters of private
concern. This difference between her first and her second objection is subtle, so
a restatement may help here. The first concerned appropriate normative expecta-
tions. The question was whether Habermas's theory supposed that structures of
social interaction in personal domains such as the family, friendship, and the
like could be subject to norms meeting conditions of deontological validity.
Benhabib claimed that in Habermas's moral theory, domain of the personal
fell outside the realm of justice. I argued that she is mistaken.
Benhabib's second objection concerns appropriate deliberative procedures.
The question is whether Habermas's theory supposes that normative expecta-
tions regulating social interaction in personal domains are appropriately decided
through postconventional procedures of moral deliberation. As I showed above,
Benhabib thinks they are not. Benhabib introduces her own model of procedural
moral universalism in response to this perceived shortcoming of Habermas's
model. In what follows, I shall try to show that her second objection founders
on a series of considerations related to those just examined above.
In fairness to Benhabib, we should note that her claims seem warranted with
regard to Habermas's initial formulations of his discourse ethics.8 These earlier
formulations tended strongly to emphasize the relation between postconven-
Charles Wright 61
tional moral judgment and normative problems that explode the boundaries
of particular conceptions of a good life. But in later essays, Habermas has
elaborated his model in a way that makes clear that the postconventional moral
orientation is not limited simply to the domain of deontological justice. In addi-
tion to moral practical discourses, which aim at establishing the deontological
validity of social norms, Habermas has also introduced ethical existential (1993d)
and ethical political (1993e) discourses. These three modes of discourse are
part of a more differentiated model of practical reason that has emerged more
recently. In the next few paragraphs I shall indicate how together they comprise
a threefold configuration of postconventional moral consciousness.
In ethical existential discourses individuals engage in dialogically mediated
reflection upon value decisions that will affect their meaning-conferring life
plans or their self-identity. Such discourses take place "within the horizon of
forms of life that [the actor] shares with others and that themselves constitute
the context for different life projects. Those who belong to a shared lifeworld are
potential participants who can assume the catalyzing role of impartial critics in
processes of self-clarification" (Habermas 1993d, 11). Ethical political discourses,
by contrast, involve members of a collectivity who "engage in public deliberation
in a spirit of mutual trust, with the goal of coming to an understanding concern-
ing their shared form of life and their identity solely through the unforced force
of the better argument" (Habermas 1993e, 23). In such discourses "participants
can clarify who they are and who they want to be, whether as members of a
family, as inhabitants of a region, or as citizens of a state" (Habermas 1993e, 23).
Moral practical discourses, finally, as we have already seen, call for deliberations
concerning a norm, practice or decision that will regulate the social interaction
of members of a pluralistic society, where communities that have taken shape
around different and sometimes incompatible conceptions of a good life must
agree on a way to regulate their interaction with one another.
All three of these discursive modes can be included under the heading of
postconventional moral consciousness because the occasion for each arises when
some inherited set of normative standards or expectations has been called into
question and stands in need of evaluation, revision, and possibly, replacement.
The range of application of each mode of discourse will vary socially, culturally,
geographically, and temporally. But all involve the shift from conventional to
postconventional moral consciousness.
I should note that each mode of discourse will bring a similar (if not identical)
set of normative constraints to bear upon the deliberative process. Participants
in any of the three modes will have to show impartial regard for each of the
participants; will have to recognize the inherent value and dignity of each
participant; will need to show respect for the needs, interests, and particular
perspective brought to the discourse by each participant; and will have to
demonstrate a readiness to accept as valid the choices, value commitments, and
62 Hypatia
action norms arising out of these processes of deliberation. Participants in each

mode of discourse will also need to possess capacities definitive of Benhabib's
procedural moral universalism as well as Habermas's model: "the ability and the
willingness to assume reflexive role-distance and the ability and the willingness
to take the standpoint of others involved in a controversy into account and
reason from their point of view" (Benhabib 1992b, 74).
Habermas makes the justificatory constraints that guide moral deliberation
explicit only in the case of moral practical discourses, since this particular mode
of postconventional moral reflection has been the focus of his philosophical
attention. But it is clear that if ethical existential and ethical political discourses
are to provide contexts for fruitful deliberations and legitimate decisions, they
must also be structured by similar, if not identical, normative constraints. As a
result, each of these postconventional modes of discourse will satisfy Benhabib's
conditions for a procedural moral universalism. Thus, rather than represent-
ing an alternative to or a corrective for Habermas's model of moral judgment,
Benhabib's proposal now captures in a condensed form the same basic model
of moral deliberation that Habermas develops in this threefold configuration
of postconventional moral consciousness.
Now in response to this elaboration of Habermas's conception of postcon-
ventional moral consciousness Benhabib might reply that while agreements
reached in ethical existential and ethical political discourses may meet criteria
of validity analogous to those defining moral-practical discourses, the questions
to be decided by the former two discursive forms are not questions of justice
strictly speaking-at least, not as Habermas defines them. This assertion would
be correct. But it would also be beside the point. For as we have already seen
above, normative expectations regulating interpersonal conduct that have met
the criteria of deontological validity can be integrated into the everyday moral
economy of both individuals and communities. And as we have also seen, nor-
mative expectations in the personal domain that have not met these criteria
can be examined from a postconventional moral orientation. The boundary
between normative validity that is to be decided by moral practical discourses
and ethical validity that is to be decided by other discursive forms is not fixed in
Habermas's moral theory. Rather, "the distinction between questions of justice
and questions of the good life is ultimately a distinction that must be drawn
within a discourse itself-depending on whether or not the conflict involves a
generalizable interest" (Baynes 1992, 142).
In light of these considerations, little seems to remain of Benhabib's dispute
with Habermas. His model of moral judgment allows for the distinction between
moral orientation and domains of moral action. It is compatible with the claim
that matters of justice are not restricted to the public domain of economy and
polity. And his three forms of discourse show that postconventional procedures
of moral deliberation are applicable to both personal as well as public domains
of social interaction.
Charles Wright 63
To summarize the discussion so far: careful examination of Habermas's model

of moral judgment shows that it can easily accommodate moral action and
deliberation that takes place in the domains of personal, local, and particular
experience as well as at the broad societal level, though admittedly Habermas
does not emphasize the former nearly to the same degree as the latter. It is
also possible to see that Habermas's model is able to accommodate the fact
that not all moral deliberation is concerned with justifying norms, and that
much everyday moral reflection need not be subject to the rigorous constraints
of deontological justification. Finally, it is clear that from the perspective of
a conventional moral orientation, there is wide scope for emotions and felt
convictions in moral reflection and action. So far, then, it seems clear that
Habermas's moral theory can withstand the criticisms brought against it by its
most prominent feminist critic.
3. PERSPECTIVE TAKING AND PARTICULARITY
At this point some readers may be willing to concede that Habermas's model
of moral judgment can escape some of the narrow and undesirable constraints
of traditional approaches to impartial moral judgment. Questions will none-
theless persist. Habermas unmistakably supposes that the exercise of impartial
moral judgment in postconventional procedures of moral deliberation requires
that a social actor bracket, or transcend, the emotional responses, contextual
knowledge, and subjective particularity comprising her everyday moral experi-
ence. The moral point of view is attained through the impartial use of reason,
not through appropriate feeling. Impartial moral judgment also demands that
the particular network of identity constituting and affectively mediated inter-
personal relations making up the actor's domain of everyday moral experience
must still in some sense be overcome. Here Habermas still seems to embrace key
characteristics of traditional conceptions of impartial moral judgment.
In the space remaining in this essay, it will not be possible to examine and
illustrate adequately both the place of subjective and contextual particularity
and the role of moral emotions in Habermas's model of postconventional moral
judgment. What I shall try to do, then, is to illustrate how impartial moral judg-
ment on Habermas's account incorporates robust dimensions of subjective and
contextual particularity. The discussion of postconventional moral emotions,
though, will have to be deferred until another occasion.
As a first step toward disclosing the place of subjective and contextual par-
ticularity in Habermas's model of postconventional moral judgment, we should
turn to the perspective-taking structure of his model of moral judgment-a core
feature that distinguishes his approach from most other impartial, principle-
based models. This feature of his moral theory is rooted in its core concept, the
principle of universalization (U), which he understands as a procedural rule of
argumentation.9 Moral-practical discourses are the vehicles through which this
64 Hypatia
rule is put into operation. Their aim is to test the validity of proposed social
norms. In such discourses participants advance reasoned arguments in an effort
to identify the potential consequences and side effects that could be expected
to come about as a result of the general observance of a proposed norm and to
ascertain whether this norm would be acceptable to all who would be affected.
The validity of a proposed norm would depend upon whether such reasoned
examination would lead participants to reach agreement concerning the accept-
ability of these consequences and side effects to all who might be affected.
According to this model, the defining feature of such reasoned examina-
tion will be reciprocal perspective taking among free and equal moral agents.10
Each participant in a moral discourse seeks to grasp the perspective of the
others, to achieve a descriptively thick understanding of the needs, concerns,
and interests of every other participant. The point of such perspective taking
is to enable each participant to achieve insight into the socially and culturally
constituted point of view from which alone the arguments of the others can be
understood to be reasonable or not.1 In other words, one participant's ability to
assess the reasonableness of another's arguments regarding the acceptability of
a proposed norm depends upon the one's understanding of the other's socially
and culturally constituted perspective on the world.12
Habermas emphasizes that the perspective taking required by the principle
of universalization must be carried out through a dialogue in which participants
encounter one another as free, equal, and responsible individuals. The dialogi-
cal mediation of reciprocal perspective taking ensures that each participant's
understanding of the others' interested perspectives will be subjected to the
latter's critical assessment. This decreases the likelihood that a "surreptitious
privileging of individual viewpoints" (Habermas 1993e, 52) will take place,
which thereby ensures a more reliable test of the generalizability of a proposed
norm.
Thus we see that far from eliminating knowledge of the othe

their particularity, Habermas's moral-practical discourses depe
larly, instead of abstracting from the particular social, cultur
circumstances in which the human interests affected by the
will be situated, moral-practical discourses must fully acknow
porate them. In Habermas's model of postconventional moral
we find a conception of the impartial moral point of view th
upon a robust engagement with particularity.
Here I should note that the engagement with particularity jus
place in relation to the participants in procedures of moral delibe
relation to specific norms. Habermas emphasizes that discours
necessarily remove the proposed or contested norm from the
in which its validity is at stake. So the possibility of a rigid
insensitive application of a given norm would seem to have bee
Charles Wright 65
it might appear that his model of moral deliberation incorporates only a partial
engagement with contextual particularity. While an adequate discussion of this
question is beyond the scope of this essay, I do want to point out that Habermas
has considered this dimension as well, but for the most part in separation from
his analyses of discourses of moral justification. In his model, the context specific
and hermeneutically sensitive application of valid norms in particular cases is
undertaken through what he calls discourses of application. Such discourses
are subject to the same requirements of deontological validity as discourses of
justification, but are directed toward the impartial consideration of the widest
possible range of relevant contextual factors. Habermas introduces the con-
cept of an application discourse in his reply to Gilligan in "Moral Conscious-
ness and Communicative Action," while Klaus Gunther (1993) provides the
definitive account.
This review of the hermeneutic demands of reciprocal perspective taking
should serve to indicate how careful attention to the particular needs and
interests of participants in discourses has been built into the process of post-
conventional moral judgment. First, far from eliminating knowledge of the
other participants in their particularity, the perspective taking procedure of
moral-practical discourses is entirely dependent upon it. Secondly, rather than
abstracting from the particular social, cultural, and historical circumstances in
which the human interests affected by the norm in question will be situated,
moral-practical discourses must fully acknowledge and incorporate them. Thus,
if a moral practical discourse is to yield genuinely impartial and hence generaliz-
able norms, each participant must attend carefully to the particularity of the
individual persons and cultural contexts that are brought into communicative
interaction.
Now a concern often raised with regard to moral theories purporting to

articulate universally valid norms or an impartial moral point of view is that
what are alleged to be universal and impartial perspectives are in fact particulars
in disguise. On the one hand, Habermas contends that the strong hermeneutic
demands of the perspective taking required in moral discourses will serve to
correct such confusion. On the other hand, though, this process of correction
is easier to describe in principle than it is to carry out. The truth of both of
these assertions-the corrective function of perspective taking as well as the
difficulty of this process in practice-will loom large in the last section of this
essay. Here I offer an instance in which Habermas's presentation of his theory
may itself stand in need of such a correction.
In this last section I shall further investigate the intimate connection
between impartiality and perspective taking by contrasting Habermas's con-
ception to one more familiar to many feminist moral theorists. In her essay,
"Playfulness, 'World'-Travelling, and Loving Perception," (1987) Maria Lugones
develops a conception of perspective taking in an effort to make clear to white
66 Hypatia
feminist moral theorists that their theoretical work suffers from certain fun-
damental oversights. Juxtaposing Lugones's reflections to Habermas's model of
moral judgment will show that despite considerable differences in language and
mode of presentation, strong similarities can be found between their respective
models of ethical perspective taking. This comparison should accomplish three
things. First, a review of the shared features of their accounts of perspective
taking ought to lend further weight to the suggestion that Habermas's moral
theory is more compatible with the aims of feminist moral philosophy than
has so far been recognized. Second, examining the contrast between what I
shall call their "measures of success" in perspective taking will reinforce the
truth of Habermas's claim that such procedures will reveal and aid in correct-
ing unexamined lifeworld assumptions shaping one person's understanding of
another. Finally, the exposure of unexamined lifeworld assumptions shaping
Habermas's understanding of his theory will point to the hermeneutic fruitful-
ness of disentangling Habermas's model of moral judgment from his presentation
of this model.
Lugones opens her analysis with the contrast between arrogant perception
and loving perception. Arrogant perception, a concept that she adopts from
Marilyn Frye, takes place when one person constructs another according to the
first person's own interests, priorities, and conceptions. Rather than seeking to
achieve understanding of the interests, priorities, and perspective of another as
that other understands them, one engaging in arrogant perception allows his
own interests and priorities to determine how the other is perceived. Arrogant
perception, on Lugones's account, also involves a failure to identify with the
other-a refusal to see the other as in some respects sharing some basic interests
and priorities with oneself.
Loving perception, by contrast, has been freed from service to one's own
will, interests, fears, and imagination. In Lugones's words, loving another entails
seeing that other "with her eyes" (1987, 8). Approaching another lovingly, learn-
ing to see with her, rather than with one's own eyes, also opens the possibility
of identification: "to see oneself in other women who are quite different from
oneself" (1987, 6).
Loving perception makes possible what Lugones calls "world"-travelling.
She offers an experientially grounded conception of the idea of "world" as
a meaningful construction or organization of life in which one's identity as
an individual takes shape and in which one may find oneself to be more or
less at home. Worlds in this sense give meaning and form to a person's lived
experience.
To give substance to the notion of "world"-travelling, Lugones draws on her
experience as a member of a marginalized community. In the dominant white
world she finds herself constructed by her white interlocutors according to ste-
reotypes of the Hispanic world that are embedded in the meaning system of the
Charles Wright 67
white world. Lugones experiences herself both as she is in her home world, and
as she is constructed in the white world according to white stereotypes of her
home world. She experiences herself both as she sees herself, and as members
of the dominant culture see her. By contrast, Lugones's white interlocutors do
not share this experience of twofold existence; they experience themselves
simply as they seem to themselves, and not as others outside their world see
them. The power asymmetry between the dominant and marginal worlds means
that white women need not, if they do not wish, ever see themselves as they are
constructed in other worlds not their own.
Lugones's essay invites certain of her interlocutors, white feminist moral and
political thinkers, to engage in "world"-travelling. She suggests that they ought
to allow themselves to see themselves as women in marginalized groups see
them. Using Habermas's concepts, we can say that the problem she identifies is
that in their thinking about women, white feminists have not yet moved fully
beyond conventional moral consciousness. The lifeworld perspective inherited
by women of European descent includes the very conceptions about and perspec-
tives upon women of color that have encouraged and legitimated white women's
failure to take seriously their thoughts, words, and experiences. In other words,
conceptions and attitudes that white mainstream feminists inherited from
their own positions of racial and economic hegemony have subtly constructed
their perceptions of women of color. One result of this construction is that,
despite their best intentions, the theoretical work of white feminists engages
in the equivalent of arrogant perception. From the perspective of Habermas's
moral theory, white feminists have remained entangled in conventional moral
consciousness, conventional and parochial by virtue of unreflective adherence
to inherited norms regarding class and race not yet thematized and called into
question. The perspective-taking that Lugones calls for-the genuine attempt to
see the world from the perspective of another-is what Habermas has described
using the concept of postconventional procedures of moral deliberation.
Two basic characteristics shared by Lugones's and Habermas's conceptions
of perspective taking deserve mention. First, the connection between loving
perception and world-travelling is clear in Lugones's approach. Not immediately
as evident, but just as fundamental, is that according to Habermas's conception
of a moral-practical discourse, participants will also have to approach perspec-
tive taking in a spirit of loving perception, because this is the only approach
that will bring about mutual understanding.3 Both Lugones and Habermas
would agree, it seems to me, that arrogant perception-what Habermas would
probably describe as a "strategic" orientation-can at best lead to negotiations
in the context of a power struggle.4
Second, for both thinkers the aim of perspective taking is for one individual
to learn to see with the eyes of the other. Lugones emphasizes that "world"-
travelling, as she understands it, is not a matter simply of one person gathering
68 Hypatia
a certain amount of information about another's life and experiences and

incorporating this information into her stable identity structure. Rather, she
supposes that it entails a shift in identity: from the person one is constructed as
in one's home world to the person one is constructed as in the world one visits.
"The 'one' here," she emphasizes, "does not refer to some underlying 'I'. One
does not experience any underlying 'I"' (1987, 12).15
Habermas captures this insight as well, though formulating it in the language
of philosophical rather than experiential hermeneutics. He approaches the
identity shift involved in perspective taking by observing that no hermeneuti-
cally neutral language constructed of concepts, beliefs, and assumptions exists
that all actors share and to which all could agree; no one language capable of
rendering all perspectives accessible in a kind of transparent communicative
medium. Perspective taking requires, for Habermas, understanding what it is to
be a person in a particular world in terms of the concepts, beliefs, and assump-
tions of that world-not one's own. Thus, in coming to understand the world of
another participant, it will not be possible to hold fast to one's home identity.
Habermas suggests that a genuine understanding of another's perspective must
involve a shift of perspectives-from one's home perspective, so to speak, to
another-to the point where one is able to understand at least what it would
mean to be at home in this other world.
Now looking at this shift in identity leads us to the point at which revealing
differences between the two thinkers begins to emerge. For Lugones, this shift
is the location and occasion for the playfulness that will have to accompany
world-traveling. Playfulness, in her words, "involves openness to surprise,
openness to being a fool, openness to self construction or reconstruction....
Negatively, playfulness is characterized by uncertainty, lack of self-importance
... a not worrying about competence and a lack of abandonment to a particular
construction of oneself, others and one's relation to them" (1987, 17). I take
this description of playfulness to mean that working one's way into a different
world perspective requires the willingness to make mistakes, to look (and feel)
silly, foolish, and incompetent. Playfulness as Lugones understands it is not a
matter of competition or sport, as is traditionally conceived, but the freedom
and openness to learn through error a different way of saying, doing, seeing,
and feeling things.
This dimension of playfulness is wholly absent from Habermas's account of
perspective taking. A possible reason for this absence will suggest itself after we
look at another striking difference between their two accounts of perspective
taking, in this case, between the criteria of success. For Habermas the measure
of success is one's ability to recognize weaknesses or self-deception in another
person's account of her own circumstances, cultural meanings, or needs. That is,
when one is successful in taking the perspective of another, one understands the
perspective of the other well enough to be able to criticize the other's account
Charles Wright 69
in terms of her own world.16 Lugones, by contrast, suggests that the measure of
successful "world"-travelling is that the traveler is able to recognize how her
person is constructed in the world she is visiting. By travelling to another's
world one can understand not only what it is to be that other person, but also
"what it is to be ourselves in their eyes" (1987, 17).
The contrast between the perspectives embedded in these two measures
of success is revealing, to say the least. One measure has been presented by a
high-status male of European descent working from within long-established
Western philosophical traditions. Success in perspective taking means for him
that one is able to criticize the other in terms of the other's own world. The
criterion presumes, in other words, that the traveler will achieve a mastery (at
least in some respects) of the world that he is visiting that is comparable to that
of the individuals whose world it is. To a reader concerned with the cultural and
historical impediments to cross-cultural understanding that still burden western
societies, such talk raises the specter of European colonialism. At first glance,
Habermas's measure of success seems undesirably burdened by that legacy; it
seems to share an uncomfortable affinity with such notions as the superiority
of western civilization, and the supposition that nothing outside the boundaries
of the west is beyond the mastery of its intellectual traditions.
The other measure of success, by contrast, has been articulated by a Latina
philosopher who, in the United States at least, possesses almost by definition
questionable social status, and whose thoughts were developed not on the basis
of a tradition of scholarly writing, but instead on the basis of experiences of
world-travelling required of her to participate in the dominant white world(s).
Lugones's analysis emerged out of and in response to the experience of social
and cultural marginalization and reflects the aims of a person struggling to foster
social and cultural reciprocity in the face of deep and largely unexamined asym-
metries of power and status. Her approach to perspective taking is concerned
not just with the subject's capacity to understand the other, but also with the
subject's readiness to learn about herself through the perspective of the other.
Thus we can see that the colonized subject's experience of being silenced, of
not being listened to, is reflected in Lugones's measure of successful perspective
taking. It should come as no surprise that Habermas's account bears no compa-
rable traces of this concern; he does not share it. His measure of hermeneutic
success bespeaks a subject with social authority.
From the perspective, say, of a resolute advocate of postcolonial feminism,
Habermas's measure would appear to reflect the theoretical conclusions of a
person who may not ever have seriously engaged in perspective taking. That
his account of perspective taking lacks the dimension of playfulness would be
consistent with this reading. The explanation for this absence would be that,
unlike Lugones, Habermas's model of perspective taking seems not to have
emerged from lived experience. Lugones knows from experience that one must
70 Hypatia
be playful-open to mistakes, faux pas, confusion, and incompetence-in order

to learn another form of life. An ongoing personal engagement in a process of
cultural perspective taking has been a necessary condition for her professional
life. This is not likely to be true of Habermas. Instead, what he has learned
about perspective taking, at least as far as it has been presented in his theoretical
work, seems to have evolved out of his engagement with a theoretical tradition,
rather than out of any lived experience.
My purpose in introducing this unflattering and possibly ad hominem inter-
pretation is not to discredit Habermas's theory. Rather, it is to call attention as
vividly as possible to the contrast between the core of his theoretical model and
his mode of presentation. What we have seen is that Habermas's presentation
of his moral theory, his understanding of what it means to experience success
in perspective taking, may bear traces of his socially privileged position and
may yield hints that he has not had to engage seriously in the very procedure
that forms the core of his moral theory. The hermeneutic significance and
plausibility of these hints and traces is, obviously, highly contestable. But for
the sake of the argument, let us suppose that the unappealing conclusions
reached just above are sound. If this were the case, then Habermas's presenta-
tion of his theory would have been shaped, in at least this one aspect (there
might be others), by a subtle and surreptitious privileging of Habermas's own
particular standpoint.
Even were all this true, the core of his model remains unaffected. Perspec-
tive taking based upon the equal recognition of the needs, interests, and world
perspectives of all participants is still at the center of his moral theory-this
is not affected by the bias alleged to be lurking in his account. Moreover, his
model of moral judgment provides not only the procedure by which just such
faults in his presentation (should they be faults in fact) can be identified, but
also the criterion by which they may be judged in need of correction. Problems
with his formulation of the theory may reveal a personal failure of insight on
Habermas's part, but their recognition represents a confirming instance for the
perspective-taking model.
On the way to achieving an understanding of the perspective of another,
it is inevitable that such unintended moments of arrogant perception will be
brought to light. Such experiences of exposure require precisely the playful-
ness that Lugones describes. One must be ready to let go of one's conception
of oneself-for instance, the idea that one is an enlightened intellectual who
has seen through one's inherited biases and prejudices-to allow competence
in perception to be located elsewhere, in order to gain the more complete
understanding available through perspective taking.
In fairness to Habermas, the conclusions reached above should be subject
to the following qualification. Habermas makes clear in many places that the
perspective taking required by practical discourses is a mutual undertaking. The
Charles Wright 71
self-interpretations of every participant in a discourse are in principle subject

to critical scrutiny by every one of the other participants. Structurally, there
is no privileged position: every position is exposed to criticism. It is true that
inherited asymmetries of power, authority, and opportunity may influence the
communicative exchange. But the structure of a discourse is such that, so long
as participants remain committed to the process, these asymmetries and their
influence upon the proceedings can be made into a theme of the discourse. In
a sense, Lugones's essay represents just such an intervention.
Lugones's reflections augment and reinforce Habermas's model of moral
judgment both because of her highly nuanced understanding of the personal
and emotional demands of world-travelling, and because her account is firmly
rooted in life experience. Her essay also offers an important warning not just
to Habermas but also to any member of a dominant culture who is genuinely
concerned with establishing relations of justice with members of a traditionally
subordinate culture. The contrast between the two measures of success show
how easily one engaged in perspective taking might fall unawares into arrogant
perception and how difficult it can be to achieve full awareness of the subtle
cultural biases shaping insight. Though my guess is that Habermas is aware
of these matters-in the abstract, at least-the fact that his own measure of
success bears traces of the position of power from which he approaches the
process testifies vividly to the difficulty of the task. Lugones's measure offers an
additional test by which such subtle biases might be detected. It is not sufficient
just to understand the other, rather we must also understand what it is to be
ourselves in the eyes of the other.
4. CONCLUDING REMARKS
Habermas's moral theory has more to offer feminist moral philosophers than
has hitherto been recognized. Careful attention to the distinction between
conventional and postconventional moral consciousness reveals it to be the
key to appreciating the comprehensiveness and flexibility of his model of moral
judgment. On the basis of this distinction we have seen that many of the tasks
and capacities that feminist moral thinkers see as central to moral judgment
have a place in Habermas's comprehensive conception.
In the conventional mode of moral judgment, appropriate feeling can in
many (if not all) instances be expected to provide reliable guidance in moral
decisions clearly situated in a particular lifeworld context. In many cases, little
or no deliberation may be necessary for a social actor to traverse the interval
between the perception of a morally significant situation and the impulse to
respond in a morally appropriate (or inappropriate) manner. The deliberative
tasks typically addressed from within a conventional moral orientation will be to
decide whether a particular act or decision violates an accepted norm, whether
72 Hypatia
a particular norm is applicable under the circumstances at hand, or which

among several viable candidates would be the appropriate norm to apply in the
circumstances. A basic supposition of this model is that most people most of the
time will deliberate ethically about problems, conflicts, and difficulties regarding
their families, friends, neighbors, and co-workers-that is, about personal, as
opposed to public matters. In the conventional mode of moral judgment richly
detailed and contextually nuanced knowledge will be both readily available as
well as appropriately brought into play as part of moral deliberation.
However, to locate these tasks and capacities of moral judgment in the
conventional mode of moral deliberation does not mean that matters of justice
are limited to the public domain of economy and polity, and that the personal
domain is in some sense of secondary moral significance. Habermas can readily
concede that the personal matters addressed in ethical existential and ethical
political discourses will play a more important role in the daily lives of most
moral agents than will matters of public justice. Nor does his model rigidly
assign questions of justice and questions of the good life into two distinct
realms of moral action. Postconventional moral norms can be incorporated
into a particular form of life and can be brought to bear in conventional moral
reflection. Moreover, norms regulating personal relations can be subjected to
postconventional procedures of justification. Habermas's three forms of practi-
cal discourse-moral-practical, ethical-political, and ethical-existential-show
that postconventional procedures of impartial moral deliberation are applicable
both to personal as well as to public domains of social interaction.
With regard to the relation between impartiality, perspective taking, and
particularity, we have seen that the perspective taking structure of Habermas's
model of moral judgment integrates both impartiality and attention to par-
ticularity into postconventional procedures of moral deliberation. Habermas's
moral-practical discourses are premised upon the supposition that participants
must come to know one another in their particularity, at least so far as it touches
upon the norm under consideration. Instead of abstracting from the particular
social, cultural, and historical circumstances in which the human interests
affected by the norm in question will be situated, moral-practical discourses
must fully acknowledge and incorporate them.
Finally, the comparison with Lugones's conception of "world"-travelling
makes it possible to see how the model of perspective taking that plays such a
central role in Habermas's moral philosophy would appear to be at the founda-
tion of Lugones's thinking as well. Moreover, Lugones's use of perspective taking
has been put to use with radical intent and effect. In her hands it becomes clear
that perspective taking provides both the procedure as well as the standard by
which failures of moral recognition can be identified and criticized. Perhaps
more than anything else this radical application of the perspective taking model
of moral deliberation calls attention to the significant potential of Habermas's
moral theory for feminist philosophy.
Charles Wright 73
NOTES
I would like to thank Jean Keller and Amy Baehr for insightful criticism of an earlier
draft of this essay.
1. Feminist commentary on Habermas's work is not extensive. Most of the exist-
ing work has been collected in Meehan (1995). Meehan (1998) provides a succinct and
even-handed review of feminist responses to Habermas's work. Meehan (2000) also
develops an acute critique of Habermas's failure to include prelinguistic dimensions
to the formation of self in his account of identity formation. Baehr (1996) develops a
constructive appropriation of Habermas's moral and political thought as an alternative
to Rawls and Okin's. Two additional overviews of feminist responses to Habermas's work
are found in Couture 1995 and Pamerleau 1996.
2. See in particular Habermas 1990c, 175-84.
3. See Benhabib 1992b and 1992c, Chapter Two and Chapter Six in particular;
Gunther 1993, 137-55; Baynes 1992, 139-43; Vetlesen 1994, 342-57.
4. See Jaggar 1995 and 2000 and Meehan 1998.
5. For an explicit statement of Habermas's position with regard to the role of
emotion in moral judgment, see Habermas 1993c, 174.
6. See, among others, Habermas 1990c, 178 and 180; 1990d, 108.
7. For illuminating accounts of the "Asian values" controversy, see Sen 1997 and
Dallmayr 2002.
8. See Habermas 1990c and 1990d.
9. Habermas formulates the principle as follows: "All affected can accept the
consequences and the side effects its general observance can be anticipated to have for
the satisfaction of everyone's interests and these consequences are preferred to those
of known alternative possibilities for regulation" (Habermas 1990d, 65).
10. In his words, "Given the communicative presuppositions of an inclusive and
noncoercive discourse among free and equal partners, the principle of universalization
requires each participant to project himself into the perspective of all others" (Habermas
1993e, 52).
11. See Habermas 1990b, 30 and 1984, 115-16.
12. For a thorough analysis of the hermeneutic demands of reciprocal perspective
taking, see Rehg 1994. My discussion is much indebted to his account.
13. Ironically enough, this characteristic can be traced back to Kohlberg, who,
along with G. H. Mead, is one of the primary sources for Habermas's model of perspec-
tive taking. According to Kohlberg, moral agents engaged in ideal role taking must be
"assumed to start with an altruistic, empathic, or 'loving' orientation" (Kohlberg 1981,
200).
14. For Habermas's typology of action into instrumental, strategic and communica-
tive, see Habermas 1984, 279-95; and 1998, 325-38.
15. Admittedly, this discussion glosses over what may be a deeper ontological dis-
agreement between Lugones and Habermas. Her assertion that "one does not experience
any underlying 'I"' raises the question whether she is calling into question the existence
of any kind of enduring ego structure underlying the experience of shifting identity
that she analyzes. Habermas clearly retains such a conception in the background of his
moral theory, though he has not elaborated on this idea since his writings in Knowledge
and Human Interests and Communication and the Evolution of Society.
74 Hypatia
16. My interpretation of Habermas's "criteria of success" in perspective taking builds

upon his account of the demands of hermeneutic understanding in general. For example,
we read:
The interpreter, then, understands the meaning of a text only insofar

as he understands why the author felt justified in putting forth certain
propositions as being true, in recognizing certain values and norms as
being right, and in expressing certain experiences (or attributing them
to others) as being authentic. ... Interpreters cannot understand the
semantic content of a text if they do not make themselves aware of
the reasons the author could have brought forth in his own time and
place if required to do so. (1990b, 30)
I am supposing that an interpreter who has understood an author's lifeworld context

in the manner Habermas here describes will also be able to identify problems, weak-
nesses, or omissions in the author's account. For a similar formulation of these criteria
of interpretive success, see also Habermas 1984, 115-16.
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Particularity and Perspective Taking: On Feminism and Habermas's Discourse Theory of

Seyla Benhabib's critique of Jiirgen Habermas's moral theory claims that

With the introduction of Carol Gilligan's concept of a different m

Hypatia vol. 19, no. 4 (Fall 2004) ? by Charles Wright

judgment is not, as Benhabib suggests, constructed around a rigid distinction

1. HABERMAS ON GILLIGAN'S DIFFERENT VOICE

Broadly outlined, Habermas's discourse theory of morality attempts to redeem

The defining characteristics of moral judgment exercised within the con-

unprecedented situation, where economic, cultural or historical circumstances

In such circumstances social actors can no longer expect emotional responses

Benhabib suggests that Habermas's construal of the moral domain posits a

In what she regards as a corrective to Haberm

needs, interests, and points of view brought by each participant to procedures of

emphasize that the shift from conventional to postconventional moral con-

opportunities for education, professional employment, and the holding of

action norms arising out of these processes of deliberation. Participants in each

To summarize the discussion so far: careful examination of Habermas's model

3. PERSPECTIVE TAKING AND PARTICULARITY

Thus we see that far from eliminating knowledge of the othe

Now a concern often raised with regard to moral theories purporting to

a certain amount of information about another's life and experiences and

be playful-open to mistakes, faux pas, confusion, and incompetence-in order

self-interpretations of every participant in a discourse are in principle subject

a particular norm is applicable under the circumstances at hand, or which

16. My interpretation of Habermas's "criteria of success" in perspective taking builds

The interpreter, then, understands the meaning of a text only insofar

I am supposing that an interpreter who has understood an author's lifeworld context

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