MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND COMMUNICATIVE ACTION - FROM DISCOURSE ETHICS TO SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION

This article strives to make a critical assessment of the claim of dis course ethics, as articulated by Jurgen Habermas, to meet with the cha llenges of moral consciousness and communicative action today. The art icle locates Habermas' theory of discourse ethics in the contemporary movement to remoralize institutions and to build a post-conventional m oral theory. It describes Habermas' agenda and looks into incoherences in his project in accordance with his own norms. Beginning with an in ternal critique of Habermas, the article, however, is engaged in an in terrogation of the Habermasian agenda from outside its own frame of re ference precisely because the issues that the discovered tensions rais e, cannot be resolved within the rationalist framework of Habermas. Th e article argues that in order to realize the lofty agenda of transfor mation that discourse ethics sets for itself, it must now make a dialo gue with critical and practical spirituality. It gives a brief sketch of the agenda of spiritual transformations that can help discourse eth ics solve some of its own stated problems such as the problems of anth ropocentrism and cognitive distantiation and be a transformative agent in thinking through the theory and practice of moral consciousness an d communicative action today.