Benue State University, Makurdi

Jürgen Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action and the Quest for Peace Building in Africa

Aborisade Olasunkanmi, Ph.D

Abstract

The quest for peace building and the appropriate means of attaining it is a perennial subject of thought. The importance of peace in any society cannot be over emphasis. For there to be a development in any society, peace is sacrosanct and the consequence of the absence of peace in any society usually lead to a state of unrest, just as we have in many African countries today. Jürgen Habermas puts forward the ideas of 'communicative action'. In his theory of communicative action, Habermas introduces the concept of 'crisis'. For Habermas, crisis comes when modern society fails to meet individual needs and when institutions in society manipulate individuals. He explains that people interact to respond to this crisis and he calls this interaction “communicative action”. Habermas asserts that rationality must be dialogical or 'communicative' where participants advance arguments and counterarguments. He also argues that communicative rationality is the consensus-bringing force of argumentative speech. Only the force of the better argument reaches consensual decisions, so that, at the end of deliberative process, all concerned are convinced by the position reached and accept them as reasonable. Could this be applicable to Africa situation, because an attempt to understand the impact of peace on our societies in Africa had become a phenomenal mirage? The trust of this work will be to examine impact of peace building on Africa, as we interrogate through the prism of Jurgen Habermas' theory of communicative action.

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