Distinction between facticity and validity

Habermas describes the fusion of facticity and validity as the defining characteristic of traditional or pre modern societies. Habermas presents a differentiation between facticity and validity as a key accomplishment of modernity. According to Habermas in the pre-modern worldviews the notion of validity is still confused with empirical efficacy. The distinct notion of ‘causality of reason’ has not yet emerged in these worldviews. Thus speaking of the mythical worldviews Habermas writes:

“Evidently there is not yet any precise concept for the nonempirical validity that we ascribe to symbolic expressions. Validity is confounded with empirical efficacy. I am not referring here to special validity claims . . . . But even the diffuse concept of validity in general is still not freed from empirical admixtures. Concepts of validity such as morality and truth are amalgamated with empirical ordering concepts, such as causality and health. Thus a linguistically constituted worldview can be identified with the world order to such an extent that it cannot be perceived as an interpretation of the world that is subject to error and open to criticism. In this respect the confusion of nature and culture takes on the significance of a reification of worldview” (TCA I: 50, emphasis added).

Habermas is saying few very important things in this passage. On the one hand he is claiming that in pre modern worldview there is not yet a concept of validity “which is freed from empirical admixture.” A notion of validity which is free of such admixture is for Habermas a notion that is not based on the notion of “empirical efficacy.”

For Habermas a notion of validity free of “empirical admixture.”, a notion of validity that is not based on the notion of “empirical efficacy” is a singular achievement of modernity. It is with modernity that we arrive at a notion of ‘rational efficacy’ which is distinct from the notion of ‘empirical efficacy’. Given such an important role that the distinct notion of validity and its emergence plays in Habermas’ understanding of modernity it is small wonder that Habermas spends so much time and so much of his energy in trying to differentiate the illocutionary force of speech acts from perlocutionary effects.

But why is such a clear cut distinction between validity and empirical efficacy so important for Habermas’ understanding of modernity? The answers to this question lies in what Habermas’ says further in the above: “Thus a linguistically constituted worldview can be identified with the world order to such an extent that it cannot be perceived as an interpretation of the world that is subject to error and open to criticism.”

For Habermas it follows form the fact the in the premodern worldviews there is no clear distinction between validity and empirical efficacy that in those worldviews a) there is no distinction between “a linguistically constituted worldview” and “the world order as such” b) Thus in the absence of any distinction between validity and empirical efficacy the notion of any alternative world interpretations becomes impossible and c) consequently the notion that a worldview or an interpretation of world is subject to error thus fallibility loses its importance. d) Furthermore, the notion of interpretations of the world being open to criticism and hence open to alternatives remains incomprehensible. The notion of inherently open ended worldviews is an alien concept to worldviews which are unable to make clear cut distinction between validity and “empirical efficacy”.

Obviously Habermas is not claiming that in premodern worldviews notions of error, critique or alternatives do not exist in the factual sense, what he is claiming is rather that such concepts have no normative power in these societies.

related posts here, here and here