[2] Habermas's discourse ethics is his attempt to explain the implications of communicative rationality in the sphere of moral insight and normative validity.
It is a complex theoretical effort to reformulate the fundamental insights of Kantian deontological ethics in terms of the analysis of communicative structures.
[6] This type of ethics consists of conversations about ideas in civic or community contexts marked by diversity of perspectives requiring thoughtful public engagement.
It was Sigmund Freud who once said, "civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock" and that statement is something that continues to be seen in society today.
Habermas extracts moral principles from the necessities forced upon individuals engaged in the discursive justification of validity claims, from the inescapable presuppositions of communication and argumentation.
Habermas speaks of the mutual recognition and exchanging of roles and perspectives that are demanded by the very structural condition of rational argumentation.
The presuppositions of communication express a universal obligation to maintain impartial judgment in discourse, which constrains all affected to adopt the perspectives of all others in the exchange of reasons.
), it is only from such a moral point of view that insight into the actual (quasi-factual) impersonal obligations of a general will can be gained, because this perspective relieves decisions from the inaccuracies of personal interests.
That is, Habermas (unlike Kant or Rawls) formulates the moral point of view as it arises out of the multiple perspectives of those affected by a norm under consideration.
This spawns discourses with a rational trajectory, which are grounded in the particular circumstances of those involved but aimed at a universal moral validity.
Before this book, Habermas had left open the question of the various applications of discourse theory to almost any type of consensus oriented group[11] ranging from highly visible political and governmental groups, such as Parliament in Great Britain and Congressional debate in the United States, and other consensus oriented activities as found in public and private institutions such as those supported on various international websites and Wikipedia.