Grounds for justice in the society of late capitalism (the approach of formal pragmatics)

A single view on the source and content of the concept of justice, as we know, does not exist. Disputes over what constitutes the fair are underway since ancient times and generate different ethical concepts. Supporters of some concepts associate the idea of justice with equality, others with individual merits. In some ethical theories realization of the idea of justice is related to the activities of the state, in others with the processes of competition. This article deals with the question of how justice is possible in today's society. Using the resources of formal pragmatics, we will identify possible reasons of solidarity in post-metaphysical perspective. Solving this problem, we (1) consider the concept of life-world, proposed in formal pragmatics, and reveal the importance of this concept for understanding the nature of society; (2) reconstruct the theory of communication developed by Habermas; (3) indicate the pathology of late modern society; (4) thematize the possible grounds of fairness in the formal-pragmatic perspective. (1) The theory of life-world allows us to represent the society not only as a system consisting of structures that operate anonymously and independently of the consciousness of people in the society but also as something that is constantly constituted by individuals in the course of everyday communicative practices. In a general sense life-world is a deep layer of non-thematic knowledge that is organized in a certain universal structure. (2) Formal pragmatics is interested in language as a speech act or action that makes a linguistic sentence a situation commensurate to the context of speech. It is noteworthy that formal pragmatics considers language and communication as the basis of social life. From the point of view of Habermas, it is communication, which weaves the social fabric and provides its progressive rationalization, that is the foundation of society, not the material productive forces. A communicative act, which coordinates the action plan of the participants by mechanisms of mutual understanding in the natural language, provides reproduction of society as a life-world. (3) Investigating the pathology of late capitalist society, researchers often indicate such characteristic phenomena as "loss of freedom" and "loss of meaning". Both these phenomena are caused by the penetration of instrumental rationality into social practices generated by communicative rapport. If in the society of early capitalism this process was carried out mainly in the area of production, in modern society (society of late capitalism) it penetrates into the social and cultural spheres. (4) The method of justification of moral norms follows from the implicit content of the general argument prerequisites.

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