Hugur - 01.01.2018, Page 86

86 Stefán Snævarr
Abstract
The Poetic Discourse Ethics
Discourse ethics is the brainchild of the German philosophers Jürgen Haber-
mas and Karl-Otto Apel. It is an attempt to give Kantian deontology an inter-
subjectivist and linguistic turn, while providing it with a consequentialist side.
According to discourse ethics, a norm can only be accepted as a moral norm
if it is accepted as such by all participants in an open and free discourse where
everybody have equal possibilities and capabilities to take part. There are norms
built into communication (including discussion) which constrain the possibility
of acceptable norms and function like Kant’s categorical imperative. The present
writer maintains that discourse ethics has a hidden poetic/literary side which he
attempts to make explicit: a) Discourse ethics has an ineliminible fictional side:
believing in the autonomy of communicators is a necessary fiction according to
Habermas; b) Discourse ethics has an ineliminible metaphorical side: the Kan-
tian end-in-itself conception is a metaphorical extension of the ordinary use of
the concept of an end; c) Discourse ethics has an ineliminible narrative side;
narratives are necessary supplement for discourse and speech acts; speech acts
utilized in discourses only make sense in narrative contexts; d) Discourse ethics
has an ineliminible side of literary genres: conversations, including discourses,
can and even must be subsumed under concepts of literary genres (for instance
comedy, tragedy, tragicomedy).
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