Only Connect Between Morality and Ethics in Habermas Communication Theory.pdfVIP

Communication Theory ISSN 1050-3293 ORIGINAL ARTICLE ‘‘Only Connect’’: Between Morality and Ethics in Habermas’ Communication Theory James Arnt Aune Department of Communication, Texas AM University, College Station, TX 77843-4234 Habermas’ recent work on political communication reveals a distrust of persuasion and private judgment. His distinction, however, between ethical and moral questions opens up a space for localized, rhetorical deliberation within a universalized communicative morality. doi:10.1111/j.1468-2885.2007.00300.x ‘‘Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height.’’ —E. M. Forster, Howards End (1910) ¨ In his recent lead article in Communication Theory, Jurgen Habermas makes a reveal- ing statement that will serve as the basis of this essay. In a searing indictment of contemporary democracy and the mass media, Habermas writes, ‘‘Issues of political discourse become assimilated into and absorbed by the modes and contents of entertainment. Besides personalization, the dramatization of events, the simplifica- tion of complex matters, and the vivid polarization of conflicts promote civic pri- vatism and a mood of antipolitics’’ (Habermas, 2006, p. 422). Any historian of political communication in the Western democracies since the early 19th century is bound to be puzzled by this observation, for the emergence of mass democracy in the United States and England, at least, was characterized by intense popular par- ticipation in politics, precisely because political campaigns were heavily personalized, dramatized, simplified, and polarized (Schudson, 1999; Washburn, 1963). At the begi