The implications of Habermas's theory of legitimation for rhetorical criticism

Jurgen Habermas's theory of legitimation is a social‐critical perspective with clear implications for rhetorical criticism. It posits that political orders claim legitimacy implicitly and explicitly, that these claims must be criticizable and redeemable through argument, and that the justifications advanced must be rationally and motivationally worthy of recognition. In the explication and evaluation of the theory advanced here, it is argued that the theory of legitimation provides an ideal potential situation which critics may use to evaluate the actual presumptions and procedures of political communication. There are three major opportunities for rhetorical critics embedded in the theory: (1) the possibility of casting questions of legitimacy in rhetorical terms, (2) the possibility of applying communication criteria to justifications of legitimacy in procedural terms, and (3) uniting the pragmatic and ethical realms of communication. Despite weaknesses in Habermas's idea of a transcendent rationality, his theory of legitimation can provide a perspective that forces rhetorical critics to reveal the assumptions about human action and social values that lay at the heart of their criteria.