Discourse Ethics and Moral Cognitivism

Habermas’s notion of communicative action suggests a possible universalism of norms. Communicative action is a cognitive activity that enables us to reflect on and examine existing normative beliefs, insights, and ideas. If we can define communicative action as a democratic procedure of rational participation that every subject can achieve, the norms with universal validity can be concluded without engaging any ideology. This is the main task Habermas hopes discourse ethics can fulfill.