Liebe, Kommunikation und Ethik

Abstract

Is there any reason today to treat the idea of an ethics of love as one of value and concern? Based on Judeo-Christian and Platonic thought, the idea of a radical ethics of conviction appears thoroughly discredited after Auschwitz. But does this judgment persist when challenged by an in-depth analysis? Does the idea of ​​love ethics not imply important and correct assumptions about a human ability to find intrinsically motivated solutions to moral problems? Could such an approach, aiming at a basal and universal understanding, proof as a helpful and sensible perspective?Given the disappointing practical outcome of those conceptions of morality, still prevailing today, that legitimate morals by extrinsic motivators, namely by abstract principles and commandments, by coercion and sanctions, there is a need of new and alternative perspectives on moral problems.
 
 This is why both the central aim of this thesis and its most important result is to be called the finding of a broader perspective on philosophical ethics. This broadened perspective presents itself as an 'Inblicknahme' of the idea of an ethics of love in the context of a social and relational theory, communication theory in the strict sense of perspective. This new perspective on a topic so far dominated by mythological and religious approaches opens up the possibility of an association of 'love ethics' with present approaches in moral philosophy that share today's secular and 'post-metaphysical' perspective on ethics. In this respect the most promising link seems to be the connection of Habermas' conception of discourse ethics with our interpretation of love as a process of therapeutically effective acts of communication that enable interpersonal understanding on an existential level. This way it seems possible to substantiate processes of rational-discursive norm construction and to correct regimes of abstract and static normativity by filling a blind spot in the discourse theory: Normative consensus would then not only be found by communicating in the abstract rational language of depersonalized subjects but also by striving for understanding and agreement with our next ones by 'affective' means. Such dualistic thought patterns are, however, of little use here, when we try to describe the hypothetical methods of communicative foundation of morality developed in this work.
 
 By drawing the sketch of such a holistic communicative 'complementary ethics' we have been trying to deliver practical and concrete examples of its possible implementation in 'real life'. Nevertheless, given the complexity of the treated problems, the considerations of this work must inevitably remain cursory and preliminary. In future research, however, one may expect a revitalization of the idea of an 'ethics of love' in the first place, but above all the finding of smarter solutions to the problems of contested legitimacy, lack of internalization and lack of flexibility in the field of rationally justified normativity.