Jürgen Habermas Theory of Communicative Action and the Quest for Peace Building in Africa

The quest for peace building and the authentic means of attaining it have been a subject of intense philosophical speculation right from ancient era. The important of peace in any society cannot be over emphasis. This implies that for there to be a development in any society, peace is sacrosanct and the consequence of the absence of peace in any society usually lead to a state of unrest, just as we have in many African countries today.

Jürgen Habermas, a German thinker and philosopher, put forward his ideas of „communicative action‟ and „consensus through deliberation and reasoning‟, which have been adapted to form a basis for argument for this article. In his theory of communicative action, Habermas introduces the concept of „crisis‟. According to Habermas, crisis comes when modern society fails to meet individual needs and when institutions in society manipulate individuals. He explains that people interact to respond to this crisis and he calls this interaction “communicative action”.Habermasasserts that rationality must be dialogical or „communicative‟, through which participants advance arguments and counterarguments. His defense of communicative reason is forthright when he argues that communicative rationality is the consensus-bringing force of argumentative speech. He asserts that only the force of the better argument reaches consensual decisions, so that, at the end of deliberative process, all concerned are convinced by the decisions reached and accept them as reasonable. My task in this work is to apply this to Africa situation. Because an attempt to understand the impact of peace on our societies in Africa had become a phenomenal mirage as many of our leaders are selfish and are also bereft of ideas to lead human societies.

The trust of this work will be to examine impact of peace building on the type of society we supposed to have through the prism of JurgenHabermas theory of communicative action. The intent we be to engender harmony, trust and normalcy in African societies.

Keywords: Africa, Communicative, Consensual, philosophical, speculation. Word Count 322