The anticipation of undistorted communication grounds critique independent of historical tradition.

Evidence

Taking people’s speaking and acting with one another as his starting-point, he attempted to show that the anticipation of undistorted communication was the condition of possibility for communicative actionthat is, action aiming to achieve understanding. His friend, the philosopher Karl-Otto Apel, provided Habermas with vital suggestions pointing in this direction. The idealizations identified within the framework of a universal pragmatics as conditions of possibility for linguistic communication were to be seen as norms that allowed for a justification of criticism that was no longer bound to historical traditions. Critical theory would then be able to confront vital idealizations with the real life-process of society. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 674

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains universal pragmatics as the framework locating idealizations that justify critique.
• XREF: Names Apel as the intellectual collaborator whose suggestions shaped Habermas’s communicative turn.