High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Theory of Communicative Action was published in 1981 in two volumes, the first subtitled Reason and the Rationalization of Society (Handlungsrationalitat und gesellschaftliche Rationalisierung), the second, Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason (Zur Kritik der funktionalistischen Vernunft). The theory goes back to the German sociologist and philosopher Jurgen Habermas who stands in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. Its central tenet is the distinction between emancipative communicative reason and strategic and instrumental reason. In his critical discussion of the rationalist tradition Habermas locates rationality in the structures of interpersonal linguistic communication rather than in the structure of either the cosmos or the knowing subject (cf.). This is founded in the observation that our identity is shaped by our relations with others (socialization). We learn who we are in relations with others....