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accept one argument over another. A true consensus is one that is achieved on argumentand appeal, as opposed to false consensus which is achieved though coercion anddomination. Such communicative competence presupposes familiarity with the conditionsunder which the validity of a claim would be acceptable to another. Together, individualscoordinate action with one another thanks to the validity basis of communication, whichalways permits participants to call one another into question. Communicative rationalityrefers to “the central experience of the unconstrained, unifying, consensus-bringing forceof argumentative speech, in which different participants overcome their merely subjectiveviews and, owing to the mutuality of rationally motivated conviction, assure themselvesof both the unity of the objective world and the intersubjectivity of their lifeworld.” 8Truth, for Habermas, is a validity claim, the justification of which is attained by arationally achieved consensus. Participants must know how to raise and test validityclaims, and they must be committed to reaching agreement rationally before they canestablish something as true, right, or sincere. What determines rational discourse is theregulative ideal of unconstrained communication and the ideal speech situation, both ofwhich function as regulative ideals, establishing conditions for achieving mutual understanding,establishing trust and good will, and promoting social integration and culturalreproduction.Ricoeur has an inconsistent take on Habermas. Sometimes he fully accepts andappropriates communicative rationality, other times his endorsement is more conditional.In his mediations of the Habermas-Gadamer debates in the early 1970s, for example,Ricoeur claims only to juxtapose hermeneutics and the critique of ideology. 9 He claimshe has no intention to “fuse them into a super-system that would compass both,” butrather, merely to show how “each speaks from a different place,” so that “each may beasked to recognize the other.” 10 Olivier Abel calls this method of non-synthetic reconciliationRicoeur’s “ethics of method.” 11 For moral reasons, Ricoeur takes great pains torespect the differences among the philosophies he brings together. By showing how eachcan recognize the validity of the other, there is no reason to create a third perspective thatwould reconcile, hence eradicate, both terms. Instead, Ricoeur’s methodological practiceof drawing a hermeneutic arc that contrasts, relates, and thereby suggests practical (nottheoretical) ways to move beyond an opposition, preserves what is valid in both positions.In theory, for example, hermeneutics and the critique of ideology are unreconcilable; inpractice, the very activity of recovering a tradition within the horizon of anticipatedunderstanding achieves the practical aim of both. Where theoretical mediations areimpossible, practical mediations are not.Yet, there are several places in Ricoeur’s works where he very explicitly incorporatesa theory of communicative rationality into a hermeneutic philosophy, creating (implicitly)the very mediation he claims is impossible. For example, in the 1970s he described textualinterpretation as a movement from guess to validation and from explanation to com-8Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1, Reason and the Rationalization ofSociety, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), 10.9For Ricoeur's mediation of the Habermas-Gadamer debate, see Paul Ricoeur, “Ethics and Culture,”in idem, Political and Social Essays, ed. David Stewart and Joseph Bien (Athens, Ohio: Ohio UniversityPress, 1974), 153-65; idem, “Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology,” in idem, From Text to Action,270-307; idem, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. George Taylor (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1986), 249-253, 310-314. For an analysis of Ricoeur's mediation of the Habermas-Gadamer debates,see, David M. Kaplan, Ricoeur's Critical Theory (Albany, N.Y.: SUNY Press, 2003), 37-45.10Ricoeur, “Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology,” 294-295.11For the ethical character of Ricoeur's method of mediation that respects differences, see OlivierAbel, “Ricoeur's Ethics of Method,” Philosophy Today (Spring 1993): 23-30.88