These conditions are such that the true interests of the participants
can emerge, that argument can proceed without any external pressures,
and that the only compulsions are the compulsions of argument itself.
In short, the ideal speech situation requires a democratic form of public
discussion which allows for an uncoerced flow of ideas and arguments
and for participants to be free from any threat of domination,
manipulation or control. In other words, the emancipation from
repressive distortions and the pursuit of rational autonomy which a
critical social science seeks to foster are themselves anticipated in and
presupposed by the ‘communicative actions’ such a science seeks to
analyze and explain. Implicit in the object to which a critical social
science is addressed, therefore, are the normative requirements in
terms of which any science guided by an emancipatory interest can be
justified. The pursuit of a form of life in which free and open
communication is possible is not some arbitrary normative or political
stance that is externally or mechanically attached to a critical social
science. It is merely the explicit recognition of an ideal which is, as
yet, unrealized, but which is promised by, and anticipated in, the very
activity of language.