me" (Habermas 296-297).
In other words, communicative reason is a process whereby the egos of the speaker, hearer and others are transcended, willingly and rationally, so that those individuals can be freed from the limited and limiting perspective of the self and a wider perspective, or set of perspectives, may be achieved. "I" the speaker enter into an interpersonal relationship with "you" the hearer and "we" is (are) formed. Of course, this communication requires that I and you exchange roles as one speaks and then hears, but in both cases each is a part of the created "we." Habermas writes,
Whoever has been trained in this system has learned how . . . to take up and to transform into one another the perspectives of the first, second, and third persons (Habermas 297).
Communicative reason develops one's ability--in relationship with others--to increase knowledge of self and others and the world by "making the unconscious conscious" (Habermas 298). The irrational life is one lived according to irrational urges, or unconscious urges, urges which are immune to the "performative attitude" of reason which allows rational communication and effective, mutually beneficial action which grows out of such communication. The act of communicative reason, then, involves a process whereby what is unknown (unconscious) becomes known (conscious), so that reason may act upon and interpenetrate it. In this process, "we make the transition to the paradigm of mutual understanding . . . about something in the world." Communicative reason allows individuals in relationship to one another to rise above subject-centered and self-centered reason and "both forms a context and furnishes resources for the process of mutual understanding" (Habermas 298).
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