With respect to the first issue, Habermas endeavors to secure a philosophy of emancipation by providing a ground for critical theory that, beyond the purely arbitrary and relati­vistic, consists in “a clarifi­ca­tion and justification of its normative foundations.”[iii]  Corresponding to the two approaches which his investigations have taken in his at­tempt to provide such grounds, Habermas's work reflects, broadly speaking, two distinct, although fundamentally related, periods, each culminating in the publication of a major work; Knowledge and Hu­man Interests represents the results of the first period, and The Theory of Communica­tive Action reflects those of the second. The crucial difference be­tween the one and the other period consists in a move from the mono­logi­cal paradigm characteristic of the first work to the dialogi­cal one representa­tive of the second. More specifically, this is a move from epistemolo­gy, pursued within the quasi-transcenden­talist framework of the philoso­phy of the subject (conscious­ness) as a ground for critical theory, to language, pursued within the reconstruc­tive framework of the philosophy of com­munication as the adequate conceptual scheme.[iv]

          In no way, however, should the shift in paradigm, however, should in no way be construed as severing the essential continuity that informs the overall development of Habermas's thought from Knowl­edge and Human Interests to The Theory of Communicative Action. Indeed the theory of cognitive interests in function of the monological scheme is preserved, developed, and ampli­fied in the second work under the dialogical scheme of instrumental and communicative ac­tion.[v] The fundamental continuity between the two works then allows for the pos­sibility of returning to the first work in order to underscore interpretive features that, though not so apparent, may contribute to an understanding of Habermas's later work.

          With respect to the second issue, Habermas's “quasi”-tran­scen­dentalism, it is important to note that though Habermas does in fact move from the “quasi”-transcendentalist framework of Knowledge and Human Interests to the empirical framework of The Theory of Commu­ni­cative Action. The “quasi” nature of Habermas's transcendentalism, inso­far as the former work is concerned, consists precisely in that Habermas was already consciously endeavoring to move beyond the subjective a priorism of the modern transcendentalist model to the more objective a posteriorism of his communica­tive one. This is to say that at no time was Habermas operat­ing within a purely transcen­dentalist mode. Indeed, Habermas conceives his own proposals in Know­ledge and Human Interests as deeply rooted in the life struc­tures, repro­ductive aims, and natural history of the human species, that is, in “the specific fundamental conditions of the possible repro­duction and self-constitution.”[vi]  In this respect, Habermas is operating in Knowledge and Human Interests within the parameters of a mitigat­ed transcenden­talism that moves toward a historical and developmen­tal—and hence an a post­eriori—analysis of the human subject.[vii]

          Further, although Habermas raises the Kantian question concern­ing the conditions of the possibility of knowledge in general, he does so within the context of critical theory, such that the question, criti­cally modified, itself becomes one concerning the conditions of the possibility of emancipa­tion from internal and external communicative constraints.[viii] The key word here, “conditions,” as used by Habermas, refers to that which “is based in the natural history of the human species, in the histo­ry of a nature.”[ix]  Hence, “in so far as [the condi­tions] proceed from the history of nature, their status cannot be grasped any longer in the rigid opposition of transcendental constitu­tion and constituted empirical world.”[x] Hence, the theory of cogni­tive interests should be understood in function of the empirical-histori­cal context which informs Habermas's formulation.

          With respect to the third issue, it is crucial to indicate how such an investigation can be made in spite of Habermas's own reser­vations to a certain form of ontology that he explicitly repudiates in his seminal Frankfurt Inaugural Address of 1965,[xi] a work which can be said to have expressed the master lines of what was later to be published in Know­ledge and Human Interests. In this work Habermas wanted to argue against the “objectivist illusion” of Western ontology prevalent in both classical philosophy and modern positivism that, notwithstanding differ­ences, “are committed to a theoretical attitude that frees those who take it from dogmatic association with the natural interests of life and their irritating influence; and both share the cos­mological intention of describ­ing the universe theoretically in its lawlike order, just as it is.”[xii]

          The classical form of this ontological objectivism severs the con­nection between Being and time, i.e., between man, for instance, and his concrete, historical context. Habermas states,

          In philosophical language, theoria was transferred to con­templation of the cosmos. In this form, theory already presupposed the demarcation between Being and time that is the foundation of ontology. This separation is first found in the poem of Parmenides and returns in Plato's Timaeus. It reserves to logos a realm of Being purged of inconstancy and uncertainty and leaves doxa the realm of the mutable and perish­able.[xiii]

The scientific form of this objectivism purports “that the world ap­pears objectively as a universe of facts whose lawlike connection can be grasped descriptively.”[xiv]  Thus, Habermas wants to hold that “as long as philosophy remains caught in ontology, it is subject to an objectivism that disguises the connection of its knowledge with the human interest in autonomy and responsibility (Mündigkeit).”[xv]

          From these passages, it is clear that, as early as the Inaugural Address, Habermas, in line with the contemporary sensitivity, as artic­u­lated in the first chapter, argues against an ontology that disengages Being and time in favor of a mode of knowing that understands the subject matter of knowledge precisely in terms of its unfolding or mani­festation in time. History, specifically hu­man history, is the con­text or horizon in which knowledge is articulated. Habermas's rejec­tion of ontology then does not appear to reject Heidegger's fundamen­tal ontology, whose two consti­tutive categories consist precisely in the relations that obtain between “being” and “time,” i.e., being under­stood precisely in terms of its emergence into time. There does not seem to be, in princi­ple, then a basic impediment to an interpretation of Habermas's work in func­tion of such a fundamental ontology of the human person, although, Heidegger's later inves­tigations were directed beyond these initial hori­zons. Moreover, it may be argued also that classical metaphysics takes its point of departure knowl­edge from the actual experience of an exter­nal realm of objects, such that its central aim is never compre­hended as divorced from a concern with the reali­ty of the actually exist­ing. Conversely, not to share Habermas's delim­i­tation of knowledge within the sphere of the natural and the social, but to consider these levels of reality as contingent existentially on a higher order of reality does not imply a repudiation of the basic in­sight animating Habermas's theory of cognitive interests.

          Notwithstanding, Habermas's position against a purely objecti­vist view of knowledge can serve as a way to introduce his theory of cognitive interests. He maintains that all know­ledge, includ­ing that attributed to the natural sciences, is rooted in a vital anthropological interest structure directed toward the basic orientations of human life, viz., the “specific fundamental conditions of the pos­sible re­production and self-constitution of the human spe­cies.”[xvi]  In this sense the en­ter­prise of knowl­edge is guided by cognitive interests that are, in turn, integral to the natural and socio-cultural well-being of the human spe­cies.[xvii]

          The title of Knowledge and Human Interests makes plain the relationship Habermas asserts, viz.: that cognitive processes are em­bedded in and reflect life structures such that knowledge is a by-prod­uct of interests grounded in the natural his­tory of the human subject and in the socio-cultural evolution of the human species. It is in this sense that, for Habermas, knowledge is not value-neutral but, rather, that the values and concerns constitu­tive of our knowledge are in function of vital pur­suits, “the socio-cultural form of life”[xviii] that pro­motes the well-being of the species. Cognitive pro­cesses, then, express our interest in preserving life through knowledge and action. This is to say that “knowledge-constitu­tive interests mediate the natural histo­ry of the human species with the logic of its self-formative process.”[xix]

          It should, however, be stressed here that the interests that guide an investigator in the acquisi­tion of knowledge should not be con­strued as in­volving a naturalistic reduction, i.e., as merely fa­voring the species's physical adaptation to an exter­nal environment. Rather, as they encom­pass the species's inherent interest not only to reproduce itself materi­ally but also to develop itself socially with a view toward achieving individual and commu­nal emancipation.[xx]

          Neither does Habermas intend with this view to promote an histor­ical relativization of knowledge that relinquishes all claim to objectivity. His point is that what is called knowledge refers to those war­ranted assertions which have been derived by the knowing subject in function of the manner in which the species, to which the knowing subject belongs as a member, is related to the various domains of real­ity that promote the vital well-being of this spe­cies.[xxi] Indeed, herme­neutically speaking, it is pre­cisely what is known to work that is transmit­ted via tradition from one generation to the next, such that what is hand­ed down by any cultural legacy would have to reflect an essential rela­tion, regardless of degree, to the various inter­ests that favor its “repro­duction and self-constitu­tion.”  In this respect the continual shaping of a cul­ture—and therefore of its knowledge claims —may be viewed as a dynamic response, however imperfect, to the exigencies of the varied interests that in time emerge as vital. To this extent, then, cognitive interests should not be understood as com­pro­mising objectivity, since their function is to de­termine the aspect under which reality is appre­hend­ed. Habermas puts it in these terms:

          These interests of knowledge are of signif­icance neither for the psychology nor for the sociology of knowledge, nor for the critique of ideology in any narrower sense; for they are invariant. . . . [These influ­ences should not be construed as] regula­tors of cognition which have to be elimi­nated for the sake of the objectivity of knowledge; instead they them­selves deter­mine the aspect under which reality can be objectified and can thus be made accessible to experience to begin with. They are the conditions which are necessary in order that subjects capable of speech and action may have experience which can lay claim to objectivity.[xxii]

           Habermas's point is that prior to the objectifications of science there are three categories or processes of inquiry “for which a specif­ic connection between logical-methodological rules and knowledge-con­stitu­tive interests can be demonstrated.”[xxiii]  Accordingly, (a) the mo­tive ani­mating the empirical-analytic sciences involves a technical interest in acquiring mastery over nature, (b) that of the historical-hermeneutic sciences consists in a practical interest in intersubjective communica­tion, and (c) that of the critically oriented sciences entails an emancipatory interest from internal and external con­straints. “Ori­entation toward technical control, toward mutual understanding in the conduct of life, and toward emancipation from seemingly `natural' constraint establish the specific viewpoints from which we can appre­hend reality in any way whatsoever.”[xxiv]  David Held states,

          The end point of this analysis—of the mode in which reality is disclosed, constituted and acted upon—is a tri­chotomous model of the human species' interests (anthro­pologically rooted strategies for interpreting life ex­perience'), media (means of social organiza­tion) and sciences. The interests are the technical, the practical and the emancipatory. These unfold in three media, work (instrumental action), interac­tion (language) and power (asymmetrical relations of con­straint and dependency) and give rise to the conditions for the possibility of three sciences, the empirical-analytic, the historical-hermeneu­tic and the critical.[xxv]

          Further, Habermas wants to argue, this connection between cogni­tive interests and cognitive disciplines—the critically-interested dimension of human reason—is made manifest via the faculty or pow­er of self-re­flection. The aim of this cognitive faculty consists in critical­ly dissolv­ing the objectivistic understanding of the sciences so as to expose the knowledge-constitutive interests that lie at the root of such processes of inquiry. Beyond displaying reason as interested, critical cognition, in Habermas's philosophy of emancipation, serves the role of examining, modifying and/or superseding the fixed struc­tures that at any given time may restrictively entangle one in order to view the interests from which such strictures originate. In this sense critical-reflection, as understood by Habermas, plays a liberating func­tion whose significance cannot be sufficiently accentuated. Indeed, self-reflection in Habermas refers to a pivotal power by which society may guide itself in accordance to vital versus vested interests. Haber­mas's claim is that through the power of self-reflection, the human subject/ community becomes transparent to itself in a manner which promotes the dissolution of previously unrecog­nized or veiled forms of internal or external deception. Habermas states,

          In self-reflection, knowledge for the sake of knowledge comes to coincide with the interest in autonomy and re­sponsibility (Mündigkeit). For the pursuit of reflection knows itself as a movement of emancipation. Reason is at the same time subject to the interest in reason.[xxvi]

          This said, the aim of the ensuing sections will be to argue that the cognitive interests, viz., the technical, the practical, and the eman­cipa­tory, do not merely refer and coincide with three processes of inquiry, viz., the empirical-analytic, the historical-hermeneutic, and the critical sciences respectively, but that these interests and dis­ci­plines themselves refer to two domains of reality, viz. that of material objects and that of communicating subjects; and fur­ther, that the tech­nical and the practical interest are best served when these proceed in function of the emancipa­tory interest. The third interest un­folds the dynamic tendency toward which the human subject/community is itself oriented as it emerges into time, constituting in this fashion a proper at­tribute of communicating subjects.[xxvii]

HABERMAS'S THEORY OF COGNITIVE INTERESTS

          This section will provide a more detailed exami­nation of each of the three knowledge-constitutive interests as found in Knowledge and Human Interests: (1) the technical/instrumental interest of the empiri­cal-analytic sciences, (2) the practical/ethical inter­est of the histori­cal-herme­neutic sciences, and (3) the emancipatory/communica­tive interest of the criti­cal sciences.

The Technical Interest of the Empirical-Analytic Sciences

          Although the second and third interest are of particular rele­vance insofar as the stated intention of this study is concerned, the technical interest is nonetheless significant for three reasons: (a) it es­tablishes the ground for uncovering the practical and emancipatory interests as neces­sary in view of certain limitations inherent to the methodological framework of the technical interest; (b) it provides a basis, as will be shown when con­sidering the emancipatory interest, for relating and dis­tinguish­ing the natural sciences from the human sciences in a manner that safeguards the integrity of each domain of inquiry; and (c) it con­firms the point that Habermas's analysis is con­ducted within the parame­ters of the “reproduction and self-consti­tution of the human species” that “arise from the actual structures of human life.”

          In the preceeding section, Habermas's position—that knowledge is rooted in interests from the lifeworld in contradistinction to the objecti­vist claim—was merely stated. Yet in order to render his theory of cog­nitive interests more defensible, especially in light of the pro­posed meta­physical interpretation of this study, the following will attempt to derive the first interest, i.e., the technical interest, by brief­ly tracing Habermas's own derivation of this interest. This involves an analysis of the demise of eighteenth and nineteenth century epistemol­ogy with the subsequent rise of scientism, specifically positivism, and his critique of its delimita­tion of knowledge. This extends epistemolo­gical reflection in a manner leading to the introduction of the techni­cal interest.[xxviii]

          In Part One of Knowledge and Human Interests[xxix] Habermas en­gag­es in an examination of the “dissolution of epistemology, which has left the philosophy of science in its place.”[xxx]  He finds that though Kant understood science as one category of knowledge, his critics took issue with his framework of theoretical, practical, and critical reason, the status of the categories and forms of intuition, and his concept of the constitution of the subject.[xxxi] Hegel, who argued that Kant failed to elucidate the manner in which the condi­tions of knowledge are them­selves derived within his epistemology,[xxxii] moved to encompass the whole of knowledge, in contradistinction to Kant's ahistorical epistemic subject, in function of his historically unfolding philosophy of Absolute Spirit. In this way Hegel severed the distinc­tion between philosophy and science that Kant sought to preserve. Indeed, it was precise­ly Hegel's characterization of philosophy as rigorous science that was to be discred­ited by “the actual fact of sci­entific progress, as bare fiction.”[xxxiii]  By identifying philosophy with science, its integrity as a distinct realm of knowledge was undermined. Marx, who endeavored to materialize Hegel's idealism, argued for the inclusion of philosophy, which he understood in terms of social sci­ence—the economic laws of motion—­under the rubric of natural sci­ence.­[xxxiv] Thus, notwithstanding their different concep­tions of the term, begin­ning with Hegel and followed by Marx, epis­temology, came to be identified with science, an identifica­tion soundly refuted by the radical positivist critique of the limits of “authentic” knowledge.[xxxv]

          Habermas's project to revive epistemology in the 1960's meant that he could not merely trace the record of its demise but, rather, had to take on the more difficult task of responding to the positivist view of epistemology as an unauthentic domain of knowing. This he accom­plished in Part Two of Knowledge and Human Interests where he chal­lenges the “objectivist illusion” at the core of the positivist inter­pretation of philosophy as strictly limited to questions of logic and methodology in an attempt to uncover the role of the subject in the production of knowl­edge. This involves Habermas in an analysis of “the prehistory of mod­ern positivism,”[xxxvi] i.e., with an examination of the work of Comte, Mach and Peirce. With respect to Comte, suffice it to say that his classic conception of positivism was tied to a history of philosophy soon to be obviated by a strictly scientistic interpreta­tion of science.[xxxvii]

          The philosophy of science as represented by Mach serves to un­derscore what Habermas takes to be the crucial flaw of early phenom­en­alist positivism, viz., the positivist circle. Mach attempted to ground the unity of science in phenomena as the immediate objects of sense experi­ence. This is to say that science “encourages the objecti­vist assumption that scientific information apprehends reality descrip­tive­ly,”[xxxviii] under­stood as a report and correlation of facts, i.e., those col­lec­tions or sets of perceptions secured in experiencing sensible ob­jects. Habermas counters that this mode of operation is guilty of cir­cular thinking in that while positing an ontology of facts founded on irreducibly subjective, individual reports, it unreflectively attempts to claim objective, intersubjective validity for the same. It is as if one were saying that the ground of science is private and subjective facts and then in the same breath acknowledge that one knows that private and subjective facts are the ground of science because that is how science understands them. Habermas questions “How . . . prior to all science, can the doctrine of elements make statements about the object domain of science as such, if we only obtain information about this domain through science.”[xxxix]  Said another way, the ambiguity of the status of facts consists in that while they are understood as irredu­cibly subjective, they must also be conceived as established intersubject­ively given the demands of objectivity in science. But how can sci­ence establish the intersubjectivity of facts when it is defined strictly as con­sisting in a purely methodological procedure for correlat­ing facts? Since Mach's view of science is without the resources for un­derstanding sci­ence, Habermas concludes that science remains without an adequate self-understanding.[xl]

          Neither is Habermas convinced by Carnap's attempt to resolve Mach's circularity by introducing a physicalist ontology, i.e., by posit­ing a realm of physical objects that are intersubjectively accessible—in con­tradistinction to the subjectivity of the flux of im­mediate sense experi­ence—as a means to establish the objectivity of science. Indeed, Haber­mas would counter that the positivist position of whatever vari­ety is open to objections. As Held succintly puts it, “In trying to establish a single framework for know­ledge, positivists must either presuppose as un­problematic the availability of an intersub­jectively constituted language, or assume, as Karl-Otto Apel expresses it, a position of `methodical solip­sism'. This amounts to `the tacit assump­tion that objective knowl­edge should be possible without inter­subjec­tive understanding by commu­nication being presup­posed'.”[xli]

          Since science limits itself to purely methodological procedures for describing and correlating facts, it is without the means for expli­cating and justifying the nature of ordinary language, practices and conventions, and intersubjective consensus that while presupposed as a condition of scientific objectivity can­not be accounted for within the strictures of the monologic—versus dialogical—framework constitutive of scientific discourse. The communication of investigators dictates the use of language not restricted to technical control over objectified natural processes; indeed, the communicative action which emerges in function of the specific mode of symbolic interaction that transpires be­tween societal subjects who reciprocally know and recog­nize each other as communicating subjects, involves a system of reference that cannot be re­duced to the framework of instrumental action.[xlii] The non-reductionistic character of the communication presents Habermas with the single most potent contention for arguing that there is anoth­er realm of discourse that attempts to satisfy the need to understand systematically the realm of ordinary language and intersubjective agreement which precedes and is presupposed by scientific investiga­tion. Science as a practiced discipline is unintel­ligible within the realm of discourse concerned with techni­cal control over objectified natural processes. For it is precisely the meta-scientific or theoretical domain of discourse—the logic of scientific procedure—concerned with the formulation of implicit/explicit conven­tions and rules con­cerning definitions, theoretical frameworks, and proce­dural conven­tions, that needs to be explicated as the sine qua non of science as a practiced versus a theoretical discipline. Indeed Habermas sees the derivation of scientific theories as a by-product of the metatheo­retical logic that informs them.[xliii] The language contingent on the process of scientific inquiry, i.e., arising out of instrumental action, is brought about with­in the parameters of a monologic framework be­tween the investigator and the object domain relevant to his field of inquiry. Nevertheless, the communication constitutive of the interaction be­tween inves­tiga­tors themselves cannot be reduced to that constitutive of scientific rationality, but “passes into the realm of a . . . pre- and meta-scientif­ic rationality of intersubjective discourse mediated by explication of con­cepts and interpreta­tion of intentions.”[xliv]  The inad­e­quacy of the meth­od­ological procedures appropriate for understanding objectified processes of nature when it comes to understanding com­municative interaction with its own set of methodological procedures provides Habermas with a basis for arguing for an extension of knowl­edge so as to include reflec­tion on the logic of science itself and its relation to action.[xlv]

          Habermas is thus “in agreement with the spirit of C. S. Peirce's project—to uncover the connections between knowledge, inquiry and action, and to reveal thereby science's foundations in human beings' practical activity.”[xlvi]  To say that the crucial difference between Peirce and early positivism consists in that he did not share their objectivist attitude signifies that instead of comprehending the aim of methodology as an elucidation of the logical structure of scien­tific theories, he understood its goal as, rather, consisting in a clarification of the logic of the procedure by means of which scientific theories are developed.[xlvii] Peirce indicated that one needs to examine science as an activity, i.e., in terms of the linguistically established operations and conventions, that are proposed by practicing scientists for the attainment of predetermined ends.[xlviii] Such a metatheoretical reflection on science as a practiced dis­ci­pline shows that it operates in function of the conceptual scheme of instrumental action, i.e., action aimed at “control of the external con­ditions for existence.”[xlix]  In this respect Peirce's three forms of infer­ence— deduction, induction,