NOTES

 

NOTES TO INTRODUCTION

          1. The aim of the present study to develop the complementary dimen­sions between the philoso­phies of Habermas and Aquinas was formulated only after completing a doctoral dissertation on Habermas, A Critical Inquiry into Habermas's Philosophy of Eman­cipation: To­ward an Ontolo­gy of the Human Person (Washington, D.C.: The American Uni­versity, 1990). The dissertation concentrated on devel­oping the view that Haber­mas's communicative model provided a novel entry into a non-traditional con­ception of metaphysics as it specifi­cally related toward the develop­ment of an ontology proper of the human person, as well as critical parameters for determining the very conception of transcendental ground that such reflection should embrace in light of his com­municative model.

          2. The topic proposed here represents an origi­nal con­tribution to Habermasian scholarship; current­ly there are no studies available that attempt to make explicit the metaphysical themes toward which his phi­los­ophy of emancipation points. Studies mar­ginally relevant to the dis­serta­tion topic consider Habermas's contribution from a predomi­nantly reli­gious versus metaphysical/ontological perspective. Thus Rudolf J. Sie­bert, in The Critical Theory of Religion, The Frankfurt School: From Universal Pragmatics to Political Theology (Berlin: Mouton Pub­lisher, 1985), challenges Habermas's thesis that tra­dition­al mythical and reli­gious worldviews have be­come obsolete. Helmut Peukert, in Science, Action, and Fundamental Theology: Toward a Theology of Communica­tive Action (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1986), endeavors to derive concepts from Habermas's communicative theory, understood as a new recon­structive discipline, in order to ground the "rational core" of theol­ogy in terms of a theory of the pragmatics of religious speech.

NOTES TO CHAPTER I


          1. Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Sci­ence, Her­meneutics, and Praxis (Phila­del­phia: University of Penn­sylvania Press, 1983); henceforth Beyond Objectivism and Relativism. For two critical re­views of this work, see Robert Hanna, Review of Meta­physics 38 (Sep­tember 1984): 109-12; and Christopher W. Go­wans, International Philo­sophi­cal Quarterly 25 (June 1985): 207-11; see also Saguiv A. Hadari, Ethics 95 (Oc­tober 1984): 164-65.

          2. Bernstein's choice of words is precise; the dichotomy, he ar­gues, is not between, say, objectivism and subjectivism or between rela­tivism and absolutism given that, in the case of the former, there are subjectiv­ists that are also objec­tivists (e.g. Kant, Husserl) and, in the latter case, the sense of fallibility which characterizes the contem­porary mood stro­ngly mitigates against professing claims to absolute knowledge in any field. Cf. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Rela­tivism, 11-13.

          3. Ibid., 231.

          4. Fred R. Dallmayr, Notre Dame University, ibid., back­cover. In­deed, Bernstein's book, in the words of Hanna, is "an able defense of post-epistemolo­gical philosophy, and presents what seems to be its stron­gest case" (112, see n. 1 above).

          5. See n. 49 below.

          6. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 8. This defi­ni­tion exhibits the four basic claims of objectivism: (1) that there are neutral, overarching con­ceptual schemes; (2) that these schemes are universal insofar as they transcend space and that they are ahistorical in the sense that they transcend time; (3) that such schemes may be articu­lated for the standard philosophical disciplines in­cluding logic, metaphys­ics, epis­temology, and ethics; and (4) that one or more of these schemes are envisioned as a safeguard against the radical skepti­cism of the relati­vists, who the objec­tivists criticize as self-referential­ly and pragmat­ically in­consistent.

          7. Ibid., 9.

          8. Ibid., 16. A related and much neglected issue is the relation­ship between cognition and volition in the "creation" and development of a philosophy. What is at stake is of crucial importance, as Harold A. Durfee elucidates, when com­menting on recent American philoso­phy: "It raises in all seriousness the question as to the relationship of the self to the philosophical position which one main­tains, whereas modern concern with objectivity has seriously neglected any such analysis. The dialogue challenges the major self-interpretation of the discipline since the Greeks and thus calls in question the fundamental proposals of most major clas­sic Western philosophers. It raises the crucial question as to the central­ity of the role of reason in philosoph­ical interpretation, and thereby the place of the irrational in philoso­phy itself, leading to a dialogue between rational­ism and voluntarism. . . . At stake therefore, is a grand dialogue regarding the philosophical self-interpretation of philosophy as a purely rational endeavor" ("Free­dom and Cognition in Recent American Philoso­phy," Tulane Studies in Philosophy 35 [1987]: 43-44). For other studies on this question ac­centuat­ing the voluntaristic point of view over the cognitive, see Dur­fee, Foundational Reflections: Studies in Contemporary Philosophy (Dordrecht: M. Nijhoff, 1987).

          9. Influenced by the later Wittgenstein/Heidegger/Dewey, Rich­ard Rorty articulated this now familiar view in his subtle critique of profes­sional "objectiv­ist" philosophy in Philosophy and the Mirror of Na­ture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979). For an excellent critical review of this work, see Rich­ard J. Bernstein's "Philosophy in the Con­versation of Mankind," Review of Metaphysics 33 (1980): 745-76.

          10. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 12-13. This defini­tion exhibits the four basic claims of relativism: (1) that there is no privileged access to unconditional verities; (2) that all conceptual schemes are relative to a given place and time; (3) that there are no metalanguages for critically evaluating and adjudicating competing schemes; and (4) that all conceptual schemes should be challenged as a safeguard against the dogmatism of the objectivists.

          11. Ibid., 18.

          12. Ibid., 19.

          13. The work of the later Wittgenstein exerted notable influence in these developments, particularly his view against the purported pretenses of overarc­hing frameworks. His analysis of language in the Philosophi­cal Investigations--as consisting in a tool, a convention, a social practice, a language game, a form of life which serves the needs of a given lan­guage community--expresses a conception of language that repudiates recommending any one language game as somehow superior to any other: "Language is an instrument. Its con­cepts are instruments" (Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe [New York: Macmillan Pub­lishing Co., 1958], sec. 569). This view of language as a functional apparatus consisting of terms and rules adopted to serve pragmatic or perceived needs mitigates against elevating any one lan­guage game to the status of a meta­langua­ge. Words do not repre­sent symbolic signs for fixed meta­physi­cal essences or epistemological foun­dations or uncondi­tional scien­tific or social verities derived by this or that method; they repre­sent, rath­er, signs whose meanings have been stipulated convention­ally in order to fulfill the aims of a given verbal communi­ty. What is of inter­est here is that Bernstein would appear not to interpret Wittg­enstein as espousing a blatant form of skepticism but rather as a central voice committed to the deconstruction of the Cartesian language game so as to lay the groundwork for greater flexibility and dialogue among the propo­nents of conflict­ing views. The work in speech-act theory of J. L. Aust­in's How to Do Things with Words (Cam­bridge, Mass.: Har­vard Universi­ty Press, 1975), has also con­tributed to the emergence and influence of the dialogical model so central to post-Cartesian thought. It is precisely the nature of the rationality that animates this dialogical openness which Bernstein endeavors to articulate in Beyond Obje­ctivism and Relativism.

          14. Besides the work of Thomas Kuhn that follows below, the move beyond the objectivist/relativist framework of the Cartesian dichot­omy is evidenced in other notable authors in the philosophy of science, viz.: Paul Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anar­chistic Theory of Knowledge (London: NLB, 1975); and Imre Lakatos, "History of Science and Its Rational Reconstructions," and "Replies to Critics," both in Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science of the Philosophy of Sci­ence Asso­ciation 1970, eds. Roger C. Buck and Robert S. Cohen, n. 8 (Dord­recht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1971). Karl R. Popper, though harder to place as a result of his objecti­vistic tenden­cies, none­theless recognizes that scien­tific hypotheses and theories should be open to serious criti­cism; see Conjec­tures and Refuta­tions: The Growth of Scien­tific Knowl­edge, 4th ed. rev. (London: Rout­ledge & Kegan Paul, 1972) and "The Rationality of Scien­tific Revo­lu­tions," in Problems of Scientific Revolu­tions, ed. Rom Harré (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975). Though never explicitly treat­ed by Bernstein, the work of W. V. O. Quine and Wilfrid Sellars has also contributed to this post-empiricist philosophy of science.

          15. Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd. enl. ed. (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1970).

          16. In a later work, Kuhn explicitly recognizes the importance of hermeneu­tics: "In my own case, for example, even the term 'herme­neut­ic', . . . was no part of my vocabulary as recently as five years ago. Increasingly, I suspect that anyone who believes that history may have deep philosophical import will have to learn to bridge the long­standing divide between the Continental and English language philo­sophical tradi­tions" (Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientif­ic Tradition and Change [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1977], xv; as quoted in Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 31).

          17. Bernstein clarifies the "internal dialectic" that has led to the develop­ment of what is coming to be called the "post-empiricist phi­loso­phy and history of science," a term coined by Mary Hesse in her article, "In Defence of Objec­tivity," reprinted in her "Revolution and Reconstruc­tions in the Philosophy of Science (Brighton, England: Harvester Press, 1980), 167-86. He states, "In the philosophy of the natural sciences, this development has been characterized as having begun with an obsession with the meaning and reference of single terms (logically proper names and ostensive defini­tions), moved to the search for a rigorous criterion for discriminating empirically meaning­ful sentences or proposi­tions, shifted to the evaluation of competing conceptual schemes, and finally turned to the realization that science must be understood as a historically dynam­ic process in which there are conflicting and competing paradigm theories, re­search programs, and research traditions" (Beyond Objec­tivism and Relativism, 171). Three basic tenets of this post-Cartesian philoso­phy of science follow: (1) a move away from proposing rigid "pious generalities" that attempt to state permanent methods of scientific inquiry in favor of examining actual historical practices and standards that have been "hammered out" in the course of scientific inquiry; (2) a move beyond objectivism (the "myth of the given" and relativism (the "myth of the framework") that while recognizing the "self-corrective nature of scientific inquiry" equally recognizes the rationality of the enterprise in the sense that reasons can be advanced to show "why a research program won over its rival"; and (3) a greater sensitivity to  "the role of choice, deliber­ation, con­flicting variable opinions, and the judgmental quality of rationality" in the prac­tice of scientific inquiry. Cf. Beyond Objecti­vism and Relativism, 71-79.

          18. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 23. Kuhn's posi­tion highlights the inadequacy of traditional views concerning the nature of scientific rationality: "As I have said before, . . ., I do not for a moment believe that science is an intrinsically irrational enter­prise. What I have perhaps not made sufficiently clear, however, is that I take that assertion not as a matter of fact, but rather of princi­ple. Scientific behavior, taken as a whole, is the best example we have of rationality. Our view of what is to be rational depends in signifi­cant ways, though of course not exclusively, on what we take to be the essential aspects of scientific behavior. That is not to say that any scientist behaves rational­ly at all times, or even that many behave rationally very much of the time. What it does assert is that, if history or any other empirical disci­pline leads us to believe that the develop­ment of science depends essen­tially on behav­ior that we have previ­ously thought to be irrational, then we should conclude not that sci­ence is irrational but that our notion of rationality needs adjustment here and there" ("Notes on Lakatos," Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science of the Philosophy of Sci­ence Asso­ciation 1970, eds. Roger C. Buck and Robert S. Cohen, n. 8 [Dord­recht, Holland: D. Reidel, 1971], 143-44). See also Kuhn's Essential Tension: Selected Studies in the Scientif­ic Tradition and Change. Yet this is not to say that Kuhn does not recognize the progress of scientific inquiry as a problem-solving enter­prise: "Though science surely grows in depth, it may not grow in breadth as well. If it does so, that breadth is not in the scope of any single specialty alone. Yet despite these and other losses to the individual com­munities the nature of such [scientific] communities provides a virtu­al guarantee that both the list of problems solved by science and the precision of individual problem-solutions will grow and grow. At least, the nature of the communities provides such a guarantee if there is any way at all in which it can be provided" (The Structure of Scientific Revo­lutions, 170).

          19. It is crucial to note here the parallel problem experienced by natu­ral and social philosophers:  Both are attempting to understand, so as to learn from what is initially different, alien, foreign; in the case of the natural scientist, between distinct conceptual schemes, theoretical frame­works, paradigms; and, in the case of the social sci­entist, between dis­tinct forms of life, cultures, societies.

          20. Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science (London: Rout­ledge & Kegan Paul, 1958).

          21. Clifford Geertz states, "In all three societies I have studied inten­sively, Javanese, Balinese, and Moroccan, I have been concerned among other things, with attempting to determine how the people who live there define themselves as persons, what enters into the idea they have (but, as I say, only half-realize they have) of what a self, Java­nese, Balinese or Morrocan style, is. And in each case, I have tried to arrive at this most intimate of notions not by imagining myself as someone else . . . but by searching out and analyzing the symbolic forms--words, images, institu­tions, behaviors--in terms of which . . . people actually represent them­selves to themselves and to one anoth­er" ("From the Nati­ve's Point of View: On the Nature of Anthropolog­ical Understanding" in Interpretive Social Science: A Reader, ed. Rabinow and Sullivan [Berke­ley: Universi­ty of California Press, 1979], 228; see also Geertz's The Interpretation of Culture [New York: Basic Books, 1973]).

          22. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 29.

          23. As Winch concurs, "My aim is not to engage in moraliz­ing, but to suggest that the concept of learning from which is involved in the study of other cultures is closely linked with the concept of wis­dom. We are confronted not just with different techniques, but with the new possi­bilities of good and evil in relation to which men may come to terms with life" ("Understanding a Primitive Society," Ethics and Action [Lon­don: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972], 42; as quoted in Bernstein, Be­yond Objectivism and Relativism, 29).

          24. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. and ed. Gar­rett Barden and John Cumming (New York: Seabury Press, 1975).

          25. For an excellent historical account of hermeneutics, see Rich­ard Palmer, Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleier­macher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer (Evanston, Ill.: Northwest­ern Universi­ty Press, 1969). Up until the 19th century hermeneutics was limited to the study of literary and sacred texts; Friedrich D. E. Schleiermacher expanded the scope of hermeneutics as a mode of rationality appropriate for defending religious thought from the domi­nation of the positivist model. Wilhelm Dilthey in his Critique of Histori­cal Knowledge (Texte zur Kritik der historischen Vernunft [Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Rup­recht, 1983]) ar­gued that hermeneutics provided the proper methodology for the study of the human sciences (Geistewissenschaften) in contradis­tinction to the positivist model of the natural sciences (Naturwi­ssenschaf­ten). In the 20th century, Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), accentuated the impor­tance of hermeneutics for philosophical reflection. Gadamer's Truth and Method may be read as an explic­it attempt to dissolve the Carte­sian dichotomy by articulating the ontologi­cal nature of historic rea­son. Paul Ricoeur in Hermeneutics and the Human Scienc­es, trans. and ed. John B. Thompson (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981) has endeavored to apply hermeneuti­cal understanding partic­ularly to the philosophy of psychology. Jürgen Habermas has been developing a critical hermeneutics of the social sci­ences. Cf. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 107-115. These studies confirm the suspicion that hermeneutics has been largely a Continental phenomena. The relevance of hermeneutical study in Anglo-American circles was brought about largely by Rorty's Philos­ophy and the Mir­ror of Nature; in the last chapter of this work, titled, "From Episte­mology to Hermeneu­tics," he argues for hermeneutics not as a "suc­cessor subject" to episte­mology, but, rather, as "an expression of hope that the cultural space left by the demise of epistemology will not be filled" (315).

          26. Hans-Georg Gadamer, "The Problem of Historical Con­s­cious­ness," Interpretive Social Science: A Reader, ed. Paul Rabinow and William M. Sull­ivan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 129-30. Cf. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 34.

          27. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 91; Bernstein, Beyond Objecti­vism and Relativism, 120.

          28. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 91-99; Bernstein, Beyond Objec­ti­vism and Relativism, 120-23.

          29. Gadamer puts it in these terms: ". . . the form of operation of every dialogue can be described in terms of the concept of the game. It is certainly necessary that we free ourselves from the custom­ary mode of thinking that considers the nature of the game from the point of view of the consciousness of the player. . . . the very fascina­tion of the game for the playing consciousness roots precisely in its being taken up into a movement that has its own dynam­ic. . . . Now I contend that the basic constitution of the game, to be filled with its spirit‑‑the spirit of buoyan­cy, freedom and the joy of success‑‑and to fulfill him who is playing, is structurally related to the constitution of the dialogue in which language is a reality. When one enters into dialogue with another person and then is carried along further by the dialogue, it is no longer the will of the individual person, holding itself back or exposing itself, that is the deter­minative. Rather, the law of the subject matter is at issue in the dia­logue and elicits state­ment and counterstate­ment and in the end plays them into each other" ("Man and Language" in Philosophical Hermeneu­tics, trans. David E. Linge [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976], 66).

          30. The term 'prejudice', as Gadamer uses it, comprehends three character­istics: (1) that which is handed down via tradition, (2) that which is constitutive of what one is at any given moment and of that which one is in the process of becoming, and (3) that which is always anticipatory, i.e., open to future testing and transformation. See Truth and Method, 235ff., especially 239; Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 127-31.

          31. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 146; Bernstein, Beyond Objec­ti­vism and Relativism, 125-31.

          32. Gadamer, Truth and Method, 235ff, especially 248; Berns­tein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 128-31.

          33. Clearly, the crucial question here is how one distin­guishes between those prejudices that are "enabling" from those that are "blind."  Berns­tein re­sponds, "For Gadamer [against Descartes], it is in and through the encounter with . . . what is generally handed down to us through tradi­tion that we discover which of our prejudices are blind and which are enabling. In opposition to Descartes' monological notion of purely rational self-reflection by which we can achieve transparent self-knowl­edge, Gadamer tells us that it is only through the dialogical en­counter with what is at once alien to us, makes a claim upon us, and has an affinity with what we are that we can open ourselves to risking and testing our prejudices" (Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 128-29).

          34. Ibid., 139.

          35. Against the Wittgenstenian notion of language as a tool, Gada­mer un­derstands language as the medium of all understanding and tradi­tion, i.e., the medium in which Dasein lives. See n. 13 above.

          36. See Book Six of the Nicomachean Ethics for the manner in which Aristotle distinguishes practical knowledge, phroné­sis, from theo­retical knowl­edge, epistéme, and from technical or productive knowledge, tec­hné.

          37. The hermeneutical element of application is developed in Gada­mer's "Hermeneutics and Social Science," Cultural Hermeneutics 2 (197­5): 307-16; and "Practical Philosophy as a Model of the Human Scienc­es," Research in Phenom­enology 9 (1980): 74-85.

          38. As Bernstein indicates, for Gadamer "the appropriation of the classical concepts of praxis and phronésis enables us to gain a critical perspective on our own historical situa­tion, in which there is the constant threat and danger of the domination of society by tech­nology based on science, a false idolatry of the expert, a manipulation of public opinion by powerful techniques, a loss of moral and political orienta­tion, and an undermining of the type of practical and politi­cal reason required for citizens to make responsible decis­ions" (Beyond Objectivism and Relativ­ism, 174-75).

          39. Ibid., 150-65.

          40. Ibid., 154.

          41. Ibid., 155.

          42. Ibid., 156 & 158 respectively.

          43. This consists in "a softening up of the old Cartesian dilem­ma by deny­ing that there could ever be anything like a pure objectivi­sm" (Han­na, 112, see n. 1 above). Once the claim to ultimate founda­tions is relinquished, the force of the relativist counterargument be­comes discred­ited since the point of its critique depends upon and is directed against rigid, uncompromising foundationalist proposals.

          44. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 225.

          45. Bernstein then proceeds to consider, notwithstanding differ­en­ces, the "common ground"--the practical-moral concern--illuminating the views of Gada­mer, Jürgen Habermas, Hannah Arendt and Richard Rorty so as to show how each contributes to the movement beyond objectivism and relativism. With respect to Habermas, Bernstein notes how his focus on the systemic features of contemporary society that undermine, distort, or prevent the realization of com­municative action provides Gadamer with a critical apparatus for examining contempo­rary social practices and institutions. Insofar as Hannah Arendt is concerned, Bernstein calls attention to her persistent reminder that praxis is a permanent human possibility capable of orienting commu­nal action in the inter­ests of pub­lic freedom. And, lastly, from Rorty, Bernstein discovers a neoprag­maticism that, beyond his deconstruct­ionist pursuits, fosters a vision of communi­ty in which the "Socratic virtues" are realized. When focusing on the deep moral-practical con­cern of all four voices, Bernstein indi­cates that he is "not confronted with a babble of 'incommensurable' languages but with a coherent conversation that has direction" (ibid., 225).

          46. Ibid., 231.

          47. Jürgen Habermas, "Questions and Counterquestions" in Haber­mas and Modernity, ed. Richard J. Bernstein (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1985), 193.

          48. It should be recalled that Rorty is also especially critical of the a priorism typical of the transcendental/foundationalist positions of the Cartesian-Lockean-Kantian legacy: "It is the notion that human activ­ity (and inquiry, the search for knowledge, in particular) takes place within a framework which can be isolated prior to the conclu­sion of inquiry--a set of presuppositions discoverable a priori--which links con­temporary philosophy to the Descartes-Locke-Kant tradition. For the notion that there is such a framework only makes sense if we think of this frame­work as imposed by the nature of the knowing subject, by the nature of his faculties or by the nature of the medium within which he works. The very idea of 'philosophy' as something distinct from 'science' would make little sense without the Cartesian claim that by turning inward we could find ineluctable truth, and the Kantian claim that this truth imposes limits on the possible results of empirical inquiry. The notion that there could be such a thing as "foundations of knowl­edge" (all knowledge in every field, past, present, and future) or a "theo­ry of representation" (all representation, in familiar vocabularies and those not yet dreamed of) depends on the assumption that there is some such a priori constraint" (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 8-9 [italics mine]).

          49. In this respect Jürgen Habermas has been characterized as "his generation's personification of the Frankfurt School and the Ger­man philosophical legacy insofar as he has encom­passed the full range of Western thought and humane concern" (Habermas, Critical De­bates, eds. John B. Thompson and David Held [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982], backcover; hen­ceforth Critical Debates). Thomas McCarthy ex­pressed the moral-political vision that imbues Habermas's work in these terms: "Jürgen Habermas is the domi­nant figure on the intel­lectual scene in Germany today, as he has been for the past de­cade. There is scarcely an area of the humanities or social sciences that has not felt the influ­ence of his thought; he is mas­ter, in breadth and depth alike, of a wide range of specialized literatures. But his contributions to philosophy and psychology, political science and sociology, the history of ideas and social theory are distinguished not only by their scope but by the unity of perspective that informs them . . . ., a vision that draws its power as much from the moral-political inten­tion that animates it as from the systematic form in which it is articulat­ed" (Preface, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas [Cam­bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978], ix; hence­forth Critical Theory). In Bernstein's own idiom: "One might epitomize Habermas's entire intel­lectual project and his fundamental stance as writing a new Dialectic of Enlighten­ment--one which does full justice to the dark side of the Enlightenment legacy, explains its causes but never­theless redeems and justifies the hope of freedom, justice, and happiness which still stubbornly speaks to us" (Introduction, Habermas and Moder­nity, 31).

          50. Cf. Jürgen Habermas, "What is Universal Pragmatics?," Com­mu­nication and the Evolution of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Bos­ton: Beacon Press, 1979), 21-25; McCarthy, Critical Theory, 277.

          51. The term philosophy of emancipation is used within the con­text of this paper to refer in a technical sense not only to Haber­mas's more recent work on the theory of communicative action but also to his earlier work on the theory of human or cognitive interests.

          52. When treating the specific difference between Gadamer's and Habermas's view, McCarthy explains, "While he agreed with Gadamer on the necessity for a sinnverstehenden access to social reality, he insisted nevertheless that the interpreta­tion of meaningful phenomena need not, indeed could not, be restricted to the type of dialogic understanding characteris­tic of the hermeneutic approach. He held out instead the possibility of a theoretically grounded analysis of symboli­cally structured objects and events which, by drawing on sys­tematically generalised empirical knowledge, would reduce the con­text-dependency of under­standing and leave room for both quasi-caus­al explanation and critique" ("Rationality and Relativism: Habermas's 'Overcoming' of Hermeneu­tics," Habermas, Critical Debates, eds. John B. Thompson and David Held [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 198­2], 57; hence­forth "Rationality and Relativ­ism").

          53. It would be a gross misunderstanding of Habermas's inten­tions if one would take this as meaning that Habermas is proposing one more objectivist position. Habermas envisions his program as a hypothetical undertaking within the general rubric of the reconstruc­tive versus nomo­logi­cal sciences as the ensuing paragraphs will make clear.

          54. What follows will be limited to a succinct presentation of the main lines of Habermas's proposal for the purpose of better indi­cating Habermas's alternative response to the objectivist/relativist dichotomy. The theory of universal pragmatics will be developed in detail within the context of the third chapter.

          55. Jürgen Habermas, "Appendix: Knowledge and Human Inter­est: A General Perspective," Knowledge and Human Inter­ests (Boston: Bea­con Press, 1971), 317; henceforth, Appendix. By means of the theory of communicative action, Habermas endeavors to avoid the theoretical im­passe maintained by both Marx and the critical theory of the Frankfurt School insofar as the relation of reason to freedom is concerned. Marx envisioned that the delimitation of freedom imposed by the need to pro­duce for the satisfaction of individual and commu­nal needs would be greatly facilitated by a progressive process of rationalization generative of technological breakthroughs. Max Weber, however, countered that the process of rationality and technology in fact leads to a process of reifica­tion wherein the most efficient means for achieving predefined goals leads to greater calculability, control and systematic planning, bureaucra­cy, economic and administrative efficiency. Weber understood rational­ization as a progressive process of depersonalization and desacralization of the natural and social world. The Frankfurt School, following Weber, abandoned reason in favor of a negative dialectics which espoused that conceptual reason (instrumental reason) turn against itself and its reifying tendencies in the direction of art as a form of non-reified thinking. Yet, given that art is better understood as a medium for transcend­ing experi­ence rath­er than as a model of dialogical relation­ships needed for recon­cilia­tion, Habermas proposes a view of critical theory that argues for a more fundamental sense of reason: viz., that instrumental reason itself depends on communicative reason. Habermas purports then by means of his theory of communicative action to provide the normative con­text for social critique. For the relationship between Marx, the Frank­furt School and Habermas, see "Reason, Utopia, and the Dialectic of Enlightenment" in Habermas and Modernity, 35-66. For a reconstruc­tion of the philo­sophical argument of critical theory which places the work of Habermas in the tradition of metacritique, see Garbis Kortian, Metacritique: The Philosophical Argument of Jürgen Habermas, trans. John Raffan (Lon­don: Cambridge University Press, 1980).

          56. Cf. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 182.

          57. Habermas, "Questions and Counterquestions," 195.

          58. Herbert Schnädelbach in Kommunikation und Reflexion, ed. W. Kuhlmann and D. Böhler (Frankfurt, 1983), 361; as quoted in Habermas, "Questions and Counterquestions," 195.

          59. Habermas, "Questions and Counterquestions," 196.

          60. Ibid., 194.

          61. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 390; cf. Haber­mas, "Questions and Counterquestions," 195.

          62. Habermas, "Questions and Counterquestions," 196.

          63. Ibid., 196. Habermas's theory of communicative action in­volves a three-tier research program: (1) a general theory of communi­ca­tion, which Habermas calls "universal pragmatics," that concerns itself with the rational reconstruction in universal terms of the happen­ing of under­standing; (2) a general theory of socialization, i.e., a theory of the acquisition of communicative action in accordance to hierar­chically-ar­ranged developmental stages that correspond to a developmental logic; and (3) a theory of social evolution, consisting in a reconstruction of historical materialism (i.e., a critique of capital­ist society) with the end in view of developing an historically oriented analysis of contem­porary society with a practical intent.

          64. Although a consideration of Habermas's critique of decons­truc­tionism is beyond the scope of this present study, from what has been said thus far concerning Habermas's conception of the role of philoso­phy, a conception to be developed in greater detail in subse­quent chap­ters, it is nonetheless possible to indicate the fundamental thrust of Hab­ermas's position with respect to this contemporary chal­lenge to reason. In this respect Habermas argues that Foucault's radi­cal historization of the idea of reason in function of an archaeological and genealogical history of the human sciences presupposes an unde­veloped notion of validity that will always have to go beyond local context in order to be effective. This inconsistency entails Foucault, Habermas contends, in the paradox of a performative self-contradic­tion. For a discussion of this paradox, see ch. IV, sec. A. On the other hand, Habermas argues that Derrida's method of dissemi­nation or deconstruction ultimately is en­meshed in the paradoxes of philosophies relying on subjectivity. Derri­da's extreme aesthetic contextualism fails to take account of social learn­ing processes by which social subjects attain an improved understanding of both natural and social reality. For Habermas these learning processes are rooted in the validity claims serving as the communicative dimension in terms of which truth and normative claims may be rationally adjudi­cated. David Cou­zen Hoy points out that Derrida's over-emphasis on texts was equally criticized by Foucault: "Foucault also accuses Derrida of being overly preoccupied with texts and ignoring their social context. Foucault suspects that Derrida's method tacitly claims authority for itself as a result of the authority and primacy it grants to the text. Further­more, Foucault believes that a text is not autonomous from the social prac­tices to which it is tied both in its own time and in the time of its later interpretation" ("Splitting the Difference: Habermas's Critique of Derrida," Praxis International 8 [January 1989]: 453). For Habermas's critique of Foucault, see "The Critique of Reason as an Unmasking of the Human Sciences: Michel Foucault," and "Some Questions Con­cerning the Theory of Power: Foucault Again" in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987). For his critique of Derrida, see "Beyond a Temporalized Philosophy of Ori­gins: Jacques Derrida's Critique of Phonocentrism" also in The Philo­sophical Discourse of Modernity. Also in this vol­ume, see "The Entry into Postmodernity: Nietzsche as a Turning Point."  For recent discus­sions on Habermas's critique of Foucault, see Dieter Freundlieb, "Ratio­nalism v. Irrational­ism? Habermas's Response to Foucault," Inquiry 31 (June 1988): 171-92; and Thomas R. Flynn, "Foucault and the Politics of Postmodernity," Nous 23 (April 1989): 187-198. For a discus­sion on Habermas's critique of Derrida, see David Couzens Hoy's article (cited above); Christopher Norris, "Deconstru­ction, Postmodernism and Philoso­phy: Habermas on Derrida," Praxis International 8 (January 1989): 426-46; and Charles Scott, "Postmodernism and Rationality," The Journal of Philosophy 85 (October 1988): 528-38. See also Thomas McCarthy, "The Politics of the Ineffable: Derrida's Decons­tructionism," The Philo­sophical Forum vol. XXI, Nos. 1-2 (Fall-Winter 1989-90): 146-68; and Richard J. Bernstein, "Dallmayr's Critique of Habermas," Political Theo­ry 16 (Nov. 1988): 580-93. For an excellent critique of deconstructionist themes in light of Habermas's proposal, see Thomas McCarthy, Ideals and Illusions: On Reconstruction and Deconstruction in Contemporary Critical Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991); henceforth Ideals and Illusions. For a discussion of deconstruction as a disguised meta­physics, see Gillian Rose, The Dialectic of Materialism: Post-Structural­ism and Law (Oxford: Blackwell, 1984), ch. 8.

          65. Anthony Giddens, "Reason Without Revolution?" Haber­mas's Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns" in Habermas and Mo­dernity, 113-14.

          66. Habermas, "What is Universal Pragmatics?," 8-20; and McCar­thy, Critical Theory, 274-79.

          67. Other reconstructive sciences include Noam Chomsky's work in linguistics, where he undertakes to reconstruct the system of rules that permits potential speakers to acquire competence in produc­ing and under­standing grammatical senten­ces (see his Aspects of the Theory of Syntax [Cambridge, Mass., 1965]); Jean Piaget's studies in developmental psy­chol­ogy, where he endeavors to unravel the process­es involved in cogni­tion (see his The Moral Judgment of the Child [New York, 1965], and Biology and Knowledge [Chicago, 1971]); and Lawrence Kolhberg's work in ethics, where he seeks to articulate the complex stages of moral devel­opment (see his "Stage and Sequence" in Handbook of Socialization Theory and Research, ed. D. Goslin [Chicago, 1969]; and "From Is to Ought" in Cognitive Development and Epistemology, ed. Theodore Mis­chel [New York: Academic Press, 1971]).

          68. Habermas, "What is Universal Pragmatics?," 24-25; and Mc­Carthy, Critical Theory, 279.

          69. Jürgen Habermas, "A Reply to my Critics" in Critical De­bates, 234. Thomas McCarthy adds, "Rational reconstructions of uni­versal competencies cannot make the strong a prioristic claims of the Kantian project. They are advanced in a hypothetical attitude and must be checked and revised in the light of the data, which are gathered a poste­riori from the actual performances and considered appraisals of compe­tent subjects. Any proposal must meet the empirical condition of con­forming in a mass of crucial and clear cases to the intuitions of compe­tent subjects, which function ultimately as the standard of accu­racy" ("Rationality and Relativism," 60). Habermas nonetheless gener­ates confusion when he distances himself from Kantian transcendental­ism while using expressions such as "the general and unavoidable presupposi­tions of achieving understanding of language," "what must be presup­posed," what is "unavoidable," and what is "necessary."  After the publi­cation of his first systematic work, Knowledge and Human Interests (trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro, [Boston: Beacon Press, 1971]), Habermas has qualified his project to disas­sociate himself from this strong transcenden­tal strain; see Bernstein, Beyond Objecti­vism and Relativism, 184-85.

          70. Hesse, "Science and Objectivity" in Critical Debates, 110-11; and McCarthy, Critical Theory, 58.

          71. Habermas, "What is Universal Pragmatics?," 16.

          72. Jürgen Habermas, "A Postscript to Knowledge and Human Inter­ests," trans. C. Lenhardt, Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 3 (1973): 180; henceforth "Postscript."  Hesse clarifies that Habermas's position "must be distinguished carefully from a realism which presup­poses that the aim of science is to derive true statements correspond­ing to an antecedently given 'real' domain of objects, and which is­sues in the possibility of technical control only as an incidental spin-off. On the contrary, Habermas believes . . . that there is no anteced­ently given domain of objects which are the direct referents of true statements. Empirical objects and 'empirical reality', in general, are constituents of human commerce with the natural world, constituted in the course of human pursuit of those technical interests which are con­tinuous with the need of all animal species to survive in their natural environment" ("Sci­ence and Objectivity," 99). Notwithstanding Habermas's position here, in response to criticism from Hesse, he recognizes his: "obligation . . . to explain how empirical limitations operate in the process of justifying truth-claims connected with de­scriptive state­ments."  Indeed Habermas readily "admit[s] that the 'evide­ntial dimension' of the concept of truth is badly in need of further clarification" ("A Reply to My Critics," 275).

          73. It will be the object of the next three chapters to develop Habermas's model of communicating subjects within the context of his philosophy of emancipation.

          74. See Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 192-94; Hesse, "Science and Objectivity," 109-14; Steven Lukes, "Of Gods and Demons: Habermas and Practical Reason," Habermas, Critical De­bates, eds. John B. Thompson and David Held (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 198­2), 139-45 and 147; and Fred Alford, "Is Jürgen Haber­mas' Recon­structive Science Really Science?," Theory and Society 14 (1985): 331-35; also see follow­ing note.

          75. McCarthy, "Rationality and Relativism," 62.

          76. Though McCarthy speaks, for instance, of the various realms of reality about which one can come to an understanding as unavoidable "idealizing suppositions," it would appear that their un­avoidability stems from what is known of each of these realms as a fact of human experi­ence. McCarthy states, "The idealizing supposi­tions we cannot avoid making when attempting to arrive at mutual understanding‑‑suppositions, for instance, of the intersubjective avail­ability of an objectively real world, of the rational accountability of interaction partners, and of the context transcendence of claims to truth and moral rightness‑‑are actually effective in organizing commu­nication . . ." (Ideals and Illusions), 2-3.

          77. Jürgen Habermas, "Interpretive Social Science vs. Herme­neuti­cism" in Social Science as Moral Inquiry, ed. Norma Haan et. al. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 261.

          78. Cf. Stephen K. White, The Recent Work of Jürgen Haber­mas: Reason, Justice and Modernity (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 129-30; henceforth Recent Work of Jürgen Habermas.

          79. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 194-95; quote from McCarthy, Critical Theory, ixf.

          80. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism, 190-91 (ital­ics mine).

          81. Habermas, "A Reply to my Critics," 233.

          82. Bernstein's articulation of the "primordial intuition" de­serves careful attention: "The recent celebration of relativistic doc­trines and the enthusiasm for an endless playfulness of interpretation that knows no limits has already elicited a strong reaction. It has been argued that regard­less of the many errors of those who have been wedded to the concept of representation, the correspondence theory of truth, the doc­trine that the function of the mind is to mirror nature, we cannot avoid the 'primordial intuition' that there is a world that is independent of our beliefs and fancies that forces itself upon us willy-nilly and constrains what we can think, say, and do" (Beyond Objecti­vism and Relativism, 4).

          83. George F. McLean makes this suggestion when he states: ". . . how can the interest in emancipation be kept alive? . . . . It can be done by drawing upon our heritage in the manner suggested by Heidegger" ("Hermeneutics, Cultural Her­itage and Social Critique," Read­ing Philoso­phy for the XXIst Century [Washington, D.C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy and University Press of America, 1989], 53).

          84. In­deed Ar­istotle considered not the ques­tion of the meaning of Being but rather the question of what a being is, and Aquinas the ques­tion that a being is. Whereas the What-ques­tion has led to numer­ous studies con­cerning the nature or essence of being, the That-ques­tion has resulted in studies concerning the character of exis­tence. For Heidegger the problem with this tradi­tional distinction is that it leads to two differ­ent senses for the common term 'to be', a distinction that may lie in Being itself or in the human effort to think it. Cf. Manfred S. Frings, Intro­duction, Heidegger and the Quest for Truth, ed. M. S. Frings (Chi­cago: Quadrangle Books, 1968), 13.

          85. Joseph J. Kockelmans, "The Founders of Phenomenology and Personalism" in Reading Philosophy for the XXIst Century, ed. George F. McLean (Washington, D.C.: The Council for Research in Values and Philosophy and University Press of America, 1989), 191-93.

          86. Heidegger, Being and Time, 32.

          87. This concern with the meaning of Being is of course reflect­ed in all of the great human enterprises, be they religious, philosophi­cal, artistic, or scientific.

          88. This state may be understood as reflected in humanity's per­petual concern with the great questions: Where did I come from?  Why am I here?  Where am I going?

          89. Heidegger, Being and Time, 487.

          90. The Heideggerian fundamental ontology proceeds not from the point of view of an extra-mundane transcendental ego, as Hus­serl's does, but from the point of view of an historically situated mundane ego. As Kockelmans elucidates, "Though the world must be explained in its transcenden­tal constitution by the human subjectivity, this must be taken not as a transcendental world-less ego, but as this concrete man in the world. For this reason, the first task of philoso­phy consists in explaining that this being indeed is different from all other beings" ("The Founders of Phenomenology and Per­sonalism," 194).

 

NOTES TO CHAPTER II


          1. Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971).

          2. Jürgen Habermas, Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society and vol. 2: Lifeworld and System: The Critique of Functionalist Reason, trans. Thomas McCar­thy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984 and 1987 respectively); henceforth Theory of Com­municative Action, vol. 1 or vol. 2.

          3. Bernstein, Introduction, Habermas and Modernity, 17. The term "foun­dations" as used here by Bernstein is to be understood in function of Habermas's hermeneutic sensitivity, i.e., as referring to empirical rather than to ahistoric, transcendental proposals that, as such, are sus­ceptible to empirical justification. Henceforth, whenever the term "foun­dations" is used in connection with the work of Haber­mas, it is this restrict­ed sense that will be intended.

          4. Habermas makes it clear that his own program should not be construed as a return to a modernist-foun­dationalism of a transcenden­talist sort: "An investigation of this kind, which uses the concept of communi­cative reason without blushing, is today suspect of having fallen into the snares of foundationalism. But the alleged similarities of the formal-pragmatic approach to classical transcendental philoso­phy lead one down the wrong trail. I would recommend that the reader who harbors this suspicion read the conclusion first. We would not be able to ascertain the rational internal structure of action oriented to reaching understand­ing if we did not already have before us--in a fragmentary and distorted form, to be sure--the existing forms of a reason that has to rely on being symbolically embodied and histori­cally situated" (Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1, xli).

          5. Bernstein puts it in these terms: "Habermas no longer speaks of 'quasi-transcendental' cognitive interests. This has led some to think that he has simply abandoned the major systematic theses of Knowledge and Human Interests. It is true he has sought to purge his thinking of the vestiges of the philosophy of consciousness and the philosophy of the subject. But the insights contained in his original trichoto­my of human interests are conceptually transformed in a new register within the con­text of his theory of communicative action. . . . This distinction is not abandoned in Habermas's universal pragmatics. On the contrary, it is refined and developed in far more detail than in his earlier work. Fur­thermore, from the perspective of the theory of communicative action, we gain a clearer perspective of the theory of communicative action, we gain a clear understanding of the conceptual space and foundations for what Habermas called the practical and emancipatory cognitive interests." (Introduction, Haber­mas and Modernity, 17).

          6. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 196-97.

          7. When considering the nature of the Habermasian theory of inter­ests, the subject of Knowledge and Human Interests, Henning Ottmann states: "Human interests are not 'transcende­ntal' in a simple (i.e. Kant­ian) sense of the word, because they do not fit into the framework of a sharp division between transcendental constitution on the one hand and the 'empir­ical' as constituted on the other" ("Cogni­tive Interests and Self-Reflection: The status and systematic connec­tion of the cognitive interest in Habermas's Knowledge and Human Inter­ests," Habermas, Critical Debates, eds. John B. Thompson and David Held [Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982], 82; henceforth "Cognitive Inter­ests and Self-Reflection").

          8. The emancipatory interest will be developed in the second and third sections of this chapter.

          9. Ottmann, "Cognitive Interests and Self-Reflection," 82. David Held adds: "Habermas understands knowledge in light of the problems man encounters in his efforts 'to produce his existence and reproduce his species being'. The conditions of the constitution of knowledge which determines 'the structure of objects of possible experience' are historical material conditions in which the development of the species has oc­curred" (Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Haber­mas [Berk­eley: University of California Press, 1980], 255; henceforth Introduction to Critical Theory).

          10. Ottmann, "Cognitive Interests and Self-Reflection," 82. As Held also notes, "Cognitive interests, which are the transcendental conditions of knowledge, are themselves materialistically grounded'."  Held clari­fies, "That is, the rule systems governing the activities of the species 'have a transcendental function but arise from actual struc­tures of human life'"(Introduction to Critical Theory, 255).

          11. This work appeared as an appendix to Knowledge and Hu­man Interests under the title "Knowledge and Human Inter­ests: A General Perspective," Knowledge and Human Interests, 301-17; hence­forth Ap­pendix.

          12. Ibid., 303.

          13. Ibid., 301.

          14. Ibid., 304.

          15. Ibid., 311.

          16. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 196-97.

          17. The objectivist illusion, according to Habermas, "prevents con­sciousness of the interlocking of knowledge with interests from the life-world" (Appendix, 305-06).

          18. Habermas, "Postscript," 178.

          19. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 196.

          20. Habermas states, "For knowledge is neither a mere instru­ment of an organism's adaptation to a changing environ­ment nor the act of a pure rational being removed from the context of life in con­templation" (Know­ledge and Human Interests, 197). Habermas's char­acterization of inter­ests as both transcending and reflecting the natural genesis and cultural history of humankind has been the object of intense critical discussion. On the one hand, idealists like Günter Rohrmoser accuse Habermas of an unreflected empiricism or natural­ism; Fred Dallmayr puts it this way: "Habermas's attitude toward science involves not so much an amendment as a deterioration of critical theory; the recognition of science merely implies a more inti­mate embrace by the tentacles of empiricism and historical relativism" (Beyond Dogma and Despair: To­ward a Critical Phenomenology of Politics [Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981], 249; henceforth Beyond Dogma and Despair; see Rohrmoser, Das Elend der kritischen Theorie, 2nd ed. [Frei­burg: Rombach, 1970], 89). On the other hand, positivists such as Hans Albert attack Habermas's work, as Dallmayr indicates, "as base­less speculation and as a trans­gression of the limits of empirical knowl­edge" (Beyond Dogma and Despair, 249); see Albert, Pläydoyer für kritischen Ratinoalismus [Munich: Piper, 1971], 54-55). Such critics fail to com­prehend that Habermas is avoiding a simplistic dichotomy that would attempt either to isolate the knowing subject from its relation to external nature or to rivet attention on external nature at the cost of the knowing subject; Habermas's notion of cognitive interests attempts to render more fluid the relations and connections between the subject and external nature.

          21. In this sense McCarthy states, "Although the sciences must pre­serve their objectivity in the face of particular interests, the condi­tions of possibility of the very objec­tivity that they seek to preserve include fundamental cogni­tive interests" (Critical Theory, 58).

          22. Jürgen Habermas, "Some Difficulties in the Attempt to Link Theo­ry and Praxis," Theory and Practice, trans. John Viertel (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), 8-9.

          23. Habermas, Appendix, 308.

          24. Ibid., 311.

          25. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 255-56. It should be noted that though Held uses the language of trans­cen­dental philoso­phy, "the mode in which reality is disclosed, constituted and acted upon," he com­ments that while "the rule systems governing the activi­ties of the species 'have a transcendental function . . . [they] arise from actual structures of human life'" (ibid., 255). The point here is to underscore once again that mitigated transcendentalist framework from which Habermas con­ducts his own investigations.

          26. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 197-98.

          27. Habermas himself views Knowledge and Human Interests as an "investigation [that] cannot claim more than the role of a prole­gomenon" (vii). In "Some Difficulties in the Attempt to Link Theory and Praxis," Habermas again makes mention of the "fragmentary and provisional character of these considerations" (14). The developmental character of both his theory of cognitive interests and theory of com­municative action lends itself to further exploration and development.

          28. At the time Habermas wrote Knowledge and Human Inter­ests, the German edition was published as Erkenntnis und Interesse (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1968), the very possibility of grounding critical theory in a manner that escapes the charge of arbi­trariness and relativ­ism demanded that the positivist delimitation of knowledge as referring exclusively to nomological science be ade­quately challenged. A major aim of this work then consisted in the refutation of the positivist presup­position of value-neutral knowledge by developing an epistemological framework that uncovers the relation between knowledge and interests.

          29. Habermas, "The Crisis of the Critique of Knowledge," (chs. 1-3), 1-63.

          30. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, vii.

          31. Habermas, "Postscript," 164.

          32. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 19.

          33. Ibid., 24; more explicitly Habermas states, "When philoso­phy asserts itself as authentic science, the relation of philosophy and science completely disappears from discus­sion. It is with Hegel that a fatal misunderstanding aries: the idea that the claim asserted by philo­sophical reason against the abstract thought of mere understanding is e­quivalent to the usurpation of the legitimacy of independent sciences by a philosophy claiming to retain its position as universal scientific knowledge. But the actual fact of scientific progress independent of philosophy had to un­mask this claim, however misunderstood, as bare fiction. It was this that served as the foundation-stone of positivism. Only Marx could have contested its victory. For he pursued Hegel's critique of Kant without sharing the basic assumption of the philoso­phy of identity that hindered Hegel from unambiguously radicalizing the critique of knowledge" (ibid.).

          34. See Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, ch. 2.

          35. Cf. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 296-300.

          36. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, vii.

          37. Ibid., 71-81.

          38. Ibid., 89.

          39. Ibid.; as quoted in Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 302.

          40. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 83.

          41. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 302; quote from Karl-Otto Apel, "The a priori of Communication and the Foundation of the Human­ities," Man and World, no. 5 (February 1972): 10.

          42. Held clarifies this point via Apel, "In a position parallel to Habermas, Apel argues that the fundamental shortcomings of positiv­ism spring from a lack of reflec­tion 'upon the fact that all cognition of objects presupposes understand­ing as a means of intersubjective communication'. Science, he con­tends, is unintelligible qua human activity, if one cannot understand the implicit and explicit conventions and rules, or more general, the communication community or language game, which it presupposes. On his account, even tacit conventions about the use of words--'not to mention explicit conventions about definitions, theoretical frameworks, or statements of facts in empirical science'--imply 'an intersubjective consensus about situational mean­ings and aims of practical life'. Science, in its adoption of procedural conventions, goes beyond the 'scientific rationality of operations which could be performed in a repeatable way by exchange­able human subjects . . . and passes into the realm of a . . . pre- and meta-scien­tific rationality of intersubjective discourse mediated by expli­cation of concepts and interpretations of intentions'" (Introduction to Critical Theory, 303; quote from Apel, "The a priori of communication," 26, 7, and 8 respec­tively).

          43. It is on the basis of Habermas's examination of the logic of this meta-scientific realm that will lead to his proposal of a technical interest as constituting the central aim of the scientific enterprise.

          44. See bottom of n. 42 above.

          45. See Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, ch. 5. For articles dealing with Habermas's views on the philosophy of science, see "The Analytical Theory of Science and Dialectics," and "A Positi­vistically Bisected Rationalism," in T. Adorno, et al., The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology (London: Heinemann 1969); McCarthy, Critical Theory, 40-52.

          46. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 304.

          47. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 91.

          48. Dallmayr understands Karl-Otto Apel as holding a similar conten­tion: "Countering the pretensions of neopositi­vism and especial­ly the 'unified science movement', Apel argued that scientific inquiry itself was inconceivable without the infrastructure of semiotic interpre­tation in a community of investigators--as Peirce had shown" (Beyond Dogma and Despair, 231).

          49. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 304; cf. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 124.

          50. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 62.

          51. For Habermas the "Empirical-analytic sciences disclose reality insofar as it appears within the behavioral system of instrumen­tal action. In accordance with their immanent meaning, nomological statements about this object domain are thus designed for a specific context in which they can be applied--that is, they grasp reality with regard to technical control that, under specified conditions, is possi­ble every­where at all times" (Knowledge and Human Interests, 195).

          52. Ibid., 191.

          53. Ibid., 124.

          54. Habermas states, "In the empirical-analytic sciences the frame of reference that prejudges the meaning of possible statements establishes rules both for the construction of theories and for theoreti­cal testing. Theories compromise hypothetico-deductive connections of propositions, which permit the deduction of lawlike hypotheses with empirical content. The latter can be interpreted as statements about the covariance of ob­servable events; given a set of initial conditions, they make predictions possible. Empirical-analytic knowledge is thus possi­ble predictive knowledge. However, the meaning of such predictions, that is their technical exploitability, is established only by the rules according to which we apply theories to reality" (ibid., 308).

          55. Ibid., 192.

          56. Ibid., 308; as quoted in Held, Introduction to Critical Theo­ry, 305.

          57. Habermas is not arguing for a strict instrumentalism; rather his argument is that the knowledge generated by the empirical-analytic sciences typically, i.e., for the most part, are concerned with technical control over the natural processes so objectified.

          58. Habermas elaborates: "In controlled observation, which often takes the form of an experiment, we generate initial conditions and measure the results of operations carried out under these condi­tions. . . . These observations are supposed to be reliable in providing immediate evidence without the admixture of subjectivity. In reality basic statements are not simple representations of facts in themselves, but express the success or failure of operations. We can say that facts and the relations between them are apprehended descriptively. But this way of talking must not conceal that as such the facts relevant to the empirical sciences are first constituted through an a priori organization of our experience in the behavioral system of instrumental action" (Appendix, 308-09).

          59. Habermas, "A Positivistically Bisected Rationalism," 209; as quoted and amended by Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 306.

          60. Habermas, Appendix, 309.

          61. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 62.

          62. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 35.

          63. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 62.

          64. On this point McCarthy is illuminating: "The com­munica­tion structures presupposed by the community of natural sciences cannot themselves be grasped within the framework of empirical-ana­lytic science. The dimension in which concepts, methods, theories, and so forth are discussed and agreed upon, in which the framework of shared meanings, norms, values and so on is grounded, is the dimen­sion of symbolic interaction that is neither identical with nor reducible to instrumental action. The rationality of discourse about the appropri­ate­ness of conventions or the meaning of concepts is not the rationali­ty of operations on objectified processes; it involves the interpretation of intentions and meanings, goals, values, and reasons. Thus the ob­jective knowledge produced by empirical-analytic inquiry is not possi­ble without know­ledge in the form of intersubjective understanding. This availability of an intersubjectively valid pre- and meta-scientific language, of a framework of shared meanings and values, is taken for granted in the natural sciences. The cultural life-context (Lebens­zusammenhang), of which scien­tific communication is only one ele­ment, belongs instead to the domain of the cultural sciences" (ibid., 69).

          65. Though Habermas does not consider the work of Gadamer in Knowledge and Human Interests, in his later writings he does criti­cally draw on his insights.

          66. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 308.

          67. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 148. Cf. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 308-09.

          68. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 309; see Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 154-58.

          69. Ibid., 156; as quoted in McCarthy, Critical Theory, 71.

          70. Habermas,  Knowledge and Human Interests, 180ff.

          71. Ibid., 176.

          72. Ibid.

          73. Habermas states, "In the context of communicative action, language and experience are not subject to the transcendental condi­tions of action itself. Here the role of the transcendental framework is taken instead by the grammar of ordinary language, which simulta­neously governs the non-verbal elements of a habitual mode of life conduct or prac­tice" (ibid., 192).

          74. Ibid., 172.

          75. Ibid., 191.

          76. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 310.

          77. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 175.

          78. Ibid., 176-77; as quoted by McCarthy, Critical Theory, 74.

          79. For Habermas's earliest critique of Gadamer, see "A Review of Gadamer's Truth and Method," reprinted in Under­standing Social Inquiry, eds. Fred R. Dallmayr and Thomas McCarthy (Notre Dame, Indiana: The University Press, 1977): 335-63; "Summation and Re­sponse," Continuum, vol. 8, nos. 1 and 2 (Spring and Summer, 1970): 123-33.

          80. Habermas, "A Review of Gadamer's Truth and Method," 360.

          81. For an excellent exposition of Habermas's critique of impor­tant contributors to hermeneutic science, including Husserl, Weber, Schutz, Wittgenstein, Winch, Garfinkel and Gadamer, see McCarthy, Critical Theory, 137-93.

          82. Christopher Broniak, "What is Emancipation for Haber­mas?," Philosophy Today 32 (Fall 1988): 202. In this article Broniak develops several stages on the road to emancipation in Habermas: (1) from domination to exploitation, which occurs when, as a result of a failure to distinguish between in­strumental and communicative ratio­nality, human subjects become means to an end, wherein technology reduces reason to results; (2) from exploitation to alienation, which occurs when interaction between subjects is transformed from a person to person relationship to a subject versus object relationship; (3) from alienation to liberation, that refers to Kant's development of subjectiv­ity over and above phenomena as the locus of domination. At this level, Broniak, indicates, "While liberation is a necessary part of the process of emancipation, it is not identical with it. Intuitions need thought, concepts need content: once these hypostatized axes of con­sciousness, viz. thinking and feeling, rec­ognize their mutual need of one another, emancipation (in Habermas's view) is possible" (ibid., 200); (4) from liberation to emancipa­tion, which consists in the ability of an individual or a social unit to make itself transparent so as to overcome obstacles standing in the way of realizing one's autonomous potential (ibid., 195ff).

          83. Habermas, "Some Difficulties in the Attempt to Link Theory and Praxis," 22-23; as quoted and amended in Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 317. It is precisely the power of critical cognition that Habermas maintains was inadequately understood by both Peirce and Dilthey: "But neither Peirce nor Dilthey discerned what they were actual­ly doing. Otherwise they would not have been able to preserve them­selves from the experience of reflection originally developed by Hegel in the Phenomenology. I mean the ex­perience of the emancipa­tory power of reflection, which the subject experiences in itself to the extent that it becomes transparent to itself in the history of its gene­sis. The experi­ence of reflection articulates itself substantially in the concept of a self-formative process. Methodically, it leads to a stand­point from which the identity of reason with the will arises" (Haber­mas, Knowledge and Hu­man Interests, 197-98). "Self-reflection" aims at attaining insight leading to self-transparency, i.e., a form of Socrat­ic self-knowledge.

          84. Though Habermas connects cognition and emancipation, he does not hold that the success of action is a sufficient criterion of the truth of propositions. Habermas's position is that the "truth of a prop­o­sition is not established by means of interest gratification, but only by an argumentative redemption of the truth claim itself" ("Post­script," 179). Habermas's discourse theory of truth will be a central concern of the next chapter.

          85. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 197-98. Die­trich Böhler takes issue with Habermas on the grounds that reason merely demonstrates an interest in emancipation from dogma and ignorance but does not prescribe standards for concrete activity; see "Zum Problem des 'emanzipatorischen Interesses' und seiner gescells­chaftlichen Wahrnehmung," Man and World, 3 (1970): 26-53; also Dallmayr, Beyond Dogma and Despair, 258-59. This critical challenge to Habermas will be addressed in the fourth chapter as it relates to practical discourse.

          86. Cf. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 318. Habermas states, ". . . we can methodologically ascertain the knowledge-consti­tutive interests of the natural and cultural sciences only once we have entered the dimension of self-reflection. It is in accomplishing self-reflection that reason grasps itself as interested. Therefore we come upon the fundamental connection of knowledge and interest when we purse methodology in the mode of the experience of reflection: as the critical dissolution of objectivism, that is the objectivistic self-under­standing of the sciences, which suppresses the contribution of subjec­tive activity to the preformed objects of possible knowledge" (Knowl­edge and Human Interests, 212); in another passage, "Indeed the cate­gory of cognitive interest is authenticated only by the interest innate in reason. The technical and practical cognitive interests can be com­prehended unambiguously as knowledge-constitutive interests only in connection with the eman­cipatory cognitive interest of rational reflec­tion. That is, only in this way can they be understood without being psycho­logized or falling prey to a new objectivism. Because Peirce and Dilthey do not comprehend their methodology as the self-reflec­tion of science, which it is nonetheless, they miss the point where knowledge and interest are united" (ibid., 198).

          87. Habermas, "Postscript," 176; as quoted in Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 318-19.

          88. The third section of this chapter will maintain the primacy of the emancipatory interest insofar as it is oriented toward the disso­lution of hypostatizations.

          89. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 313.

          90. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 319.

          91. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 214; as quoted in Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 319.

          92. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 217; as quoted in Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 320.

          93. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 252. This re­view of Habermas's relation to psychoanalysis draws from Held's treatment; see Introduction to Critical Theory, 321-22.

          94. Habermas's three-tier research program corresponds to each of the three levels of the psychoanalytic model; see ch. I, n. 63; cf. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 321.

          95. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 258.

          96. Dallmayr indicates, "By rendering transparent previously hidden or mangled layers of experience, self-reflection is able to pro­duce a personal catharsis and transformation of character, an emanci­pation from the domina­tion of past constraints" (Beyond Dogma and Despair, 259-60).

          97. Ibid., 260.

          98. There is nothing simplistic in Habermas's view of such therapy, as Dallmayr indicates, "In his interpretation, the Freudian model implies not so much the transfer or imposition of knowledge, but rather a complex dialogue between analyst and patient, a dialogue in which only the patient's acceptance of a diagnosis can have the emancipating effect of deepened self-awareness. The mutual relation­ship, he notes, is thus not technical but practical in character, and as such embedded in the contingencies of practical experience: apart from aiming at the relief of concretely identifiable patholo­gies, thera­peutic efforts are experimental and never assured of success" (ibid., 243).

          99. In this respect Freud cautions against an unreflec­tive adop­tion of the psychoanalytic model into the cultural community; see Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. and ed. James Strachey, (New York: Norton, 1962), 91.

          100. Gadamer, "Replik," in Apel, et al., Hermeneutik und Ideo­logiekritik, 283-317; as quoted in Dallmayr, Beyond Dogma and De­spair, 262.

          101. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 394; also see Rick Roderick, Habermas and the Foundations of Critical Theory (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), 68-69; henceforth Foundations of Critical Theory.

          102. This view of Habermas's theory of universal prag­matics as the representing his more recent methodological framework for critical theory will be considered within the context of the ensuing chapter.

          103. George F. McLean expresses this contention in these terms: "Emancipation could not be the central reality of life itself, but only a propitious state for physical survival. Habermas not only dis­agrees with the arbitrariness of this presupposition, but proceeds to show how the struc­tural elements Freud cites are essentially analytic dimensions of a situation of interpersonal--if deformed--communica­tion between psychoanalyst and patient. Their meaning is deriva­tive, not of physical forces, but of the reality of symbolic communication and its disruptions" ("Hermeneutics, Cultural Heritage and Social Critique," 47).

          104. Erich Hahn disagrees arguing that Habermas fails to take adequate account of Marx's emphasis on the dialectical relations be­tween "force" and "relations of production" ("Die theoretischen Grund­lagen der Soziologie von Jürgen Habermas," Johannes H. von Heiseler, et al., Die "Frankfurter Schule" im Lichte des Marxismus [Frankfurt-Main: Verlag Marxistische Blatter, 1970], 70-89; as quoted in Dallmayr, Beyond Dogma and Despair, 266-67). Rolf Zimmerman expresses his disagreement in these terms: "While we can accept Habermas's distinction between purposive-rational and communicative action, we cannot accept his identification of purposive-rational with labour as much since labour also includes the moment of communica­tive action" ("Emancipation and Rationality: Foundational Problems in the Theories of Marx and Habermas," Ratio 26, [Dec. 1984]: 158; henceforth "Problems in the Theories of Marx and Haber­mas"). See also Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 390ff. McLean, however, insists on a fundamental distinction between labor and interaction: "Liberation from the suppression of persons by the institutional frame­work of labor and rewards requires more than merely instrumental productive action, for this can respond only to external constraints. Communicative action is required in order to be aware: (a) of the moral totality of human dignity as this is reflected in the highest vision of a cultural heritage, (b) of its disruption by repressive institu­tional manipulation for the private interest of the class in power, and (c) of the types of changes which will be truly emancipative" ("Her­meneutics, Cultural Heritage and Social Critique," 47).

          105. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 307.

          106. Roderick, Foundations of Critical Theory, 54.

          107. On this point Held contends, ". . . it seems apparent from post-Kuhnian philosophy of science that no straight forward separation can be made between what Habermas calls the 'empirical-analytic and the hermeneutic sciences' . . . . Hermeneutic problems are central to all attempts to comprehend lawlike regularities in natural or social phenomena. While a knowledge of regularities and a capacity for prediction seems an important constitutive element of most forms of interpretative knowledge" (Introduction to Critical Theory, 392). Though this is true Habermas's point is that the metatheoretical opera­tions that precede nomological investigation and disclose the technical interest cannot be understood within the context of the hypothetico-deductive methodology but involves the distinctive methodology prop­er to hermeneutics.

          108. Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 208.

          109. Ottmann, "Cognitive Interests and Self-Reflection," 90; quotes from Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, 131. On this point McCarthy comments, "This construction makes it possible to avoid some of the problematic features of Kant's thing-in-itself. For one thing, nature-in-itself is not unknowable; it is knowable but only subject to the conditions of possible objectivity. It "appears" only in relation to possibilities of instrumental action; what we "catch 'of'" it is its technical controllability" (Critical Theory, 117).

          110. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 117.

          111. Ibid., 117-18; quote from Habermas, Knowledge and Hu­man Interests, 131. Ottmann makes a similar point, see "Cognitive Interests and Self-Reflection," 90.

          112. See ch. I, sec. B, and ch. III, sec. B.

          113. Habermas's discourse theory of truth will be con­sidered in detail in the ensuing chapter, sec. B.

          114. Though not considered by Habermas, one way to view the importance of this conception of science consists in that it does not initially discount other possible orienta­tions to natural reality. In this respect, an explanation, for instance, of the phenomenon of miracles may or may not be ultimately susceptible to nomological scrutiny. In the latter case, the phenomenon may result from an intervention other than those accessible within the compass of nomological methodology.

          115. Though sympathetic with Habermas's positions, Apel was one of the first to point out the conflation of the two senses of reflec­tion in Knowledge and Human Interests; see Apel's study on this question in Materialien zu Habermas' 'Erkenntnis und Interesse', ed. Fred Dallmayr (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1974).

          116. Habermas, "Postscript," 182.

          117. Habermas, "Some Difficulties in the Attempt to Link Theo­ry and Praxis," 22-24.

          118. For Habermas "Self-reflection brings to consciousness those determinants of a self-formative process of cultivation and spiri­tual formation [Bildung] which ideologically determine a contemporary praxis of action and the conception of the world. Analytic memory thus embraces the particulars, the specific course of self-formation of an individual subject (or of a collective held together by group identi­ty). Rational reconstructions, in contrast, deal with anonymous rule systems, which any subjects whatsoever can comply with in so far as they have acquired the corresponding competence with respect to these rules. Reconstructions thus do not encompass subjectivity, within the horizon of which alone the experience of reflection is possible. In the philosophical tradition these two legitimate forms of self-knowledge have generally remained undifferentiated and have both been included under the term of reflection. However, a reliable criterion of distinc­tion is available. Self-reflection leads to insight due to the fact that what has previously been unconscious is made conscious in a manner rich in practical consequences: analytic insights intervene in life, if I may borrow this dramatic phrase from Wittgenstein. A successful reconstruction also raises an 'unconsciously' functioning rule system to consciousness in a certain manner; it renders explicit the intuitive knowledge that is given with competence with respect to the rules in the form of 'know how'. But this theoretical knowledge has no practi­cal consequences. By learning logic or linguistics I acquire theoretical knowledge, but in general I do not thereby change my previous prac­tice of reasoning or speaking" (ibid., 22-23).

          119. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 101; quotes from Habermas, "Some Difficulties in the Attempt to Link Theory and Praxis," 24.

          120. Habermas, "Postscript," 184.

          121. Ibid., 176

          122. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 94; quote from Habermas, Appendix, 314.

 


NOTES TO CHAPTER III


          1. See Rose B. Calabretta, The Intellectual Origins of the Prob­lem of "Value-Free" Sociology (Ph.D. diss., Fordham University, 1979).

          2. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 345.

          3. Habermas, Appendix, 317.

          4. McCarthy, Translator's introduction, The Theory of Communi­ca­tive Action, vol. 1, iv.

          5. Habermas, "What is Universal Pragmatics?," 26.

          6. Ibid., 61.

          7. The summary presentation of universal pragmatics in the first chapter aimed at distinguishing Habermas's position from that of Gadamer's. This section will endeavor to interpret universal pragma­tics as representing the methodological framework within Habermas's philosophy of emancipation.

          8. See ch. I, sec. B.

          9. This term is used here to denote the object of knowledge char­ac­teristic of modern and contemporary rationalist, empiri­cist, and tran­scen­dentalist epistemologies.

          10. Habermas, "What is Universal Pragmatics?," 5-6.

          11. Ibid., 41-44.

          12. Ibid., 42.

          13. Ibid.

          14. By means of a strategic speech act an actor uses deception, threat of sanctions or the promise of reward--whether directly or indi­rect­ly--in order to influence behavior. For Habermas this mode of speech is derivative from the more basic speech act--communicative action--where­in an actor endeavors to motivate another subject ratio­nally, i.e., by depending on the illocutionary binding force con­tained in the speech act. In communicative interactions the participants coor­dinate their actions consensually. See Theory of Communicative Ac­tion, vol. 1, 279-95. However, Dallmayr points out that both commu­nicative and strategic action are teleological or goal-oriented. Both are social actions conduct­ed within social contexts, and both consist in a means (speech) for at­taining an end (doing something). Notwithstand­ing, the formal affinities between these two modes of action, Haber­mas would claim that the crucial difference between the nonstrategic and the strategic speech act consists in their respective aims: on the one hand, to bring about inter­personal understanding, and, on the other, to influence the behavior of another deceptively. Cf. Roderick, Founda­tions of Critical Theory, 98; and McCarthy, Critical Theory, 25.

          15. For Habermas the primary per se function of a speech act consists precisely in its orientation to reaching inter­personal under­stand­ing. In this sense Habermas argues that action theory as under­stood by intentionalist semantics is unsatisfactory: "This nominalistic theory of meaning is not suitable for clarify­ing the coordinating mech­anism of linguis­tically mediated interaction because it analyzes the act of reaching understanding on a model of action oriented to consequen­ces" (Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1, 274ff). Notwith­standing his criticism of intentionalist semantics, Habermas has yet to provide an adequate ac­count of meaning: "It is not clear whether he accepts a Gricean-Searlean account of meaning in terms of intention, or some­thing closer to Chomsky's account. . . . Habermas pays insuf­ficient attention to the distinction between semantic and pragmatic levels" (Roderick, Foundations of Critical Theory, 98-99).

          16. Habermas, "What is Universal Pragmatics?," 44-59.

          17. Ibid., 41ff. Note that Habermas also employs the modifiers "assertoric," "interactive," and "expressive" corresponding to the speech acts constative, regulative and avowal, respectively, to indicate the mode of communication which each type of speech action effects; see ibid., 58.

          18. Ibid., 59.

          19. Ibid., 63.

          20. Ibid., 63; cf. ibid., 53ff.

          21. John B. Thompson takes issue with this point: "It seems to me implausible and misleading to contend that all four validity-claims are necessarily raised with the utterance of every speech-act. In what sense does reading a poem, telling a joke, or greeting a friend presup­pose the truth of what is said?  Is not sincerity characteristically sus­pended rather than presupposed by the participants in a process of collec­tive bargain­ing, or by friends engaged in the light-hearted activi­ty of 'taking the mickey'?  In what sense, precisely, does the utter­ance of a sentence like 'The sky is blue this morning' raise a claim to correctness which is clearly distinguishable from its intelligibility or its truth?  Habermas may be right to criticise Austin for working with an undifferentiated notion of 'objective assessment'; but Habermas in turn seems mistaken to maintain that the various claims which he discerns in this notion are necessarily raised with every speech-act, albeit in an implicit and unthematic form." ("Universal Pragmatics" in Critical Debates, 126). Habermas responds to Thompson in these terms: "I do not understand bargaining as a case of communicative action; a silent greeting is as a rule the non-linguistic equivalent of an illocutionary abbreviated speech-act, the meaning of which can be expanded with reference to the underlying norm of action; in­direct speech-acts can likewise be expanded--if necessary through modifying available expressions or introducing new ones . . . . jokes, fictional representations, irony, games, . . . rest on intentionally using categori­al confusions which, in the wake of the dif­ferentiation of validi­ty-claims and corresponding modes (being/illusion, is/ought, essence/appearance), are seen through as category mistakes" ("A Reply to My Critics," 270-71).

          22. Habermas, "What is Universal Pragmatics," 2-3 (italics mine).

          23. Concerning Habermas's views on the inadequacy of seman­tic theory, see "What is Universal Pragmatics?," 32. Cf. ibid., 30-31; see also "Towards a Theory of Communicative Action," Recent Sociol­ogy, 2, ed. Hans Peter Dreitzel (New York: Macmil­lan, 1970), 22.

          24. Thompson takes issue with the various distinctions‑‑number of speech acts, realms of reality, validity claims--stating, ". . . there is a lack of clarity about the nature of the distinctions cited by Haber­mas and the grounds for treating these distinctions as fundamental. Without a more precise specification, it is difficult to judge whether the proposed distinctions are genuinely universal or merely extrapolat­ed from the tradition of Western philosophy" ("Universal Pragmatics," 128). Habermas counters, "Thompson would have to show . . . that, for example, the logical arguments for assuming three validity-claims are false. If one examines the ways in which the validity of a standard utterance as a whole can be contested, one finds, in my view, precise­ly three aspects under which a hearer can, if need be, say no. He or she can say no to the truth of the statement asserted (or of the exis­tential presuppositions of a mentioned propositional context), to the rightness of the ut­terance in relation to a normative context (or to the rightness of an underlying norm of action itself), and finally to the truth­fulness or sincerity of the intention expressed by the speaker. One arrives at the same result through formal-pragmatic investigation of elementary sentences with descriptive, normative and expressive con­tents, and through the pragmatic logic of the corresponding (types of) argumentation specific to questions of truth, justice and self-deception. Futhermore, the decentred understanding of the world, the develop­ment of which can be found both in ontogenesis and in the changing structures of world-views, also speaks for the universality of the dis­tinction among exactly three worlds" ("A Reply to My Critics," 271-72).

          25. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 291; quote from Habermas, "Vorbereitende Bemerkungen zu einer Theorie der kommunikativen Kompetenz," Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozialtechnologie -- Was leistetdie Systemforschung? (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971), 120.

          26. All quotes from this paragraph are from McCarthy, Critical Theory, 288-89.

          27. Habermas, "What is Universal Pragmatics?," 64. This is to say that an individual can only convince another of the sincerity of what he says not so much by providing reasons but by behaving in conformity to expressed intentions.

          28. Ibid., 64. It should be noted that the validity claim truthful­ness remains largely undeveloped in the work of Habermas. Donald Jay Rothberg proposes that this claim be understood as dealing with an individual's interiority, i.e., as properly referring to the religi­ous/spiritual dimension of human experience. In an important article Rothberg challenges Habermas's contention that the "disenchantment of the world" brought about within the context of modernity "repre­sents a conclusive 'overcoming' (or Aufhebung) of religious (and metaphysical) worldviews," where "the implicit and 'ungrounded' authority of the 'sacred' is generally replaced by the explicit rational authority of a 'grounded consensus'" ("Rationality and Religion in Habermas's Recent Work: Some Remarks on the Relation Between Critical Theory and the Phenomenology of Religion," Philosophy and Social Criticism 11 [Summer 1986]: 221, 223-24; see Theory of Com­municative Action, vol. 2, 119f). Rothberg argues that while Haber­mas fails to present any acceptable reasons in his argument against the validity of religious claims, he also fails to consider religious experi­ence. In this respect Rothberg states, "Habermas's critique of religion, it is clear, makes very strong claims that are at once formal, norma­tive, and universal. Perhaps what is most striking about Habermas's argument is his radical separation of form (or structure) and content in dealing with the question of the relationship between rationality and religion. The main focus is on the extent to which different world­views approximate the formal structures identified by the theory of universal pragmatics, and the level of the development manifest ac­cording to the criteria such as differentiation, reflexivity, and so on. Such an approach obviously differs from those contemporary inquiries into religion, such as the phenomenology and philosophy of religion, which largely take seriously the content of religious experience and claims" ("Rationality and Religion," 224-25).

          29. Ibid., 63-64.

          30. The main work which treats Habermas's theory of truth is found in his "Wahrheitstheorien," [Theories of truth] Wirklich­keit und Reflexion: Festschrift fur Walter Schulz, ed. H. Fahren­bach (Pfullin­gen, 1973), 211-265. Passages in English from this work used in this study are from McCarthy's Critical Theory; Held's Introduction to Critical Theory; Thompson's Critical Hermeneutics: A Study in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur and Jürgen Habermas (Cambridge: Cam­bridge Univer­sity Press, 1981); and Roderick's The Foundations of Critical Theory. Trans­lations of Habermas's study will be annotated by first providing the reference to the English version and then to the German original (e.g.: McCarthy, Critical Theory, 300; Habermas, "Wahrheitstheorien," 219).

          31. Though Habermas uses both "discourse theory" and "consen­sus theory" to characterize his theory of truth, this study will prefer the former so as to distinguish it from C. S. Peirce's own consensus theory. Cf. C. S. Peirce, "How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (1878).

          32. This section draws from McCarthy's lucid formula­tion of Habermas's discourse theory of truth and his constitution theory of objects; see Critical Theory, 291-310.

          33. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 299; Habermas, "Wahrheits­theo­rien," 219. Alessandro Ferrara articulates the nature of Habermas's conception of truth as follows: "Habermas's consensus theory of truth represents one of the best available responses to the difficulties typi­cal of the accounts in terms of coherence and correspondence. It fits into the post-Kuhnian discussion as a promising attempt to steer a course between two unsatisfactory alternatives, exemplified by Laka­tos's renewed search for an apriori criterion of validity and by Rorty's renunciation of all normative implications of the concept of validity. These alternatives are part of the new turn taken in recent times by the philosophical confrontation, central in the development of Western thought on truth and validity, between universalism and skep­ticism. As it has been suggested, today the age-old opposition of universalism and skepticism has taken the form of a confrontation between objectivism and relativism. Those who continue to search for a set of meanings, rules or presuppositions capable of transcending cultural and temporal particularity have abandoned all metaphysical, or otherwise 'absolutistic' pretensions. Today, those who defend univer­salistic positions defend them within the framework of a fallibilistic objectivism" ("A Critique of Habermas's Consensus Theory of Truth," Philosophy and Social Criticism 13 [Fall 1987], 39; henceforth "Con­sensus Theory of Truth.)"  Ferrara traces the four-stage development of Habermas's conception of truth: (1) "The first stage of Habermas's theory of truth lasts from 1963 to 1965. At this time Habermas takes an active role in the polemical confrontation between Adorno and Popper which goes under the name of Positivismusstreit and tries to outline a notion of scientific truth or validity in terms of an immanent critque of Popper's theses. This immanent critique is aimed at bring­ing out the implications of the hermeneutic presuppositions of Pop­per's critical rationalism and at elaborating them in a pragmatist direc­tion."  (2) "In the second stage of his theory of truth (1965-68), Habermas develops systematically the point‑‑concisely stated in "Analytische Wissenschaftstheorie und Dialektik" (1963) and in "Gegen einen positivistisch halbierten Rationalismus" (1964)‑‑that we can form a rational consensus about the validity of basic statements only insofar as we share, underneath the diversity of theoretical per­spec­tives, a more fundamental pre-theoretic orientation. This pre-theo­retic orientation concerns the necessity for our species to control natural processes in order to preserve itself and to reproduce social life. . . . This alternative theory of knowledge‑‑which takes into ac­count the relation of knowledge to the life-world and to the interests underlying our cognitive enterprises‑‑is spelled out in Knowledge and Human Interests 1968."  (3) "The third stage of Habermas's theory of truth (1969-1973) can be characterized through the attempt, made for the first time in "Wahrheitstheorien," to spell out the notion of ratio­nal consensus. In fact, in order to avoid the relativistic implications of the pragmatist and conventionalist theories of truth, Habermas needs to specify the kind of consensus which can count as rational and as such warrant the assertibility of a statment. . . . Rational consensus is any consensus formed under the conditions which define the ideal speech situation.?"  (4) "In the fourth stage (1974- ) Habermas brings some internal adjustments to his theory, but adds little of strategic significance. The two most important issues that he addresses are the status of the ideal speech situation and the so-called evidential aspects of truth. The question 'How is the ideal speech situation to be under­stood?' has been a considerable source of concern for Habermas ever since he formulated his consensus theory of truth. In 1971 he charac­terized the ideal speech situtation as the prefiguration of a liberated form of life. The same formulation was used in his paper 'Wahrheits­theorien'. Most of Habermas's later remarks on the status of the ideal speech situation are devoted to retracting this infelicitous early formu­lation and to stressing an alternative conception, according to which the ideal speech situation is only an 'unavoidable presupposition of argumentation'" ("Consensus Theory of Truth," 40ff). Cf. discussion on ideal speech situation in section C of this chapter, and in sections B and C of chapter V.

          34. The fourth statement treating the ideal speech situa­tion, i.e. the formal canons for the argumentative vindication of truth claims, consti­tutes the essence of the "logic of theoretical discourse" and will be con­sidered in the next section of this chapter.

          35. Strawson distinguishes between a speech episode and the asserted propositional content of an assertion: "'My state­ment' may be either what I say or my saying of it. My saying something is certainly an episode. What I say is not. It is the latter, not the former we de­clare to be true" (P. F. Strawson, "Truth," Truth, ed. G. Pitcher [Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1964], 33); as quoted in McCarthy, Critical Theory, 300.

          36. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 300; Habermas, "Wahrheitstheo­rien," 219.

          37. Jürgen Habermas's Theorie der Gesellschaft oder Sozial­technologie? (Frankfurt, 1971), 206-07; as quoted in McCarthy, Criti­cal Theory, 295.

          38. Habermas, "Postscript," 180.

          39. Thompson does not agree with Habermas on this point: ". . . I wish to distinguish between the justification for the assertion of a state­ment, and the justification for the assertion that a statement is true. There may well be cases in which these two types of justification over­lap or even coincide, but it seems mistaken to assume that this must necessarily be so. One may assert, for example, that a person P is in pain, and one may justify this assertion on the basis of what P does; but the justification of the assertion that it is true that P is in pain may require an appeal to addi­tional evidence, such as how P feels at the time in question" (Critical Hermeneutics, 207). Haber­mas's response to Thompson consists in emphasizing that the state­ments which would be the object of discursive justification would be hypothetical statements and modal statements; i.e., those which are negative and counterfactual; see "A Reply to My Critics," 275.

          40. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 301; Habermas, "Wahrheitstheo­rien," 223.

          41. Habermas, "Postscript," 170.

          42. Habermas is not espousing here a correspondence theory of truth; his argument against correspondence follows.

          43. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 301; Habermas, "Wahrheitstheo­rien," 218.

          44. Habermas, "Postscript," 169; as quoted in McCarthy, Criti­cal Theory, 301. Habermas's rationale for rejecting a simple corre­spondence for the ex­pression "This ball is red" is provided by Ferrara: "In the first case, to establish the truth of 'This ball is red' appears a simple matter of com­paring our words with the world only because we are taking for granted a host of assumptions about colors, matter, perception, light and what not. Yet this non-problematical quality of the validity of statements such as 'This ball is red' quickly vanishes once we move from the level of the life-world to the level of scientif­ic inquiry. Then all tacit assump­tions which allow us to simply 'look at the world' can no longer be retained and the consensual dimension of truth comes again to the fore" ("Consensus Theory of Truth," 46). Notwithstanding, Ferrara argues for the role of some non-naive form of the correspondence theory within the context of scientific inquiry; see n. 78 below.

          45. Here it would probably be helpful to recall that for Haber­mas the constitution of objects of experience is the product of the "systematic interplay of sense reception, action and linguistic repre­sentation."

          46. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 302; Habermas, "Wahrheitstheo­rien," 216.

          47. Roderick indicates, "Habermas points out that the correspon­dence theory is based on the correct insight that our statements should agree with the facts and that these facts must be 'given' in perceptual experience. To escape the problems in the correspondence theory of truth in explaining the relationship between facts and the world, Habermas appeals to his theory of discourse. It is only in discourse, he claims, that 'facts' can be certified as 'facts' and this is 'always only at the time when the validity claim connected with statements becomes thematized'. In his view, both what we mean by 'facts' and what the 'facts' actually are can only be clarified by referring to discourse in which problematical validity claims are examined" (Foun­dations of Critical Theory, 84; quotes from Habermas, "Wahrheits­theorien," 216-17).

          48. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 302. With respect to the relation of corre­spondence that is said to obtain, McCarthy indicates, "The history of philosophy is replete with discarded attempts to characterize the latter in terms of picturing, mirroring, correlation, congruity, like­ness, and so forth; but "how can an idea be like anything that is not an idea?" (ibid., 303).

          49. Ibid.

          50. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 303; Habermas, "Wahrheitstheo­rien," 218.

          51. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 303.

          52. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 303; Habermas, "Wahrheitstheo­rien," 219.

          53. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 303; Habermas, "Wahrheitstheo­rien," 239.

          54. See sec. C below.

          55. McCarthy, Critical Theory, 304. Ferrara expresses the circu­larity and Habermas's response in these terms: "If the truth of a state­ment rests on rational consensus, and ratio­nal consensus is defined as agreement in the ideal speech situation, what grounds the validity of the claim that rational consensus is consen­sus achieved in the ideal speech situation?  Habermas would be cornered, according to this argument, between the risk of an infinite regress and the equally unde­sirable necessity to adopt some strong variety of tran­scendental argu­ment which could exempt the claim that only consensus reached in the ideal speech situation is rational from the need for being itself validat­ed in ideal discourse. . . . By showing through a pragmatic analysis that whoever engages in discourse but denies the implicit pre­supposi­tions of discourse specified in the notion of the ideal speech situation commits a performative contradiction, Habermas avoids the circularity without paying the price of having to claim an a priori or strong transcendental status for these presuppositions of discourse. In fact, his reconstructive hypotheses can be empirically falsified through the production of utterances which violate the implicit rules of discourse and yet in at least one culture or historical period are not regarded as performative contradictions" ("Consensus Theory of Truth, 47).

          56. Giddens, "Reason Without Revolution?," 115-16.

          57. Thompson, "Universal Pragmatics," 130.

          58. Ibid., 130-31; quotes from Habermas, "Postscript," 170 and 169 respectively. Ferrara agrees with Thompson: "Habermas purports to account for truth solely in terms of consensus but in fact cannot avoid implicit reference, which takes the form of tacit assumptions without which the consensual dimension of truth cannot make sense, to the no­tions of truth as consistency and truth as correspon­dence which he ex­plicitly rejects" ("Consensus Theory of Truth," 47-48).

          59. Habermas, "A Reply to My Critics," 273.

          60. Ibid., 275.

          61. The terminology used here to refer to the three formal crite­ria of discourse are the author's and not Habermas's.

          62. White, Recent Work of Jürgen Habermas, 56.

          63. Ferrara adds, "What is it about the ideal speech situation that guarantees that the best argument and only the best argument will pre­vail. No answer to these questions can be found for the simple reason that they do not represent sensible questions for Habermas's theory of truth. The ideal speech situation does not contribute to the correct selec­tion of the best argument among several competing ones, but rather defines the one deemed the best as the argument to which it is rational to consent" (Ferrara, "Consensus Theory of Truth," 52 [italics mine]).

          64. Thompson, Critical Hermeneutics, 87; Habermas, "Wahrheitstheorien," 214.

          65. Thompson, Critical Hermeneutics, 87.

          66. Thompson, Critical Hermeneutics, 88; Habermas, "Wahr­heitstheorien," 241.

          67. Thompson, Critical Hermeneutics, 89; Habermas, "Wahr­heitstheorien," 243.

          68. Cf. Stephen Toulmin, The Uses of Argument (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), 97-107, specifically "The Pattern of An Argument: Data and Warrants" and "Backing and Warrants."  Cf. Thompson, Critical Hermeneutics, 88f.

          69. Richard J. Bernstein, The Restructuring of Social and Politi­cal Theory (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976), 223-25.

          70. Alvin W. Gouldner, The Dialectic of Ideology and Technol­ogy: The Origins, Grammar and Future of Ideology (New York: Sea­bury Press, 1976), 144.

          71. Raymond Geuss, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 66-67.

          72. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 396.

          73. Roderick, Foundations of Critical Theory, 86.

          74. Held, Introduction to Critical Theory, 344; Habermas, "Wahrheitstheorien," 258.

          75. This, of course, is not to discount the possibility that at one time a sort of ultimate material criterion may be articulated that may be invoked in settling questions of truth in theoretical discourse.

          76. Thompson counters, ". . . it is difficult to see why subjects can be said genuinely to agree about something only when their agree­ment is induced by the force of the better argument, as opposed, for example, to the feeling of compas­sion or the commitment to a com­mon goal" ("Universal Prag­matics," 129). On this point Habermas is especial­ly illuminating: "The communicative prac­tice of everyday life is immersed in a sea of cultural taken-for-grantedness, that is, of consensual certainties . . . . As soon, however, as an element of this naively known, prereflexively present back­ground is transformed into the semantic content of an ut­terance, the certainties come under the conditions of criticisable knowledge; from then on disagreement con­cerning them can arise. Only when this disagreement is stubborn enough to provoke a discursive treatment of the matter at issue do we have a case concerning which I am claiming that a grounded agree­ment cannot be reached unless the participants in discourse suppose that they are convincing each other only by force of better arguments. Should one party make use of privileged access to weapons, wealth or standing, in order to wring agreement from another party through the prospect of sanctions or rewards, no one involved will be in doubt that the presuppositions of argumentation are no longer satisfied" ("A Reply to My Critics," 272-73).

          77. Habermas concedes, "I readily admit that the 'evide­ntial dimension' of the concept of truth is badly in need of further clarifi­cation" ("A Reply to My Critics," 275).

          78. Ferrara, "Consensus Theory of Truth," 48.

          79. Ferrara insists that Habermas's tendency to present his theory as antagonistic to correspondence approaches to truth, "creates the expec­ta­tion of a theory of truth completely free of correspondence elements. Then when the inevitable refer­ence to the correspondence aspects of truth is detected, in the form of tacit assumptions about competent participants or about the topic of discourse in the ideal speech situation, the presence of such reference appears as a flaw in Habermas's theory. No impres­sion of inconsistency would arise, in­stead, if Habermas allowed for the notion of consensus to be seen as complementing, rather than replacing, the notion of the correspon­dence of an assertion with reality" ("Consen­sus Theory of Truth," 54). Ferrara's point is well taken; however, Habermas's failure to stress correspondence theories is in function of his critical understanding of theory languages; see sec. B above.

          80. Ferrara, "Consensus Theory of Truth," 55; also see ch. I, sec. A.

          81. Jürgen Habermas, "Legitimation Problems in the Modern State," Communication and the Evolution of Society, 186.

 


NOTES TO CHAPTER IV


          1. Stephen K. White, Recent Work of Jürgen Habermas; see espe­cially chapter 3, "Justice and the Foundations of Com­municative Ethics," 48-68, and chapter 4, "Toward a Minimal Ethics and Orienta­tion for Political Theory," 69-89.

          2. Ibid., 48; quote from Jürgen Habermas, "Uber Moralität und Sittlichkeit‑‑Was macht eine Lebensform 'rational'?," in Rationalität, ed. Herbert Schnädelbach (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1984), 225. An­other trans­lation of this passage distinguishing between moral and evaluative ques­tions reads: ". . . the development of the moral point of view goes hand in hand with a differentiation within the practical into moral questions and evaluative questions. Moral ques­tions can in principle be decided rationally, i.e., in terms of justice or the generalizability of interests. Evaluative questions present themselves at the most general level as issues of the good life (or self-realization); they are accessible to rational discussion only within the unproblematic horizon of a concrete historical form of life or the conduct of an individ­ual life" (Jürgen Haber­mas, "Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philo­sophical Justification," Moral Consciousness and Communicative Ac­tion, trans. Christian Lenhardt & Shierry Weber Nicholsen [Cam­bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1990], 108; henceforth "Discourse Ethics"). See also Habermas, "A Reply to My Critics," 251.

          3. Habermas initiates his philosophical justification of discourse ethics by carefully defending the domain of moral phenomena in a manner that addresses the objec­tions of a "die-hard skeptic."  In this effort he uses the work of P. F. Strawson who "develops a linguistic phenomenology of ethical consciousness whose pur­pose is maieutically to open the eyes of the empiricist in his role as moral skep­tic to his own everyday moral intuitions" ("Discourse Ethics," 45; see also Strawson, Freedom and Resentment [London, 1974]).

          4. Habermas is careful to avoid incurring in the natural­is­tic fallacy as typi­cally occurs in ontologistic and intui­tive forms of ethics by em­phasizing the analo­gous--and never identical‑‑character of assert­oric and regulative speech acts. In this regard, he follows Toulmin in distinguishing between the predication of an assertoric statement, e.g., "This table is yellow," consisting in the adjectival predica­tion of the property "yellow" to a table; and the form of a regulative statement, e.g., "Which course of action is the right one?" The regulative state­ment does not assert a property but asks "whether there are any rea­son[s] for choosing one course of action rather than another."  This position, that views practical questions as admitting argumentative vindication in a manner analogous to truth claims, rejects the notion that the truth or validity of a statement is limited to descriptive propo­sitions only. See Toulmin, An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge, 1970), 28; cf. "Discourse Ethics," 53f.

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