Habermas sought to justify critical social theory through an epistemological reconstruction of positivism’s prelude.
Evidence
Knowledge and Human Interests had been written between 1964 and 1968, and was designed as a prolegomenon, to be followed by a two-volume analysis of the development of analytical philosophy. Habermas hoped by this means to find an approach to a new, non-idealistic theory of society. Knowledge and Human Interests reconstructed the intellectual prelude to recent positivism, and sought to justify critical social theory epistemologically. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2679
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies the project and intellectual function of Knowledge and Human Interests as an epistemological grounding of critical theory.
- XREF: Connects to the Frankfurt School’s positivist dispute and the theory-practice debates in the wider critical theory canon. — connects to: Critical social theory is inherently a hopeful project of transcending existing society. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1903; Habermas’s 1965 inaugural lecture launched a critical philosophy of science against positivism — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2431; Habermas naturalized Kant’s transcendental conditions into empirical species history. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2443 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Habermas naturalized Kant’s transcendental conditions into empirical species history.
#corroborates(0.85) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2443 - Habermas’s theory of human species formation synthesized a wide range of philosophical sources
#expands(0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2427 - Habermas grounds universalizing reason in the dialogical structure of communication.
#expands(0.75) — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 356