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History and Evolution: On the Changing Relation of Theory to Practice in the Work ofJürgen HabermasAuthor(s): Thomas McCarthySource: PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association,Vol. 1978, Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers (1978), pp. 397-423Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Philosophy of Science AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/192480 .

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History and Evolution: On the Changing Relation of Theory to Practice in the Work of JUrgen Habermas

Thomas McCarthy

Boston University

The relation of theory to practice has been a persistent concern of Marxist thought, so much so, in fact, that this type of acute self-consciousness might be regarded as one of its constitutive features. Thus in his introduction to the 1971 edition of Theory and Practice, J{lrgen Habermas offers the following characterization of critical theory:

The theory specifies the conditions under which a self-reflection of the species has become objectively possible. At the same time it names those to whom the theory is addressed, who can with its help gain enlightenment about themselves and their emancipatory role in the process of history. With this reflection on the context of its origin and this anticipation of the context of its application, the theory understands itself as a necessary catalytic moment of the very complex of social life that it analyses; and it analyzes this complex as an integral network of coercion, from the viewpoint of its possible transformation. The theory thus encompasses a dual relation of theory to practice; on the one hand, it investigates the constitutive historical constellation of interests to which the theory, in and through the very act of knowing, still belongs; on the other hand, it examines the historical complex of action on which the theory, as action-orienting, can have an influence. In the one case, we have the social practice which, as social synthesis, makes knowledge possible; in the other case, a political practice that consciously aims at overthrowing the existing systems of institutions. (TP: 1, 2).1

This dual relation of theory to practice can be used to demarcate the

PSA 1978, Volume 2, pp. 397-423 Copyright Q 1981 by the Philosophy of Science Association.



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critical from other modes of theorizing -- e.g.,from the objectivating attitude and the techtnological-predictive relation to practice of the physical sciences and theories modeled after them. But this will not be my task here. I would like instead to examine the different stages in the development of Habermas' conception of this relationship, from his initial sketches of "an empirical philosophy of history with a practical intent" to his recent discussions of the 'theory of social evolution." In doing so I shall be focusing on only one aspect ot the theory-practice problematic, namely on the methodological question of whether and how a relation to practice is built into the basic concepts, assumptions, and procedures of critical social theory. My aim is not only to contribute to the ongoing reception of Habermas' thought in this country; the different conceptions he has articulated are in themselves valuable contributions to our understanding of the foundations of social inquiry in general and of critical theory in particular. Moreover, the path of his development, the reasoning behind the shifts in his conception of critical theory, is itself instructive in regard to the internal constraints under which theory stands in its relation to practice.

1 Empirical Philosophy of History with Practical Intent

Let us begin with Habermas' earliest sustained discussion of the logic of critical theory, his wide-ranging review of Marxist literature: "Literaturbericht zur Philosophischen Diskussion um Marx und den Marxismus' (1957). As this is a critical review and not a systematic statement, one has to be careful in attributing specitic views to its author. Nevertheless, it is possible to discern a clear pattern in the critical remarks and to reconstruct, at least in broad outline, the position from which they emanate.

Critical theory is there characterized as an empirical philosophy of history with a practical or political intent. The term "philosophy" is not used in its traditonal sense to designate a mode of thought that provides its own foundations and realizes its own ideals. Following Marx, Habermas rejects this "illusion of autonomy". Philosophical reflection is not absolute; it originates in and expresses the very world that it takes as its object; and it must return to this world if the ideals inherent in it are to find more than a merely abstract realization. The radical self-reflection that is thus conscious of its his-- torical origins and practical mission is forced to renounce the claims ot First Philosophy; it takes the form of critique and serves as a "critical prologue to practice". "Philosophy begins with reflection on the situation in which it finds itself... . This consciousness becomes self-consciousness when philosophy critically recognizes itself to be an expression ot the situation that is to be overcome and henceforward places its critical practice in the service of a critique through practice. It knows that to the extent that it carries forward the realization of its immanent meaning, it is working toward transcending itself as philosophy." (LM: 288, 289).

Traditional philosophy of history pretended to be a contemplative



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view of the whole of history, future as well as past, and claimed to reveal its "meaning". This meaning was typically rendered in terms of a necessary progress towards some metaphysically guaranteed goal ascribed to a fictive "subject of history" -- God or Nature, Reason or Spirit. As Habermas interprets him, the young Marx rejected such con- structions: there is no purely theoretical guarantee of the outcome of history. The movement of history is contingent in regard to both the empirical conditions of change and the practical engagement of social actors. Its "meaning" is not a matter for metaphysical nypostatization but for practical projection; it is a meaning that men, in the knowledge of "objective conditions" can seek to give it. The exaggerated epistemic claims of traditional philosophy of history derived in part from its failure to appreciate the essentially practical nature of its prospective dimension. The projected future -- which conveys meaning on the past -- is not an object of contemplation or scientific predic- tion, but of practice.

Thus Kant's dictum, that we can prophesy the future only to the extent that we bring it about, was shared by the young Marx. But the practical reason in which he grounded the meaning of history was not Kant's pure practical reason in general -- the source of regulative ideals for moral action, in particular of the idea of a kingdom of ends; it was rather a historically rooted and practically engaged reason; its point of departure was the critical analysis of alienated labor, its goal was the revolutionary transformation of the concrete historical conditions that fostered it. "If the 'meaning' of history is not to remain hopelessly external to the real historical process, it cannot be derived from 'consciousness in general' as an idea of practical reason... . It must be taken rather from the structure of the historical-social situation itself... . Alienated labor, from which is derived the 'meaning' of overcoming alienation, does not precede all history as a general structure of consciousness or of the historicity of man; it is rather part of this particular historical situation." (LM: 311).

The experience of alienation and the practical interest in overcoming it are the moving force behind critical theory. This is not to be construed as an external relation; for this type of theory, the relation of theory to practice is constitutive. Its basic categories and assumptions reflect the interest in emancipation; they are formed with an eye to its practical realization. As Habermas puts it, "the critique of ideology and the doctrine of revolution combine to form a single piece, or better, a single circle, in which each reciprocally provides the presuppositions of the other... . The doctrine of revolution is for critique the doctrine of categories. What is can be grasped only with an eye to what is possible. An historical theory of what exists, if it is to be appropriate to its object, must be a theory of its transformation." (LM: 316).

This account of the relation of theory to practice in Marxism is not unfamiliar; but it is also not unproblematic. Renunciation of the idea



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of pure theory in favor o0 the primacy ot practical reason, where the latter is viewed as historically conditioned and situationally engaged, naturally gives rise to questions about the criteria of objectivity and truth. This is all the more the case for contemporary Marxists, who are confronted with the argument that the subsequent development of capitalism requires either the radical revision of Marxist theory or the admis- sion that it is not an empirical theory of society. Habermas is clearly concerned with this problem in his 1957 review; it takes the form there of the relation of critique to empirical social research, a problem which, as Habermas suggests toward the close of the essay, has never been adequately resolved within Marxism. But he does offer some general guidelines for dealing with it; they are to be found in his explication of the modifier "empirical as it functions in his characterization of critical theory as "an empirical philosophy of history with practical intent".

He insists that critique remain subject to the checks of empirical science.

The meaning of the actual historical process is revealed to the extent that we grasp a meaning, derived from 'practical reason of what should be and what -- measured against the conditions of the social situation and its history -- should be otherwise, and we theoretically test the conditions of its practical realization. This has nothing to do with blind decisionism. For in the theoretical-empirical testing we must interpret the actual course of history and the social forces of the present from the point of view of the realization of that meaning; it is here that we meet with success or failure. (LM: 310).

The presence or absence of the objective conditions of possibility of social transformation has to be empirically ascertained. As a consequence, "the reliance of critique on sciences -- on empirical, historical, sociological, and economic analyses -- is so essential that it can be refuted scientifically and, at the level of theory, only scientif i- cally." (LM: 289). But this does not mean that it can be adequately confirmed by science. Even if empirical analysis should show the conditions of possibility of social transformation to be present, lithe revolution itself requires in addition that this possibility be decisively grasped; it requires a practice that is aroused (not determined) by in- sight into the practical necessity of revolution.'" (LM: 289). Thus the conditions of adequacy to which critical theory is subject include both empirical-theoretical and practical-political components. Only if the latter are fulfilled can the truth of the theory be confirmed; but un- less the former are satisfied, the theory stands empirically refuted.

This empirical falsifiability is merely the other side of a require- ment that the data which critical theory works up be empirically secured. "So long as dialectic, like history itself, is contingent, it must let what it wants to know be furnished empirically, that is, with the help of the procedures of objectivating science." (LM: 321). The results of



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empirical social research become the material for a critical interpretation that measures the irrationality of existing social relations against a practically realizable concept of what they should and could be.

While this construction does provide a place for the controlling standards of empirical science within critical theory, it does so only at the cost of placing social critique and social science in a peculiar- ly unmediated relation. Habermas sometimes writes as if they were two separate modes of inquiry, one ascertaining the facts and the other critically interpreting them, subject of course to the constraint placed on such interpretation by these facts. Although the two lines of inquiry are brought into relation in critical theory, the relation seems to be external rather than internal. That is to say, the incorporation of empirical social science into critical social inquiry seems to leave the categories, assumptions, and procedures of the former as they were. Thus Habermas refers to the 'independent status of scientific analysis in the framework of a philosophical critique that is related to practice." (LM: 304). It is, he says, only the results of such analysis that are to be critically interpreted. (LM: 292). And he makes it clear that these are the results of "the procedures of objectivating science", the data of a "scientifically objectivated reality". (LM: 321).

This type of external relation between science and critique is difficult to reconcile with other aspects of Habermas' idea of a critical social theory,for example with the "primacy of the practical interest" in the sense that reliable knowledge of history and society is only possible from a practically interested point of view. This would seem to require an internal relation between science and critique, to require, that is, that the categories, assumptions, and procedures of empirical social research themselves reflect the practically interested standpoint of the social theorist. And in fact it is in this direction that Haber- mas' thoughts on the methodology of critical theory steadily move in the early sixties. Thus in his paper, "Between Philosophy and Science: Marxism as Critique", delivered in 1960 and published in revised and expanded form in 1963, he insists on the necessary tie of social knowledge to interest.

When in knowing we fictitiously place ourselves outside the complex of social life and confront it (as an object), we still remain part of it, in the very act of knowing, as subject and object in one... . Thus a prior understanding of the social totality, originating in interested experience, always enters into the fundamental concepts of the theoretical system... . Significantlv this is a prior understanding of how society as a totality is and, at the same time, ought to be; for the interested experience of a lived situation separates "is" from "ought" just as little as it dissects what it experiences into facts and norms. (TP: 210).

Habermas is fully aware of the problem of objectivity that this position raises. He speaks of the "embarrassment into which critique falls



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as a result of the loss of innocence of its scientific consciousness (TP: 241), and asks "to what source of experience can critique appeal if, as materialist, it renounces philosophy as First Philosophy and yet cannot be absorbed into the positive sciences?" (TP: 241). It must, he suggests, "open itself to the historically variable complex of experience of the concrete social life-world, prior to all methodological objecti- vation" (TP: 241); but if critique is to avoid becoming arbitrary and subjective as a result, "then the interests which guide knowledge must be brought under control, they must be legitimated as objective interests." (TP: 210).

It was only with Habermas' entrance into what has come to be called the "positivist dispute in German sociology" that these suggestions re- ceived any detailed methodological articulation. In his 1963 contribu- tion on "The Analytical Theory of Science and Dialectics", the question of the prior or pre-understanding (VorverstHndnis) that enters into concept and theory formation in the social sciences is given a decidedly hermeneutic twist. It is presented as a question that cannot be resolved by "any unmediated approach, whether apriorist or empiricist, but only in conjunction with the natural hermeneutics of the social life- world. In place of hypothetico-deductive systems of statements, we have the hermeneutic explication of meaning." (AD: 134).

Thus in 1963 Habermas already saw the inexpungable hermeneutic dimension of sociaL inquiry as the "Achilles heel of positivism in social science. He deployed it there as a kind of antithesis to the latter, a necessary step on the path to an adequate conception of social theory which would integrate both moments, hermeneutic Sinnverstehen and causal explanation, in a critical theory of society. (AD: 139, 140). This is basically the same strategy that he later (1967) follows in his lengthy review of literature on the logic and methodology of the social sciences, Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften. But there are also marked differences in the argument. To mention only one: whereas hermeneutic Verstehen was equated with the understanding of subjectively intended meaning in the earlier essay, it is later expanded, following Gadamer, to encompass interpretations of cultural tradition as well. This gives a different and, in many ways, methodologically more radical slant to the later argument. It is to this that I shall now turn.

2. Theoretically Generalized History

In Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, Habermas reviews the various research traditions in which it has been argued -- against empiricism and positivism -- that the "meaningfulness" of social phenomena calls for modes of inquiry that are essentially different from those which have proven successful in the natural sciences. Social actors typically have interpretations of their behavior; and these are not, as some neo- positivists would have it, simply "intervening processes located inside human organisms", which, while heuristically fruitful, can be dropped from the lawlike statements of behavioral regularities. The meanings to which social action is oriented are primarily intersubjective meanings constitutive of the social matrix within which individuals find them-



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selves and act: inherited concepts, beliefs, and values, institutionalized roles, social norms, and so on. As a result, access to, and the explanation of, social phenomena require that we somehow come to an understanding of the cultural and institutional setting within which the behavior to be explained has its significance. To put this point in another way, the social scientist must pursue the tasks of concept and theory formation in the light of the prior categorial and theoretical structuring of the object domain through the interpretive schemata of the actors themselves.

After critically examining a number of different accounts of what is involved in this -- ranging from neo-Kantian and Weberian to linguistic and phenomenological -- Habermas argues that the most adequate analysis of the logic of Verstehen, the one that best avoids subjectivistic, in- dividualistic, and descriptivistic biases, is the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Gadamer excludes from the start any account in purely psychological terms. Understanding is intrinsically bound up with interpretation; and the interpreter does not approach his subject as a tabula rasa, as an ideally neutral observer with a direct access to the 'given". Rather he brings with him a certain horizon of expectations -- of concepts and beliefs, practices and norms, standards and values, etc. -- that spring from his own social world. The subject is seen by him from perspectives opened by this horizon. But this means that there can be no question of the interpreter ridding himself of all preconceptions and prejudgments; this is a logical impossibility, the idea of an interpreter without a language. And it means that there is no such thing as the correct interpretation, in itself, as it were. If interpretation is a two-term relation, and if the hermeneutic situation of the interpreter is itself caught up in the movement of history, the notion of a final, once-and-for-all interpretation makes no sense. As Gadamer puts it: "Each time will have to understand the written tradition in its own way... . One understands otherwise if one understands at all." This is the basis of the philologist's experience of the inexhaustibility of the meaning of transmitted texts -- each age attempts to provide a "better" interpretation, and it does so from perspectives that were unavailable to previous ages.

This openness to reinterpretation applies to historical events as well, for they are reconstructed within narrative frameworks, and this involves relating them to other, later events. Thus their historical description becomes in the course of time richer than observation at the moment of their happening permits (e.g.,"The Thirty Years War began in 1618"); and their historical significance accrues to them in part through what happens later and from the point of view of those born later (e.g.,The Thirty Years War: a military happening that extended through three decades; the political collapse of the German empire; the postponement of capitalist development; the end of the Counter-Reforma- tion, etc.). With this in mind, A.C. Danto argues in his Analytical Philosophy of History that we could give a aefinitive account of the past only if, anticipating the future, we could provide a definitive philosophy of history that fixed the meaning of history as a whole -- and this he takes to be impossible. The essential incompleteness of



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historical descriptions, he goes on, entails an element of arbitrariness.

Completely to describe an event is to locate it in all the right stories, and this we cannot do. We cannot because we are temporally provincial with regard to the future. We cannot for the same reasons we cannot achieve a speculative philosophy of history. The complete description then presupposes a narrative organization, and narrative organization is something that we do. Not merely that, but the imposition of a narrative organization logically involves us with an inexpungable subjective factor. There is an element of sheer arbitrariness in it. We organize events relative to some events which we find significant in a sense not touched upon here. It is a sense of significance common, however, to all narratives and is determined by the topical interests of this human being or that. (Quoted in RTM: 349).

Habermas acknowledges the force of Danto's argument, but rejects his sceptical conclusions. If any account of the past implicitly presupposes a philosophy of history (to the extent, at least, that narrative organization involves judgments of significance), then every historian is, at least implicitly, a philosopher of history.

Every historian is in the role of the last historian. Hermeneutic deliberations about the inexhaustibility of the horizon of meaning and the new interpretations of future generations remain empty; they have no consequences for what the historian has to do. He does not at all organize his knowledge according to standards of pure theory. He cannot grasp anything that he can know historically independently of the framework of his own life practice. In this context the future exists only in a horizon of expectations. And these expectations hypothetically fill out the fragments of previous tradition to a universal-historical totality, in the light of which -- as a prior understanding -- every relevant event can in principle be described as completely as possible for the practically effective self-understanding of a social life-world. Implicitly every historian proceeds in the way Danto wishes to forbid to the philosopher of history. From the viewpoint of practice he anticipates end-states from which the multiciplicity of events is structured without force into action-orienting histories. Precisely the openness of history, that is, the situation of the actor, permits the hypothetical anticipation of history as a whole, without which the retrospective significance of the parts would not emerge. (RTM: 350).

Danto's arguments lead to scepticism only if we view the philosophy of history as a purely theoretical undertaking with no internal relation to practice -- there can be no closed theory of an essentially open future. If, however, we look at the philosophy of history from a practical point of view, we can move from sceptical resignation to an examination of conditions of possibility -- the closure that is impossible in theory is not only possible but necessary in practice. What Danto declares to be impossible is something every historian must do.



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The route through hermeneutics enables Habermas to work out in much more detail some of the suggestions regarding the relation of theory to practice that he had advanced earlier. The historically situated character of the basic concepts and assumptions of social theory, their roots in social practice, can now be explicated in terms of the constitutive Vorstruktur of interpretative understanding. By revealing the dependence of the latter on the socio-cultural "initial situation" of the interpreter, and pointing out the essentially historical nature of this situation, hermeneutics forces us to reflect on the relation of theory to history. Furthermore, the situational engagement of social inquiry, its anticipation of future practice, can be worked out in terms of the horizon of expectations from which the theorist projects the pro- visional closure of his system of reference. Finally, from the hermeneutic standpoint the self-reflective aspect of social inquiry becomes clearly visible. The interpreter cannot assume a purely subject/object relation to his own life-world; he is not a solitary, mediating ego for whom everything else -- including his language and culture -- are just so many cogitata; nor is he a transcendental consciousness outfitted with an invariant set of forms of intuition and categories of understanding. He is a concrete historical subject; and his concepts and beliefs, standards and ideals,rules and norms, issue from the very world that he wishes to understand. In this sense, the interpreter belongs to the object domain under investigation. There can be no question of theoretically dominating the historical-social world in an act of sover- eign independence. In attempting to understand it we are at the same time engaged in a process of self-understanding. We are reflectively becoming aware of elements that have been internalized in our own development as social agents. In this way, social inquiry is the continuation of a self-formative process; it is of practical significance for the "articulation of an action-orienting self-understanding".

On the other hand, adopting the hermeneutic perspective brings with it a number of fundamental problems. For one thing, it raises with in- creased sharpness the question of standards of objectivity in social inquiry. As we saw above, Habermas previously dealt with this question by appealing to the independent status of empirical social research, to the check provided by the results of "objectivating" social science. But now that the very processes of concept and theory formation in empirical social inquiry are regarded as dependent on the prior structuring of the social life-world by its members and on the interest situation of the theorist himself as a social actor, he can no longer take this tack. The question of objectivity reappears in a somewhat altered form: having embraced hermeneutics, how can the critical theorist escape the cultural and historical relativism it seems to entail? From the hermeneutic standpoint, interpretive understanding belongs to the very tradition that it develops through appropriating; having accepted this more or less transcendental argument for the necessity of participating in and continuing tradition, how can the critical theorist justify his disasso- ciation from and critique of tradition?

In Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften Habermas closes his discussion of Gadamer with an examination of the limits of the hermeneutic perspec-



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tive and an argument for the possibility and necessity of moving beyond it. I shall mention only the following points. The methodology of social inquiry must, he argues, be fashioned so as to permit the detection and critique of ideology; for world views can conceal and distort as well as reveal and express the real conditions of social life. In re- stricting social inquiry to the explications of shared meanings, hermeneutics tends to sublimate social processes entirely into cultural tradition. But if culture is viewed in relation to the social, political, and economic conditions of life, it loses the appearance of self-suffi- ciency. Changes in the mode of production, for example, or in the system of power relations, can themselves overturn accepted patterns of interpretation, "from below", as it were. A reduction of social inquiry to Sinnverstehen could be justified only on the idealist assumption that linguistically articulated consciousness determined the material conditions of life. (RTM: 356-361).

What is needed, Habermas argues, is a means of grasping the objective framework of social action so that cultural tradition can be viewed in relation to the other moments of the social system. With this in mind, he turns to an examination of Parsons' structural-functionalism. Par- sons does not ignore the meaningfulness of social action; but he does not limit its significance to what is intended by social agents or articulated in the cultural tradition. He conceives of the social system as a functional complex of institutions in which cultural patterns or values are made binding for action, that is, are incorporated into binding social norms and institutionalized values. In this framework it is possible to investigate the empirical connections between social norms which go beyond the subjective intentions of those acting under these norms. The significance of the objective connections within the system of social roles is latent; to grasp it, we must discover the functions that specific elements fulfill in the self-maintenance of the social system.

Habermas' criticisms of this approach center around its subordination of the hermeneutic and critical moments of social inquiry to the requirements of empirical-analytic science. Parsons short-circuits the hermeneutic dimension by, for example, adopting the simplifying assumption of a universal value schema; all value systems are constructed from the same set of basic value orientations (pattern variables) fundamental to all social action. Upon closer analysis, however, it becomes evident that the four pairs of alternative value orientations are tailored to an analysis of a particular historical process, the transformation from traditional to modern society. There is a pre-understanding of the historical situation incorporated in the very formation of these concepts. If the historically situated character of functional analysis is taken into account, Habermas argues, then the problems and methods of historical-hermeneutic reflection become unavoidable. (LSW: 179-180).

The critical dimension of social inquiry is also cut short in structural-functional analysis, for it does not permit a systematic separa- tion of the utopian, purposive-rational, and ideological components of values systems. According to Parsons, cultural values are mrade binding



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for social action in institutions; the latter integrate "value orientations" and "motivational forces", thus securing the normative validity of social roles. Habermas finds this construction overly harmonistic.

In the framework of action theory, motives for action are harmo- nized with institutional values, i.e. with the intersubjectively valid meaning of normatively binding behavioral expectations. Non-integrated motive forces which find no licensed opportunity for satisfaction in the role system are not analytically grasped. We may assume, however, that these repressed needs, which are not absorbed into social roles, transformed into motivations, and sanctioned, nevertheless have their interpretations. Either these interpretations "overshoot" the existing order, and, as utopian anticipations, signify a not yet successful group identity; or, transformed into ideologies, they serve projective substitute gratification as well as the justification of repres- sing authorities... . In relation to such criteria, a state of equilibrium would be determined according to whether the system of domination in a society realized the utopian elements and dissolved the ideological contents to the extent that the level of productive forces and technical progress made objectively possible. Of course society can then no longer be conceived as a system of self-preservation... . Rather, the meaning in relation to which the functionality of social processes is measured is now linked to the idea of communication free from domination. (LSW: 181-182).

As these last lines indicate, the incorporation of historico-hermeneutic and critical moments into the analysis of social systems bursts the functionalist framework, at least insofar as the latter is understood on the model of biology. The validity of functional analysis presupposes (among other things) that it is possible to specify empirically the boundaries of the system in question, the goal state which the system tends to achieve and maintain, the functional requirements for self- maintenance, and the alternative processes through which they can be met. This is the case above all in biology; an organism is easily demarcated from its environment and the state in which it maintains itself can be characterized in terms of necessary processes with specifiable toleran- ces. The same cannot be said for social systems. In the course of history, not only the elements but the "boundaries" and the "goal states" of societies undergo change; consequently their identity becomes blurred. A given modification might be regarded either as a learning process and regeneration of the original system, or as a process of disintegration and transformation into a new system. There is apparently no way to determine which description is correct independently of the interpretations of the members of the system.

Habermas concludes that if the analysis of social systems were to in- corporate the historico-hermeneutic and critical dimensions as suggested, it could no longer be understood as a form of strictly empirical-analytic science; it would have to be transformed into a historically oriented theory of society with a practical intent. The form such a theory would



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take is that of a "theoretically generalized history" or "general interpretation", which reflectively grasped the formative process of society as a whole, reconstructing the contemporary situation with a view not only to its past but to its practically anticipated future. It would be a critical theory of society.

In the place of the goal state of a self-regulated system we would have the anticipated end state of a formative process. A herme- neutically enlightened and historically oriented functionalism would not aim at a general theory in the sense of the strict empirical sciences, but at a general interpretation of the same kind as psychoanalysis... . For historically oriented functionalism does not aim at technically useful information; it is guided by an emancipatory cognitive interest that aims at reflection and de- mands enlightenment about one's formative process... . The species too constitutes itself in formative processes which are precip- itated in the structural change of social systems and which can be reflected, i.e. systematically narrated, from an anticipated point of view... . The end (of history) can only be anticipated, in a situation-bound way, in the exercise of reflection. Thus the general interpretive framework, however saturated with previous hermeneutic experiences and however corroborated in particular interpretations, retains a hypothetical element--the truth of an historically oriented functionalism is confirmed not technically, but only practically, in the successful continuation and completion of a self-formative process. (LSW: 306-308).

This obviously points ahead to the psychoanalytic model of the theory-practice relationship that is developed in Knowledge and Human Inter- ests (1968). Before moving on to this, however, let us review briefly the two versions already discussed. The original conception of an empirical philosophy of history with practical intent stressed the practical dimension of critical theory. Its theses were not first put forward theoretically and only subsequently translated into practice; rather the theory was guided at every step by its relation to practice -- it was a "critical prologue to practice". Thus the course of previous history, as well as the nature of the present situation were to be interpreted from the standpoint of a possible realization of a practical meaning, a meaning derived from a historically situated practical reason. In Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften the emphasis on the historico-practical dimension of critical theory is retained but somewhat qualified. On the one hand, examination of the hermeneutic dimension of social inquiry shows it to be unavoidably rooted in the investigator's historical situation, to be "tacitly connected to his action-related prior understanding" of that situation. Temporally provincial with regard to the future, the historically oriented critical theorist can interpret the past only from the viewpoint of end states anticipated from the horizon of his own practice. On the other hand, the situation-dependency of social inquiry is not absolute. The guiding preunderstanding of the critical theorist can be freed, at least in part, from the "dogmatics of his own socialization process" by constructing a general interpretive framework for social development. This would make it possible to develop a "theoreticallv"



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or "tsystematically generalized history" and thus to mitigate the radical- ly situational character of a purely hermeneutic approach. Nevertheless the intrinsic relation of theory to practice remains: critical theory is guided by an emancipatory cognitive interest; the systematic reconstruction can be confirmed only in practice, through the successful continuation and completion of self-formative processes.

While the frame of reference for Habermas' next extended discussion of the logic of critical theory is markedly different, his conclusions are similar. I shall not be able here even to mention all the aspects of the argument of Knowledge and Human Interests; and since this work has been available in English for some time now, that is perhaps unnec- essary. The clearest methodological statements appear in the sections on psychoanalysis, which Habermas there takes to be "the only tangible example of a science incorporating methodical self-reflection", and thus as providing clues to the structure of critical social theory. Inter- estingly, these clues refer primarily to the ideas of a general interpretive schema and a theoretically generalized history, with which the argument of Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften concluded.

Interpreting Freud's work as a theory of systematically distorted communication, Habermas points out the ways in which it goes beyond a purely verstehenden explication of meaning. In contrast to normal hermeneutics, psychoanalytic interpretation deals with "texts" that both express and conceal their "author's" self-deceptions. The "depth-hermeneutics" that Freud developed to assist in the reflective reappropria- tion of these lost portions of the self clearly relies on theoretical assumptions, among them a general interpretation of early-childhood patterns of interaction, coordinated with a phase-specific model of personality formation. On the other hand, the application of this "systematically generalized history" of psychodynamic development has an unavoidable hermeneutic component. Its concepts are schematic or type concepts that have to be translated into individuated situations; it is applied in constructing life histories in which subjects can recognize themselves and their world. In contrast to ordinary philological hermeneutics, however, this reconstruction of individual life histories requires a peculiar combination of interpretive understanding and causal explanation. "We cannot 'understand' the 'what' -- the semantic content of the systematically distorted expression -- without at the same time 'explaining' the 'why' -- the origin of the systematic distortion itself." The explanatory hypotheses refer not to the "causality of nature" but, so to speak, to the "causality of fate", i.e., to the workings of repressed motives and other "symbolic contents". The postulated causal connections do not represent an invariance of natural laws but an invariance of life history which operates through "the symbolic means of the mind" and thus can be analytically dissolved.

Other methodological peculiarities of Freud's general theory of psycho-dynamic development concern the type of corroboration appropriate to a systematically generalized history of this type. The assumptions it contains -- about interaction patterns between the child and his primary reference persons, about corresponding conflicts and forms of coping



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with conflict, about the personality structures that result, and so on -- serve as a "tnarrative foil" for the reconstruction of individual life histories. They are developed as the restult of numerous and repeated clinical experiences and are correspondingly subject to empirical corroboration. But this is of a distinctive sort; the physician's attempt to combine the fragmentary information obtained in the analytic dialogue and to offer a hypothetical reconstruction of the patient's life history essentially anticipates the latter's own reflective appropriation of this story. The corroboration of a general interpretation thus depends in the last analysis on the successful continuation of processes of self-formation: "only the context of the self-formative process as a whole has confirming and falsifying power." (KHI: 269).

Using these clues, Habermas advances a conception of social theory that combines empirical and philosophical, systematic and historical, theoretical and practical elements. Critical theory undertakes a reconstruction of the history of the species as a reflective appropriation of its self-formative process. While this reconstruction takes place within an empirically supported, general theoretical framework, it is at the same time practically interested and historically rooted. Critical of ideology, it analyzes the contemporary situation from the anticipated standpoint of realizing, to the extent possible at the given stage of sociAl development, a form of social organization based on universal, undistorted communication.

The logic of the movement of reflection, which derives its thrust from developments in the system of social labor... is the logic of trial and error transposed to the level of world history... . At every stage, development of the forces of production produces the objective possibility of mitigating the force of the institutional framework and "replacing the affective basis of (man's) obed- ience to civilization by a rational one." Every step on the road to realizing an idea beset by the contradiction of violently distorted communication is marked by a transformation of the institutional framework and the destruction of an ideology. The goal is "providing a rational basis for the precepts of civilization": in other words, an organization of social relations according to the principle that the validity of every norm of political consequence be made dependent on a consensus arrived at in communication free from domination... . The ideas of the Enlightenment stem from the store of historically transmitted illusions. Hence we must comprehend the actions of enlightenment as the attempt to test the limits of the realizability of the utopian content of cultural tradition under given conditions. (KHI: 283-284).

3. Theory of Social Evolution

In a later (1971) discussion of the suitability of psychoanalysis as a model for critical theory, Habermas distinguishes three aspects of the theory-practice problematic.



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The mediation of theory and practice can be clarified only if we begin by distinguishing three functions, which are measured in terms of different criteria: the formation and extension of critical theorems which can stand up to scientific discourse; the organization of processes of enlightenment in which such theorems are applied and can be tested in a unique manner by the initiation of processes of reflection in particular target groups; and finally the selection of appropriate strategies, the solution of tactical questions, and the conduct of the political struggle. On the first level, the aim is true statements; on the second, authentic insights; and on the third, prudent deci- sions. Because in the tradition of the European working-class movement all three at once were assigned to the party organization, specific differences have become obscured. (TP: 32).

It is only at the level of organizing processes of enlightenment, he con- tinues, that the therapeutic interaction between analyst and patient may serve as a suitable analogue of the relation of the social critic to his target groups. "The theory serves primarily to enlighten those to whom it is addressed about the position they occupy in an antagonistic social system and about the interests of which they could become conscious -- as objectively their own -- in this situation. Only to the extent that organized enlightenment and counsel lead to the target group's recognizing itself in the interpretations offered does the analytically proposed interpretation become an actual consciousness, and the objectively at- tributed interest situation become the real interest of a group capable of action." (TP: 32).

It would not be difficult to raise problems with this psychoanalytic model of the relation of the critical theorist to the oppressed groups that are to be enlightened about their true situations and interests -- problems concerning the social-political analogues of such fundamental elements of the analytic situation as resistance and transference, or the artificial suspension of the pressures of life. But from our epis- temological-methodological perspective, this is not the most important aspect of Habermas' threefold division. The characterization of the first level, that of theory formation proper, in terms of the normal model of scientific discourse aimed at generating true statements appears to be a significant retreat from the central ideas of Knowledge and Hu- man Interests. The characterization there of critical theory as intrinsically guided by an interest in human emancipation was one moment of the general thesis that all forms of knowledge are bound, with quasi- transcendental necessity, to interest structures rooted in the fundamental conditions of the reproduction of human life. As he had already made clear in his inaugural lecture at Frankfurt University in 1965, Habermas intended this as a direct attack on the "illusion of pure theory" behind both classical philosophy and modern scientism. His threefold distinction of functions, however, appears now to acknowledge the legitimacy of just such a purely theoretical attitude; the relation to political practice, to the organization of enlightenment, appears to be subsequent to, rather than constitutive of, critical theory. If this is more than mere appearance, we are obviously faced with a major shift



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in his conception of the theory-practice relationship: in his earliest writings, critical theory was distinguished from traditional theory precisely by its constitutive relation to social and political practice; in the writings of the late sixties, the very idea of pure theory, critical or traditional, was called into question by the thesis of the cognitive interests underlying all knowledge -- critical social theory was distinguished from other modes of inquiry not in virtue of being interest-lad- en at all, but by its specific interest in emancipation. The passages we are now considering appear to rehabilitate the idea of pure theory, not only in general, but precisely in connection with critical theory.

Habermas' writings since about 1970 do indeed testify to a shift in a more strongly theoretical direction. The reasons behind this are complex and cannot be adequately examined here. I shall mention only a few of the problems to which the theory of cognitive interests gave rise, problems deriving from a fundamental ambiguity in the concept of self- reflection that underlies the argument of Knowledge and Human Interests. Habermas there attempts to revive and radicalize the idea of a critique of knowledge. In this context "self-reflection" means reflection on the universal and necessary conditions of knowledge. It is in this sense that Peirce advanced the "self-reflection of the natural sciences" and Dilthey the "self-reflection of the cultural sciences". On the other hand, taking Marx and Freud as his points of departure, he attempts to develop the idea of a critique of ideology. In this context "self-reflection" means bringing to consciousness "those determinants of a self- formative process that ideologically determine a contemporary practice and world view." It is in this sense that Marx lifted the ideological veil from the relations of production in capitalist society, and that Freudian psychoanalysis "reveals the genetically important phases of life history to a memory that was previously blocked." These two notions of self-reflection are not identical: in the one case we have to do with reflection on the general presuppositions and conditions of valid knowledge and action; in the other, with reflection on the specific formative history of a particular (individual or group) subject. In Knowledge and Human Interests it is Fichte and Hegel that provide the bridge from Kant's transcendental critique of reason to the Marxian and Freudian critique of false-consciousness. Fichte supplies the notion of a practical interest in autonomy operative within reason itself, which is incorporated by Hegel into a conception of phenomenological self-reflection on the self-formative process of the individual and the species. The latter is both a reflection on the conditions of knowledge and a critical-reflective dissolution of rigidified forms of life: "since at every stage it strikes at the dogmatic character of both a world-view and a form of life, the cognitive process coincides with a self-formative process."

Although Habermas' argument clearly relies on this twofold meaning of "reflection", it is not at all clear that this is consistent with his rejection of idealism. On materialist presuppositions, the interest in emancipation extends to the practical transformation of established socio-economic conditions. And it is obvious that this sort of political practice cannot be reduced to self-reflection. The implications for



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theory are no less problematic. The identification of reason with critical self-reflection jeopardizes its claim to universality. In an idealist framework, the convergence of reason and freedom does not necessarily entail a particularizing of reason. In a materialist framework, however, the identification of reason with reflection on "those determinants of a self-formative process which ideologically determine a contemporary practice and world view" seems to entail a specification of reason in terms of particular content and particular goals. And this raises obvious problems in regard to standards of objectivity in the critique of ideology.

In his 1973 "Postscript to Knowledge and Human Interests", Habermas acknowledges the fundamental ambiguity underlying the argument of that book.

The studies I published in Knowledge and Human Interests suffer from the lack of a precise distinction... between reconstruction and "self-reflection" in a critical sense. It occurred to me only after completing the book that the traditional use of the term "reflection" which goes back to German Idealism covers (and confuses) two things: on the one hand, it denotes reflection upon the conditions of the capacities of a knowing, speak- ing, and acting subject as such; on the other hand, it denotes reflection upon unconsciously produced constraints to which a determinate subject (or a determinate group of subjects, or a determinate species of subjects) succumbs in its process of self-formation. In Kant and his successors, the first type of reflection took the form of a search for the transcendental ground of possible theoretical knowledge (and moral conduct)... In the meantime, this mode of reflection has also taken the shape of a rational reconstruction of generative rules and cognitive schemata. (PKHI: 182).

There are, Habermas now holds, important differences between critical self-reflection and rational reconstruction. Whereas critique is brought to bear on something particular (i.e.,the particular life history of a particular individual or group), reconstructions deal with anonymous rule systems that any subject may follow insofar as he has acquired the requisite competence. Whereas critical self-reflection makes unconscious elements conscious in a way that has practical consequences (i.e.,it affects the determinants of false consciousness and initiates a reorganization of action-orienting self-understanding), reconstructions render explicit a "know-how" (i.e.,the intuitive knowledge acquired with rule competence) without involving practical consequences of this sort. Critique remains bound to "the system of action and experience" in a way that reconstruction does not. Since it embraces the particulars of a self-formative process and aims at transforming specific determinants of an ideologically distorted practice and world view, it is a historically situated reflection. In contrast, reconstructions of the universal conditions of rational speech and action are not context-bound in this way. They represent the "purest" form of theoretical knowledge, for they issue neither from a technical interest in control



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of objectified processes, nor from a practical interest in securing action-oriented self-understanding, nor directly from an emancipatory interest in dissolving pseudo-objectivities. Rather they are "first gen- erated within a reflexive attitude', that is, from a concern to render explicit what is always implicitly presupposed in thought, speech, and action. (TP: 24). While the two modes of reflection are thus distinct, they are not, Habermas maintains, unconnected. It is precisely reflection in the sense of rational reconstruction that provides the normative-theoretical basis for reflection in the critical sense: "the critical sciences such as psychoanalysis and social theory also depend on being able to reconstruct successfully general rules of competence. To give an example, a universal pragmatics capable of understanding the conditions that make linguistic communication at all possible has to be the theoretical basis for explaining systematically distorted communication and deviant processes of socialization." (PKHI: 184).

The course of Habermas' debate with Gadamer led in the same direction. As I indicated above, after drawing on hermeneutics to explicate the historicically situated character of social inquiry, the problem for Habermas was to avoid the relativistic implications of a purely hermeneutic approach. With this in mind he called for procedures designed to grasp the objective framework of social action and the conditions of its historical development. In response to this, Gadamer pointed out that once Habermas had acknowledged the inexpungable hermeneutic dimension of concept and theory formation in the social sciences, it was no longer open to him to exempt the investigation of historical, social, political, and economic conditions from its reach -- as if these too were not sym- bolically structured and open to interpretation. In short, the distinction between subjectively intended and culturally transmitted meanings on the one hand, and the "objective framework" of social action on the other, cannot be construed as referring to two distinct spheres of reality, one of meanings, the other of facts, such that access to the latter is completely independent of a grasp of the former. And if this is so, why is social inquiry any less context-dependent and situation-bound than other forms of interpretation? And how can the critique of ideology justify its own assumed distance from the socio-cultural conditions which it analyzes? How can it ground the ideas of truth, freedom, and justice against which it measures them?

These arguments go to the very heart of Habermas' position, precisely because they issue from a perspective that has much in common with his own--including recognition of language as a "universal medium" of social life, awareness of the historicity of human existence and the historical rootedness of human thought, and acknowledgement of the practical moment intrinsic to all understanding of meaning. But one can, he argues, ac- cept these insights without accepting Gadamer's methodological conclusions. From a methodological point of view, the principal issue is whether or not hermeneutic Sinnverstehen is or can be the sole and adequate basis of social inquiry. Accordingly, in his reply to Gadamer, Habermas stresses the possibility of theoretically grounded analyses of meaningful phenomena which make use of systematically generalized knowledge beyond that available to the competent speaker as such, and which



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are, consequently, less context-dependent than purely hermeneutic explications of meaning. In other words, the preunderstanding that functions in any attempt to understand meaning need not be simply a reflection of the socio-cultural situation of the interpreter; it can be theoretically grounded and methodologically secured. What he has in mind here are rational reconstructions of the universal structures of thought, speech, and action, as well as of the patterns and conditions of their development. Thus, taking psychoanalysis as an example, he argues that the assumptions underlying Freud's depth-hermeneutics are only partly explicit in his own writings. Their full and consistent development would require a general theory of normal (undistorted) communication, a developmental account of the acquisition of the competence to communicate, and an account of the conditions under which systematic distortions in communication arise. (UH: 138-139).

Some years before, Habermas had already advanced the general view that the normative-theoretical foundations of critical theory would have to be found in that distinctive and pervasive medium of life at the human level: language. In his inaugural lecture at Frankfurt University, he had declared: "what raises us out of nature is the only thing whose nature we can know: language. Through its structure autonomy and responsibility are posited for us. Our first sentence expresses unequiv- ocally the intention of universal and unconstrained consensus. Auto- nomy and responsibility together (MUndigkeit) comprise the only idea we possess a priori in the sense of the philosophical tradition." (KHI: 314). Of course, at that time this was little more than a declaration-- that the normative-theoretical underpinnings of critical theory were badly in need of renewal, that neither dialectical materialism nor a retreat to pure philosophy was adequate to this task, that earlier attempts by members of the Frankfurt School to articulate and ground a conception of rationality that essentially transcended the confines of "instrumental thought" had not in the end succeeded, and that the solution was to be found in a theory of language.

It is only with the formulation of the basic ideas of his communication theory that this declaration has assumed the more definite form of a research program. It might best be described as having three levels: the ground level consists of a general theory of communication or, as Habermas calls it, a universal pragmatics; at the next level this theory serves as the foundation for a general theory of socialization in the form of a theory of the acquisition of communicative competence; finally, at the highest level, which builds on those below it, he outlines a theory of social evolution which he views as a reconstruction of historical materialism. I cannot provide even the briefest sketch of this program here. But I would like to say a few words about the rationale behind each of the subprograms and to indicate the most important consequences for Habermast conception of the theory-practice relationship.

a. In contrast to the usual abstraction of logical and linguistic analysis from the pragmatic features of language, the idea of a universal pragmatics rests on the contention that not only phonetic, syntac- tic, and semantic features of sentences, but also certain pragmatic



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features of utterances, not only language but speech, not only linguistic competence but communicative competence, admit of rational recon-* struction. The competence of the ideal speaker must be regarded as including not only the ability to produce and understand grammatical sentences, but also the ability to establish and understand those modes of communication and connections with the world through which speech becomes possible. Pragmatic rules for situating sentences in speech acts concern the relations to reality that accrue to a grammatically well- formed sentence in being properly uttered; they are general rules for arranging the elements of speech situations within a coordinate system formed by the external world of objects and events (about which one can make true or false statements), the inner world of my own experiences (which can be expressed sincerely or insincerely, truthfully or deceit- fully), and the social life-world of shared values and norms (which an act can either fit or fail to fit and which are themselves either right, i.e.,legitimate or justifiable, or wrong). From this pragmatic point of view, it becomes clear that speech necessarily (even if often only implicitly) involves the raising, recognizing, and redeeming of "validity claims", claims to the truth of statements, the sincerity of express- ions, and the rightness of actions and norms. (UP).

In a series of arguments which I cannot here reproduce, Habermas attempts to show that truth and rightness claims require discursive justification and thus have to be analyzed in terms of the possibility of rational consensus; that a consensus is rationally motivated only if it is a result of the force of the arguments advanced and not of acciden- tal or systematic constraints on communication; that this absence from constraint obtains when the pragmatic structure of communication is such that there is an effective equality of opportunity for the participants to assume dialogue roles; and finally that the requirements for this "ideal speech situation" are connected with conditions for an ideal or pure form of interaction. The outcome of this chain of reasoning is that the idea of the good and just life from which critical theory takes its start is inherent in the notions of truth and rightness and as such is anticipated in every act of speech. Thus critique need be neither arbitrary nor totally context-dependent; its guiding principles are built into the very structure of discourse, they are grounded in the "fundamental norms of rational speech." (WT).

b. It was a tenet of the earlier Frankfurt school that basic psychological concepts had to be integrated with basic socio-economic concepts because the perspectives of an autonomous self and an emancipated society were essentially interdependent. Habermas too starts from the in- terdependence of structures of personality and social structures, of forms of identity and forms of social integration. But the socio-psychological framework he deploys involves much more than a readaptation of Freudian psychoanalysis; it is an integrated model of ego or self-development which draws on developmental studies in a number of areas, ranging from psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology to social interac- tionism and analytic ego psychology. The task as he sees it is to work out a unified framework in which the different strands of human development are not only analytically distinguished, but their interconnections



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are systematically taken into account. Pursuing this task, Habermas construes ego development as the acquisition in stages of linguistic, cognitive, and interactive competences: the ego develops in and through the integration of one's "inner nature" into universal structures of language, thought, and action. Ontogenesis is thus, at least potential- ly and ideally, a process of growing autonomy in relation to different regions of reality -- internal, external, and social. These universal competences and their associated modes of autonomy, taken together and in their coherence, form the core of a comprehensive conception of rationality, one that contains but is irreducible to the "instrumental reason" for which exclusive validity has so often been claimed. In this way, the normative conception of MUndigkeit, from which critical theory, borrowing from German Idealism, took its start, can be grounded in a rational reconstruction of universal, species-wide competences that are acquired in a hierarchical series of stages. (MD, EI).

c. Habermas t reconstruction of historical materialism is the end- product of his long-standing distinction between labor and interaction, his insistence that rationalization processes in the sphere of communicative action are neither identical with nor an immediate consequence of rationalization processes in the sphere of production. It turns on the thesis that developments in the forms of social integration have their own logic: "I am convinced that normative structures do not simply follow the path of development of reproductive processes...but have an internal history." Habermast strategy in working out the logic of this development is to employ structural comparisons with the developmental logics constructed for ontogenetic processes in the framework of his theory of communicative competence. This is of course a new version of an old strategy, and there is no lack of historical evidence for the pitfalls involved in drawing such parallels. Nevertheless, Habermas maintains, under certain restrictions one can indeed find "homologous structures of consciousness" in individual and social development -- homologies between rationality structures in ego development and in the evolution of world views, between the development of ego and group (or collective) identities, between the development of moral consciousness and the evolution of moral and legal representations.

Although he wants to argue for the existence of hierarchical structural patterns in social evolution, Habermas is not proposing that we read human history as an internal unfolding of Geist. Thus he repeated- ly emphasizes the difference between the logic of the development of normative structures and the dynamics of this development. The former merely circumscribes the range of variations in which increasingly complex structural formations can take shape; whether new structures arise, and if so, when and where,depend on contingent boundary conditions and empirical learning processes.

The analysis of the dynamics of development is "materialist" insofar as it refers to crisis-producing system problems in the sphere of production and reproduction. It remains "historically oriented" insofar as it must look for the causes of evolutionary changes in the whole breadth of contingent circumstances



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under which a) new structures are acquired in individual consciousness and transposed into world views; under which b) system problems that overburden the adaptive capacity of a society arise, under which c) the institutional embodiment of new rationality structures can be tried and stabilized; and under which d) the new ranges of possibility for mobilizing resources are utilized. Only after rationalization processes (which require a historical and materialist explanation) have taken place, can developmental patterns for the normative structures of society be given. These internal logics bear witness to the obstinacy, and to this extent the internal history, of the mind. The procedures of rational reconstruction have their place here. My conjecture is that cognitive and interactive developments merely exhaust the logical range of possible structural formations that already emerged with the natural-historical innovation of linguistically established intersubjectivity at the threshold to the socio-cultural form of life. (RImI: 37-38).

Thus at the center of Habermas' theory of social evolution is a conception of social learning as the institutional embodiment of increasingly complex and encompassing structures of rationality. In one sense it is only individuals who learn; but t:heir ability to learn provides a "resource" that can be drawn upon in thie formation of new social structures. If the results of individual leXarning processes find their way into cultural tradition, they comprise a kind of cognitive potential that can be called upon in social moveTlents when unsolvable system problems require a transformation of the baLsic forms of social integration. Whether and how problems arise that o\Erload the structurally limited adaptive capacity of a society is conti,ngent; whether the necessary but not yet institutionalized structures cfw rationality are available, whether social movements arise to meet the challenge by drawing on this potential, whether they succeed in institutionalizing new forms of social integration, and whether these institutions can be stabilized, are also dependent on contingent circumstances. Nevertheless, there is a systematically reconstructible pattern to the development of normative structures, a developmental logic; and the end-stage of this logic, the telos of human development, is precisely that type of unconstrained intersubjectivity "anticipated in every act of speech".

From the standpoint of our concern with Habermas' conception of the theory-practice relationship, the most striking feature of his theory of social evolution is just that he understands it as a theory in the strict sense: "The name 'theory of social evolution' already signals the claim that general hypotheses are put forward and tested in a discursive attitude." (RHM: 246). This is a decidedly different claim than that originally associated with the "practical hypotheses" of an empirical philosophy of history with political intent. For one thing, it reduces the historical rootedness of evolutionary theory to a general dependency on the general state of development of mankind: "With Marx, I see in the anatomy of man a key to the anatomy of the ape, i.e., in the categories of the most developed formation of society at a given time a pattern



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of structures whose developmental logic can be traced back through past formations." (TRHM: 1). Nevertheless, within these limits, reconstructive hypotheses lay claim to universal validity, i.e.,to a validity independent of historico-hermeneutic standpoint. "For the development of a competence... there is only one correct theory; whether a presently accepted theory is replaced by a better one does not depend on the process of events and on changed retrospectives." (RHM: 217). It depends, that is, on empirical-theoretical considerations.

If this were a complete picture of Habermas' present position, it would clearly mark the abandonment of his original views on the unity of theory and practice. But critical theory does not exhaust itself in the construction of a theory of social evolution (the reconstruction of historical materialism); its ultimate aim remains an historically oriented analysis of contemporary society with a practical intent (a reconstruction of the critique of capitalist society). And here there is a basic asymmetry. Just as Marx held that it was only with the development of "abstract labor" in capitalism that "labor" first became recognizable as a universal determination of social systems, Habermas holds that "developmental sequences can be reconstructed only for those competences which are objectively accessible to us at the contemporary level of development." (RHM: 248). As a consequence, "the validity claim of evolutionary theory is restricted to statements about learning processes that can be retrospectively known." (REM: 249). In comparison to the retrospective explication of past developments, the analysis of contemporary society is, at least implicitly, prospective and thus harbors an essentially practical moment.

Evolutionary statements about contemporary social formations have an immediately practical reference insofar as they serve to diag- nose developmental problems. The restriction to retrospective explanations of historical material is dropped in favor of a retrospective projected from the perspective of action; the diag- nostician of the present adopts the fictive standpoint of an evolutionary explanation of a future past... . As a rule, Marxist explanations of developed capitalism also share this asymmetric position of the theoretician who analyzes developmental problems of the contemporary social system with a view to structural pos- sibilities that are not yet (and perhaps never will be) institutionalized. It can be seen with this that the application of evolutionary theories to the present makes sense only in the framework of a discursive formation of the will, i.e. in a practical argumentation dealing with reasons why particular actors in particular situations ought to choose particular strategies of action over others. (REM: 250).

Since we cannot know in advance the course of future development -- whether existing structural problems will lead to a regression, disintegration, or self-annihilation of contemporary society, or whether they will be successfully resolved in a new social formation, and which particular, institutional form this will take -- we can only project the future practically, engage ourselves for it politically, and analyze the



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present -- in a prospective retrospective -- from vantage points opened by practice. Thus the analysis of existing constellations of interest involves a hypothetico-practical moment.

A social theory critical of ideology can identify the normative force built into the institutional system of a society only if it starts from the model of the suppression of generalizable interests and compares the normative structures existing at a given time with the hypothetical state of a system of norms formed, ceteris paribus, discursively... . How would the members of a social system, at a given stage in the development of productive forces, have collectively and bindingly interpreted their needs, and which norrms would they have accepted as justified, if they could and would have decided on the organization of social inter- course through discursive formation of the will, with adequate knowledge of the limiting conditions and functional imperatives of their society... . The social scientist can only hypothetically project this ascription of interests; indeed a direct confirmation of this hypothesis would be possible only in the form of a practical discourse among the very individuals or groups involved. An indirect confirmation on the basis of observable conflicts is possible to the extent that the ascribed interest positions can be connected with predictions about conflict motivations. (LC: 113-113).

Our provinciality with respect to the future means that we cannot adopt a purely theoretical attitude toward it; we are forced to practically anticipate it. This places the critical theorist in the role of an ad- vocate for a more human society, with all the situation-dependency, un- certainty and risk that this imDlies. While the theories of communication, ego development, and social evolution provide a normative-theoretical basis for social critique, they do not provide a standpoint outside of history from which the theorist might observe the present moving in- exorably toward a determinate future. It remains as true after their construction as before that "in a process of enlightenment there can be only participants." (TP: 40).

All the same, Habermas' conception of the relation of theory to practice has changed in fundamental ways. The original idea of analyzing society from the viewpoint of realizing a practically possible future, and the historically rooted and situationally engaged character of such analysis, are now retained only for the critique of contemporary society. Social theory in the proper sense -- based now on the rational reconstruction of universal structures of thought, speech, and action, and of the patterns of their development in the individual and in society -- is no longer viewed as having an "immediately practical reference". Al- though reconstructive science differs in important respects from empirical-analytic science, it remains "pure theory": its hypotheses are put forward and tested "in a discursive attitude"; they are no longer the "practical hypotheses" of an empirical philosophy of history with political intent. Moreover, the distinction of social theory from the critique of contemporary society does not leave the latter untouched. Although



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critique remains projective and practical, the general categories and assumptions it deploys are those which have proved themselves in the theory of social evolution. Thus even here the situation-dependency of concept and theory formation is sharply reduced. In short, Habermas' thoughts on the methodology of critical theory have moved steadily toward the idea of a new science of society. In this respect, and allow- ing for the shift of focus from material reproduction to normative structures, his own development parallels that of Marx.

Note

Throughout the paper only references to works of Habermas will be made. The references in the text will be by an abbreviation combining the first letters of major words in title. The list of references correlates the abbreviations and full titles. When an English translation of the entire text is available the English title is used to derive the abbreviation, otherwise the German title is used.



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References

All references are to works of JUrgen Habermas

[AD] "The Analytical Theory of Science and Dialectics." In The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology. (trans.) G. Adey and D. Frisby. New York: Harper, 1976. Pages 131-162. (Originally published as "Analytische Wissenschaftstheorie und Dialektik. Ein Nachtrag zur Kontroverse Zwischen Popper and Adorno". In Zeuwnisse Theodor W. Adorno zum sechzigsten Geburtstag,, Edited by M. Horkheimer. Frankfurt: Europaische Verlagsanstalt, 1963. Pages 473-501 .)

[EI] Introduction to Die Entwicklung des Ichs. Together with R. Dobert and G. Nunner-Winkler. K6ln: Kiepenheur & Witsch, 1977. Pages 9-30.

[KHI] Knowledge and Human Interests. (trans.) J. Shapiro. Boston: Beacon, 1971. (Originally published as Erkenntnis und Interesse. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1968.)

[LC] Legitimation Crisis. (trans.) T. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon, 1975. (Originally published as Legitimationsprobleme in Sp4tkapitalismus. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1973.)

[ELM] "Literaturbericht zur philosophischen Diskussion um Marx und den Marxismus." As reprinted in German version of [TP]. Pages 261-335. (Originally published in Philosonhische Rundschau 5 (1957): 165-235.)

[LSW] Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1970. (Title essay originally published as Beiheft 5 of Philosoohische Rundschau. Tubingen: Siebeck und Mohr, 1967.)

[MD] "Moral Development and Ego Identity." In Communication and the Evolution of Societv. Boston: Beacon, 1979. Pages 69-94. (Originally published as "Moralentwicklung und Ich-Identitat." In [RHM]. Pages 63-91.)

[PKHI] "Postscript to Knowledge and Human Interests." Philosophy of the Social Sciences 3(1973): 157-189.

[RHM] Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976. (Several of these essays appear in English translation in Communication and the Evolution of Society-. (trans.) J. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1979.)

[RTM] "A Review of Gadamer's Truth and Method." In Understanding and Social Inguiryv. Edited by F. Dallmayr and T. McCarthy. Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 1977. Pages 335-363. (Originally



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published as "Die hermeneutische Ansatz". In [LSW]. Pages 251-290.)

[TP] Theory and Practice. (trans.) J. Viertel. Boston: Beacon Press, 1973. (Translation and abridgment of essays from the fourth edition of Theorie und Praxis, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971, together with one essay "Labor and Interaction: Remarks on Hegel's Jena Philosophy of Mind" from Technik und Wissenschaft als "Ideologie". Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1968. Earlier German editions are 1st- 1963, 2nd- 1966, 3rd- 1968.)

[THRM] "Thesen zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus. " Paper delivered at the Hegel Congress in Stuttgart, May 1976. (Printed in [RHM]. Reprinted as "Toward a Reconstruction of Historical Materialism.n In Communication and the EYolution of Sct (trans.) J. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1979. Pages 130-177.)

[UH] "Die Universalitatsanspruch der Hermeneutik." In Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971. Pages 120-159.

[UP] "What is Universal Pragmatics." In Communication and the Evolution of Society. (trans.) J. McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1979. Pages 1-68. (Originally published as "Was heisst Universalpragmatik." In Sorachpragmatik und Philosoghie., Edited by Karl-Otto Apel. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1976. Pages 174-272.)

[WT] "Wahrheitstheorien."n In Wirklichkeit und Reflexion: Walter Schulz zum 60. Geburtstag. Pfullingen: Neske, 1973. Pages 211-265.



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