Showing papers on "Critical theory published in 1973"

Language, the Primordial Labor of History: a Critique of Critical Social Theory in Habermas:

Abstract: was only in passing and he tended to identify it more or less with consciousness.1 He had much more to say about consciousness, and that could be construed as embodying what he thought about language as a philosopher of history; but even then we would have to recognize that both language and consciousness remained subordinate to something else in his idea of history, and that something has to be either production or labor or productive labor. &dquo;The first historical act,&dquo; according to Marx, is &dquo;the production of means to satisfy needs, the production of material life itself.&dquo; It is first not only in a chronological sense, but also as constitutive &dquo;a fundamental condition of all history which must be fulfilled in order to sustain human life every day and every hour, today as well as thousands of years ago.&dquo; Marx accepted this fundamental fact (Grundtatsache) in its entire significance and all its implications as &dquo;the first principle (das Erste) in any theory of history.&dquo; 2 What he did later on, starting from this principle, was indeed a prodigious labor of language and conscientization, but the consciousness of Marx was fixed more on

The critical theory of science

Abstract: The meta-scientific investigation of the various kinds of influence which determine both the establishment of the cultural institution of science and criteria governing its internal operations, including criteria of the concepts of cognition has been termed by Professor Jurgen Habermas as the critical theory of science. The five-fold thesis of his theory treats of what he considers to be the extrascientific interests which determine and accompany our traditional concepts of knowledge as characterized by science. The development of the theses is preceded by his analysis of the faults of “positivist methodology” in which, he argues, distinctions such as that between facts and values are based upon fundamental confusions concerning inerradicable and pervasive practical concerns in terms of which the concepts of cognition are ultimately founded. He identifies the three all-embracing knowledge-guiding interests or concerns as the cognitive interest which determines logical and empirical categories, the practical interest which determines the character of human understanding within the cultural sciences, and the emancipatory interest which determines our concept for freedom and autonomy. The arguments for the critical theory are here analyzed and criticized in terms of their logical shortcomings, while the claims made in favor of the critical theory are found to be based upon inerradicable and pervaisive confusions concerning logical consistency in argumentation. The final section summarizes, moralizes, and speculates upon the criticalness of the critical theory.