From: "Frederik van Gelder Ph.D." <Gelder-AT-em.uni-frankfurt.de>
Date: Tue, 5 Mar 1996 03:00:18 +0000
Subject: Re: HAB: Habermas on Kant



There's an essay in Habermas' _Nachmetaphysisches Denken_
called "Metaphysik nach Kant", and there are some stray
references to Kant in his _Der philosophische Diskurs der
Moderne_. (Also in the compilation of early essays
_Philosophisch-politische Profile_, especially the essay "Der
deutsche Idealismus der juedischen Philosophen") For all that,
there is nothing comparable in Habermas to Adorno's Kant
lectures, now published as part of the Gesammelte Schriften
under the title _Kants 'Kritik der reinen Vernunft'_. (edited
by Adorno Archive director Rolf Tiedemann)

Why this difference in emphasis between Horkheimer, Adorno,
Marcuse on the one hand and Habermas on the other - with
regard to Kant - is interesting. For Horkheimer and Adorno -
contemplating the European crisis, the mass paranoias of
various kinds, culminating in the catastrophy of the world
wars - Kant is central because the authority of the natural
sciences is itself implicated in this crisis, and hence an
analysis of Kant is at the same time a probing of the
positivist degeneration of thought characteristic of
modernism. Not so for Habermas, whose 'reconstruction' of the
history of the human race is noticeably less gloomy in its
implications than the one to be found in the _Dialektik der
Aufklaerung_ or the _Eclipse of Reason_. "Evolution" - as in
_Communication and the Evolution of Society_ is not a word to
be found in Horkheimer and Adorno's vocabulary. 
This varying relationship to Kant (which in this context must
be understood as the relationship to the natural sciences) is
hence a most useful touchstone if one is to navigate one's way
through some of Europe's most prolific authors. It is
comparable only to the weight placed - by Horkheimer, Adorno,
Marcuse - on the arts, music, aesthetics, which in turn is
lacking in Habermas.

regards,

Frederik van Gelder

> I've recently been re-reading Habermas' _Knowledge and Human Interest_. 
> I'm curious about Habermas' views on Kant. In his work on unravelling the 
> Hegel-Marx relation, Habermas points out that there is a certain Kantian 
> element in Marx' readiong of Hegel. Does anyone know of any other place 
> in Habermas' work that develops this angle.  I'd be very interested in 
> some references to Habermas' reading of Kant. Thank you very much for 
> anyhelp that you can give me in this.
> Antoine Goulem
> 
> 
> 
-------------------------------------------
Frederik van Gelder  Ph.D.
Institut fuer Sozialforschung
Frankfurt University
(Yes, the 'old' Frankfurt School)

Gelder-AT-em.uni-frankfurt.de
-------------------------------------------