From: "JMacDuda" <lakeview-AT-feist.com>
Subject: HAB: Habermas and Science
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 14:34:06 -0600


OK folks,  last night I started to read McCarthy's study on Habermas. Page
one already has me confused.
McCarthy says the following: 

"A systematic and theoretically adequate account of the relation of theory
to practice, one capable of countering the hegemony of scientism on all
fronts, is still outstanding. Meeting this need has been an abiding concern
of Habermas's work." 

This sounds all fine and dandy, but when I read the first essay by Habermas
in MC&CM, I got the opposite impression. Habermas talks in the essay about
how the place for philosophers is to be stand-ins for "empirical theories
with strong universalistic claims" (15). And he later says that "the
venerable transcendental and dialectical modes of justification may still
come in handy. All they can fairly be expected to furnish, however, is
reconstructive hypotheses for use in empirical settings" (16). This doesn't
sound anything to me like "countering the hegemony of scientism." In fact,
it sounds like the opposite.

Did Habermas change his mind in MC&CM, after McCarthy's book was written,
or am I misinterpreting Habermas, or misinterpreting McCarthy, or
misinterpreting ... ? Please help.

								Kris 




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