Subject: [HAB:] Philosophy and/or Critical Social Theory?
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 12:48:27 +0000



List,

A tale of five quotes all related to Habermas’s conception of the division 
of labour between philosophy and the social sciences. I believe there was a 
shift in Habermas’s position in the early-1980s whereby he carves out a 
domain for philosophical inquiry (especially moral philosophy: see –MCCA-, 
-J&A-) distinctive from the applied objectives of critical social theory. 
What do others think?


“What moral **theory** can do and should be trusted to do is to clarify the 
universal core of our moral intuitions and thereby refute value skepticism. 
What it cannot do is make any kind of substantive contribution… Moral 
philosophy does not have privileged access to particular moral truths. In 
view of the four big moral-political liabilities of our time [hunger, abuse 
of human rights, disparities of social wealth, arms race]… The historical 
and social sciences can be of greater help in this endeavour than 
philosophy.” (-MCCA-, MIT Press, 1990: 211).

“Hence, I advocate an ascetic construal of moral theory and even of ethics – 
indeed, of philosophy in general – so as to make room for a critical social 
theory.” (-J & A-, MIT Press, 1993: 176)

“I propose that philosophy limit itself to the clarification of the moral 
point of view and the procedures of democratic legitimation, to the analysis 
of the conditions of rational discourses and negotiations. In this more 
modest role, philosophy need not proceed in a constructive, but only in a 
**reconstructive** fashion. It leaves substantial questions that must be 
answered here and now to the more or less enlightened engagement of 
participants, which does not mean that philosophers may not also participate 
in the public debate, though in the role of intellectuals, not of experts.” 
(“Rawl’s Political Liberalism,”  Journal of Philosophy, March 1995, 92 (3): 
131)

“Habermas argues that there is no fixed boundary between philosophy and the 
social sciences. There is – and ought to be – a symbiotic relationship 
between philosophy and the social sciences, although they are not reducible 
to each other.” (Bernstein,R., -The New Constellation-, Polity Press, 1991: 
223)

"Following the tradition of the Frankfurt School, he does not accept a 
principled (foundational) difference between **philosophy** and 
**critical-reconstructive social science**. And this means that all 
philosophical propositions are considered to be **empirically testable** and 
thus **fallible**, as indeed are propositions of general linguistics (e.g. 
Chomsky’s “innateness” thesis”)." (Apel, K., Routledge, 2002: 19)

Cheers,

Mattp

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