Habermas - Knowledge and Human Interests

Contents

German text copyright 1968 Suhrkamp Verlag
English translation copyright 1987 Polity Press

The book was first published under the title Erkenntnis und Interesse in 1968 by Suhrkamp Verlag, except for the appendix. The appendix was first published in Merkur in 1965 and reprinted in Technik und Wissenschaft als Ideologie by Suhrkamp Verlag in 1968.

This English translation was first published in 1972 by Heinemann Educational Books. The second edition and appendix were published in 1978 and reprinted in 1981. This Polity Press edition was first published in 1987 in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Reprinted 1994, 1998, 2004, 2007

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Preface

I am undertaking a historically oriented attempt to reconstruct the prehistory of modern positivism with the systematic intention of analyzing the connections between knowledge and human interests. In following the process of the dissolution of epistemology, which has left the philosophy of science in its place, one makes ones way over abandoned stages of reflection. Retreading this path from a perspective that looks back toward the point of departure may help to recover the forgotten experience of reflection. That we disavow reflection is positivism.

The analysis of the connection of knowledge and interest should support the assertion that a radical critique of knowledge is possible only as social theory. This idea is implicit in Marxs theory of society, even though it cannot be gathered from the self-understanding of Marx or of Marxism. Nevertheless I have not gone into the objective context in which the development of philosophy from Hegel to Nietzsche took place. Instead I have limited myself to following immanently the movement of thought. This has its logic, for only at the price of dilettantism could I anticipate a social theory at which I should first like to arrive through the self-reflection of science. Now the first step in that direction has been taken. Thus this investigation cannot claim more than the role of a prolegomenon.

I first expounded the systematic perspectives guiding this investigation in my Frankfurt inaugural address of June, 1965, published as an appendix to the present volume.

In this framework psychoanalysis occupies an important place as an example. It seems to me necessary to state that my acquaintance with it is limited to the study of Freuds writings; I cannot draw upon the practical experiences of an analysis. Nevertheless I have learned much from the Wednesday discussions of the associates of the Sigmund-Freud-Institut that took place under the direction of Alexander Mitscherlich. I owe thanks to Alfred Lorenzer, who gave me access to the manuscript of his study of the methodological role of understanding in psychoanalysis. This manuscript has now been published in two parts by Suhrkamp Verlag as Kritik des psychoanalytischen Symbol-begrifs and Sprachzerstrung und-Rekonstrulcrion. I am indebted to him for more suggestions than I could indicate through specific references.

Jrgen Habermas

Frankfurt, 1971

Translators Note

I should like to thank the following persons for their contribution, through discussion, reading, and encouragement, to the preparation of this translation: my colleagues Shierry Weber and Donna Huse of the Center for the Study of Technological Experience; Paul Breines; and Charlotte Riley. My original interest in the subject of this work arose under the teaching of Herbert Marcuse, Barrington Moore, Jr., Robert Paul Wolff, and Paul Tillich; to all of them I am much indebted.

Jeremy J. Shapiro

If we imagine the philosophical discussion of the modern period reconstructed as a judicial hearing, it would be deciding a single question: how is reliable knowledge (Erkenntnis) possible. The term theory of knowledge, or epistemology, was coined only in the 19th century; but the subject that it retrospectively denotes is the subject of modern philosophy in general, at least until the threshold of the 19th century. The characteristic endeavor of both rationalist and empiricist thought was directed likewise at the metaphysical demarcation of the realm of objects and the logical and psychological justification of the validity of a natural science characterized by formalized language and experiment. Yet no matter how much modern physics, which combined so effectively the rigor of mathematical form with the amplitude of controlled experience, was the model for clear and distinct knowledge, modern science did not coincide with knowledge as such. In this period what characterized philosophys position with regard to science was precisely that science was accorded its legitimate place only by unequivocally philosophical knowledge. Theories of knowledge did not limit themselves to the explication of scientific methodthey did not merge with the philosophy of science.

This was still the case when modern metaphysics, which was already organized around the problem of possible knowledge, was itself subjected to doubt. Even Kant, through whose transcendental-logical (transzendentallogisch) perspective epistemology first became conscious of itself and thereby entered its own singular dimension, attributes to philosophy a sovereign role in relation to science. The critique of knowledge was still conceived in reference to a system of cognitive faculties that included practical reason and reflective judgment as naturally as critique itself, that is a theoretical reason that can dialectically ascertain not only its limits but also its own Idea. The comprehensive rationality of reason that becomes transparent to itself has not yet shrunk to a set of methodological principles.

It was with the elaboration of a metacritique that subjects the critique of knowledge to unyielding self-reflection, with Hegels critique of Kants transcendental-logical inquiry, that philosophy was finally brought to the paradoxical point of not altering its position with regard to science but abandoning it completely. Hence I should like to put forth the thesis that since Kant science has no longer been seriously comprehended by philosophy. Science can only be comprehended epistemologically, which means as one category of possible knowledge, as long as knowledge is not equated either effusively with the absolute knowledge of a great philosophy or blindly with the scientistic self-understanding of the actual business of research (Forschung). Both equations close off the dimension in which an epistemological concept of science can be formedin which, therefore, science can be made comprehensible within the horizon of possible knowledge and legitimated. Compared with absolute knowledge scientific knowledge necessarily appears narrow-minded, and the only task remaining is then the critical dissolution of the boundaries of positive knowledge. On the other hand, where a concept of knowing that transcends the prevailing sciences is totally lacking, the critique of knowledge resigns itself to the function of a philosophy of science, which restricts itself to the pseudo-normative regulation of established research.