How does Habermas connect sociology with human emancipation? Do you find his arguments convincing?
How does Habermas connect sociology with human emancipation? Do you find his arguments convincing?
According to Held, “Habermas conceives of his project as an attempt to develop a theory of society with a practical intention: the self-emancipation of people from domination” (1980, pg. 250). His aim then is broadly consistent with the traditional concerns of members of the Frankfurt school; the critique of instrumental reason as a factor contributing to the birth and rebirth of forms of domination and the critique and/or restructuring of Marxism, are concerns that have been approached by both Horkheimer and Adorno. But Habermas’ aims are perhaps more far-reaching as he has concerned himself with establishing an epistemological position upon which critical theory may flourish.
For How, Habermas attempted to “locate Critical Theory and social science generally, on a wider map of knowledge” (2003, pg. 117). The attempt by Habermas to establish Critical Theory as a sociological discipline concerned with human emancipation emerges out of the belief that critical and reflective forms of knowledge have been subsumed under the weight of instrumental reason which has given rise to domination by positivism or ‘scientism’ and the institutional complexes to which they give rise. Habermas’ assertion is that a positivist epistemology is a source of only one form of valid knowledge. According to Habermas then, “scientism means science’s belief in itself: that is the conviction that we can no longer understand science as one possible form of knowledge but rather must identify knowledge with science” (Habermas, J, cited in Bottomore, T, 2002, pg. 57). The elimination of self-reflective forms of knowledge promoted, in Habermas’ view, a dogmatic assertion of the correctness of the ‘scientistic’ method. The positivist position often involves conceiving the subject in an overly deterministic framework in which agency is eliminated, or discounting the subject as an active agent altogether as with Popper who was concerned to establish an “epistemology without a knowing subject” (Popper, K, cited in McCarthy, T, 1978, pg. 48). Habermas rejects this position and according to Pusey instead argues that “the validity of scientific knowledge, of hermeneutic understanding, and of mundane knowledge always depends as much on its ‘subjective’, and inter-subjective, constituents as it does on any methodologically verifiable observation and experience of the object-world” (1987, pg. 22). This is the expansion of the category of legitimate knowledge to include not only ‘scientistic’ knowledge but also subjective knowledge. Habermas’ epistemological concerns also aim to establish the grounds for a social subject, as Pusey points out: “one of the aims of Knowledge and Human Interests is to secure the foundations of sociology and to show there is no knower without culture, and that all knowledge is mediated by social experience” (1987, pg. 23).
