A Brief Overview of the Frankfurt School (Part 13)
A Review of Habermas’s Life, Works, and Ideas
Habermas’s views in the field of methodology and philosophy of science are a continuation of the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School. Like them, he strongly attacked positivism and the dominance of its methodological approaches over the domains of social and human sciences. In addition, he sharply criticized Popper’s notions of rationality, placing them—alongside logical positivism, methodological Dadaism, and various schools of the philosophy of science, from Thomas Kuhn to Paul Feyerabend and Imre Lakatos—among the serious threats to the logic of social sciences.
On the other hand, his efforts to revive Marxism as a cultural and critical tool, his criticism of the conservative foundations of Gadamerian hermeneutics, and his firm and reasoned defense of the enlightening capacities of modernity against the critical attacks of French theorists like Jacques Derrida and other postmodernists are among the key themes that hold an important place within Habermas’s wide range of studies.
One of the most notable features of Habermas’s thought is his constant engagement with diverse themes that, in fact, form the bond and coherence of his overall position. Among these are his strong resistance to scientific, political, and philosophical attempts to monopolize knowledge and truth; his passionate commitment to free and undistorted communication as a means to attain truth and knowledge; and finally, his belief that the only way to realize an intellectually free and politically non-repressive society is through vigilant and critical examination of falsehoods and pseudo-realities.
Another indication of Habermas’s indebtedness to the teachings of the Frankfurt School—while at the same time highlighting his effort to continue and reconstruct critical theory—is his formulation of the foundations of the theory of emancipatory truth. This theory was the outcome of his extensive studies and deep reflections on the Frankfurt School’s ideas. However, in relation to one of Marx’s core theories, namely Marx’s teleological framework, a clear difference is evident between the Frankfurt School and Habermas. Marx’s teleology begins with the abstract assumption that human beings, as creatures with latent potential, possess creative capacities that have yet to be realized. The Frankfurt School, in its reassessment of Marxist theories, abandoned the notion that only the historically alienating process of labor could realize this truth. Habermas, however, considered this Marxist view of truth to be a historical condition that must be realized—one in which potential truth could indeed become actual truth. The importance of this assumption for Habermas lies in the fact that it provides the necessary ideal conditions for criticizing events as deviations from norms, and also offers a foundation for ideological critique, whose task is to reveal the social and political factors that conceal the anticipated truth. Since the realization of an individual’s latent creative potential depends on the expansion of social emancipation, cultural critique cannot and should not be separated from political critique. Thus, it can be said that Habermas’s ideal of undistorted communication, with its critical and emancipatory capacities, is essentially the fruit of this underlying Marxist theme.
In his anti-positivist critique of Popper’s and Hans Albert’s “critical rationalism,” Habermas insists that the vital content of emancipatory truth must not be marginalized under the dominance of a purely scientific methodology that rejects all meanings and concepts unless they can be explained through scientific analysis. In Habermas’s view, contrary to the widespread assumptions of positivism, decisions and values—the “facts and norms” tied to moral and political life—cannot be dismissed or rationalized through utilitarian scientific calculations. Moreover, in the study of social and human sciences, facts and norms cannot be separated. Interestingly, Gadamer agreed with Habermas on this point; however, Habermas resisted the ideological authority of scientific reasoning, which sought to legislate for matters of social and political values and norms. He argued that such values and norms cannot be subjected to scientific rules, since those rules ultimately serve specific interests and are grounded in particular ideologies. Similarly, Habermas criticized Gadamer’s traditional hermeneutics for claiming that the authority of historical and cultural tradition is the only strong rival to technological thinking.
According to Habermas, resisting the one-dimensionality of scientific reasoning by relying on the authority of historical and cultural tradition would amount to nothing more than replacing one distorted truth with another.
To support and reinforce his claim, Habermas compares the issues raised by tradition with those in psychoanalysis. Reflecting on psychoanalysis, he notes: just as neurotic behavior entails the repression of its underlying causes, so too tradition may unconsciously and unintentionally be incapable of perceiving non-self values.
Habermas’s commitment to emancipatory truth was not the only basis of his opposition to Gadamer. In his debate with Gadamer, he also entered into a serious confrontation with Gadamer’s dialogical model of conversational understanding and responded critically, blending it with aspects of John Searle’s “speech act theory.” In his famous essay, The Claim to Universality of Hermeneutics, Habermas argued that truth is to be understood as an idealized consensus achieved in the course of unrestricted and non-coercive communication. For him, the validity of a discourse as a truthful discourse is not epistemologically or ontologically external to it; rather, it historically emerges from within it. Thus, when questions arise about the truth-claims of tradition, participants in that tradition are not bound to passively accept established authority. Instead, they are logically required to engage critically with it and to expand their own claims.
Habermas returned to this discussion in Knowledge and Human Interests (1968), where he argued that all knowledge is rooted in a sociological origin, suggesting the possibility of rational discourse that enables participants to reconsider norms through effective and practical consensus. If discourse regarding the assumptions that guarantee knowledge is possible, then envisioning broader assumptions (emancipatory ones) for such discourse is also possible. Habermas’s central claim is that the very concept of rational discourse entails the anticipation of conditions for freer and more adequate foundations. This inner logic of discourse naturally directs all rational dialogues toward freer, more open, and more enlightening positions.
In his two-volume Theory of Communicative Action (1984), Habermas sought to uncover and reconstruct pre-theoretical intuitions that legitimize speech acts. He argued that in the process of understanding what is said, comprehension occurs not because the interlocutors share common experiences, but because one party can grasp the point the other is making and understand their intention, despite personal perspectives or preferences. Based on this, Habermas formulated his thesis of the “ideal speech situation,” for he believed that if discourse can inherently generate intersubjective meanings capable of transcending any particular interlocutor, then with sound reasoning, the emancipatory potential embedded in those meanings can be realized and expanded beyond the initial discourse.
Moreover, Habermas argued that in the broader linguistic community, anyone who speaks a language belongs to a universal community and simultaneously seeks its expansion—a community built on clarity, honesty, free consensus, and communication. Analysts of these assumptions widely agree that Habermas’s claim—that such consensus is neither imposed by force nor accidental, but arises from the practical use of everyday language—is the deepest and most fundamental aspect of his contribution to European philosophy.
Habermas’s idealistic views have sparked intense debates from various intellectual and philosophical currents in recent years, particularly from poststructuralists advocating deconstruction and from postmodernists. Their main criticism of Habermas’s perspective is that both his ideal speech situation and his commitment to attaining historical truth are artificial constructs intended to advance his own political commitments. According to them, Habermas’s arguments and theses not only spread the illusion of an ultimate truth of discourse—the realization of a genuinely free communicative society—but also represent an authoritarian attempt to block historical pathways.
However, in his monumental work The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1987), Habermas responded to these criticisms, firmly asserting that ideal constructs like the undistorted speech situation cannot be refuted through genealogical reductivism. For Habermas, truth-claims, like meaning-claims, always transcend the empirical conditions that initially gave rise to them. Simply dismissing the universality of a political truth or discrediting it by exposing the partial interests of certain groups who claim to support it does not diminish the critical potential inherent in that truth. Furthermore, even if disagreements exist on a subject, there remains at least agreement on what that subject concerns. In such cases, it remains logically possible to reach consensus on how to resolve disagreements rationally.
From this perspective, the concept of emancipatory critique may be one of the last strongholds against the harsh and deadly threats found in political and religious dogmatism. Habermas’s defense of modernity carries important political significance. Poststructuralists, postmodernists, and deconstructionists may expose the will-to-power that underlies progressive interpretations of philosophical and cultural modernity. Yet the question remains: are we aware of the destructive consequences of abandoning the entire program of modernist ideals to such skepticism? Poststructuralist and postmodernist critics may delight in exposing the so-called authoritarian elitism of modernity, but does this not fulfill the very dream of authoritarian and oppressive regimes that have always sought to persuade their subjugated masses that no reality exists beyond what is imposed upon them?
If any claim to meaning or truth that aims to transcend its own social and political origins is denied, then the claim to the ideal—which is undoubtedly essential to any aspiration for revising positions in more comprehensive and inclusive ways—will gradually erode. The result of this erosion is precisely what Habermas has long feared and warned against: without awareness, mutual understanding, and responsibility toward the broader demands of rational critique, humanity’s consciousness will remain confined within existing horizons, and its freedom to think and act beyond them will be irreparably damaged.
