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Jurgen Habermas and transcendental philosophy.


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Authors

Power, Michael Kevin 

Description

Given the vast range of Habermas's work over the past twenty years, the focus of this dissertation is relatively narrow. I am concerned to explicate his status as a transcendental thinker~ a status which I believe has not been made fully clear, either by Habermas himself or by a nUmber of commentaries and criticisms concern.ing him. This task may seem . anachronistic given the "de-transcendentalisation" of Habennas's work recently, and the shift to a programme for a theory of communicative action. Yet, there is a more general and speculative intention behind it. Working through issues within Habermas's thought I attempt to bring to the surface a reading of transcendental strategies and a speculative vision of their potentialities whiCh avoids the less flexible features of a model which has dominated appraisals of them. Such an interpretative task is much more than descriptive. There is a normative intention that underlies it, a call for a revaluation of transcendentalism. The dissertation is divided into four parts as follows: PART I provides Habennas's work communication. of two problems a general introduction to the two major "phases" of Le. his theory of "cognitive interests" and his theory of The transcendental perspective is introduced in the light that arise in these contexts. PART 11 concerns the earlier theory of "Knowledge-Constitutive Interests" . specifically. The "analytical" model of transcendental thinking is introduced apd "played" into Habermas's claims. Against the limitations of this model, ~ more henneneutic and dialectically conceived transcendentalism is offered, one that overcomes prima facie aporias in Habermas's conception of Nature an~ natural science. PART III concerns his later theory of communication and, in particular the transcenpental status of Habermas's notion of an Ideal Speech Situation. The "Ideality" of this construct has been misunderstood. Borrowing in part from· Kant's concept of a "regulative idea" I try to make the ISS more plausible as a transcendental construct. PART IV attempts to bring together some of the claims developed previously as a reply to Rorty's polemical challenge to epistemology. I wish to underline certain deficiences of this dissertation. I shall not raise detailed questions about social theory, .about the viability of critical theory, or about substantive analyses of modern capitalism. Nor am I concerned to contest in depth Habermas's interpretations of particular thinkers. Rather, I wish to exhibit the general structure of Habennas's early thought -from the relatively more philosophical perspe·ctive of transcendental approaches to experience and cognition.

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Qualification

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Awarding Institution

University of Cambridge