From Critical Reflection To Discursive Communication

Critical hermeneutics is a methodology throughout all of Habermas's writings on critical theory. However, Habermas only discusses critical hermeneutics in two of his early works, i.e., On the Logic of Social Sciences and Knowledge and Human Interests, and deepens this study in his controversy with Gadamer. Frankly speaking, critical hermeneutics has never been seen as the core of Habermas's critical theory. It is the theory of communicative action and its derivative theory, including discourse theory, discursive democracy, philosophy of law, theory of post-nationalism, and theory of religion, can be known as Habermas's core concepts. In spite of this, we can't undervalue the role which critical hermeneutics plays in Habermas's whole theory. Critical hermeneutics is always the methodological underpinning of his philosophy. One might say that without critique of ideology and linguistic critique, Habermas's critical theory may loses its suitable critical method, which is used to solve the present problems in our society. Therefore, critical hermeneutics cannot be avoided if one wants to have a comprehensive understanding of Habermas's critical theory.As a major advocate of western Marxism, Habermas firmly follows the academic path of social critique initiated by Marx and Habermas's predecessors in the Frankfurt School from his early career. As Marx and his predecessors, Habermas also takes the following aims as lifetime enterprise:to eliminate alienation, to re-construct reasonable societies, and to liberate the human race. Such aims are manifested in Habermas's research on methodology. Habermas follows and reconstructs the critical consciousness coming from his predecessors in Frankfurt School, and emphasizes the function of emancipation of critical theory and function of meaning understanding of method. Following critical theorists, Habermas questions the application of positive methodology which is used in natural sciences to the problems in the social sphere. He believes that it is the positive method that leads to the one-sidedness of traditional social theory, and prevents social theory's due function on social emancipation.Habermas finds a new way to pursue social critique in the theory of interpretive sociology. Through careful analysis and examination of social phenomenology and linguistic sociology, he emphasizes that social sciences must seek a hermeneutic understanding as opposed to a positive causal explanation of human actions. Habermas says the critical and reflective consciousness in hermeneutics should be the main methodological principle of social science research, so he chooses hermeneutics as his suitable method. This hermeneutics is not the philosophical one Gadamer insists. Instead, it is critical hermeneutics, or'depth hermeneutics'.Critical hermeneutics acknowledges the basic principle of philosophical hermeneutics, and the makes some new progresses on the later. In habermas's view, Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics gets over the narrowness of the methods used in interpretive sociology and rightly puts emphasis on "inter-subjectivity" and "lifeworld" (or in Gadamer's words, "tradition"). According to Gadamer, the process of interpreting social actions is a process of inter-subjective communication between agents, which ultimately reaches fusion of horizon on the platform of tradition. Habermas agrees to this point and takes it as a starting point of his critical theory. However, he criticizes that philosophical hermeneutics loses the spirit of critique in that the latter relies too much on tradition and fails to pay attention to the domination of ideology in tradition. This means that philosophical hermeneutics is inadequate for the aim of critical theory to pursue social critique. The method of hermeneutics required by critical theory should be one that incorporates both critical reflection and hermeneutics.Freud's theory of psychoanalysis matches the interpretive trends of Habermas's critical reflection and for that reason becomes the paradigm of constructing critical hermeneutics. Habermas points out that despite the fact that psychoanalysis finally takes the path of positivism; it still contains elements of critical hermeneutics. For psychoanalysis has an insight into "systematically distorted communication" and uses the method of communication to inspire the patients to reflect upon themselves. Furthermore, Freud has extended this model of psychoanalysis to the field of social analysis and achieved good results. According to Habermas, with a small alteration of the method of psychoanalysis-peeling off its positivist elements-we can construct a methodology of critical hermeneutics suitable for critical theory. This new method begins from Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, and makes Freud's psychoanalysis as its paradigm. It brings'critique'and'reflection'('self-reflection') into philosophical hermeneutics, and combines critical reflection, communicative hermeneutics and practice together. Therefore, hermeneutics functions now as a method of social analysis and critique of ideology, instead of a way of meaning understanding. It is no more a theory in books, but a practical principle and method in the critique of present society.The function of critical hermeneutics, i.e. critique and reflection, firstly displaces in Habermas's early thoughts. We can prove this from Habemas's first book On the Logic of Social Sciences (1967) and his book on epistemology, namely Knowledge and Human Interests (1968). Critical hermeneutics provides normative guidance for the construction and function of public sphere, which protects the private sphere from the intervention of state authority and makes criticisms of the latter. Here, critical hermeneutics shows its role in making critique of ideology. Habermas's critique of epistemology aims not only to find suitable sphere for empancipatory knowledge, but also to reconstruct the epistemological basis for critical theory. In Knowledge and Human Interests, he argues that quasi-transcendent "interests", including technological cognitive interests, practical cognitive interests, and empancipatory cognitive interests, can underwrite empirical-analytic science, hermeneutical science and critical social sciences. Also, Habermas points out that the development of the concept of interests still relies on the methodology of critical hermeneutics. Although Peirce (a pragmatist) and Dilthey (a hermeneutics theorist) touched the issue of the connection between knowledge and interests, their deeply-rooted positivist way of thinking stopped them from exploring this issue further. Thus, the only hermeneutics that can completely get over positivism is one with critical orientation, which can also develop an idea of interests to guide knowledge.In 1970s, Habermas completed the most important change in his philosophical career, that is, the linguistic turn. Such a change is related to the whole background of the Western philosophy, but also due to the more and more criticism received by the theory of cognitive interests. Habermas notices that he should learn from the achievement of linguistic turn in Western philosophy, and build his critical theory on a more solid basis of communicative rationality. It means that he must change his focus from critique of ideology to construction of reasonable order of modern societies, so as to make sure the legitimation of critical theory. This change also influences the critical hermeneutics as the methodology of critical theory, which innovate itself to complete the transition from the critique of ideology to that of linguistics.The critical hermeneutics completes its linguistic turn in the universal pragmatics, and achieved good results which manifests that critical hermeneutics plays an essential rule in the construction of the theory of communicative action.First, it is the methodology of universal pragmatics which is the embryo of the theory of communicative action. The basic aim of general pragmatics is to reconstruct the general conditions of possible understanding--i.e., the validity claim-so as to provide the basis for the rationality of communicative action. The function of critical hermeneutics is shown in such a reconstruction. The process of reconstruction is to reveal the preconditions of discursive communication or pre-theoretical knowledge in reality, which is also a process of linguistic critique.Second, the construction of idealized speech situation cannot do without critical hermeneutics either. Once Habermas establishes the reasonableness of communicative action, he will have to seek for an ideal speech situation for it. This is the necessary condition to make sure that communication is not influenced by ideology. As such, under the guidance of the reflective principle of critical hermeneutics, Habermas constructs an idealized speech situation. This situation always plays a role in Habermas's theory because it is a "reference system" of rational critique and reflection and a norm to effectively criticise the "systematically distorted communication" caused by political ideology.The theory of critical hermeneutics justifies itself in the context of general pragmatics and idealized communication. As the method and principle of understanding of communicative action, the value orientation of critical hermeneutics is critique and reflection. Only by virtue of this method of hermeneutics can the theory of communicative action achieve the following goals:to keep the over-developed instrumental rationality under the control of communicative rationality and to reconstruct a free, just and reasonable society. The critical hermeneutics as a method can only displays and develops itself in the context of the theory of communicative action, which carries out the linguistic critique in social critique. The combination of meaning understanding and critique of social institution, which has been done in critical hermeneutics, shows the applicative aspect of hermeneutics. It is the resurrection of Aristotle's'practical wisdom'. Critical hermeneutics is a methodological principle which combines theoretical wisdom and practical wisdom, and its inclusion of critique and reflection opens a new and hopeful vision of paradigm of methodology in the Western philosophy.