Reflection Revisited Jurgen Habermas' Discursive Theory of Truth

by Swindal, James C.

• ISBN13: 9780823218073
• ISBN10: 0823218074
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-01-01
• Publisher: Fordham University Press

Summary

Jurgen Habermas, particularly in his master work Theory of Communicative Action (1981), takes us several of the basic insights of the philosophical tradition of reflection initiated by Kant, and sets it on a new and highly original emancipative path. He claims that reflection not only can determine the limits of reasoning about thought and action, but also can grasp the limits that human agents face in freeing themselves form unjust social and economic structures. Human agents can engage in constructive and emancipative communication with others by determining the limits not of their own consciousness, but of the intersubjective structures shared in everyday communication. Reflection Revisited examines Habermas' own two-stage development of this theory of emancipative reflection and explicates how he applies reflection specifically to the problems of personal identity development and ethics.

Author Biography

James C. Swindal is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at John Carroll University.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Introduction: Reflection and Validity	p. 1
Habermas's Critique of the Use of Reflection in Theories of Consciousness	p. 18
The Early Habermas and the Development of Psychoanalytic Reflection and Normative Discourse	p. 86
Habermas's Development of a Reflective Acceptability Theory of Truth	p. 117
Reflective Acceptability in Discourse Ethics and Ego-Identity Development	p. 183
The Temporal Background Conditions of Discourse	p. 230
Bibliography	p. 271
Index	p. 291
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