Habermas and the Project of Immanent Critique

Abstract

According to his own understanding, Jürgen Habermas' Theory of Communicative Action offers a new account of the normative foundations of critical theory. 1 Habermas' motivating insight is that neither a transcendental or metaphysical solution to the problem of normativity, nor a merely hermeneutic reconstruction of historically given norms, is sufficient to clarify the normative foundations of critical theory.In response to this insight, Habermas develops a novel account of normativity which locates the normative demands upon which critical theory draws within the socially instituted practice of communicative understanding.Although Habermas has claimed otherwise, this new foundation for critical theory constitutes a novel and innovative form of "immanent critique".To argue for and to clarify this claim, I offer, in section 1, a formal account of immanent critique and distinguish between two different ways of carrying out such a critique.In section 2, I examine Habermas' rejection of the first, hermeneutic option.Against this background, I then show, in section 3, that the Theory of Communicative Action attempts to formulate an immanent critique of contemporary societies according to a second, "practice-based" model.However, because Habermas, as I will argue in section 4, commits himself to an implausibly narrow view in regard to one central element of such a model -in regard to the social ontology of immanent normativity -his normative critique cannot develop its full potential (section 5). The Concept of Immanent CritiqueWhether a particular theoretical project should be described as "immanent critique" depends on the meaning of this term which, in spite of its importance, has rarely been clearly defined. Titus Stahl, "Habermas and the Project of Immanent Critique"Pre-review version -not suitable for citation.Hence, before turning to Habermas' model, I will clarify what I mean by "immanent critique," and the theoretical commitments I take such a project to entail.Critical theories -or at least, those varieties which locate themselves within the Frankfurt School tradition -generally derive some of their methodological commitments from Marx's early writings.Criticizing the Utopian tendencies of his time, Marx rejects all "dogmatic" forms of normative criticism, which postulate normative principles from a context-free, external vantage point. 2 However, criticizing Hegel, Marx also argues that social critique is not to be based on a reconstruction of "reason in history", but rather on an analysis of the material conditions of social reproduction.3 Thus, insofar as we can attribute any normative project to Marx, he must envisage a form of criticism that draws on norms which already exist in objective social reality.4 Many critical theorists have subsequently endorsed this broad strategy of justifying the normative standards of critique by reference to immanent potentials of social reality.In so doing, these theorists not only reject forms of moral constructivism and of moral realism that introduce norms from the "outside", but they also reject a merely "internal" application of those normative standards which are already accepted by their audience.5 However, any theory which attempts to draw on normative standards within objective social reality in this manner must solve three distinct problems: First, in order to justify a critical judgment by reference to immanent social standards, a theory must plausibly explain the sense in which such immanent standards "exist."Providing such an explanation requires a social ontology: a theoretical account that specifies the meaning of claims regarding the existence of particular social entities, and in this case, of socially immanent norms.Second, even given a justification for the assumption of immanent norms on the level of a social ontology, it is unclear what type of epistemic access social critics have to the relevant normative potentials immanent to social reality.Third and finally, it is an open question as to what kind of critical authority an immanent critique that draws upon them can aspire to.In summary, any model of immanent critique must clarify: the ontology of the immanent normative standards employed; its epistemology; and the consequences of its reliance upon those standards for its own critical capacity.Although these questions are seldom clearly distinguished, there have been numerous attempts to address the issues they raise.We can roughly divide these answers into two camps, which I will

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