To use an epistemological distinction introduced by Jürgen Habermas in Erkenntnis und Interesse ( Knowledge and Human Interests ), critical theory in literary studies is ultimately a form of hermeneutics, i. e. knowledge via interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressions — including the interpretation of texts which are themselves implicitly or explicitly the interpretation of other texts.

As such, critical theory was left, in Jürgen Habermas ’ words, without " anything in reserve to which it might appeal ; and when the forces of production enter into a baneful symbiosis with the relations of production that they were supposed to blow wide open, there is no longer any dynamism upon which critique could base its hope.

* Whether it is through universal pragmatic principles through which mutual understanding is achieved ( Habermas ).

The seminal work is by Jurgen Habermas in Germany but the most extensive literature has been in English, led by theorists such as Jane Mansbridge, Joshua Cohen, Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson.

* In the European Union, thinkers such as Habermas have advocated a Euro-patriotism, but patriotism in Europe is usually directed at the nation-state and often coincides with Euroscepticism.

Among the current advocates of consensus theory as a useful accounting of the concept of " truth " is the philosopher Jürgen Habermas.

Habermas maintains that truth is what would be agreed upon in an ideal speech situation.

The most prominent philosophers with which the so-called ' Frankfurt School ' is associated were Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas and Max Horkheimer.

Central to this problem, Habermas argues, is the way Foucault seemingly attempts to remain both Kantian and Nietzschean in his approach.

For Habermas, hermeneutics is one dimension of critical social theory.

It is worth noting that for many contemporary political philosophers, the rigidity of a particular set of norms, rules, or fixed boundaries about either the way that subjects who would qualify for deliberation are constituted ( a position perhaps epitomized by John Rawls ) or regarding the kinds of argument which qualify as deliberation ( a position perhaps epitomized by Jürgen Habermas ) constitute a foreclosure of deliberation, making it impossible.

" According to the distinguished German social theorist, Jürgen Habermas, " For Weber, the intrinsic ( that is, not merely contingent ) relationship between modernity and what he called ' Occidental rationalism ' was still self-evident.

One " project " of modernity is said by Habermas to have been the fostering of progress by incorporating principles of rationality and hierarchy into public and artistic life.

Most prominently Jürgen Habermas and others contend that postmodernity represents a resurgence of long running counter-enlightenment ideas, that the modern project is not finished and that universality cannot be so lightly dispensed with.

The Public Sphere, or bourgeois public, is according to Habermas, where " something approaching public opinion can be formed " ( 2004, p. 351 ).

Although he was initially part of the School's inner circle, Jürgen Habermas is generally considered as the first to have diverged from Horkheimer's research program, thus giving rise to a new generation of critical theorists.

# Lyotard himself has ironically spoken of " the great narrative of the end of great narratives ", a point taken up against him by such thinkers as Alex Callinicos and Jürgen Habermas, who argue that Lyotard's universal skepticism toward metanarratives is itself a contemporary metanarrative, and thus self-refuting.

Social theorists ( such as Karl Marx, Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, and Jürgen Habermas ) have proposed different explanations for what a social order consists of, and what its real basis is.

For Habermas, it is all of these, as well as communicative action.

And it is less surprising that, as Habermas incorrectly suggests in reference to Nolte, it is being questioned.

It is doubtless no coincidence that Habermas, Jäckel, Mommsen and others become involved in the recent election campaign in this way.

In the 1960s, Jürgen Habermas raised the epistemological discussion to a new level in his Knowledge and Human Interests, by identifying critical knowledge as based on principles that differentiated it either from the natural sciences or the humanities, through its orientation to self-reflection and emancipation.

Habermas dissolved further the elements of critical theory derived from Hegelian German Idealism, though his thought remains broadly Marxist in its epistemological approach.

When, in the 1970s and 1980s, Jürgen Habermas redefined critical social theory as a theory of communication, i. e. communicative competence and communicative rationality on the one hand, distorted communication on the other, the two versions of critical theory began to overlap or intertwine to a much greater degree than before.

However, recent work by philosopher and critical theorist Nikolas Kompridis tries to show that Heidegger's insights into world disclosure are badly misunderstood and mishandled by Habermas, and are of vital importance for critical theory, offering an important way of renewing that tradition.

Habermas also criticized Marxism and previous members of the Frankfurt School for missing the hermeneutical dimension of critical theory.

Since the 1960s, Frankfurt School critical theory has increasingly been guided by Jürgen Habermas ' work on communicative reason, linguistic intersubjectivity and what Habermas calls " the philosophical discourse of modernity ".

More recently, critical theorists such as Nikolas Kompridis have voiced opposition to Habermas, claiming that he has undermined the aspirations for social change which originally gave purpose to critical theory's various projects — for example the problem of what reason should mean, the analysis and enlargement of " conditions of possibility " for social emancipation, and the critique of modern capitalism.

In so doing, experimental psychologists paint an inaccurate portrait of human nature while lending tacit support to the prevailing social order, according to critical theorists like Theodor Adorno and Jürgen Habermas ( in their essays in The Positivist Debate in German Sociology ).

Marx's work inspired the ' Frankfurt School ' of critical theory, now best exemplified in the work of Jürgen Habermas.

Because Habermas developed it in order to have a normative and philosophical foundation for his critical social theory, most of the inroads into formal pragmatics start from sociology, specifically with what is called action theory.

Theatres of conversation and exchange – such as the salons, and the coffeehouses in England – played a critical role in the emergence of what Habermas termed the ‘ public sphere ’, which emerged in ‘ cultural-political contrast ’ to court society.

It is currently associated with the works of Ágnes Heller and Carlos Escudé, and is strongly rooted in the criticisms which Habermas has leveled at postmodern philosophy, namely that universalism and critical thinking are the two essential elements of human rights and that human rights create a superiority of some cultures over others.

Weber's thought regarding the rationalizing and secularizing tendencies of modern Western society ( sometimes described as the " Weber Thesis ") would blend with Marxism to facilitate critical theory, particularly in the work of thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas.

Jürgen Habermas established communicative action as a reaction to postmodern challenges to the discourse of modernity, informed both by critical theory and American pragmatism.

The result of the theory is a conception of reason that Habermas sees as doing justice to the most important trends in twentieth century philosophy, while escaping the relativism which characterizes postmodernism, and also providing necessary standards for critical evaluation.

The philosopher-sociologist Jürgen Habermas has critiqued pure instrumental rationality as meaning that scientific-thinking becomes something akin to ideology itself.

Jürgen Habermas has critiqued the concept of pure instrumental rationality as meaning that scientific-thinking becomes something akin to ideology itself.

The philosopher-sociologist Jürgen Habermas has critiqued pure instrumental rationality as meaning that scientific-thinking becomes something akin to ideology itself.

Though unsatisfied with Adorno and Horkeimer's thought presented in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Habermas shares the view that, in the form of instrumental rationality, the era of modernity marks a move away from the liberation of enlightenment and toward a new form of enslavement.

Jürgen Habermas has argued that to understand rationalization properly requires going beyond Weber's notion of rationalization and distinguishing between instrumental rationality, which involves calculation and efficiency ( in other words, reducing all relationships to those of means and ends ), and communicative rationality, which involves expanding the scope of mutual understanding in communication, the ability to expand this understanding through reflective discourse about communication, and making social and political life subject to this expanded understanding.

Jürgen Habermas sees The Spectator as instrumental in the " structural transformation of the public sphere " which England saw in the 18th century.