In this article, the author first argues that Habermas's distinction between the two modes of language use that, he alleges, are central to the two starkly different modes of human cognitive activities, that is, analytical-empirical sciences and hermeneutics, is untenable and should be eventually abandoned. For, contrary to Habermas's argument, the analytical-empirical sciences, if they are to be properly understood, must also be conceptualized as involving the performative mode of language use that Habermas thinks is characteristic of hermeneutics only. Second, by using historical examples, the author proceeds to demonstrate why Habermas's hermeneutic objectivism that is based on the methodology of rational reconstruction is doomed to remain wedded to the epistemological foundationalism that he wants to displace by introducing his methodology of rational reconstruction.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Austin, J. (1962). How to do things with words. New York: Oxford University Press.
2.
Austin, J. (1970). Philosophical papers. Oxford , UK: Clarendon.
3.
Barnes, B. (1974). Scientific knowledge and sociological theory. London: Routledge Kegan Paul.
4.
Barnes, B. (1982). T. S. Kuhn and social science. New York: Columbia University Press.
5.
Bauman, Z. (1987). Legislators and interpreters: On modernity, postmodernity, and intellectuals. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
6.
Bloor, D. (1991). Knowledge and social imagery (2nd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
7.
Bogen, D. (1989). A reappraisal of Habermas's theory of communicative action in light of detailed investigation of social praxis. Journal for the Social Theory of Behavior, 19, 47-77.
8.
Bourdieu, P. (1990a). In other words. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
9.
Bourdieu, P. (1990b). The logic of practice. Cambridge , UK: Polity.
10.
Bourdieu, P. (1991). The peculiar history of scientific reason. Sociological Forum, 5, 3-26.
11.
Bourdieu, P. (1996). The rules of art. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
12.
Collins, H. (1985). Changing order: Replication and induction in scientific practice. London: Sage.
13.
Gadamer, H.G. (1975). Truth and method. New York : Seabury.
14.
Galison, P. (1987). How experiments end. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
15.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prentice Hall.
16.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society. Berkeley: University of California Press.
17.
Giddens, A. (1985). Reason or revolution: Habermas's Theorie des Kommunikative Handelns. In R. Bernstein (Ed.), Habermas and modernity (pp. 95-124). Cambridge, UK: Polity.
18.
Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
19.
Giddens, A. (1993). New rules of sociological method (2nd ed.). Cambridge, UK: Polity.
20.
Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and human interest. Boston: Beacon.
21.
Habermas, J. (1976). Rationalism divided in two: A reply to Albert . In A. Giddens (Ed.), Positivism and sociology (pp. 195-223). London: Heineman.
22.
Habermas, J. (1980). The hermeneutic claim to universality. In J. Bleicher (Ed.), Contemporary hermeneutics (pp. 181-202). London: Routledge Kegan Paul.
23.
Habermas, J. (1983). Interpretive social science vs. hermeneuticism . In N. Haan et al. (Eds.), Social science as moral inquiry (pp. 251-270). New York: Columbia University Press.
24.
Habermas, J. (1984). The theory of communicative action (Vol. 1). Boston: Beacon .
25.
Habermas, J. (1985). Questions and counterquestions. In R. Bernstein (Ed.), Habermas and modernity (pp. 192-216). Cambridge, UK: Polity.
26.
Habermas, J. (1987). Philosophy as stand-in and interpreter. In K. Baynes et al. (Eds.), After philosophy: End or transformation? (pp. 291-318). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
27.
Hesse, M.B. (1974). The structure of scientific inference. Berkeley: University of California Press .
28.
Honneth, A. (1985). The critique ofpower. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
29.
Horton, R. (1970). African traditional thought and Western science . In B. Wilson (Ed.), Rationality (pp. 131-171). Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell.
30.
Kim, K.M. (2002). Nested hierarchies of vicarious selectors. In C. Heyes & D. Hull (Eds.), Selection theory and social construction: The evolutionary naturalistic epistemology of Donald T. Campbell (pp. 101-118). Albany: SUNY Press.
31.
Kuhn, T.S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
32.
Latour, B., & Woolgar, S. (1986). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific fact (2nd ed.). Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press.
33.
Louch, A.R. (1969). History as narrative. History and Theory, 8, 54-70.
34.
Lynch, M. (1993). Scientific practice and ordinary action. New York: Cambridge University Press.
35.
McCarthy, T. (1985). Reflection on rationality in the theory of communicative action. In R. Bernstein (Ed.), Habermas and modernity (pp. 177-191). Cambridge, UK: Polity.
36.
McCarthy, T. (1988). Scientific rationality and the "strong program " in the sociology of knowledge. In E. McMullin (Ed.), Construction and constraint: The shaping of scientific rationality (pp. 75-96). Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.
37.
McCarthy, T. (1990). Private irony and public decency: Richard Rorty's new pragmatism. Critical Inquiry, 16, 355-370.
38.
Morell, V. (1997). Microbiology's scarred revolutionary. Science, 276, 699-702.
39.
Pickering, A. (1995). The mangle ofpractice. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
40.
Polanyi, M. (1958). Personal knowledge. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
41.
Polanyi, M. (1967). The growth of science in society. Minerva, 5, 533-545.
42.
Popper, K. (1959). The logic of scientific discovery. London: Hutchinson.
43.
Popper, K. (1972). Conjectures and refutations. London: Routledge Kegan Paul.
44.
Rabinow, P., & Sullivan, W M. (1979). Interpretive social science: A reader. Berkeley: University of California Press.
45.
Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
46.
Rorty, R. (1990). Truth and freedom: A reply to Thomas McCarthy . Critical Inquiry, 16, 633-655.
47.
Rorty, R. (1993). Wittgenstein, Heidegger and the reification of language. In C. Guignon (Ed.), Cambridge companion to Heidegger (pp. 337-357). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
48.
Rudwick, M.J.S. (1985). The great Devonian controversy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
49.
Searle, J. (1998). Mind, language, and society. New York: Free Press.
50.
Shweder, R. (1986). Divergent rationalities. In D. Fiske & R. Shweder (Eds.), Methatheory in social science (pp. 163-196). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
51.
Winch, P. (1958). The idea of social sciences and its relation to philosophy. London: Routledge Kegan Paul.
