Page 6 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

Translator’s

Introduction

Some twenty years ago Jiirgen Habermas introduced his idea of a
critical social theory that would be empirical and scientific with-
out being reducible to empirical-analytic science, philosophical in
the sense of critique but not of presuppositionless “first philos-
ophy,” historical without being historicist, and practical in the
sense of being oriented to an emancipatory political practice but
not to technological-administrative control.1 Although these gen-
eral features are still recognizable in his mature views on critical
theory, the original conception has undergone considerable de-
velopment. The essays translated in this volume provide an over-
view of the theoretical program that has emerged. Before sketch-
ing its main lines it might be well, by way of introduction, to
review briefly Habermas’ earlier discussions of social theory; for
in these a number of important ideas that have since receded into
the background or altogether disappeared from view are still
clearly visible.

I

A recurring theme of Habermas’ writings in the late fifties and
early sixties was that critique must somehow be located “between
philosophy and science.’ * In his account of the transition from