The “Great Refusal” and Social Theory, 1961–1981 127
of a speech situation which would be free from domination and in
which disputes concerning the truth of statements, or the correct-
ness of norms could be rationally resolved. Since moreover this
situation is necessarily anticipated in every act of speech it attests to
the reality and universality of the interest in emancipation.^168
Remarkably, the core of this vision predates what is described
as Habermas’s linguistic turn. In a 1971 essay, he notes that already
in his 1965 inaugural lecture at Frankfurt he had reached similar
conclusions:
... [I]n every speech act the telos of reaching an understanding
[Verständigung] is already inherent. “With the very first sentence [we
utter] the intention of a general and voluntary consensus is unmis-
takably enunciated.” Wittgenstein has remarked that the concept of
reaching an understanding lies in the concept of language.... Every
one who speaks a natural language has intuitive knowledge of it and
therefore is confident of being able, in principle, to distinguish a
true consensus from a false one. In the educated language of philo-
sophical culture, we call this knowledge a priori or innate.^169
The turn to innate anthropological universals thus predates his
systematic immersion in the linguistic theories of Wittgenstein,
Sellars, Austin, and Searle by at least a half decade, locating the
key motive forces behind the TCA well before the dramatic West
German events of 1967–9. The linguistic turn is thus perhaps better
understood as an anthropological turn.
But there also were more immediate stimuli from the West
German political context in the 1970s as well. He defended the tra-
dition of Critical Theory associated with the Frankfurt Institute
for Social Research against allegations by CDU officials that it had
inspired a generation of left-wing terrorists and challenged the laws
proscribing “radicals” from employment in the civil service, which
were instituted by both Willy Brandt (1969–74) and Helmut Schmidt
(1974–81). Habermas frequently worried that he would awake one
morning to find a newspaper report of a left-wing terrorist who
had attended some lectures on Critical Theory in Frankfurt.^170 As
(^168) Held and Thompson, Critical Debates, 8–9.
(^169) Habermas, “Some Difficulties in the Attempt to Link Theory and Praxis”
[1971], in Theory and Practice, 17; for the section of his 1965 lecture quoted,
see Habermas, “Erkenntnis und Interesse,” 163.
(^170) Conversation with Habermas, July 2004 , Flensburg.