274 The Nature of Political Theorysubjective notions of ‘interiority’. Further, all denied the idea that language simply
pictured, corresponded with, or represented an external world. A great deal of what
we call reality subsisted in language. Both Habermas and Gadamer, in fact, tended
to emphasize what might be termed the rhetorical and pragmatic dimensions of
language.
Third, this scepticism concerning the idea of an external empirically apprehended
reality, led to an unease with the role of ‘positivism’, empirical knowledge, technical
knowledge, and the importation of natural science modes of explanation into the
humanities. There was nothing to stop natural science being considered as another
body of signs or linguistic conventions. Nevertheless, the claim to superiority of
this form of knowledge, over all others, was treated with critical anxiety and deep
scepticism. One of the earlier critical theory texts, by Adorno and Horkheimer,The
Dialectic of the Enlightenment, encapsulated this anxiety. The unease of language-
based thought with natural science and positivistic assumptions did not mean that all
such movements simply abandoned the idea of ‘empirical knowing’. Far from it; three
strategies were adopted. The first ruled out science-based accounts from linguistic
analysis. Natural science was regarded as a special case of knowledge not subject to
linguistic problems. In many ways, this was the easiest response. The second claimed
to situate empirical and natural science based explanations, as a ‘sphere of language’,
which worked through a particular and unique method of analysis. However, it
did not proceed beyond this position. In many ways, this is part of Gadamer’s central
argument in hismagnum opus Truth and Method. The third strategy was more daring,
if problematic. It was one, which could be found earlier in the century within Idealist
philosophy. Essentially, this strategy differentiated ‘knowledge spheres’.^2 The different
knowledge spheres needed to be held in tandem. Natural science became one of
these legitimate spheres. However, it was important that any particular knowledge
sphere should try not to colonize the whole ground of human knowledge. This is the
strategy taken initially by Habermas. It was also part of his own strategy for dealing
with the claims of Gadamerian hermeneutics, Wittgensteinian theory, and the more
‘positivistic’ claims of both Marxism and empirical social science.
A fourth feature underpinning critical theory and hermeneutics was the opposition
to classical foundational metaphysics. Metaphysics was seen as caught in a traditional
humanism, which centred on humanity as the core of what is real. Heidegger (as
we have seen) had already heavily criticized this perspective. His alternative was the
‘inhuman’ in the shape ofBeing, thus displacing the centrality of the human. Neither
Gadamer (who had been Heidegger’s student), nor Habermas (who studied Heidegger
closely, but violently rejected him), followed this conception of Being. However,
both, like Heidegger, reject the older search for foundational metaphysical premises.
Not unexpectedly, this rejection is something shared with postmodernists, such as
Foucault and Derrida (amongst others). In consequence, their opposition to meta-
physics is still, in part, an opposition to traditional humanism (in Heidegger’s sense).
Thus, both Habermas and Gadamer consider themselves, with some qualifications,
to be ‘post-metaphysical thinkers’. In this sense, both have critical reservations about
overt claims to both foundationalism and universalism. It would however also be true