The Nature of Political Theory

278 The Nature of Political Theory

paradigm of subjectivity—a paradigm that gave rise to the whole problem of negative
self-destructive reason.^6 In consequence, for Habermas, Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s
Dialectic of Enlightenment‘holds out scarcely any prospect for an escape from the
myth of purposive rationality’ (see Habermas 1998: 110–14). He traces the origin
of doubts about this notion of reason toideology critique, namely, where the reason
underpinning ideology critique becomes itself ideologically suspect (see Habermas
1998: 116). Consequently, suspicion of ideology becomes more or less total, which,
in turn, undermines the whole concept of reason. For Habermas, both Adorno and
Horkheimer, therefore, ‘surrendered themselves to an uninhibited scepticism regard-
ing reason’ (Habermas 1998: 129). This reflexive movement of ‘reason against itself’
(the performative contradiction), is something that Habermas traces to the impact of
Nietzschean ideas. In fact, he sees Nietzschean ‘destructive’ and ‘self-reflexive’ ideas at
work, surreptitiously, within Adorno’s and Horkheimer’s own theories. However, he
continues that, ‘Horkheimer and Adorno find themselves in the same embarrassment
as Nietzsche: If they want to renounce the effect of a final unmaking and still want
tocontinue with critique, they will have to leave at least one rational criterion intact
for their explanation of the corruption ofallrational criteria’ (Habermas 1998: 127).
The answer to this philosophical conundrum can be found in the groundwork of
Habermas’s own theory.

Critical Theory Fulfilled

One important hiatus therefore within critical theory, specifically in the work of
Adorno, Marcuse, and Horkheimer, was that they did not offer any sustained
argument or worked-out alternative to the inadequacies of traditional theory and
subject-based instrumental reason. In this sense, Habermas stands out from the crit-
ical theory grouping, insofar as this is precisely what he has tried to do. Habermas
developed a deeply worked-out project, premised on a critical interpretation of occi-
dental thinking from Aristotle to the present era—although with particular reference
to philosophical writing from the eighteenth century to the present. In reconstructing
this tradition, he advances a comprehensive theory of communicative competence
and a consensus theory of truth, which contains powerful implications for both
philosophy and the social sciences.
Yet, debate about Habermas is at an odd stage, at the present moment. There is
already, like Rawls, a mountain of literature concerning his work, and he is still actively
writing and developing his ideas. He also has multiple interpreters, sympathizers, and
critics. It is difficult to get a clear handle on such a technically sophisticated thinker as
Habermas, without some distance in time, certainly to pick up the subtle transitions
and mutations in his ideas. For example, Habermas has clearly gone through certain
intellectual transitions—although the precise relations of these transitions to any
consistent themes in his work remains unclear. Originally, in the 1960s, and early
1970s, his ideas were more obviously connected to the neo-Marxist aspirations of the
critical theory school (tempered by a more eclectic philosophical stance). Although