A reflexão epistemológica de Habermas e a sua proposta de racionalidade comunicativa

Abstract

Jürgen Habermas is a modern thinker who presents us with a rationality capable of creating spaces of freedom that correspond to the ideals of social emancipation that have always crossed the horizon of Western modernity. Through several studies by this author, including critical contributions to his theory, we will develop his epistemological reflection and his relevant contribution to the renewal of German critical theory. We will begin by presenting his critique on positivism, and then summoning the dispute with Gadamer about hermeneutics. Habermas adopts hermeneutics, albeit with some criticism, as a facilitator of self-reflection that allows revealing to social sciences the errors of both objectivist social science and vulgar analysis of language. We will follow this thinker's perspective on the interests that guide knowledge and, finally, we will take into account his theory of communicative rationality, which stresses Habermas's universalist optimism, based on a healthy pluralism that allows human consensus.