Knowledge and Human Interests

By: Jurgen HABERMAS (Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt)

• Description
• Buy book / Order Exam Copy
• Table of Contents

Description

Habermas describes Knowledge and Human Interests as an attempt to reconstruct the prehistory of modern positivism with the intention of analysing the connections between knowledge and human interests. Convinced of the increasing historical and social importance of the natural and behavioural sciences, Habermas makes clear how crucial it is to understand the central meanings and justifications of these sciences. He argues that for too long the relationship between philosophy and science has been distorted.

In this extraordinarily wide-ranging book, Habermas examines the principal positions of modern philosophy - Kantianism, Marxism, positivism, pragmatism, hermeneutics, the philosophy of science, linguistic philosophy and phenomenology - to lay bare the structure of the processes of enquiry that determine the meaning and the validity of all our statements which claim objectivity.

This edition contains a postscript written by Habermas for the second German edition of Knowledge and Human Interests.

---

---

* Exam copies only available to lecturers for whom the book may be suitable as a course text.
Please note: Sales representation and distribution for Polity titles is provided by John Wiley and Sons Ltd.

---

Table of Contents

Preface.

Translator's Note.

Part I: The Crisis of the Critique of Knowledge.

Part II: Positivism, Pragmatism, Historicism.

Part III: Critique as the Unity of Knowledge and Interest.

Appendix.

Knowledge and Human Interests: A General Perspective.

Jurgen Habermas: A Postscript.

Index.

---