Abstract

McCarthy's The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas argues that Habermas' “linguistic turn” is no “turn” at all. Rather, it is the gradual evolution of a program to rework the normative and theoretical foundations of critical theory of communicative competence. Now that the contours of Habermas' program over the last twenty years have come into focus, it is more appropriate to speak of a “procedural” rather than a “linguistic” turn, since the theory of communicative competence continues the tradition of proceduralism in ethics and politics first initiated by Thomas Hobbes.

In Knowledge and Human Interests, Habermas maintained that the “materialist reappropriation” of Hegel could not regress behind Hegel's critique of modern epistemology.