Abstract

This article discusses the career of anthropological motives in the work of Jürgen Habermas. The main thesis is that besides his explicit criticism of the use of anthropological arguments in the field of moral and social philosophy there is a more or less strong commitment to this kind of thinking in his own work. This becomes most explicit in Habermas’ early writings around Knowledge & Human Interest, where he tries to formulate an anthropological grounded interest in emancipation, and in his recent publication The Future of Human Nature, where he slightly moves away from his strict Kantian discourse ethics. But even in the formulation of his universal pragmatics we can find some weak anthropological grounding.