Abstract

First generation members of the Frankfurt School of social theory--Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse--anticipated the need, now more acutely felt, for theoretical reflection concerning the causes of environmental degradation. While their philosophical approach offered insight into the social, historical and psychological sources of this problem, it was burdened with serious conceptual difficulties. Jurgen Habermas's reconstruction of the philosophical foundations of critical social theory promises to resolve many of these difficulties. Yet his linguistic and pragmatic approach to ethical theory, and to his conception of modernity, seems to entail an anthropocentrism that forecloses the possibility of identifying an ethical dimension to human interaction with the natural world. ;This dissertation first traces the vicissitudes of the environmentalist impulse in the work of the Frankfurt School, concentrating on the critique of instrumental reason and Habermas's reconstruction of this theoretical program. It then outlines the obstacles facing environmental thinkers in Habermas's conception of practical reason and in his conception of modernity. After a critical examination of these obstacles, the dissertation shows that his theoretical approach can be reconciled with the aims of environmental ethics and philosophy. By drawing upon discussions of care, particularity, perception and community in current moral psychology and ethical theory, this dissertation reconstructs Habermas's conception of moral judgment so that a place for a moral dimension to human interaction with the natural world can be secured