ABSTRACT
In the early 1970s Paul Ricoeur put forward the claim that the hierarchical ordering of knowledge-leading interests and their connection to the trilogy of labour-power-language in Habermas's critique of ideology are dependent upon a philosophical conception similar to Heidegger's existential analytic, and more particularly to his hermeneutics of care. In particular, Ricoeur (1981) appeals to the need of ' reflection of a Heideggerian type under Gadamer's guidance' in order to outline a relevant philosophical background for constructing a critical social theory (or, a theory that can serve the function of a critique of ideology). At the same time, however, Ricoeur is not willing to situate his hermeneutic discourse in an ontology of pre-understanding in order to suggest a new kind of critical theory. Instead, he prefers to preserve a transcendental-epistemological reflection (of Kantian type) on the conditions of the possibility of knowledge about ideology. Thus, there is an interplay between hermeneutic ontology and transcendental epistemology, which lays the foundations of the critique of ideology. This kind of hermeneutic meta-critique of Habermas' critique of ideology was one of Ricoeur's contributions to the famous Gadamer-Habermas debate. In this essay I will try to push Ricouer's arguments in the direction of surmounting the shortcomings of Karl-Otto Apel's transcendental-pragmatic epistemology from the viewpoint of hermeneutic phenomenology.
