ABSTRACT
While sharing some of the ideas of the hermeneutic perspective in the human sciences, Habermas succeeds the tradition of the Frankfurt School and suggests that critique is not only an integral part of understanding. As a critical theorist, Habermas wants to distance himself from the early Frankfurt School thinkers in their reliance on unfounded philosophies of history and undifferentiated concepts of rationality as the normative foundations for their social critique. Habermas argues, from the observer’s perspective, that habitual power and power based on legitimate authority form a continuum rather than a sharp distinction. For, in Habermas’s theory of communicative action, social justice is no longer determined by any objective standard made externally from an absolute foundation or an observer’s standpoint outside the life world. Habermas perceives society as being composed of system and lifeworld. For Habermas, the lifeworld also includes institutional elements such as scientific enterprises and other cultural and social institutions.
