ABSTRACT
From the methodological aspect, Weber’s dichotomizing and decontextualizing mode of theorizing is unable to account for the dynamics emerging from the interactions in and between different dimensions of social and historical reality. From the aspect of social diagnosis, Weber does not pay enough attention to the development of resources for more complex and higher levels of social integration in modern western culture. Therefore he is unable to perceive the potentials which are still available for conflict resolution. Habermas proposes the pair-concepts of instrumental rationality and communicative rationality, and system and the lifeworld to substantiate this social diagnosis as an alternative to Weber’s. Habermas shares the postpositivist and hermeneutic viewpoint that the vantage point assumed by the foundationalists does not exist at all. Challenges to critical theory regarding its rational reconstruction of human rationality normally lead to disagreements on its usefulness for providing a theoretical framework for explaining particular social events.
