ABSTRACT
The real problem with Habermas's account of nature, is not that it fails to capture nature's 'otherness' but rather that it does not sufficiently see that nature too is simply part of the social or communicative realm. Now Habermas's views of nature, and his critique of the naturalism of his predecessors, have certainly been the subject of sharp criticisms from ecologically minded points of view. It is Habermas's separation of nature from the social, not his separation of 'nature in itself' from the one the authors encounter in their instrumental actions, that prevents him from conceiving of the possibility of an 'ethics of nature'. Categories of 'life' and of teleology, he suggests, may turn out to be ineliminable from biological theories. In later works such as The Theory of Communicative Action, the underlying dualism is defended not by an appeal to interest but directly to language. Ottmann and Whitebook employ similar strategies in their critiques.
