ABSTRACT
Jurgen Habermas is the leading second generation figure of the Frankfurt School, a group of philosophers, social theorists and cultural critics who established the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt in 1929. Habermas taught philosophy at the Universities of Heidelberg and Frankfurt, before moving to the Max Planck Institute in 1972, and subsequently, from the mid 1980s, returning to his post as professor of philosophy and sociology at the University of Frankfurt. The commitment to consider all individuals as potential participants in discourse presupposes a universalistic commitment to the potential equality, autonomy, and rationality of individuals. Capitalism maintains its hegemony by averting crises of motivation, legitimacy, identity, politics and economics. Habermas' theory of knowledge-constitutive interests seeks to uncover the interests at work in particular situations and to interrogate the legitimacy of those interests, identifying the extent to which they serve equality and democracy.
