ABSTRACT
[In the first part of his paper, which is not reproduced here, Jack Mezirow discusses the application of Jurgen Habermas’s theory of knowledge to adult learning and education. Habermas has differentiated three generic areas in which human interest generates knowledge:
the area of ‘work’, involving instrumental action to control or manipulate the environment, exemplified by the empirical-analytical sciences (e.g. physics, geology);
the ‘practical’ area, involving interaction to clarify the conditions for communication and intersubjectivity, exemplified by the historical-interpretative sciences (e.g. history, theology, descriptive social sciences);
the ‘emancipatory’ area, involving an interest in self-knowledge and self-reflection, exemplified by the critical social sciences (e.g. psychoanalysis, the critique of ideology).
