ABSTRACT
Habermas could charge hermeneutics in its traditional and philosophic form with 'idealism' since it assumes the self-interpretation of actors to be the last and final arbiter of any account concerning their motives and interests. The idealizations hermeneutics rests upon render it blind to the perception of material factors that assert themselves 'behind the backs' of social actors. In contradistinction to the other critical approaches, Sandkuhler's orthodox Marxism does not allow him to see ideology as 'false consciousness' but only as the socially necessary consciousness of social existence: 'the characterization of all forms and qualities of social consciousness as merely "ideological" would be the result of a differentiating theory of knowledge'. Sandkuhler's argumentation leads, of course, to a questioning of the Marxian scheme in which all emanations of consciousness are seen as representations of an alienated practice; as a consequence, all thought has hitherto been false and only serves to mask reality.
