ABSTRACT
Jurgen Habermas argued that Hans-Georg Gadamer had underestimated the power of critical reflection and its capacity to break through collective illusions, especially when it is informed by general theories of the potential for rationality built into the history of modern societies. From the perspective of critical theory, progress always has been accompanied by regression. Critical theorists must grant, however, that without Habermas's adoption of a hermeneutical stance no one would have been in a position to recognize the terrain held in common by some critical theorists and some hermeneutical philosophers. And in turn hermeneutical philosophers must recognize that it is largely since the debate with Habermas that Gadamer has given full expression to the Aristotelian elements in his theory, slowly transforming hermeneutics into practical philosophy and into a theory of social reason applicable to the public issues of the current times.
