ABSTRACT
Misgeld tells us that wide reflective equilibrium does not do justice to the embeddedness of our present judgments about society in our life-world. It is important to get a systematic social theory that has as a part of its central core a set of warrantedly assertable truth claims. Critical theory so construed is distinct from political philosophies as we have come to know them and from moral theories such as we find them in the tradition of moral philosophy. Misgeld sides with a Rortyan neopragmatism in rejecting the idea that a critical theory of society can, as the author maintains, provide a method that will be an important aid for solving the problems specific to modern societies and history. The task of the unmasker, say a Foucault or a Chomsky, is sometimes just to show the moral agent (Moore's plain person) that in so resisting there is nothing unreasonable in her behavior.
