ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses Habermas’s critical theory as a philosophical-transcendental means of orientation. Its purpose is to clarify the philosophical structure of critique proposed by Habermas, which has become so influential in contemporary critical international theory, and how it relies on a grand narrative of human development that poses a radical separation between theory and practice, i.e., between the philosophical assessment of the logical structure of human development and the actual history of embodied human beings. Furthermore, this grand narrative sustains a transcendental normative standpoint of orientation that also separates the criteria for critical judgement from the actual concrete living experiences of human beings. Consequently, Habermas’s critical theory is revealed as an inadequate answer to the problem of orientation both in its explanatory and anticipatory dimensions. This chapter thus serves to establish the point of contrast with the argument for a historical-sociological approach to grand narratives and critical theorising that is developed in the rest of the book.
