Knowledge and Human Interests

Habermas, Jurgen) Shapiro, Jeremy J. (trans)

ISBN 10: 0807015407 / ISBN 13: 9780807015407

Published by Beacon Press, Boston, MA, 1972

About this Item

1st Amerian edition; dj w/rubbing, ltie chipping, unclipped price, in mylar; brown c w/cream boards; , 356 clean, unmarked pages/Appendix, Notes and Index; . A tightly reasoned critique of positivism -- the belief that "science and only science is knowledge" -- in defense of philosophical reflection.

Seller Inventory # 044871a

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Knowledge and Human Interests
• Publisher: Beacon Press, Boston, MA
• Publication Date: 1972
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0807015407
• ISBN 13: 9780807015407
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

For those concerned with the relationships between thought and action, Knowledge and Human Interests will quickly be recognized as a brilliant book -- and a bold outline for a new social theory.

"…this book is rich in suggestions for a new theory of knowledge that would take into account the 'interest' of humanity in non-repressive and non-distorting commmunication, or free and equal interaction as the implicit horizon of knowledge."
-- Mark Poster

"It is not altogether easy to assess the work of a scholar whose professional competence extends from the logic of science to the sociology of knowledge, by way of Marx, Hegel, and the more recondite sources of the European metaphysical tradition.…The baffling thing about Habermas is that, at an age when most of his colleagues had painfully established control over one corner of the field, he has made himself the master of the whole, in depth and breadth alike."
-- Times Literary Supplement

From the Back Cover

Habermas describes Knowledge and Human Interests as an attempt to reconstruct the prehistory of modern positivism with the intention of analysing the connections between knowledge and human interests. Convinced of the increasing historical and social importance of the natural and behavioural sciences, Habermas makes clear how crucial it is to understand the central meanings and justifications of these sciences. He argues that for too long the relationship between philosophy and science has been distorted.

In this extraordinarily wide-ranging book, Habermas examines the principal positions of modern philosophy - Kantianism, Marxism, positivism, pragmatism, hermeneutics, the philosophy of science, linguistic philosophy and phenomenology - to lay bare the structure of the processes of enquiry that determine the meaning and the validity of all our statements which claim objectivity.

This edition contains a postscript written by Habermas for the second German edition of Knowledge and Human Interests.