Jürgen Habermas — The Communicative Turn (1968–1971)
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Placement: The movement of the whole
Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929) represents the second generation of the Frankfurt School — young enough not to have been in exile, old enough to have consciously experienced the Nazi period. His philosophical development is an attempt to escape the aporias of the first generation: Adorno’s negative dialectics, Horkheimer’s pessimism, the impossibility of constructive practice.
Knowledge and Human Interests (1968) is his first major systematic work — published in the year of the student revolt, standing between the fronts.[1] The book marks a turning point: from the philosophy of consciousness to the theory of communication, from subject-object dialectics to intersubjective understanding, from Hegel to a transformed, language-pragmatic philosophy.
The temporal constellation is significant: in 1968, as the students revolted, as Adorno was besieged by them, as Marcuse was proclaimed a prophet — Habermas published a book showing: there is a way out of negativity. Not through naive affirmation, not through voluntaristic action — but through theoretical transformation of the foundations.
Intellectual-historical placement: The young Habermas
Habermas was born in 1929 — into the crisis of the Weimar Republic. He was 14 when the war ended, 16 at the time of the Nuremberg trials. The exposure of Nazi crimes shaped him existentially — but differently than it shaped Adorno. Adorno had experienced the catastrophe from outside (in exile); Habermas experienced it from inside (as a member of the Hitler Youth, as part of the system).[2]
This difference matters. Adorno could say: “I was not there, I am innocent.” Habermas had to say: “I was there, even though I was a child.” This involvement led to a different philosophical stance: not distance, but responsibility; not negativity, but reconstruction; not refusal, but engagement.
In 1956 Habermas became Adorno’s assistant in Frankfurt. The relationship was productive but tense. Adorno had taken notice of him because Habermas, already in 1953 — as a 24-year-old student — had published a vehement critique of Heidegger in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Heidegger had just had his 1935 lecture course Introduction to Metaphysics printed, in which he spoke, without comment, of the “inner truth and greatness” of National Socialism. The young Habermas attacked — and thereby publicly broke with the Heideggerian tone that still dominated postwar German philosophy.[3]
Adorno valued Habermas’s intelligence but distrusted his “positivity.” Habermas admired Adorno but rejected his pessimism. In 1961 Habermas went to Heidelberg to work with Gadamer — a deliberate distancing from Frankfurt.[4]
In 1964 he returned — as professor, as successor to Horkheimer (who had become emeritus). Now he was in a position to redefine the Frankfurt School. Knowledge and Human Interests (1968) was this attempt — not as a break with Adorno, but as transformation.
The steelman position: Habermas’s way out of negativity
The basic thesis: Three cognitive interests
The book develops an epistemologically critical thesis: knowledge is not “disinterested” (as Kant claimed), but interest-guided. But “interest” here does not mean subjective arbitrariness but anthropologically anchored basic orientations.[5]
The three interests: first, the technical interest — the interest in mastering nature. It guides the empirical sciences (physics, chemistry, biology). These sciences seek to discover laws in order to make nature predictable and controllable. This interest is legitimate — but it must not be absolutized.
Second, the practical interest — the interest in mutual understanding. It guides the hermeneutic sciences (historiography, philology, cultural studies). These sciences seek to understand, not explain; to interpret, not control. They aim at intersubjective agreement about meanings.
Third, the emancipatory interest — the interest in liberation from domination. It guides the critical sciences (psychoanalysis, ideology critique, critical theory). These sciences seek to expose how domination stabilizes itself — through unconscious mechanisms, through ideological delusion, through structural violence.
This triad is a transformation of Hegel’s system. In Hegel there is logic — nature — spirit. In Habermas there are three cognitive interests corresponding to three types of science. The structure is similar — but the foundation differs: not ontological (an order of being), but anthropological (basic human orientations).
A first systematic limit already shows itself here: Habermas’s threefold division remains arbitrary. Why exactly these three interests? Where does their distinction come from? Habermas offers no systematic derivation, only a phenomenological description. A foundation in reflexive logic — as Johannes Heinrichs will later develop (→ chapter 17a) — would ask: How do these three interests relate to one another? Is there a fourth? How is their unity to be thought?
The critique of the philosophy of consciousness
The decisive point is the critique of the philosophy of consciousness — that is, of the tradition running from Descartes through Kant to Hegel, which starts from the self-conscious subject.[6]
Habermas shows: the philosophy of consciousness runs into aporias. The subject is supposed to become transparent to itself — but it remains opaque. It is supposed to know objects — but it also constitutes them at the same time. It is supposed to be autonomous — but it is conditioned by nature, society, history.
The alternative: communication theory. It is not the solitary subject directed at objects that is fundamental, but intersubjective understanding between subjects. Knowledge is not monadic but dialogical. Truth arises not in the individual consciousness but in communicative exchange.
This turn has radical consequences. It transforms Hegel’s dialectic from subject-object to subject-subject, Hegel’s recognition through struggle (lordship and bondage) into mutual understanding, Hegel’s spirit from absolute knowledge into communicative reason.
Psychoanalysis as a model of self-reflection
A central chapter analyzes psychoanalysis as a model of critical self-reflection.[7] Habermas shows: Freud discovered something philosophically significant — self-deception.
The neurotic suffers — but does not know why. He has symptoms — but does not understand their meaning. Repression makes unconscious what should become conscious. Psychoanalysis is the process by which the unconscious is made conscious — not through instruction from outside but through self-reflection.
This structure is dialectical — in the Hegelian sense, but transformed: alienation (the subject is estranged from itself), reflection (through dialogue the estranged becomes recognizable), reconciliation (the subject appropriates the estranged — not through elimination but through integration).
Psychoanalysis is thus a model for critical theory in general: ideology is collective self-deception, ideology critique is collective self-reflection, emancipation is collective appropriation of what has been alienated.
The outlook: Communicative reason
Knowledge and Human Interests ends programmatically: philosophy must transform itself from philosophy of consciousness into communication theory.[8] The basic idea is already clear in 1968: reason is not monological but dialogical. It is realized not in solitary thinking but in communicative exchange. Truth is not correspondence (agreement of statement and thing) but consensus (agreement among communication partners) — not factual consensus, however, but ideal consensus: consensus under conditions of communication free of domination.
This conception is a radical transformation of Hegel. Recognition is achieved not through struggle but through mutual understanding. The dialectic is not subject-object but subject-subject. Reconciliation is not ontological (in being) but processual (in communicative exchange).
The Habermas-Luhmann controversy (1971)
Two paths after Hegel
Only three years after Knowledge and Human Interests, one of the most important theoretical debates of postwar German sociology takes place: “Theory of Society or Social Technology?” — this is the title of the volume in which Habermas and Niklas Luhmann confront their positions. The systematic aspects of this debate — Luhmann’s position, his critique of Hegel, the unresolved questions — were already presented in detail in chapter 4.4. Here we are interested in the debate from the perspective of Habermas’s development.[9]
The constellation is revealing: Habermas, representative of the Frankfurt School, defends a normative theory of society that continues Hegel and Marx. Society must be criticized against the idea of rational understanding, emancipatory practice, communication free of domination. Luhmann represents a value-free systems analysis that describes how society functions without applying normative standards.
Habermas’s charge: Luhmann’s systems theory is conservative — it accepts existing conditions instead of criticizing them. By renouncing normativity, it immunizes itself against critique and becomes a legitimating ideology of the status quo.
Luhmann’s reply: Habermas’s critical theory is nostalgic — it clings to normative ideals (reason, emancipation, freedom from domination) that can no longer be realized in modern society. Modern society is functionally differentiated — there is no longer a center from which “rational” integration could be achieved.
The unresolved problem
The debate ends undecided. Habermas can show that Luhmann’s systems theory underilluminates the normative dimension. Luhmann can show that Habermas’s action theory underestimates the complexity of modern societies. Both are right — and both are one-sided.
The problem neither can solve: how do action and system relate to each other? Is the system something other than the sum of actions? If so, where does it come from? If not, why does it have laws of its own?
Habermas’s later answer — the distinction between “system” and “lifeworld” in The Theory of Communicative Action (1981) — is an attempt to solve this problem. But as we shall see in chapter 17b, the solution remains unsatisfactory. The more systematic tool for solving this problem — reflexive systems theory — will be presented by Johannes Heinrichs in 1976, five years before Habermas’s main work (→ chapter 17a).
Sublation I: What is true? (Preserving)
Habermas’s approach contains important moments of truth:
First: the overcoming of the philosophy of consciousness. The turn from subject-object to subject-subject is philosophically fruitful. It resolves many classical problems: the problem of other minds (the other is not inferred analogically but given communicatively), objectivity (not correspondence but intersubjective recognition), normativity (not the categorical imperative but validity achieved communicatively). This turn is a legitimate further development of Hegel. Hegel’s recognition is already intersubjective — but it remains framed within the philosophy of consciousness. Habermas shows: one can think the intersubjective more radically — as linguistically mediated, as communicatively structured.
Second: the rehabilitation of reason. Against Adorno’s total critique, Habermas shows: there is emancipatory reason. Not every rationality is instrumental, not every systematicity is domination, not every mutual understanding is ideology. Communicative reason is not reduced to means-end calculation — it aims at understanding, at mutual recognition, at discourse free of domination. This rehabilitation was necessary. Adorno’s negativity had become sterile. Habermas shows: one can be critical without being hostile to reason.
Third: the integration of psychoanalysis. The interpretation of psychoanalysis as a model of self-reflection is brilliant. It shows: emancipation is not external liberation (revolution) but internal transformation (self-reflection). The parallel to ideology critique is fruitful: as the individual deceives himself (repression), so society deceives itself (ideology).
Fourth: the enabling of practice. Unlike Adorno, Habermas can think practice. Communicative reason is not only critical but also constructive. It shows not only what is wrong — but also what is possible: communication free of domination, discursive understanding, democratic will-formation.
Sublation II: The inner contradictions (Negating)
But Habermas’s position also has limits, which already show themselves in this early phase:
First contradiction: the idealism of communication. Habermas posits “communication free of domination” as a regulative idea. But is this not itself idealistic? All real communication is structured by power — by differences in education, by economic inequality, by structural asymmetries. The question: if all real communication is dominated, how can “communication free of domination” be a norm? Habermas answers: as a regulative idea, as orientation. But is this not a relapse into Kantian idealism — an ought separated from an is?
Second contradiction: the neglect of the unconscious. Habermas takes up Freud — but he rationalizes him. Psychoanalysis becomes a model of self-reflection, the unconscious something that can be made conscious. But is this not a misrecognition of what Freud discovered: that there is a remainder that cannot be made conscious? Lacan had shown: the unconscious is structured like a language — but it withdraws from conscious control. Habermas’s optimism underestimates the opacity of the subject.
Third contradiction: the ungrounded basic categories. Habermas’s three cognitive interests are described, not derived. He finds them empirically-phenomenologically but does not ground them reflexively-logically. Why exactly three? Why these three? How do they relate to one another systematically? These questions remain open — and they are not really answered in his later work.
Fourth contradiction: the unresolved action/system problem. The Luhmann debate shows: Habermas cannot satisfactorily clarify the relation between communicative action and systemic integration. Both dimensions remain side by side, without their mediation being thought through. This problem will occupy him in the following years — but the solution he will offer in 1981 (system vs. lifeworld) will raise new problems (→ chapter 17b).
Sublation III: Systematic placement (Elevating)
Knowledge and Human Interests (1968) and the Luhmann debate (1971) mark a turning point in the Frankfurt School:
The achievement: Habermas shows a way out of Adorno’s negativity. He rehabilitates reason without becoming naive. He enables practice without becoming voluntaristic. He productively transforms Hegel — from philosophy of consciousness to communication theory. And he confronts the systematic challenge posed by Luhmann’s systems theory.
The limit: but the approach remains idealistic. “Communication free of domination” is a regulative idea — not a real possibility. Psychoanalysis is rationalized. The basic categories are described, not derived. The action/system problem remains unresolved.
The further development: The Theory of Communicative Action (1981) will develop these approaches further — but also raise new problems. Habermas’s attempt to solve the action/system problem through the distinction between “system” and “lifeworld” will prove dichotomous. A more systematic solution — the reflexively-logical mediation of action and system — will be presented by Johannes Heinrichs as early as 1976. That Habermas does not take up this alternative belongs among the missed opportunities of postwar German philosophy (→ chapter 17a, chapter 17b).
Jürgen Habermas: Knowledge and Human Interests, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1968. The book is based on lectures Habermas had been giving since 1964. ↩︎
On the biography see Stefan Müller-Doohm: Jürgen Habermas. Eine Biographie, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2014, especially pp. 23–89 on his childhood and youth. ↩︎
The relationship with Adorno is documented in their correspondence, published in: Theodor W. Adorno / Jürgen Habermas: Briefwechsel 1960-1969, ed. Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2015. ↩︎
The time with Gadamer (1961–1964) was important for Habermas’s hermeneutic education. But he broke with Gadamer’s traditionalism — the famous Habermas-Gadamer debate of the 1960s shows the differences. ↩︎
Habermas: Knowledge and Human Interests, pp. 241–262: “Knowledge and Interest.” ↩︎
Ibid., pp. 9–47: “Crisis of Epistemology.” ↩︎
Ibid., pp. 262–331: “Self-Reflection as Science: Freud.” ↩︎
Ibid., pp. 368–396: “Afterword.” ↩︎
Emmanuel Levinas: Totality and Infinity, pp. 211–216. The face as ethical epiphany, which comes before all ontology: “Le visage parle. Il parle, en tant que c’est lui qui rend possible et commence tout discours” (p. 213)—“The face speaks. It speaks, insofar as it is what makes possible and begins all discourse.” ↩︎