On Habermas’s Unsatisfactory Effort To Distinguish Communicative Reason From Instrumental Reason

The critique of instrumental reason has a long and complicated history and isdeveloped in the writings of a number of key critical theorists, including, among others,Weber, Lukás, Benjamin, Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas. When it comes toHabermas’s turn, he proposes a new kind of reason, namely communicative reason, toresolve the dilemmas of instrumental reason. Thus in reponse to Habermas’s effort totheorize a new form of reason called communicative reason, this thesis argues thatHabermas’s effort to distinguish communicative reason from instrumental reason isunsatisfactory.This thesis is composed of five parts. The first part is a brief introduction oninstrumental reason, primarily focused on the Weberian understanding of instrumentalreason, which is often taken as the most original form of it. The second part sets out toexamine Habermas’s attempts to explain the concept of reason and to distinguishcommunicative reason from instrumental reason based on this particular concept. Thethird part is the second chapter and will deal with the retraceability of communicativereason to strategic reason. The fourth part is the third chapter and will discuss thecurious arguments with which Habermas seeks to deny the understanding-directed useof language its success-directed character. The final part is the conclusion whichsummarizes that Habermas’s endeavour to distinguish communicative reason frominstrumental reason is unsatisfactory.