Truth and Justification (PDF)

In this important new book, J& #252rgen Habermas takes up certain
fundamental questions of philosophy. While much of his recent work
has been concerned with issues of morality and law, in this new
work Habermas returns to the traditional philosophical questions of
truth, objectivity and reality which were at the centre of his
earlier classic book Knowledge and Human Interests.

How can the norms that underpin the linguistically structured
world in which we live be brought into step with the contingency of
the development of socio-cultural forms of life? How can the idea
that our world exists independently of our attempts to describe it
be reconciled with the insight that we can never reach reality
without the mediation of language and that 'bare' reality is
therefore unattainable?

In Knowledge and Human Interests Habermas answered these
questions with reference to a weak naturalism and a
transcendental-pragmatic realism. Since then, however, he has
developed a formal pragmatic theory which is based on an analysis
of speech acts and language use. In this new volume Habermas takes
up the philosophical questions of truth, objectivity and reality
from the perspective of his linguistically-based pragmatic theory.
The final section addresses the limits of philosophy and reassesses
the relation between theory and practice from a perspective that
could be described as 'post-Marxist'.

This volume, now available in paperback as well, by one of the world's leading philosophers will
be essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy,
social theory and the humanities and social sciences generally.