Science, Politics, and Swift Boats • P. T. Jackson • Page 29
validity,” and that we are thus left with a pure interplay of dominations without end
(ibid.: 127). Thus there is a duty for social scientists and philosophers to promote social
conditions that more closely approximate the ideal.
But this ideal is, again, not purely utopian, but rests on the best use of reason that
we have available. Such a use of reason also necessarily presupposes “‘the world’ as the
totality of independently existing objects that can be judged or dealt with,” and
presupposes that this world is “objective” in the sense of being “‘given’ to us as ‘the
same for everyone’” (Habermas 2001: 16). It is on the externality of this world, and the
subordination of knowledge practices to it, that Habermas’ claims to decontextualized
knowledge ultimately rest:
…the “being the case” or obtaining of states of affairs indirectly
expresses the “existence” of recalcitrant objects (or the facticity of
constraining circumstances). The “world” that we presuppose as
the totality of objects, not of facts, must not be confused with the
“reality” that consists of facts, that is everything in the world that
can be represented in true statements (ibid.: 18).
Since consensus about the character of the world depends not merely on local
intersubjective notions but on the ability of rational procedures of inquiry to reach some
solid limit in the character of the (classically) objective world itself, it is possible for the
sciences—and the social sciences in particular—to establish more or less certain facts
about, for instance, the effects that the rationalization of certain social practices will
have on the reproduction of the lifeworld. Indeed, establishing these conditions is the
task of the social sciences, which can show how imperfectly the idealizing
presuppositions of communicative action have been implemented in a given society.
Convention