Concept

Rational reconstruction

Résumé
Rational reconstruction is a philosophical term with several distinct meanings. It is found in the work of Jürgen Habermas and Imre Lakatos. For Habermas, rational reconstruction is a philosophical and linguistic method that systematically translates intuitive knowledge of rules into a logical form. In other words, it is an approach to science and philosophy which attempts to put meanings into language properly. It is a type of formal analysis that makes explicit and systematizes the universal and inescapable conditions for the possibility of certain types of phenomena. Rational reconstruction explicates the deep generative structures that give rise to and allow for particular performances, behaviours, and other symbolically pre-structured realities. It is a procedure that is intimately tied to the interpretation of reality, and can deal with an extremely broad range of questions (but not all). Habermas sees rational reconstruction as a task appropriate for philosophy. This mode of philosophical reflection can be compared to procedures traditionally taken up in philosophy and is concerned with the questions traditionally posed. Once it has renounced its claim to be a first science or an encyclopedia, philosophy can maintain its status within the scientific system neither by assimilating itself to particular exemplary sciences nor by the exclusive distancing of itself from science in general. Philosophy has to implicate itself in the fallibilistic self-understanding and procedural rationality of the empirical sciences; it may not lay claim to a privileged access to truth, or to a method, an object realm, or even just a style of intuition that is specifically its own. Only thus can philosophy contribute its best to a nonexclusive division of labor, namely, its persistent tenacity in posing questions universalistically, and its procedure of rationally reconstructing the intuitive pretheoretical knowledge of competently speaking, acting and judging subjects. ...
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