Habermas and green political thought - Two roads diverging

Abstract

My principal ecocentric objection to Habermas's social and political theory has been that it is thoroughly human-centered in insisting "that the emancipation of human relations need not require or depend upon the emancipation of nature." Ibid., 140. Although Habermas has moved beyond the pessimism and utopianism of the first generation of Critical Theorists by providing the conceptual foundations of the practical and emancipatory cognitive interests, he has, as Whitebook points out, also "markedly altered the spirit of their project." Whitebook, "The Problem of Nature in Habermas," 41. Yet it is precisely the "spirit" of the early Frankfurt school theorists, namely, its critique of the domin..