Habermas' Realistic View after the Linguistic Turn

Rorty, who influenced Habermas by his linguistic turn, believes that the debate between realism and antirealism belongs to the tradition which we have already departed from. In fact, in his view, the linguistic turn principally make this distinction difficult. In contrast, Habermas believes that the decision between the realistic and nominalistic positions is a fundamental choice, which plays a crucial role in epistemology, ontology, and the corresponding concepts of truth and reference. The main concern of Habermas as the heir of the realist and the idealist traditions, is to show the simultaneous presence of idealistic and naturalistic elements of knowledge in explaining cognition. For this purpose he refers to a pragmatic account of knowledge. Habermas replaces what has been achieved pragmatically, as the internal realism, with the transcendental idealism. Internal realism, for Habermas, has two essential duties; on the one hand, to stand against relativism as a new form of skepticism, and on the other hand, to oppose the metaphysical realism in its dogmatistic form. The difficulty of Habermas's task, in explaining his realistic view, is to reconcile two priorities; the ontological priority of the objective world, with the epistemological priority of linguistic life-world. This article describes and criticizes the way Habermas develops this view