David S. Owen is Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Hamline University.

Acknowledgments

Abbreviations

Introduction

1. The Idea of Progress and Critical Social Theory

Critical Social Theory
Critical Hermeneutics
Summary

2. Habermas's Conception of Critical Social Theory

Formal Pragmatics

Communicative Action
Sociocultural Lifeworld
Communicative Rationality

The Developmental Theory of Social Evolution

Habermas's Reconstruction of Historical Materialism
Overview of the Mature Theory

The Theory of Modernity
Summary

3. The Development Theory of Social Evolution

General Considerations

Conceptual and Theoretical Distinctions
Epistemological Assumptions

Principal Elements

The Dimenions of Development
Rationalization
The Dynamic between Interaction and Labor
Development Logic and Empirical Mechanisms
Social Evolution as a Learning Process

4. The Idea of a Development Logic of History

The Concept of Developmental Logic

The Psychological-Theoretic Conception
Formal Properties
The Social-Theoretic Conception

The Developmental Logic Thesis

The Homological Arguments
The Formal-Pragmatic Argument
Further Questions

5. Progress and Social Evolution

Habermas's Conception of Progress
The Dialectic of Progress
A Differentiated Conception of Progress
Summary and Conclusions

Notes

Bibliography

Index