Toward a Rational Society

Historicism has broken the natural-traditional validity of action-orienting value systems. Today, the self-understanding of social groups and their worldview as articulated in ordinary language is mediated by the hermeneutic appropriation of traditions as traditions. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, in Humboldt’s time, it was still impossible, looking at Germany, to conceive of the scientific transformation of social life. Thus, the university reformers did not have to break seriously with the tradition of practical philosophy. For the techniques with which the development of a highly industrialized society could be brought under control can no longer be interpreted according to an instrumental…