Critically and comprehensively examining the works of Habermas and Foucault, two giants of 20th century continental philosophy, this book illuminates the effects of scientific reason as it migrates from its specialized institutions into society. It explores how science permeates shared human consciousness, to produce effects that ripple through the entire social body to restructure relations between persons, discourses, institutions, and power in ways which we are barely conscious of. The book shows how science, through its entwinement with power, discourses, and practices, presents certain social arrangements as natural and certain courses of action as beyond question. By arguing for a non-reductive, liberal scientific naturalism that sees science as one form of rationality amongst others, it opens possibilities for thought and action beyond scientific knowledge.

Examining the shifting relations between science and other social institutions, discourses and power, the book addresses the narrowing of freedom by the instrumental modes of thinking that accompany scientific and technological change. McIntyre simultaneously raises the question of the good life and the question of a philosophical critique both directed towards science and, at the same time, shaped by, and responsive to it. By analysing the works of Foucault and Habermas in terms of their social, political, and historical contexts it reveals the two thinkers as linked by a commitment to the Enlightenment tradition and its emancipatory telos. The significant differences between the two are seen to result from Foucaults radicalization of this tradition, a radicalization which is, at the same time, implicit within the Enlightenment project itself.

John McIntyre is a research affiliate at the University of Sydney. He hastutored and lectured at University of Sydney and Melbourne School of Continental Philosophy.His research is focussed on science, technology and their relationship to society and draws on philosophical thought from across both the analytic and continental philosophical traditions.Prior to commencing formal studies in philosophy, McIntyre worked as an environmental planner.

CHAPTER 1. Modernitys Nagging Question

Science and Society / The Aim and Contents of this Book / Philosophy and Its Contexts / Habermas and Foucault: Lives and Motivations / Modernity Science and Philosophy

CHAPTER 2. Habermas Critique of Positivism

Habermas Response to Positivism / Knowledge and Human Interests / Habermas Theoretical Partitions

CHAPTER 3. Science, Modernity and Communicative Action

Habermas Linguistic Turn /Lifeworld, System and the Rationalisation of Society /The Diagnosis of Modernity/Insights andAporias /Reinterpreting Habermas

CHAPTER 4. Science and Deliberative Democracy

Between Facts and Norms / Philosophy and Science / The Future of Human Nature. / Free Will and Determinism / Concluding Thoughts

CHAPTER 5. Foucaults Archaeology of Scientific Knowledge

Foucaults Radicalisation of Critique / Madness / Archaeology and the History of Science / Order and The Sciences / Concluding Thoughts

CHAPTER 6. Science and Power

From Archaeology to Genealogy / The Emergence and Dissemination of Modern / Power/Knowledge / The Constitution of The Subject / The Natural Sciences / The Normalisation of Society / Bio-Power and Governmentality / Normative Confusions

CHAPTER 7.Science and the Genealogy of the Subject

Later Foucaults Broader Framework / Ethics, Aesthetics and Spirituality / The Genealogy of The Subject / Philosophy and Science after Kant

CHAPTER 8. Science, Philosophy and Modernity

The Reconcilability of Habermas and Foucault / Reflexivity and its Modern Radicalisation / Discovery and Self-Transformation / Normative Foundations and Confusions. / Wrapping up the debate / Concluding Reflections