Hans Albert - Albert's Critical Rationalism

Albert's Critical Rationalism

Albert held the chair of 'Social Sciences and General Studies of Methods' at the University of Mannheim. He is also a much-cited philosopher. Most importantly, he gave Popper's critical rationalism a concise, broad-ranging formulation, even as a way of life.

He gave evidence for his thesis that there is no field of human activities where one should not be critical. Thus he applied critical rationalism to the social sciences, especially to economics, politics, jurisprudence, and religion.

In his view the attitude of criticism is one of the oldest European traditions (going back to the pre-Socratics) in comparison with other less critical traditions.

Before his many books were published Hans Albert was already known to a broader audience for his contributions to the positivism dispute answering his opponents of the so called Frankfurt School (school of Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer at Frankfurt's Institute of Sociology). His contributions were to:

  • differentiate critical rationalism and positivism;
  • argue against some strains of sociology opposing the application of methods used in natural sciences;
  • suggest that the role of values and the scientific handling of values has to be given new thought;
  • interpret Max Weber not as supporting value-free science but as demonstrating that scientists can 'be free of any value judgement', even for research in the fields of values.

New insights are not easy to be spread or proliferate. There is often an ideological obstacle, for which Albert coined the phrase 'immunity against criticism'.

Albert's well known Münchhausen Trilemma is ironically named after Baron Münchhausen, who allegedly pulled himself out of a swamp seizing himself by his shock of hair. This trilemma rounds off the classical problem of justification in the theory of knowledge. All attempts to get a certain justification must fail. The verdict concerns not only deductive justifications as many of his critics believe, but also inductive, causal, transcendental, and all otherwise structured justifications. They all will be in vain:

  • (1) All justification in pursuit of certain knowledge has also to justify the means of justification and therefore there can be no end.
  • (2) One can stop at self-evidence or common sense or fundamental principles or anything else, but in doing so the intention to install certain justification is abandoned.
  • (3) The third horn of the trilemma is the application of a circular argument.

Albert stressed repeatedly that there is no limitation of the Münchhausen Trilemma to deductive conclusions. Therefore certain justification is impossible at all. Once having given up the classical idea of certain knowing one can stop the process of justification where one wants to stop. This, however, presupposes that one is ready to start critical thinking at this point anew if necessary. Thus:

  • Don't look backwards to the solid basis of your thinking, but look always forward to the consequences.
  • In this way no problem arises to justify this non-justificationalism.

To observe and criticize the endeavors made to escape from the quagmire of certain justification became an instructive part of Hans Albert's philosophy. For example his discussion of the ideas of Karl-Otto Apel, one of Germany's leading philosophers (see Albert's Transzendentale Träumereien... meaning Transcendental Reveries. Karl-Otto Apels Language Games and His Hermeneutical God, which is not yet translated).

Still, Albert argues that critical rationalists have to accept that those attempts of rigorous justification (like Apel's) are not senseless, since only as long as alternative methods are without success can critical rationalism be called successful.

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