Habermasian Pedagogy

Abstract

As one begins to develop a pedagogy based on the work of Habermas, one must start with delineating his views on epistemology. Sposito and Strong, in discussing Habermas’ discursive method, suggest that “[g]etting language that is about the world right is a matter of epistemology; getting a language of community right is a matter of hermeneutics” (1995, p. 283). The distinction becomes clearer as one considers the subjective interpretation of a poem. When one attempts to discern what the poet means, when one reaches beyond one’s immediate reality for interpretation, the process would correlate with the breadth of epistemology. When one reads and feels the poem for one’s self, in a more subjective sense, one would derive meaning from the context of a personalized reality, a hermeneutic approach.