Habermas, Machiavelli, and the Humanist Critique of Ideology

Abstract

This essay takes Habermas's early work as a point of departure for considering the place of humanism in contemporary debates about ideology and interested critical judgment. I argue that from the Renaissance to the present the humanist tradition demonstrates a continuity of reflection on the relation between knowledge and human interests. Habermas can be seen as the inheritor of those Renaissance humanists who argue for the possibility of political consensus based on a shared faculty of critical judgment. Machiavelli's critique of this consensual strain of humanism can offer contemporary critics another model of judgment, in which conflict and dissent are of paramount importance.