Rational reconstruction

Rational reconstruction is a philosophical term with several distinct meanings. It is found in the work of Jürgen Habermas and Imre Lakatos.

For Habermas, rational reconstruction is a philosophical and linguistic method that systematically translates intuitive knowledge of rules into a logical form. In other words, it is an approach to science and philosophy which attempts to put meanings into language properly.

The type of formal analysis called rational reconstruction is used by Habermas to name the task that he sees as appropriate for philosophy. This mode of philosophical reflection can be compared to procedures traditionally taken up in philosophy and is concerned with the questions traditionally posed. That is, rational reconstruction involves making explicit and theoretically systematizing the universal and inescapable conditions for the possibility of certain types of phenomena. Put more specifically, it can be said that rational reconstruction is a manner of explicating the deep generative structures that give rise to and allow for particular performances, behaviours, and other symbolically pre-structured realities.

Once it has renounced its claim to be a first science or an encyclopedia, philosophy can maintain its status within the scientific system neither by assimilating itself to particular exemplary sciences nor by the exclusive distancing of itself from science in general. Philosophy has to implicate itself in the fallibilistic self-understanding and procedural rationality of the empirical sciences; it may not lay claim to a privileged access to truth, or to a method, an object realm, or even just a style of intuition that is specifically its own. Only thus can philosophy contribute its best to a nonexclusive division of labor, namely, its persistent tenacity in posing questions universalistically, and its procedure of rationally reconstructing the intuitive pretheoretical knowledge of competently speaking, acting and judging subjects. ... This dowry recommends philosophy as an indispensable partner in the collaboration of those who are concerned with [the progress of reason, knowledge and truth].

Rational reconstruction is limited to the analysis of symbolically pre-structured realities because it is a procedure that is intimately tied to the interpretation of reality as opposed to its description. So, while the natural sciences generate theoretical knowledge about the general structures of an observable reality, rational reconstructions (sometimes called the reconstructive sciences) generate a theoretical knowledge of the deep structures of a reality accessible only through interpretation. Some questions cannot be dealt with through the process of rational reconstruction, but an extremely broad range of questions can be. It is hard to point out a phenomenon that is not in some way symbolically pre-structured, that is without some meaning to someone.

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