Habermas "re-reads" Adorno and Horkheimer from his own perspective, that is, from the point of view of the "linguistic paradigm", which substitutes the transforming práxis for argumentation. Hence, Habermas can not see that Adorno's competence in communication is subordinated to something essentially different, to an impulse towards emancipation. The characteristics of this rationally mediated transcendental a priori must be searched not in Dialectics of enlightenment but in Minima moralia.
Critical theory; linguistic paradigm; transcendental a priori; práxis; argumentation; emancipation