Truth and reality in Jürgen Habermas' Pragmatic Realism

The present work is divided into three sections. The first (only in Italian) is an analysis of some of the main philosophical issues about the notions of reality and truth. The second section provides both a historical reconstruction and a theoretical discussion of the notion of truth in the philosophy of Jürgen Habermas. It shows how Habermas' approach to truth changes during the years. In the '60s (chapter one) he maintains a weak kind of realism, connected to the idea of transcendental and natural interests at the basis of an emancipatory, interpretative-practical and descriptive-technical attitude. During the '70s Habermas enhances the role of communication, thus coming to a “consensualist” theory of truth, where truth is linked to justifications obtained in discurses inspired by an ideal speech situation (chapter two). Finally, he has recently come to a realist turn, linked to a “Janus-faced” theory of truth (chapter three). The third section aims to assess whether and how this last formulation is a realist approach to truth. Such an evaluation will unveil the hiding place for the theoretical problems affecting Habermas' realist turn: the notion of objectivity.