Cognitive interest
The expression interest in knowledge or knowledge-guiding interest denotes in general usage the intention, for example, when carrying out a research project or other investigation, also in application to the main question of an entire research discipline.
Occasionally, the term design interest is brought into play as a counter-term: Basic research, for example, has an interest in knowledge of itself, whereas in the areas of research and development there is more interest in application and design.
The specific use by Jürgen Habermas and other authors from the context of critical theory also became influential . Habermas differentiates between different types of science and assumes that each has a specific purpose that guides the effort of knowledge:
- empirical-analytical sciences with an interest in technical knowledge aimed at usability,
- historical-hermeneutic sciences with a practical interest in knowledge that aims at action orientation and understanding,
- critical social sciences with an “emancipatory” interest in knowledge that wants to “liberate” the human subject.
The technical experiment is by no means, as it pretends, indifferent and objective, but already supported by a previous interest in knowledge and the understanding of the meaning of the hermeneutic sciences is by no means understandable in the sense of an ancient concept of theoria "theory" as an abstractive contemplation, rather the interpreter turns depending on the interests of the tradition based on its situation. The work Knowledge and Interest by Habermas deals with the epistemological , social-scientific and anthropological framework conditions of this view in more detail.
The pedagogue Wolfgang Klafki further differentiates between “historical-hermeneutic” and “systematic-hermeneutic” interests in knowledge; the former concern concrete, the latter abstract objects.
literature
- Rainer-Olaf Schultze: Interest in knowledge in political science . in: Dieter Nohlen (ed.): Lexikon der Politik , Vol. 2 (Political Science Methods), CH Beck, Munich 1994, pp. 107–117.
Individual evidence
- ↑ So z. B. in the article in the Gabler Wirtschaftslexikon .
- ↑ See J. Habermas: Technology and Science as Ideology , Frankfurt am Main 1968 and previously knowledge and interest . Frankfurt inaugural lecture on June 28, 1965, in: Merkur 19 (1965), pp. 1139–1153.
- ↑ See W. Klafki: Hermeneutischeverfahren in der Erziehungswissenschaft. In the S. et al. (Ed.): Funk-Kolleg Educational Science. Educational Science 3. An Introduction . Weinheim 1971 (various reprints).