This interest in the elimination of conditions
which distort self-understanding reveals that critical social science
moves beyond the tendency of interpretive social science to rest content
with illuminating, rather than overcoming, social problems and issues.
By synthesizing interpretive and causal categories in this way,
Habermas tries to produce a critical social science that can demonstrate
why individuals have the distorted self-understandings that they do,
and how they can be corrected.