Realists and supporters of ‘democratic underlabouring’ have recently challenged the traditional separation between political theory and practice. Although both attack Jürgen Habermas for being an idealist whose philosophy is too removed from politics, I argue that this interpretation is inaccurate. While Habermas’s social and political theory is indeed oriented to truth and understanding, he has sought realize his communicative conception of democracy by increasing the quality of political debate as a public intellectual. Building on his approach, I argue that giving the theorist a direct role in public policy undermines theory as an enterprise oriented towards truth while overlooking the contingency, participatory nature and complicated internal logics of social and political practice. My basic thesis is that Habermas’s understanding of the relationship between theory and practice overcomes these difficulties by providing an account of theory that is independent but simultaneously also allows philosophers to participate in politics as public intellectuals.

“民主的劳动力不足”的现实主义者和支持者最近对政治理论与实践之间的传统分离提出了挑战。尽管两家人都抨击于尔根·哈贝马斯（JürgenHabermas）是个理想主义者，其哲学太过政治化，但我认为这种解释是不准确的。尽管哈贝马斯的社会和政治理论确实以真理和理解为导向，但他已通过提高作为公共知识分子的政治辩论的质量来寻求实现自己对民主的沟通观念。基于他的方法，我认为赋予理论家直接在公共政策中的作用会破坏作为一个面向真理的企业的理论，同时忽略了社会和政治实践的偶然性，参与性和复杂的内部逻辑。