  In this transitional phase from Knowledge and Human Interests to The Theory of Communicative Action, Habermas's basic philosophical endeavor was to develop a more modest, fallibilist, empirical account of the philosophical claim to universality and rationality. This more modest approach moves Critical Theory away from its strong transcendental framework, exemplified in the theory of cognitive interests with the unmistakably Kantian language of object-constitution. In setting that earlier project aside, Habermas adopts a more naturalistic, “postmetaphysical” approach (1992a), characterized by the fallible hermeneutic explication or "reconstruction" of shared competences and normative presuppositions that allow actors to engage in familiar practices of communication, discourse, and inquiry. In articulating presuppositions of practice, reconstructive analysis remains weakly transcendental. But it also qualifies as a “weak naturalism” inasmuch as the practices it aims to articulate are consistent with the natural evolution of the species and located in the empirical world (2003a, 10-30, 83ff); consequently, postmetaphysical reconstruction links up with specific forms of social-scientific knowledge in analyzing general conditions of rationality manifested in various human capacities and powers.