For Habermas, rational reconstruction is a philosophical and linguistic method that systematically translates intuitive knowledge of rules into a logical form.
Rational reconstruction explicates the deep generative structures that give rise to and allow for particular performances, behaviours, and other symbolically pre-structured realities.
Philosophy has to implicate itself in the fallibilistic self-understanding and procedural rationality of the empirical sciences; it may not lay claim to a privileged access to truth, or to a method, an object realm, or even just a style of intuition that is specifically its own.
Only thus can philosophy contribute its best to a nonexclusive division of labor, namely, its persistent tenacity in posing questions universalistically, and its procedure of rationally reconstructing the intuitive pretheoretical knowledge of competently speaking, acting and judging subjects.
It is concerned with the deep structures of intelligence that generate the knowledge, judgments and actions of subjects as well as the meaning, import and validity of objects.
These kinds of rational reconstructions are notably different from the purely philosophical but comparable solutions and methods offered up as definitive answers to such issues in the past.
Hegel's dialectic sought to systematize the process of knowing, fitting each stage of insight as a defined moment to be subsumed in the development of absolute knowledge.
Habermas sees rational reconstruction as a similar, but less grandiose, undertaking: "Marked down in price the transcendental and dialectical modes of justification may still come in handy.
[Rational reconstructions are] fallibilistic in orientation, they reject the dubious faith in philosophy's ability to do things single handedly, hoping instead that the success that has for so long eluded it might come from an auspicious matching of different theoretical fragments (Habermas, 1990a)."
On the one hand, the rule consciousness [i.e. intuitive know-how] of competent subjects is for them an a-priori knowledge; on the other hand, the reconstruction of this calls for inquiries undertaken with empirical [methods] (Habermas, 1979).In this respect Habermas sees those theorists whose projects represented a blend of philosophy and scientific methods as important exemplars.
Internal history focuses on normative concerns and the reasons scientists can be said to have for accepting or rejecting scientific theories according to some account of the logic of science.