Jürgen Habermas and the Role of the Philosopher

Generally, the issue of modernity is associated with the fate of reason in modern European history. Specifically modernity is related to how reason was conceived as a critical and emancipatory guide towards the ontological, social, political, technical and overall development of humanity. As Lawrence Cahoone, in his, From Modernism to Postmodernism, Abstract This essay tries to critique the concept of modernity through a discussion of Jürgen Habermas's communicative rationality and modernity as an unfinished project. Habermas tried to defend modernity conceived as communicative rationality by strengthening everyday communicative action against the instrumental rationality of the economy and the state. After considering the insights of transmodernist, African, feminist and intercultural thinkers on modernity, I will try to show how the conventional understanding of modernity as progressive and reflective fails to fully address issues of otherness and domination.

The modern/postmodern debate is usually presented as one of universality vs. relativism, rationalism vs. irrationalism and emancipation vs. deconstruction. This article tries to critically expose and critique Habermas's discussion of postmodernism as a wa highlighting some of the limitations of this lively discussion. This is to be accomplished through a conceptual analysis of Habermas's defense of modernity against the postmodernism of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault as elaborated in Habermas's work The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity the following points. (1) Habermas's discourse of modernity provides better accounts of responsibility and emancipation compared to the postmodernism of Derrida and F (2) Still, Habermas's discourse of modernity fails to fully address asymmetrical power relations and (3) Habermas's modernity is Eurocentric in failing to fully deconstruct the Eurocentric tendencies of the philosophical tradition of which it's a

1981

The Iowa Review

Habermas on Modernity and Postmodernism Guenter Zoeller THE TITLE of this ambitious contribution to the interpretation of our times is carefully chosen: "discourse" here means the reflective thematiza tion of an issue that is up for critical discussion; "philosophical discourse" refers to an ongoing debate among philosophers; and "modernity" indi cates the topic of this discourse: the status of Western culture since the En lightenment. Furthermore, Habermas distinguishes philosophical moder nity from modernism in the arts and from a more casual sense of modern times.

Political Theory, 1989

Theory and Society, 1974

Published as: “Habermas Confronts the Deconstructionist Challenge: On The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity” in Canadian Journal of Political and Social Theory, Vol. 14, No. 1,2,3, 1990.

This is the central question that Jürgen Habermas asks himself and us throughout his magnum opus. The two volumes with over 1,700 pages are the summum of his life's work and seventy years of engagement with philosophy and society. It is a kind of self-assurance and can certainly be seen as his intellectual and moral testament, making it essential reading for Habermasians and others interested in Habermas' legacy. After ten years of endeavour, he gave himself this gift on his 90 th birthday. But the question arises as to who takes on 1,700 pages of reading these days. Who reads this on a tablet or smartphone? But after just a few weeks, the third edition has already been published-although the publisher is not revealing anything about the number of copies. 2 Translation rights have already been sold in seven languages, including Chinese, so a global debate is predictable and desirable. The questions that occupy Habermas are obviously fuelled by his own interest in knowledge and thus by the question of meaning in his own life. So who is the addressee of this opus? I think first and foremost the author himself. 3 Given the length of the book, one might be tempted to read only the interim observations and the postscript. That would be a pity, because it is well worth the tedious, exhausting retracing of the argumentation, as it provides many new insights and food for thought. "I do n'ot want to conceal one of the motives that also led me in my retirement to the otiose and quite protracted preoccupation with the history of philosophy. It was simply the pleasure in finally getting to read the many important texts I had previously neglected, and rereading many other texts I had already consumed so often in different contexts-but this 1 Published as 'Was ist ein nichtverfehltes Leben? Zu Jürgen Habermas, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie',

This book follows postwar Germany's leading philosopher and social thinker, Jürgen Habermas, through four decades of political and constitutional struggle over the shape of liberal democracy in Germany. Habermas's most influential theories-of the public sphere, communicative action, and modernity-were decisively shaped by major West German political events: the failure to denazify the judiciary, the rise of a powerful constitutional court, student rebellions in the late 1960s, the changing fortunes of the Social Democratic Party, NATO's decision to station nuclear weapons in Germany, and the unexpected collapse of East Germany. In turn, Habermas's writings on state, law, and constitution played a critical role in reorienting German political thought and culture toward a progressive liberal-democratic model. Matthew G. Specter uniquely illuminates the interrelationship between the thinker and his culture.

Review of Politics, 2022

Due to his defense of the Enlightenment and his disputes with his French contemporaries, Habermas is often seen as a staunch opponent of postmodernism. However, this interpretation overlooks many of the decidedly postmodernist aspects of his philosophy. Although he presents himself as a defender of the "unfinished project of modernity," Habermas's philosophy shares many characteristics with postmodernism, including its decentering of the autonomous subject, its skepticism towards metaphysics, and its rejection of stadial philosophies of history. In light of these similarities, I argue that we need to reconsider Habermas's disputes with Foucault and Derrida regarding the legacy of the Enlightenment. I conclude that rather than seeing Habermas as a conservative critic of his more radical counterparts in France, Habermas, Foucault and Derrida should instead be seen as part of a shared attempt to come to terms with the rise of totalitarianism over the course of the postwar period.