Jürgen Habermas’ Project of Modernity

Abstract

Jürgen Habermas sees modernity as an unfinished project. It means that much more has to be done in the realm of modernity before thinking about the possibility of a postmodern world. Habermas’ discourse of modernity heavily relies on Hegel’s conception of subjective freedom. In place of Hegel’s absolute, Habermas proposes his intersubjectivity approach to rationality. This constitutes, conceiving modernity in terms of the rationalization of the lifeworld i.e, abandoning conventional standards and pre-modern religions, traditional outlooks. Habermas attempts to go ahead of the ‘closed’, ‘systematic’ thinking of Kant and Hegel. Habermas synthesizes dialectically the empirical and the historical-analytical hermeneutical studies. It is a constant cognition and vigilant criticism and this process always goes on.