The philosophical discourse of modernity
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures is a book by Jürgen Habermas . The volume, first published in 1985 by Suhrkamp , collects lectures that Habermas gave in 1983/1984 at the Collège de France , as well as at Cornell University and Boston College . Habermas supplemented the texts with an article that has already been published and a newly written final chapter. It is about the aporia that a subject-centered reason creates in the foundation of modernity. Above all, he presents these problems in the lectures and unsuccessful efforts to escape them, especially through the Nietzsche successors he calls this. In The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity , Habermas limits himself primarily to negative criticism, while he represents his counter-model in the theory of communicative action .
Habermas examines the extent to which modernity is able to justify itself for reasonable reasons. For this it is necessary to find a principle that is inherent in modernity itself, which modernity proves to be reasonable, and which also has the same stabilizing effect on society as religion in premodernism . On this basis, he is concerned with establishing a European identity that breaks with the Europe of defense ministers and competitiveness, and which resolutely takes up the legacy of Occidental rationality.
In the lectures, Habermas draws an arc from Hegel to the Left Hegelians and Nietzsche to postmodernism . With Hegel, modern philosophy began to become aware of itself and to look for answers to the modern problem of justification. Hegel constructed " subject-centered reason " as a principle in order to fulfill the three mentioned conditions. This, however, has a tendency to absolutize the rationality of purpose and the level of reflection reached in each case. A dialectic of Enlightenment is required . The justification principle is needed as a fourth condition, it must allow a self-criticism of modernity. But if subject-centered reason tries to criticize itself, it also criticizes the concept of reason itself, and becomes entangled in hopeless paradoxes.
Habermas examines different thought models to deal with these paradoxes. Neoconservatives welcome the situation and try to say goodbye to cultural modernity, including some features of the Enlightenment (democracy, equality). The philosophy of practice tries to give social work priority over the individual, but shows itself as a child of the subject-centered philosophy and remains caught in its contradictions.
The other two approaches do not have Hegel, but Nietzsche as their origin. In his critique of reason, Nietzsche, on the one hand, reduced reason to the will to power . On the other hand, Nietzsche considered a philosophical critique of reason possible by digging up the roots of metaphysical thought without posing as philosophy. The second program is followed by Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida . Metaphysics cannot overcome these. Their theories lead to fatalism and they level the differences between world exploration and problem solving.
In chapters 9 and 10, a central text of the Foucault-Habermas debate , he deals with Michel Foucault's draft of a genealogy . Habermas characterizes it as a learned, positive historiography that appears as an anti-science. But even Foucault could not criticize power without getting caught up in the aporias of his self-reference, to which the irritating basic concept of power in Foucault's theory leads in particular. With Foucault, Habermas criticizes the tendencies towards normalization in disciplined societies, just as knowledge hierarchies within society undermine the possibilities of critical thinking. Unlike Foucault, however, Habermas does not see these undesirable developments as philosophically justified, but rather in certain "social pathologies" of late capitalist societies. Unlike Foucault, he does not see humanism as a problem, but as a necessary yardstick to be able to criticize dehumanization. At the same time, he suspects Foucault of being a disguised humanist who only strives to find a simpler philosophical paradigm in which to reformulate the ancient human rights .
Contrary to the four strategies mentioned, Habermas still considers a self-justification of reason based on Hegelian principles to be possible. But this is not based on a subject-centered, but rather a communicative reason, which Habermas presents in the theory of communicative action .
expenditure
- Jürgen Habermas: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Twelve lectures. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1985, ISBN 3-518-57722-0 . PDF of the table of contents
literature
- Raymond Geuss : Reviewed work (s): The philosophical discourse of modernity by Jürgen Habermas Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung Vol. 41, H. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 1987), pp. 682-685
- David B. Ingram : Foucault and Habermas in: Gary Gutting (ed.): The Cambridge Companion to Foucault Cambridge University Press 2003 ISBN 978-0-521-60053-8 pp. 240-283
- Steven T. Ostowoch: Review: The philosophical discourse of modernity in: German Studies Review Vol. 10, No. 3 (Oct. 1987), pp. 631-632