Philosophical Discourse of Modernity

Jürgen Habermas is a German philosopher and sociologist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theories on communicative rationality and the public sphere. In 2014, Prospect readers chose Habermas as one of their favourites among the "world's leading thinkers".Thomas McCarthy is the author of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, published by Wiley.

• Introduction by Thomas McCarthy viiPreface xixI Modernity's Consciousness of Time and Its Need for Self-Reassurance 1II Hegel's Concept of Modernity 23Excursus on Schiller's" Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man" 45III Three Perspectives: Left Hegelians, Right Hegelians, and Nietzsche 51Excursus on the Obsolescence of the Production Paradigm 75IV The Entry into Postmodernity: Nietzsche as a Turning Point 83V The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment: Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno 106VI The Undermining of Western Rationalism through the Critique of Metaphysics: Martin Heidegger 131VII Beyond a Temporalized Philosophy of Origins: Jacques Derrida's Critique of Phonocentrism 161Excursus on Leveling the Genre Distinction between Philosophy and Literature 185VIII Between Eroticism and General Economics: Georges Bataille 211IX The Critique of Reason as an Unmasking of the Human Sciences: Michel Foucault 238X Some Questions Concerning the Theory of Power: Foucault Again 266XI An Alternative Way out of the Philosophy of the Subject: Communicative versus Subject- Centered Reason 294Excursus on Cornelius Castoriadis: The Imaginary Institution 327XII The Normative Content of Modernity 336Excursus on Luhmann's Appropriation of the Philosophy of the Subject through Systems Theory 368Notes 386Name Index 423Subject and Title Index 427