Jürgen Habermas: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1985)
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
The Starting Point: Defense from Within
We have already traced Habermas’ development: his communicative turn in Knowledge and Human Interests (1968, -> Chapter 7.4), his major work The Theory of Communicative Action (1981, -> Chapter 17b). The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1985) is not a new theory but the application of this theory to the history of modernity – and at the same time Habermas’ systematic engagement with postmodernism.
Habermas was no outsider to the critical tradition. He had been Adorno’s assistant, had carried the Frankfurt School forward, was himself a critic of instrumental reason. But he saw: the line from Adorno to Foucault and Derrida led into a dead end. If all reason is domination, then criticism itself becomes impossible.
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (1985) is Habermas’ systematic engagement with postmodernism. He reconstructs the “discourse of modernity” from Hegel to Foucault and Derrida – and shows where it went off the rails.
The Diagnosis: Subject-Centeredness as the Root Problem
Habermas’ thesis: the problem is not reason as such, but a particular model of reason – subject-centered reason. From Descartes to Hegel, reason was conceived as the self-relation of a subject that knows and shapes the world. This model is exhausted – here the postmoderns are right.
But the alternative is not the abandonment of reason, but its transformation. Instead of subject-centered reason: communicative reason. Instead of the solitary subject that knows the world: subjects who communicate with one another and come to an understanding about the world.
The Critique of Hegel: Completed Too Soon
Hegel had clearly seen the problem of modernity: diremption. Modernity shatters the traditional unities – human being and God, individual and community, reason and nature. Hegel’s solution was dialectical reconciliation: spirit sublates the diremption by passing through it and overcoming it in a higher unity.
We presented Habermas’ critique of Hegel – that he reconciles “too quickly” – in detail in Chapter 17c.
But Habermas does not reject Hegel. He wants to preserve Hegel’s framing of the problem while transforming his solution. Modernity needs reconciliation – but not the final reconciliation of absolute spirit, rather the ever-renewed mutual understanding of communicatively acting subjects.
The Critique of Foucault and Derrida
Foucault had shown that reason is bound up with power – every order of knowledge is also an order of power. Habermas partly accepts this: yes, instrumental reason is domination. But Foucault does not distinguish between different forms of rationality. He throws everything into one pot – including the very critique he himself practices.
Derrida had shown that meaning can never be finally fixed – every text refers to other texts, différance works endlessly. Habermas partly accepts this: yes, meaning is context-dependent, interpretation is never concluded. But Derrida exaggerates. In everyday communication we do in fact understand one another – not perfectly, but sufficiently. Mutual understanding is possible, even if it is never definitive.
The Alternative: Communicative Reason
Habermas’ counter-proposal: we should not think of reason as a property of a subject, but as a structure of communication. When we speak with one another, we raise validity claims – claims to truth, rightness, sincerity. These claims can be contested and justified. The “peculiarly unforced force of the better argument” is what reason actually is.
This saves critique from self-contradiction. If reason is communicative, I can criticize instrumental reason without rejecting reason altogether. I criticize what instrumental reason does with communicative reason. The circle is broken.