Habermas: An Incomplete Project

Habermas


I liked Habermas, but he could have stated his theories in Modernity- An Incomplete Project in less words. What I got the most out of is his stress of the rational and scientific thought. In my daily life I try to maintain a rational demeanor, thinking things through rather than off-the-cuff reactions. His criticism is understandable, and I can see his train of thought because he starts in the beginning, with the change from the classical world into the French Enlightenment. The line that stands out to me the most was his statement: “The spell which the classics of the ancient world cast upon the spirit was first dissolved with the ideals of the French Enlightenment.” The idea of modernity coming out of an Enlightenment is exciting, and it makes me wonder what life was like to allow such a drastic change in movement. I feel like the change from Modernism to Post-Modernism was a bit less radical than the change from classicism to modernity.

Habermas’ statement of “The new value placed on the transitory, the elusive and the ephemeral, and the very celebration of dynamism, discloses a longing for an undefiled, immaculate and stable present” confused me. I can wrap my head around aesthetic modernity, but the way Habermas explains it, despite his creative wording, is awkward. I still am trying to break it down to understand exactly what he is saying.

I appreciated how Habermas took on Weber’s idea of cultural modernity as “three autonomous spheres.” But Weber believed if you put science, morality and art into a society, then that modernity can exist. However, I always believed that morals were more of a personal persuasion rather than a cultural one. I know that there are certain cultural morals, but I would consider those mass ethics rather than morality. I suppose my definition is flawed, because by my notion, cultural modernity couldn’t exist of morality wasn’t universal, as would be the definition of science and art.