Abstract

The central thesis of this dissertation is that Habermas' theory of modernity and rationality represents a major effort to defend the project of modernity, up against the current trends of thought, such as relativism, decisionism, and emotivism--which hold that ultimate norms are arbitrary and beyond rational warrantability--by developing a comprehensive theory of communicative action which argues that norms and truth have to be based on, and established by, rational discussion among free participating subjects, and thus linked, in the last analysis, with the ideal forms of life. ;Modernity emerges as the result of the dissolution of mythical, religious-metaphysical worldviews, of the universal secularization and differentiation of value spheres. Modernity seems to be dominated by instrumental rationality. Yet, it contains in itself an "avenging force", communicative rationality which guides societal integration, and puts up resistance to the invasion of instrumental rationality into the lifeworld, and thereby, contributes to the achievement of a balanced interchange between systemic and societal integration. ;Although reason has lost its substantive unity in modern time, it still retains a formal and procedural unity. Because of this, the formal procedures and presuppositions of rational agreement, of possible consensus and rational will-formation themselves become legitimation principles. This being so, modernized societies are better equipped to deal with, not only those steering problems pertaining to material production and reproduction of social life, but also the problems affecting societal integration. ;At the end of this discussion, I attempt to supply a tentative apology for modernity from a comparative perspective. I argue that compared to traditional societies, modernized societies provide the individual with unprecedented freedom and contains the capacity at the social level to form new mechanisms for dealing with problems of both systemic and societal integration, and to create new meanings in correspondence with the constant progress that is made possible by modernity itself