Abstract

This study focuses on the problems of modernity, especially the philosophical position of Habermas's critical theory of society. I argue that although Habermas's approach provides new elements to the debate, he still cannot achieve a moment of unconditionality through the notion of communicative action for which cannot be free of undesirable assumptions. Furthermore, I argue that there are also the problems of primacy of communicative action and the scope of application within the theory of discourse ethics for resolving concrete ethical problems. As I understand, the issue of modernity is about the role and nature of rationality and its subject in determining what kind of social action or social order is best for us to live. In a sense, the problems of modernity can be conceived as a cultural crisis, a crisis that the breakdown of metaphysical certainty and the disenchantment of religious worldviews leave us without some sense of what truth, justice, and reason are all about. One of the main difficulties for Habermas is to avoid committing the pitfalls of either pure transcendentalism or pure relativism. In doing so, Habermas takes the problems of modernity to be generating normativity out of itself, a normativity that deeply rooted in the model of communicative action. Simply being a speaker who is capable of speech and action, one is unavoidably committed to generating rational reflection. Every action or discourse has to provide justification for its status in terms of its rational ground. Since the notions of rationality are not prior to but a functions of forms of life and systems of language, they do not constitute the world but are themselves elements of linguistically disclosed world. Therefore, Habermas believes that the telos of language will provide the ground for a rational justification of any validity claims. Of course, the justification of this telos of language is not based on a priori principle but on a fallible, empirical enterprise of reconstructive science