The Radicalising Project of Modernity: Beyond Modernist Defeatism, Liberal Apology and Postmodern Farewells
摘要
Chapter 6 presents a radicalising project of modernity apt to lead the Frankfurt School out of its defeatist-domesticating impasses. To do so, it shows that only by politically radicalising the concepts of humanism, enlightenment, and romanticism can their spirit be kept, and their coherence upheld. Even more so, only with a politicisation from below can their own content be realised society-wide. Further, the chapter demonstrates why these idea(l)s are in irreconcilable opposition to capitalist modernisation. In this way, Habermas’ project of modernity is reunited with Marx’s transcapitalist horizon and a general anti-Eurocentrist understanding of the modern—thus giving Critical Theory a foundation that may serve as a feasible alternative to its dead end as well as to its liberal and postmodern affirmative turns.