ABSTRACT
In the early 1980s, Jurgen Habermas gave a short address entitled 'Modernity-An Incomplete Project', first in German in Frankfurt and then in English in New York. Habermas's philosophical and social theory had, from the first, entailed a criticism of modernity, not least in the form of contemporary capitalist societies. If such societies are indeed the product of the European Enlightenment, then Habermas has always been a critic of the Enlightenment. The theory of communicative action stubbornly hangs on to notions such as 'true' and 'good' as critical tools, refusing to relinquish them to the ravages of relativism and perspectivism that at least superficially seemed to characterize the work of such heralds of postmodernism as Jacques Derrida, Foucault and Jean-Francois Lyotard. Habermas's interpretation of Nietzsche is at once a pivotal moment in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity and the most contested. A critical stance towards Heidegger has characterized Habermas's philosophy since his first published works.
