ABSTRACT
Right from the start, Habermas’ diagnosis of modernity and its prospects has worked in the shadow of two, apparently competing, paradigms. Marx's critical theory was a necessary legacy for this student of Adorno and Horkheimer and liberal ideals have had considerable allure for a man who has lived through the dislocation of German post-War reconstruction. Has he managed to rescue the emancipatory, universalizing and practical commitments of critical theory through a project that seeks to excavate liberal democratic normativity? Habermas is convinced that liberalism does not allow us to fully grasp the potentials of liberal democratic societies for substantial self-reform and for further democratization. He insists that ‘the liberal interpretation is not wrong. It just does not see the beam in its own eye’. 1 Habermas’ determination to capture the elusive beam missed by a liberal interpretation of liberal democratic normativity is an undertaking that has had some real achievements; it has also failed in some important respects.
