Reviews

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures by Jürgen Habermas

edustoryramos24's review against another edition

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2.0

A collection of essay overviewing the most popular philosophical trends of the 80s (Derrida, Foucault, Bataille etc) in which Habermas tries to debunk postmodernist über-relativism. Still under the spell of Adorno and Horkheimer´s Dialetik der Auflklärung, it´s a hit and miss job, and its breadth of scope, from epistemology to the philosophy of consciousness to neo-Marxism, makes it disperse and inconclusive, at least to me. In some aspectes it reads today more dated than some of Habermas´ earlier work. At one point he describes someone´s theory of communication along the following lines: understanding is but another form of misunderstanding, it is just a misundersanding the shortcomings of which are not sufficient to disturb social communicaton.... OK? possibly because the interlocutors in question, er, understood? something? enough? LSD, anyone?

ashleyinsh's review against another edition

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5.0

4.5

isabelabaldini's review

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1.0

uma das coisas mais burras que eu já tive o desprazer de (re)ler

alexlanz's review

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Nobody likes him, but I agree with him about Heidegger ontologizing Nietzsche, and the difference between philosophy and literature; but the last three chapters were deadly boring.