TITLE:
Normative Foundation of Modernity: Habermas’ Criticism of Marx and Its Limits—An Investigation Based on The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity
AUTHORS:
Guo Tang
KEYWORDS:
Modernity, Normative, Foundation, Labor, Dialogue, Limit
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Social Sciences,
Vol.10 No.2,
February
22,
2022
ABSTRACT: According to Habermas, the essence of modernity is subjectivity (subject
rationality). Marx has put forward the modernity theory based on “labor” in The Manuscript of Economics and Philosophy in 1844. However, Habermas believed that there was still a single
subject reason behind the concept of “labor”, which showed that there were
problems in the normativity of Marx’s theory. According to Habermas, the
normative foundation can only come from the free interaction between subjects
at the rational level, and can be expressed as “dialogue” activities in the
public domain when implemented in theoretical strategies. However, from the
standpoint of historical materialism, the “capital” that Marx pays attention to
constitutes the limit of Habermas’s “dialogue” activities.