Synopsis
A sweeping critical-theory survey defending the unfinished project of modern reason against thinkers who would abandon Enlightenment rationality altogether.
Core passage idea
Paraphrase · Modern copyrighted workModernity's promise of reason is not exhausted but unfinished, so the answer to its pathologies is more communicative reason, not less.
It resists the postmodern turn by insisting that the cure for Enlightenment's failures lies within its own rational resources.
To avoid a bubble
Pair with Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish.
Reading note
Read it as a lecture series engaging Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida, expecting dense argument across the whole modern tradition.
Best paired with
Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish