One of the most distinctive features on the intellectual landscape of
the last decades of the twentieth century is the intensity with which
doubts have been raised about the conceptual foundations of Western
modernity. Hard questions have emerged about the predominant
modern understandings of reason, subjectivity, nature, progress, and
gender. With the exception of the last topic, one might argue that
these questions emerged in this century in their most powerful form
within two streams of German philosophical reflection. In the immediate
post-World War I1 years, Martin Heidegger wrote his "Essay
on Humanism" (1946) and "The Question Concerning Technology"
(1949)~an d he continued for the next thirty years to articulate a
thorough critique of most of what the modern West has held dear.'
In 1947 Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer published their Dialectic
of Enlightenment, developing the claim that the systematic
pursuit of enlightened reason and freedom had the ironic long-term
effect of engendering new forms of irrationality and repressi~n.~
These critiques had an immense impact both on the initial shape of
the work of Jiirgen Habermas and on its continued evolution.