Jürgen Habermas represents the transitional second generation of the Frankfurt School that must grapple with our contemporary, globalized times. Habermas’ move from communicative action to inquiring into the pre-political foundations of democracy takes Western philosophy to task but does not push the envelope far enough. Sections from The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity and an interview with Eduardo Mendieta (titled A Conversation About God and the World ) reveal an extant Eurocentric bias. I show that these very same texts contain strands that redeem critical theory for the contemporary, multicultural world(s) we inhabit today. I then take up Dr. B. R. Ambedkar—an Indian pragmatist contemporaneous with the Frankfurt School—as an example of how critical theory (by Max Horkheimer’s principles) might be done in a different cultural setting while remaining pragmatically sensitive to its particularities.
Lillianne John (Sun,) studied this question.