Reinventing the World? Trans-modernity’s Emancipatory and Communicative Possibilities

Abstract

Modernity as a philosophical project seeks to lay the foundation for human emancipation in developing critical discourses of reason. The tool of critical discourses is to construct a logical power that banishes all obstacles which prevent from the Enlightenment conditions of humanity. At the outset of Jürgen Habermas’ critical social theory, priority is given to human emancipatory potentials to reach into a universal consensus while positively organizing instrumental as well as hermeneutic interests. If emancipation is human, then it requires rational as well as ethical discourses of approaching human global problems. In line with this argument, it must be an urgent task to introduce a new trend that can understand and potentially solve the real questions of [global humanity]. What are the fundamental causes for and in contemporary global social crises and distractions? Most of us would accept Habermas’ core argument that describes modernity as an unfinished project and its emancipative themes are not fully realized. But we need to go beyond the Habermasian perspective to identify human problems in which modernity faces globally. Thus, this article traces key emancipatory and communicative possibilities of trans-modernism (Dussel 1993).1 Trans-modernity as a critical paradigm aims at human liberation although its starting juncture is the concealed philosophical traditions of the colonized societies by using their lived and felt experiences.