Jeffery Nicholas differentiates between objective reason as a practice of evaluation that provides justification and critique and subjective rationality as a subspecies of reason limited to means-ends forms of reasoni...Jeffery Nicholas differentiates between objective reason as a practice of evaluation that provides justification and critique and subjective rationality as a subspecies of reason limited to means-ends forms of reasoning. He believes that modem crisis is a crisis of reason due to the dominant form of reason in modernity, i.e., subjective rationality. Nicholas aspires to develop a substantive form of reason to base a critical theory of society aimed at human emancipation in the spirit of the Frankfurt School. The most interesting part of this effort is that although Nicholas thinks that Habermas＇s theory of procedural and situated communicative rationality is an initial step towards a substantive conception of reason, he recognizes the limitations of formalism in this conception and argues that the requisite terms provides Maclntyre＇s theory of tradition-constituted and tradition-constitutive reason. The mediating figure in this project is Charles Taylor, whose critique, first, is used against Habermas and, then, his Gadamerian idea of the ＂fusion of horizons＂ is adopted in order to expand Maclntyre＇s theory.展开更多
文摘Jeffery Nicholas differentiates between objective reason as a practice of evaluation that provides justification and critique and subjective rationality as a subspecies of reason limited to means-ends forms of reasoning. He believes that modem crisis is a crisis of reason due to the dominant form of reason in modernity, i.e., subjective rationality. Nicholas aspires to develop a substantive form of reason to base a critical theory of society aimed at human emancipation in the spirit of the Frankfurt School. The most interesting part of this effort is that although Nicholas thinks that Habermas＇s theory of procedural and situated communicative rationality is an initial step towards a substantive conception of reason, he recognizes the limitations of formalism in this conception and argues that the requisite terms provides Maclntyre＇s theory of tradition-constituted and tradition-constitutive reason. The mediating figure in this project is Charles Taylor, whose critique, first, is used against Habermas and, then, his Gadamerian idea of the ＂fusion of horizons＂ is adopted in order to expand Maclntyre＇s theory.
