RADICAL DEMOCRACY AND MODERNITY

Abstract

The author discusses the current debates about modernity and postmodernity from the point of view of the radical democratic project. She tries to show that the critique of the modern rationalist universalist (Enlightenment) epistemology does not necessarily have to lead to political conservatism, as e. g. Habermas (among others) has argued. On the contrary, the critique of this epistemology is what makes possible the articulation of the project of radical and plural democracy. This project is defined as the continuation of the democratic tradition using the tools of the postmodern age.