This work by Jurgen Habermas examines the theoretical and philosophical contours of the modern era. It is a work on a theme that concerns a wide range of disciplines, from sociology and politics to philosophy, aesthetics and literary theory. Habermas traces the contemporary critiques of modernity back to their philosophical origins in the work of Marx, Nietzshe, Heidegger and others and shows how the work of these thinkers was to some extents a response to the ideas of reason and reflexive self-understanding, and the the processes of rationalization and modernization, which developed in the course of the 18the and early 19the centuries.