Abstract

This paper aims to provide an aesthetic foundation for Jürgen Habermas’s theory of “Communicative Rationality.” It argues that Immanuel Kant's Critique of the Power of Judgment and his unique understanding of aesthetics is efficiently useful to illustrating the logic by which Habermas’s innovative theory of communicative rationality. In addition, it investigates the claimed relation between Theodor Adorno’s explanation of independent modern art and the Habermas’s solutions for getting over the unwelcomed self-alienation process within the contemporary society. Finally, it suggests that Adorno’s attention to the independent art, unlike the Kant’s explanation of aesthetics, is not helpful in shedding light on hidden aesthetic aspects of “communicative rationality.”