Jurgen Habermas

The Enlightenment project is unfinished.

The lifeworld is the background of shared understandings and practices.

Communicative reason is the core of human rationality.

The public sphere is distorted by mass media and commercialization.

Modernity is an unfinished project.

The universalization of moral principles is possible through discourse.

The system is composed of the economy and the administrative state.

Truth claims are redeemable through reasoned argumentation.

The public sphere is increasingly fragmented and privatized.

The concept of 'society' needs to be rethought in terms of communication.

The state has become an organizational system that increasingly intervenes in the lifeworld.

The European Union is an experiment in post-national democracy.

Globalization represents a challenge to national sovereignty and democratic self-governance.

The public sphere is the space where private individuals come together to form a public.

The crisis of modernity is a crisis of reason.

Normative validity claims are inherent in all communicative action.

The lifeworld is the source of solidarity and meaning.

The concept of deliberative politics is an attempt to translate the ideal speech situation into political practice.

The secularization of society does not mean the disappearance of religion.

The challenge of postmodernism is to rethink the project of modernity, not to abandon it.