Reflective Authenticity : Rethinking the Project of Modernity
Reflective Authenticity: Rethinking the Project of Modernity is a challenging consideration of what remains of ambitious Enlightenment ideas such as democracy, freedom and universality in the wake of relativist, postmodern thought. Do clashes over gender, race and culture mean that universal notions such as justice or rights no longer apply outside our own communities? Do our actions lose their authenticity if we act on principles that transcend the confines of our particular communities? Alessandro Ferrara proposes a path out of this impasse via the notion of reflective authenticity. Drawing on Aristotle, Kants concept of reflective judgement and Heideggers theory of reflexive self-grounding, Reflective Authenticity: Rethinking the Project of Modernity takes a fresh look at the state of Critical Theory today and the sustainability of postmodern politics
1 online resource (200 pages)
9780203005422, 0203005422
1047707502
Front Cover
Reflective Authenticity
Copyright Page
Contents
Preface
1 Authenticity and validity
The caravan at the ford
Autonomy and authenticity
The universalism of authenticity
Authenticity and intersubjectivity
2 Postmetaphysical phronesis
The relevance of phronesis: consonances and dissonances
Phronesis revisited
A non-rationalistic rationality
3 From Kant to Kant: a normativity without principles
The question and the answer
The normativity without principles of the judgment of taste
Oriented reflective judgment
4 Reflective authenticity and exemplary universalism
Authenticity as a normative category
Models of authentic subjectivity
Exemplary universalism: Simmel's lesson
5 Post-modern eudaimonia: dimensions of an authentic identity
The case for a postmetaphysical notion of eudaimonia
Individual identity and self-fulfillment
Dimensions of the authenticity of an individual identity
Concluding remarks
6 The fulfillment of collective identities
The nature of collective identities
Coherence
Vitality
Depth
Maturity
Concluding remarks
7 Authenticity, the text and the work of art
The "author's intention" approach
Interpretation as "fusion of horizons"
Interpretation as "making the most" of a text
The text as a symbolic identity
Interpretation as judgment on the fulfillment of a symbolic identity
The identity of the work of art
Concluding remarks
8 Rethinking the project of modernity
Authenticity and the project of modernity
Radical reflexivity: metaphysical and postmetaphysical
"Here we stand. We can do no other"
Notes
References
Index