A teoria da modernidade de Habermas e a questão do racionalismo ocidental: uma crítica à cegueira e à romantização do racionalismo

I will reconstruct the Habermasian comprehension of the foundations of Western rationalism and its contraposition to mythical worldviews: rationalism, based on its capability of decentration and its separation between nature, society and individuality, would enable the reflexivity of everyday practice and, therefore, the formation of a universalistic moral consciousness, that would ensure the formalist, universalist reasoning of the norms. From that, I will defend that the Habermasian position concerning rationalism suffers from a historical and sociological blindness that, attributing superiority to European rationalism over mythical worldviews because of rationalism’s capability of universalization, reinforces, in one side, the settler, missionary and messianic sense of European rationalism, and, on the other side, romanticizes rationalism’s universalist potential and its episteme based on the formalization of values. My central argument consist that the only way left to rationalism is to turn itself towards an internal critic, refusing any universalist intention.