Research

My current research centres on issues of subjectivity, understood by Hegel “as the philosophical pillar of modernity,”[1] and its relationship with Universality. My forthcoming book, Jürgen Habermas and the Claim to Universality of Western Modernity with Occidental Rationality critically examines Habermas’s “claim to universality with our Occidental understanding of the world,” [2] and the connection he establishes between Weber’s notion of Occidental Rationalism and the basis of a theory of modernity. It incorporates the work of continental philosophers such as Derrida, Foucault and Dallmayr concerning the marginalized subject. In various refereed articles, I further my thinking on marginalized subjectivity. For instance,  in “Pursuing the Emancipatory Purport of Subjectivity from Frankfurt to Paris,” appearing in Metaphyzik (2010), I argue that based on Habermas’s notions of modernity and subjectivity, the marginalized populations of the world – namely the Other – can no longer expect intellectual and ethical support for their plight from Frankfurt and should immigrate to Paris in order to purse the emancipatory aspect of subjectivity. In the past few years, I have applied my reflections to the question of ‘subjectivity’ and ‘universality’ in the broader context. My research on notions of recognition and identity in the era of globalization, questioning the universality of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the future of the discipline of philosophy, and the idea of university, all refer to two of the world’s most significant philosophical issues: subjectivity and universality as opposed to marginalized subjectivity and particularity.

[1] Habermas, Jürgen (1987). The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (F. Lawrence, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Habermas (pp 16-17) points out that Hegel, “was the first philosopher to develop a clear concept of modernity,” the first to understand the modern world primarily in terms of subjectivity.

[2] Habermas, Jürgen (1984). Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1 (p. 17). Boston, MA: Beacon Press.