Situating the Self

Benhabib intervenes in the debates concerning modernity, postmodernity, reason and the self. She is critical of postmodernism, but also of the idea that the task facing us today is the completion of the "project of modernity".

---

In this book, Seyla Benhabib makes an intervention into the debates concerning modernity, postmodernity, reason and the self. She is critical of postmodernism, but also of the idea that the task facing us today is the completion of the "project of modernity". The chapters of the volume develop a theory of ethical judgement compatible with a principled, universalist morality, and integrate this theory with the feminist critique of traditional moral philosophy and social analysis. The result is a distinctive position which demonstrates that general ethical assessments of human social life can be made without relaxing into the fundamentalisms of metaphysics or other "grand narratives".