The Modern - an unfinished project was the title of a speech I gave in September 1980 when I received the Adorno Prize. This topic, controversial and multifaceted, has not let me go. Its philosophical aspects have become even more prominent in public consciousness due to the reception of French neostructuralism - as has the buzzword "postmodernism" following the publications of F. Lyotard. The challenge posed by neostructuralist critiques of reason thus forms the perspective from which I seek to gradually reconstruct the philosophical discourse of modernity. Jürgen Habermas.