Abstract
John Dewey’s Unmodern Philosophy and Modern Philosophy aspires to overcome the
antiquated philosophical baggage of so-called “modern” philosophy and replace it with a
philosophy that is truly modern, having incorporated the technoscientific revolution. As
the philosophical revolution is incomplete, so is Dewey’s own text. In an attempt to flesh
out a Deweyan conception of modernity, this chapter turns to another philosopher who
has argued that modernity is still an unfinished project: Jürgen Habermas. This chapter
compares their accounts of the meaning of modernity, its pathologies, and their proposed
cures through a turn from subjective reason to intersubjective action and concludes that
their essential difference lies in the emancipatory potential of scientific-technological
reason itself.