Open Access

Michael Löwy

• A partir de Marx y de Max Weber, se puede definir la modernidad como la civilización capitalista/industrial basada en la economía de mercado, la racionalidad instrumental y el desencantamiento del mundo. De todos los miembros de la Escuela de Frankfurt, W
• Since Marx and Max Weber modernity can be defined as the capitalist-industrial civilization based on market economy, instrumental rationality and disenchantment of the world. Of all mambers of the Frankfurt School, Walter Benjamín was the most radical critic of modernity, specially in his last text, the Theses on the concept of history (1940). Rejecting the modern cultura of progress, Benjamin placas in the center of his vision of history the concept of catastrophe. Similar ideas are found in The Dialectics of Enlightenment (1947) by Horkheimer and Adorno. The work of Habermas reprasants a certain breach from the Frankfurt tradition and a coming to terms with modernity and the ideology of progress. When Habermas and Weber are comparad, it must be admitted that the weberian proposition about the irreducible contradiction of valúes (the "war of gods") is a more viable starting point to undarstand modern society than the paradigm of a linguistic reconciliation of values professed by Habermas, somewhat under the inspiration of Talcott Parsons doctrine of "consensual values".