A critica da modernidade e a educaçao

In this paper the author tries to relate the concepts of modernity and postmodernity underlying the approaches of Habermas and Lyotards and to examine the meaning of this reflection to the area of education. Incompatible in many viewpoint, the positions of these two authors converge in the recognition of the crisis of the concept of imperial and monological rationality, considered life saving for humanity. In the view of Lyotard, this concept dissolves in a fragmentarism without perspective, and in that of Habermas it is a concept which has to be redimensioned comunicatively. The crisis of the traditional concept of reason, for which this paper tries to call attention, has a radical importance for pedagogical theory and practice since they are founded, even if unconsciously, on the modern concept of reason.