"A number of crucial issues are at stake in the debate between Habermas and the postmodernists. These have to do not simply with the legitimacy of the modern age,3 but with questions of rationality, truth, subjectivity, power, justice, morality, and the role of the aesthetic. A fruitful way of addressing the contrast between Habermas and the postmodernists on these issues is by distinguishing two fundamental ethical orientations operating behind their respective positions. These are centred around two different senses of responsibility: a responsibility to act vs a responsibility to otherness.4 While Habermas privileges the responsibility to act in the world in a normatively justified way, the postmodernists celebrate the responsibility to otherness...These two senses of responsibility are linked, in turn, to two different understandings of the primary function of language: language can be understood primarily in terms of its capacity to coordinate action (Habermas), or primarily in terms of its capacity to disclose the world (Heidegger and Derrida). The conception of language as action-coordinating goes hand in hand with the priority given to the first sense of responsibility (the responsibility to act), while the view of language as world-disclosing corresponds closely to the priority given to the second sense of responsibility (the responsibility to otherness). While the two senses of responsibility, and their associated conceptions of language, should not be seen as mutually exclusive/ it is indeed the case that they represent the polarities around which the debate between Habermas and the postmodernists has been conducted''.