Critique of Economic Rationality and Welfare Reconstruction in the Perspective of Habermas, Lyotard, and Islam
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.37812/aliqtishod.v14i2.2495Keywords:
Multidimensional Welfare, Habermas, Lyotard, Maqashid al-Shariah, FalahAbstract
This study aims to reconstruct the concept of community economic welfare through a critical dialogue between the thoughts of Jürgen Habermas and Jean-François Lyotard, and to formulate its implications for the development of Islamic economics. Using a qualitative approach with a library research method, this article criticizes the dominance of instrumental rationality in the modern economic paradigm that tends to reduce welfare to a single material indicator based on Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The results show that Habermas's critique through the idea of communicative rationality and 'normative validity' can expand the scope of welfare into the socio-communicative dimension to prevent the colonization of the lifeworld by technocratic systems. On the other hand, Lyotard's rejection of grand narratives and the concept of performativity provides a foundation for recognizing the plurality and heterogeneity of local welfare experiences to avoid universal homogenization. As an original contribution, this study offers a multidimensional economic welfare model that integrates four main pillars: material-spiritual as the base foundation, socio-communicative (Habermas), plurality of experience (Lyotard), and Maqashid al-Shariah and maslahah (Islamic Economics) as the highest normative filter. All these dimensions lead to the achievement of falah, namely ultimate happiness and success in this world and the hereafter. This integration indicates that true welfare does not place humans merely as instrumental economic agents, but as whole moral-transcendental beings.
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