Through a series of e-mail exchanges following the symposium, we discussed with von Moos the Frankfurt School’s critique of postmodernism as a form of counter-Enlightenment, as an anti-modern tenet that dismantles everything that European philosophy and science have held to be fundamentally true. This is an important and valid criticism of postmodernism. However, we wonder if Venturi and Scott Brown's arguments might, in many respects, align better with the (second generation) Frankfurt School's critical theory than with postmodernism.xiii We feel a connection can be drawn between the possibilities Venturi and Scott Brown saw in Early Modern architecture and in Mannerism, and the potential that the school’s thinkers like Jürgen Habermas found in 'incomplete' Modernity and Enlightenment. Venturi and Scott Brown have repeatedly stated their admiration for Early Modernism. In a conversation with von Moos for his 1999 book on the couple’s works, Scott Brown said, “We have always claimed that we are Modernists, in any rational definition of Modernism, because it is our point of departure. We subscribe to a set of ways of building that stem from the Modern movement, and we think of ourselves as functionalists. We have approached Modernism as loyal supporters who change it to keep it relevant.”xiv In the first chapter of the pair’s recent book, Architecture as Signs and Systems for a Mannerist Time , Venturi thoroughly explained the lessons that he learned from early Mannerists, and adapted and used in his design.xv In the introduction to Habermas’ influential essay “Modernity – An Incomplete Project,” Thomas Docherty wrote, “Habermas sees the possibility of salvaging Enlightenment rationality… Habermas accepts that errors have been made in the attempt to attain such a rational society; but this should not negate the project of modernity as such.”xvi Venturi, Scott Brown and Habermas all challenged the existing paradigms and acknowledged their problems, but endeavored to build upon and evolve them, rather than suggesting something entirely revolutionary and new. Along similar lines, in his essay "The Doubles of Postmodernism," Robert A.M. Stern also distinguishes Venturi and Scott Brown from other 'schismatic' postmodernists, by considering the pair as the 'traditional' ones, who argue for “recognition of the continuity of the cultural tradition of Western Humanism of which it holds modernism to be a part."xvii