One of the most problematic consequences for contemporary thought is the collapse and exhaustion of critique as political agency. The crisis of critique is generally seen as a crisis of the humanities in their attempt to orient the promises of modernity. This article is an attempt to investigate the conditions of possibility of thought today in the defense of a program of enlightenment based on the work of the Spanish philosopher José Luis Villacañas and on the philosophical force of the Kantian proposal of reason. The hypothesis that the essay unfolds is that today a rationality of criticism is possible as a condition of possibility of a res publica enunciated by Kant’s thought and extended in the reconstruction and enunciation of Villacañas’ republican thought. However, the possibility of this thought and of the rationality of critique passes today through a critique of the hedonistic individuality of 21st century capitalism.