Book Description

Book Description
Two countervailing trends mark the intellectual tenor of our age the spread of naturalistic worldviews and religious orthodoxies. Drawing on both contemporary scientific advances and the revitalization of religious practices Jrgen Habermas explores the fundamental tension between naturalism and religion. ... Read more

Book Description
Jurgen Habermas has developed the theory of communicative action primarily in the context of critical social and political theory and discourse ethics. The essays collected in this volume, however, focus on the theory's implications for epistemology and metaphysics. They address two fundamental issues that have not figured prominently in his work since the early 1970s. One is the question of naturalism: How can the ineluctable normativity of the perspective of agents interacting in a linguistically structured lifeworld be reconciled with the contingency of the emergence and evolution of forms of life? The other is a key problem facing epistemological realism after the linguistic turn: How can the assumption that there is an independently existing world be reconciled with the linguistic insight that we cannot have unmediated access to "brute" reality?

Truth and Justification collects Habermas's major essays on these topics published since the mid-1990s. They offer detailed discussions of truth and objectivity as well as an account of the representational function of language in terms of the formal-pragmatic framework he has developed. In defending his post-Kantian pragmatism, Habermas draws on both the continental and analytic traditions and endorses a weak naturalism and a form of epistemological realism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Still the best
Habermas remains the best philosopher living, one who is neither reactionary nor radical, just clear and above all balanced!

Excellent Translations! Excellent Essays!
For Habermas fans this book is a must. There is so much excellent material in this book that it is not a page turner -- you have to stay awhile and enjoy each page before moving on to the next. Taking time to think a lot makes this page a very slow and very worthwhile read.

Habermas keeps getting better. ... Read more

Book Description
Examines the theoretical and practical dimensions of Habermas's debates with contemporary philosophy and the social sciences and the politically informed unity of his theory and practice. ... Read more

Book Description
Two of the worlds great contemporary thinkers--theologian andchurchman Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, and Jurgen Habermas,philosopher and Neo-Marxist social critic--discuss and debate aspects ofsecularization, and the role of reason and religion in a free society.These insightful essays are the result of a remarkable dialogue between thetwo men, sponsored by the Catholic Academy of Bavaria, a little over a yearbefore Joseph Ratzinger was elected pope.

Jurgen Habermas has surprised many observers with his call for "thesecular society to acquire a new understanding of religious convictions",as Florian Schuller, director of the Catholic Academy of Bavaria, describesit his foreword. Habermas discusses whether secular reason providessufficient grounds for a democratic constitutional state. JosephRatzinger/Benedict XVI argues for the necessity of certain moral principlesfor maintaining a free state, and for the importance of genuine reason andauthentic religion, rather than what he calls "pathologies of reason andreligion", in order to uphold the states moral foundations. Both men insistthat proponents of secular reason and religious conviction should learnfrom each other, even as they differ over the particular ways that mutuallearning should occur.

Customer Reviews (5)

Rational faith
Reading this book requires a concentrated level of attentive reading. It is a great argument for a rational approach to the adoption of any belief system. Faith without reason is blind and capricious.

Heavy Philosophy & A Call to Conscience
Undoubtedly, these authors are the gold standard in their respective arena. The first is a Kant-based neo Marxist and the latter a theologian steeped in Augustine and leader of the Catholic world.

If you are in search of a page-turner with a climatic ending, keep looking. Otherwise, this is a smartly presented text divided into a chapter for each speaker who makes their case with calculated passion. The reader without a basic foundation for philosophy may find this one a bit over the top. If not, the book is succinct and delves into man's reason and existence in contemporary times.

In the end, the book achieves its intention. If it was meant to leave the reader undecided-it failed. However, this is not the case as one cannot continue to remind ones self that one chapter reinforces a philosophy that has been tried and exhausted within a century and another that has been tested two millennia and beyond. Both make their cases on man, politics, religion and our state of the world; however, it is clear which rings with hope, love and idealism.

Debating the place of Religion in Society
Habermas and Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI) are two of the greatest minds of their times. This short work is their take on the interctions of democratic culture, political liberalism, religion and God. These two separate essays are the summation of a discussion between these two men. They were written well after the conversation had taken place and so ovbiously they're a little less satisfying than if we were able to read a transcript of the conversation, or perhaps response papers written immediately thereafter. However these are still two excellent essays, written by two brilliant men, who give the reader much to ponder about the current state of modern life.

Without LOGOS "the Center will not hold"...
Jurgen Habermas is a Neo-Marxist and born-again Kantian.Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger is Pope Benedict XVI. Habermas despite twisting,turning and equivocation implying his variation on The CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE can sustain democratic Institutions(& ontological,ethical,epistemological,and even aesthetic underpinings)reluctantly admits LOGOS(subsistent,
metaphysical guaranteer of Being,Truth & Justice~ie God)is sine qua non for survival of Democratic West. Cardinal Ratzinger,a neo-Thomistic Aristotelian,now preeminent dogmatic Catholic theologian in the West,
echoes and expatiates on this admission as both warning and counsel to radical secularists~ Without LOGOS,"The Center will not hold"(Yeats):
Totalitarianism(451"benevolent"; die technik/Heideggerian material;or brutal Orwellian)is inevitable....

The virtue of this book is clarity and indisputable authority of its spokesmen. Take and read.

The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion
Both chapters are excellent. However, there is not a kind a debate where one lecture is coordinated with the other. It looks to me that they belong to different events.
Any way, ideas from both authors are to be analysed in deep due to the significance of the concepts about God's role in society. ... Read more

Book Description
This critique of French philosophy and the history of German philosophy is a tour de force that has the immediacy and accessibility of the lecture form and the excitement of an encounter across national cultural boundaries as Habermas takes up the challenge posed by the radical critique of reason in contemporary French postmodernism. The lectures on Georges Bataille, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Cornelius Castoriadis are of particular note, since they are the first fruits of the recent cross-fertilization between French and German thought.

Jurgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Are You Old Enough To Read This Book?
If we were to nominalize a certain category by calling it the "theoretical 80s", there are two books I "elect" to represent this time for interested parties: Richard Rorty's *Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature* and Juergen Habermas' *Philosophical Discourse of Modernity*.Much as Rorty there offered a concise introduction to philosophers then "motivating" the bulk of contemporary discourse in the "discipline", Habermas here offers relatively quick rundowns of Continental thinkers against the backdrop of the reconstituted IfS's enduring concerns.In other words, this is as close to journalistic as responsible essays on postmodernisms early and late can be; Habermas could tell you who coined the term, but does not.

The gamely accepted Anglo-American logical and metaethical work is blissfully absent from "historically informed" portraits of left-wing philosophers and social theorists relatively sanguine about the passing of fetishized "reasonings", with the unfortunate exception of a recasted Derrida/Searle debate: here staged outside the *Proposition's Progress* which is "intention-based semantics" for Stalnaker and Schiffer, but oh so much more once *realites* formerly banned from Berkeley get into the act.Also excepted is the "unfortunate norm", fellow sociologist Jean Baudrillard (who could easily benefit from a readily accessible longform periodization of his work) -- but instead we have a marvelously sanitized Bataille, a genuine argument for "inspirational" treatments of negative theodicies.

The book to read if *Theory of Communicative Action* does not excite you; and if it does, the sundry works of Niklas Luhmann and Pierre Bourdieu are rather readily available after all, as is the German philosophical scholarship of which I imagine this was more-or-less a part domestically.But really, the only thing which impinges on this as a history of postmodernism (*After-Foucault* and all) is the *Wirkungsgeschichte* of intellectual life's influence upon culture during this period.If every band has a Shonen Knife that loves them, I'm not sure the widespread availability of Lacan in New York has nothing to do with it -- and this evaluation of postmodernism enables a serious assessment of its effective influence.

Leaves no stone unturned
Though I am almost always disturbed by Habermas's borderline naivety concerning what he calls the "unfinished project of modernity," in this volume he rises to the heights I always thought him capable.In 400+ pages (a big book, but always just short enough on the essays to be concise and clear), Habermas shows his command of almost all post-Kantian philosophy.His criticisms are almost always on-target, and even though I do not follow his conclusions (has he read and dealt seriously with ALL of Heidegger?what does he do with metaphysics that are expressly anti-metaphysical, such as those of Bergson, Whitehead, and James?), I am always amazed at his insights and explanations.Interestingly enough, much of what Habermas is explicating (critique of foundations) has always been found in theoretical form in Gadamer, and in cosmological form in Whitehead.Habermas always seems to hold out hope that some sort of Rawlsian "original position" will be found (can Habermas really think that there could ever be such a thing as an "ideal speech situation," devoid of what Gadamer calls the Wirkungsgeschichte, or history which affects it?).For my part, I cannot accept this.Insofar as modernity wanted to find such a situation, it was guilty of what Whitehead called "misplaced concrescence."Habermas makes himself succeptible to the same criticisms.But even though I all too often find Habermas too optimistic in regards the quest of modernity, I am never disappointed when he writes about that quest.I believe this is one of Habermas's finest books, worth the time and effort required to read it.

Excellent overview of 200 centuries of thought
This is truly a masterpiece. Especially if you're somebody schooled in the incredibly repetitive and tedious Anglo-Saxon tradition, this book will surely be a revelation. You'll need some philosophical training tounderstand a lot of this, but if you want a brilliant, sweeping evaluationof most of the most important thinkers in Europe post-Kant, with just theperfect balance of detail and summary, and of exegesis and polemic, thenthis book is essential.

Habermas begins by showing how the discourse ofmodernity and postmodernity, the concepts that transmitted philosophy fromthe Humean/Kantian epistemologist's study to the real world, began withHegel, and how it has been developed since then in different directions,but nobody has really risen to Marx's challenge successfully. Somebody whodoesn't know Heidegger and Derrida too well may get the impression thatthey're not as important as they actually are, due to Habermas' necessarilyselective treatment of their work, but other than that the way Habermasdissects the nature of modernity and postmodernity, and then shows how thefuture can still be hopeful with 'communicative rationality' rather thanthe solipsistic nature of pre-Habermasian philosophy which inevitably endsup in postmodern tangles, is brilliant.

You can hardly expect any onetext to be perfectly right, and I do have a few annoyances - mainly 1) histreatment of Searle's attack upon Derrida, which leaves the situationseeming a little more lopsided in favour of Searle than it really was (youget the impression Searle beat Derrida, when in fact Derrida really won theargument, he just failed to emphasise a few things) & 2) his treatmentof Horkheimer and Adorno's pessimism, which in many ways, thoughdisheartening, is still a little more realistic than his own optimisticpoint of view (he could've said that, despite Adorno's pessimism,communicative rationality is the best way to go, rather than making it seemas if we're on a direct, quick road to his utopian 'ideal speechsituation'), and finally 3) when he assumes that "metaphysical worldviews" are "outdated", he ignores the possibility of goingright back to Hegel and revitalising him with the positive, rather than thenegative-Nietzschean, insights of the last 200 years, especially that ofLévinas Heideggerean theology and the late Derrida's 1990s writings onreligion. A possibility that's difficult but he dismisses a little tooeasily.

Other than that, though, this is an astounding book of a qualityimmensely superior to the mass of over-rated rubbish you get these days,like Foucalt and Rorty. ... Read more

Book Description
In this timely volume Jrgen Habermas responds to the dramatic political events of the period since 9/11 and maps out a way to move the political agenda forward, beyond the acrimonious debates which have pitched opponents of the war against the Bush Administration and its coalition of the willing'. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Not overly complex
Previous reviewers have complained that Habermas presents his ideas in a more complex way than necessary.I submit that those reviewers are correct that his ideas, as _they_ understand them, could have been presented more simply.

Habermas is writing to academics.Yes, you need to have some background knowledge to access his thought.If you think that he is being more complicated than necessary, you almost certainly just don't get it.

An excellent introduction
This is one of Habermas' simpler books. It marks a major turn in his thought, however. He no longer wishes to exclude questions of the "good life" (teleology) from judgements of justice (deontology). He sees that morality must be grounded in a "species ethic" (ie: a naturalist, religious or metaphysical anthropology). This is significant as his previous work betrayed the sceptical approach to modern liberalism maintained by his predecessors in the Frankfurt School (esp. Adorno & Horkheimer). He know longer holds fast to Dworkin-esque neutrality. Nonetheless he still places the priority on deontology, a fact that makes his claims more tangible than, say, Charles Taylor's. An insightful, well presented and simple read.

Unnecessarily complicated
As the rest of Habermas's books, this one is an extremely difficult read. Unless you have previous knowledge of philosophical concepts, you will most likely not understand what Habermas is saying because he makes constant references to other philosophers, concepts and ideas.Rather than elaborating on them, he assumes that the reader already knows them.As well, I found that he takes rather simple concepts and makes them unnecessarily complex, as if to sound impressive.By the time you dig through all the semantic nonsense, you realize that his ideas are not exceptional and they could have been conveyed in a much simpler, straight-forward manner.This book is a complete waste of time since you will spend hours just trying to understand what he's attempting to say, thinking that you will discover something brilliant, only to be disappointed.My suggestion is to pick up a different book that is simpler to understand and where the author does not try to make his ideas sound impressive by using unnecessarily complicated language.

Sharp thinking.
More great work from someone who realizes that NYC isn't the center of the universe.

Drivel
More drivel from the great man of Europe. ... Read more

Book Description
This is Jürgen Habermas's most concrete historical-sociological book and one of the key contributions to political thought in the postwar period. It will be a revelation to those who have known Habermas only through his theoretical writing to find his later interests - in problems of legitimation, of rationalization, and of communicative action foreshadowed in this lucid study of the origins, nature, and evolution of public opinion in democratic societies.

Among the topics discussed are the origins of the category of "publicity" in the 18th-century, the rise of social institutions like newspapers, coffeehouses, and reading societies that provided for the formation and articulation of public opinion, and the way in which public opinion came to be assigned specific political responsibilities within liberal democracies.

Habermas's concern is with the rise of a politically active and informed public in England, France, and Germany, and the declining role of that public with the emergence of modern social welfare states. His ultimate subject, and the focus of his later work is the possibility of democracy under the radically changed socioeconomic, political, and cultural conditions of present day society.

Jürgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought edited by Thomas McCarthy. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Indispensable for Understanding Contemporary Culture
Okay, perhaps I've got the social-theory-geek gene, but when I first read this book some fourteen years ago (during grad school), I was able finally to put together a lot of things that had been swimming around in my brain. I'd already read a good bit of Adorno before a professor (with whom I was doing an independent study on Adorno) recommended that I read this.Habermas's historical analysis was so compelling that I simply couldn't put the book down.Moreover (all this may seem hard to believe), the lucidity of his presentation also helped me put a lot of what was going on in Adorno's writings in a clearer light.

While I don't agree with the directions in which Habermas later went--I strongly resist the notion of recuperating the modern project--this book provides a compelling analysis of how Western society and culture got to where it is now.

Habermas: The Public in History
In this monograph, Habermas tracks the origination, the evolution, and the dispersal of an informed "public sphere" among democratic Western nations.He defines public sphere as "private people com[ing] together as a public" (27).Once these individuals, gathered as reading groups or as aficionados of theatre, the arts, and politics, the individuals melded into a public capable of debating the government.Habermas locates these fledgling "publics" primarily in eighteenth-century France, England and to a lesser extent in the areas of Europe designated as German.Tellingly, Habermas strongly links the formation of the public sphere with the rise of capitalism and a continuing bourgeois revolution.Comprised of literate individuals governed by the principals of the Enlightenment, these "publics" eventually challenged the validity and legitimacy of governments, most notably in France during the French Revolution and England during the English Civil War.

Habermas builds a compelling argument based upon his interpretation of Rousseau, Kant, Locke, Hegel, and Marx.He links the works of these philosophers and sociologists in a credible chain stretching back to the eighteenth century.However, he only deals thoroughly with the educated, propertied elite of society.Habermas views the "unpropertied" and illiterate as a separate from and incapable of participating in a true public sphere.To do this he must dismiss a plethora of lower class uprisings found throughout the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries.Even when the various governments quickly quashed these rebellions, the Ludites in England and the various rebellions of 1848 come to mind, it is difficult to dispute the effect these rebels and rebellions had upon the public discourse.As an early work on the subject, it is almost certain that Habermas had to amend his arguments following E.P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class, published in 1963 a scant year after this work.His exclusion of the great press of society from a functioning public sphere seems arrogant at best and naïve at worst.

One of the most influential studies on the subject
Habermas' work, though written more than four decades ago, still retains most of its original relevance for the study of the public sphere. If you are interested in this subject, and if you are into critical thinking, then this book is certainly worth reading. Why? Well, if you take in consideration the fact that no other book has been written so far on the subject that has been able to surpass Habermas' account both in depth and originality, then you begin to get my point. As to a critical reading of the argument put forth by Habermas, one should read "Habermas and the Public Sphere", edited by Craig Calhoun. This book includes an appendix by Habermas where he revises some of his original positions.

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere
When you talk about the public sphere in front of intellectuals, Jürgen Habermas's name is bound to come up. Habermas's 1962 study, "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere," examines the creation, brief flourishing, and demise of a public sphere based in rational-critical debate and discussion. The feasibility of a true public sphere, which is inclusive of anyone who would participate, is for Habermas of utmost importance. Habermas follows a methodology similar to the one Michel Foucault takes in "Discipline and Punish," which analyzes the abolition of public displays of power, and the process by which the structures of power are inculcated in the individual from the 17th through the 20th centuries. Habermas analyzes historical, economic, and political conditions from classical antiquity through his own historical moment, tracing the circumstances in which the public sphere arises, how it functions, and ceases to function over time.

Habermas begins with a delineation of the terms 'public' and 'private,' orienting them philologically from their roots and meanings in classical antiquity. From here, he traces the adoption of the words and their synonyms into the European Middle Ages and the era of feudalism. Habermas says that in this period, the feudal lord and the monarch, for whom `representative publicness' functioned as a display of power before their subjects, dominated the public. Authority figures embodied virtues and powers in a public fashion. Public representation of political and economic power continued, unabated until the Reformation, at which time, the privatization of religious faith signaled a separation between society and the state. Economically, in the 16th and 17th centuries, the spread of trade necessitated the spread of news from various locales. As news outside of the home became relevant to home economy, the private individual begins to take an interest in public events. Consolidation of 'national' financial administration and state-controlled taxation, along with the rise of print culture, facilitated the dissemination of news, initially in the form of governmental decrees, market conditions, and happenings at court. Through this, the actions of the authorities came under the scrutiny of a reading public.

The 18th century is the key moment for Habermas. In this period, the government, along with private individuals, made use of the press, for the first time, in persuasive appeal to a public made up of private people. The press now presented the public with information, with which they were to use reason and discussion to determine what was in the public's interest. Habermas emphasizes the theoretical parity that this brings about - the rise of the coffee houses and salons, in which merchants met with gentility and engaged in rational-critical debate over issues of public import. Stretching this into the realm of the franchise, Habermas is careful to point out the problematics of a situation in which actual decision-making was restricted to those with money and land, but stresses that the opportunity for anyone to acquire these prerequisites was, again, theoretically, open to all.

For a brief time during the 18th century, Habermas sees the flourishing of a public sphere, born out of a reading public, that began to interact with the processes of public policy, legally, and morally. The purpose of this public sphere, according to Habermas, is to eliminate the domination of authoritative power, and establishing a government that is actually representative of the public will and contingent upon public opinion. Unfortunately, in the 19th century, with the stratification of party politics, the proliferating press encouraged less rational-critical discussion. Increasingly, debate moved into parliamentary circles, and the public was asked only to approve of party measures, not participate in the formation of the rules that governed them. In the 20th century, along with the creation of the welfare-state, consolidation of moneyed interests, and the expansion of universal suffrage (ironically), the public sphere disintegrated even further. New media - radio, television, etc. - turned its addresses to the public into mere advertising. Even the illusion of a private people engaged, as a public, in matters of their own governance, was gone, and the public became vessels for mass media.

To recuperate a true participatory public sphere, Habermas takes a guarded approach. He indicates that some kind of elite could be formed. These private individuals would undertake the responsibility of rational-critical debate, determining the public interest. The general public, then, would give their approval or disapproval to the measures decided on by this elite. This is kind of a bleak outlook, and one I don't much care for myself. Of course, this is a horribly limited review of Habermas's "Structural Transformation". I haven't even noted the break he takes to outline the historical-philosophical evaluation and critique of the public sphere by Kant, Hegel, Marx, Mill, and Tocqueville. Nor did I note the extensive use Habermas makes of political and economic changes in his key nations - England, France, and Germany - and the contributions these make to the disintegration of the public sphere. At any rate, "Structural Transformation" is an exhaustive (and exhausting) study, as relevant now to the study of literature, economics, government, history, etc., especially of the last three centuries, as it ever was. Even though it is a pain to read, you'll be glad you finally read it. Think of it as theoretical medicine - it may not taste good, but in the long run, it's good for you.

Habermas puts me to sleep
... This is Habermas' dissertation, but his writing is so poor, in English or in German, that it really doesn' matter. The book is a response, in my opinion, to Carl Schmitt, andspecifically to Schmitt's argument that the core of liberal democracy isdebate in parliament, that liberal democracy is rule by discussion (or, asits called now, "political discourse"), but that that discussionis now more real than painted flames on a radiator. Liberal democracy is infact the triumph of aliberal, private, hidden powers, who rule from theshadows and through the true organs of power, the media, and through thehidden power of the private vote cast in the illicit privacy of the votingbooth, where the bourgeois individual is free to exercise his worstprejudices and basest motives. So argues Schmitt. Habermas gives aninteresting historical account of the rise of "Offentlichkeit"(which translates into the all-too-easy abstraction "publicsphere," whatever that is), from the letters passed in the mailrelating the news from town to town, to French salons, to newspapers, totelevision and radio. Habermas, like Schmitt, seeks to unmask the illiberalpowers lurking behind the good liberal prejudices, but he, like Schmitt,mistakes liberalism for a debating society when in fact it is much moresophisticated than that. Habermas needs to read the Federalist Papers andthe debates (!) at the constitutional convention to understand how littlethe founders of one liberal democracy thought of the power of discussion. ... Read more

Book Description
These critical essays on Jürgen Habermas's major contribution to sociological theory, The Theory of Communicative Action, provide an indispensable guide for anyone trying to grasp that large, difficult, and important work.

The editors' introduction traces the history of the reception of the work and identifies the main themes on which discussion has focused: a concept of communicative rationality; a theory of action based on distinguishing communicative from instrumental reason; a two-level concept of society that integrates lifeworld and system paradigms; and a critical theory of modernity meant to diagnose the sociopathologies of contemporary society.

Axel Honneth is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Berlin. Hans Joas is Professor of Sociology at the Free University, Berlin.

Contributors: Jeffrey Alexander. Johann P. Arnason. Johannes Berger. Günter Dux. Jürgen Habermas. Hans Joas. Hans-Peter Krüger. Thomas McCarthy. Herbert Schnädelbach. Martin Seel. Charles Taylor. ... Read more

Amazon.com
Jurgen Habermas, an esteemed political philosopher who lived in Germany during the Nazi reign, has produced a thought-provoking work on what he calls "deliberative politics." To summarize his view, true democracy isn't just the compilation of opinions or a blanket treatment of majority rules, but a social process in which people meet, discuss, modify and, ultimately, agree. He draws connections between how such a process could shape the making of laws and direct the course of nations. His writings here represent a lifetime of political thought on the nature of democracy and law, and deserve an audience and a place in the foundations of democratic theory.Book Description
In Between Facts and Norms Jürgen Habermas works out the legal and political implications of his Theory of Communicative Action (1981), bringing to fruition the project announced with his publication of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in 1962. This new work is a major contribution to recent debates on the rule of law and the possibilities of democracy in postindustrial societies, but it is much more.

The introduction by William Rehg succinctly captures the special nature of the work, noting that it offers a sweeping, sociologically informed conceptualization of law and basic rights, a normative account of the rule of law and the constitutional state, an attempt to bridge normative and empirical approaches to democracy, and an account of the social context required for democracy. Finally, the work frames and caps these arguments with a bold proposal for a new paradigm of law that goes beyond the dichotomies that have afflicted modern political theory from its inception and that still underlie current controversies between so- called liberals and civic republicans.

The book includes a postscript written in 1994, which restates the argument in light of its initial reception, and two appendixes, which cover key developments that preceded the book.

Habermas himself was actively involved in the translation, adapting the text as necessary to make it more accessible to English-speaking readers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

The Latest Major Work by Habermas
His central concern is implied by the title.We can't really see a law as a law unless it's backed up with enforcement.That's law as a "fact."But we also want law to reflect values that we can rationalize and validate.That's law as a "norm."This difficult study is worth the effort for anyone who wonders about law's nature and about how ideas like "justice" claim our attention.Habermas wants to define an idea of law that lies "between" law as a fact (what law is and says) and law as a value or norm (what law ought to be, or what we feel law ought to be).The classic test case is a circumstance like Nazi Germany, where policies of Jewish extermination were "in fact" legitimated within the state power structure.If you are interested in an argument that respects the importance of state might but also resists the notion that might makes right, then this book should be on your list.

Put Your Hope in the Law
A big book on the big topic of 'how do we all get along' by one of the biggest of living philosophers.

I'll not address the details of the argument or Habermas's place in left-wing politics. Instead, I'll address the intellectual and cultural context.

What Habermas says he is doing is looking for a way to hold societies together that are no longer composed only of one ethnic group; that are no longer made up of adherents of one religion; and are no longer made up of people who accept one myth of their nation or one philosophy of life. We wouldn't need his contribution here, he is saying, if we were not in "postmetaphysical" times--by which he means two things. First, he means that we're in a scientific, secular era when the educated classes, anyway, of major Western countries can no longer be convinced of much of anything by *religious* arguments. Religion doesn't command much belief among social elites, and many others, let alone the kind of universal belief it once inspired. And theology has long since been driven from the position of being 'queen of the sciences' by physics. The second thing he means by "postmetaphysical" (which he uses instead of "postmodern") is that we live in a time when it's hard for any of us to believe that only what we believe is true, and that what we believe is totally true...because our world is so interconnected and we are aware of so many different religions and worldviews people have. That is, religious and worldview pluralism relativizes the authority any one religion or worldview could have now.

Mostly Habermas thinks our "enlightened" state of cosmopolitan equality is really good. But he acknowledges that we've lost something in losing the certainties and meaning and ethics of religions. Among other things we've lost is the social glue that holds citizens of countries together. Since Habermas is a social philosopher of hope, who wants to prevent a Nazi regime and a Holocaust from ever happening again, this is really important to him.

So after saying why socialist welfare states, with their paternalistic governments, and unregulated capitalism, with its discrimination against those who are such losers as to not be affluent, can't be the way forward, he then surveys and rejects other options. Of course, the way forward is his theory, which in his lingo is a constitutional deliberative democracy with a free public sphere and a vibrant lifeworld. Never mind all that, unless you want to get into his theory. The force of it here is that, in a way most people afraid of getting speeding tickets would not expect, he, as a leftie, sees The Law as the best means for keeping all of us together. Even if we don't respect each other so much, basically, if we respect the law we can get along. Even if we don't care about each other so much, if we do as much for each other as the law demands, society will be livable. So the right kind of law makes possible a peaceful society of people who radically disagree on really basic stuff that would often make people violent.

The book is designed to sort out the right kind of law. It is the kind that you can obey not just because you'll get in trouble if you don't, but also because you can agree in principle with how the law was made (even if you don't like the law itself). And the right way to make laws is for people to talk long enough and openly enough with each other in political publics and fora to come up with basic rules of the game we can all live with.

Highly technical, highly abstract, assumes you know basic stuff about Aristotle and Kant without him explaining it, amazingly comprehensive. Underrated in the US because it's not done in the usual Anglo-American way, but not only great for legal theory types, but also for people doing Rawls or Rorty or Derrida or MacIntyre. And for systematic thinker people, think of Between Facts and Norms as Habermas's equivalent of Aristotle's Politics or Hegel's Philosophy of Right. If you like the Olympic pool these guys swim in, this is gold medal contender material.

Democracy: well-known, little understood
Some commentators of Habermas' work have argued that he changed his position from "The Theory of Communicative Action" (see review in here at Amazon.com) to "Between Facts and Norms" (BF&N). In the preface of the English edition of BF&N the author himself replies to this issue: Habermas hopes that the book will clear the impression that "the theory of communicative action is blind to institutional reality -or that it could even have anarchist consequences (p. xi)".Thus, the purpose of BF&N is to apply discourse theory to the analysis of democracy in modern societies and not to change the route of his critical theory, as some have argued.Having said this, the reader may be interested to know whether it is possible to understand this book without reading TCA first. I would reply to this question with a cautious "yes".But, of course, something of the understanding will be missed without the theoretical background of Habermas' magnum opus.For someone who would like to read BF&N but is not willing to digest TCA's two volumes, I recommend reading his essay "Three Normative Models of Democracy" (in "The Inclusion of the Other", ed. by Ciaran Cronin and Pablo de Greiff, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998).This essay presents an outline of the arguments that Habermas will fully develop in BF&N.In this book, he proposes a normative model of democracy as a middle point alternative to the republican and the liberal models.While the republican model relies on Rousseau's idea of collective opinion and will-formation, which demands communication and consensus, the liberal model attributes supremacy to the institutional protection of individual freedom.Habermas affirms that his proposal is normatively "stronger" than the liberal model, but "weaker" than the republican model.In other words, in his deliberative model of democracy, institutions should do more than just protecting the individual from state oppression and act also as carriers of communicative rationality.Institutions are crucial to democracy because they act as legitimacy 'gatekeepers', transforming public opinion into communicative power."According to discourse theory, the success of deliberative politics depends not on a collectively acting citizenry but on the institutionalization of the corresponding procedures and conditions of communication, as well as on the interplay of institutionalized deliberative processes with informally developed public opinions" (BF&N, p. 298).In a deliberative democracy, opinion formation in the public sphere is to be transferred to the legal and political systems in order to legitimize binding decisions that apply to a political community.
Habermas model is not, therefore, a radical departure from what we know nowadays as a "democratic system".However,most existing democracies lack the conditions for an unconstrained opinion formation in the public sphere due to ideological manipulation,as Habermas points out.Thus, democratic institutions do not guarantee an authentic democracy.As much as Habermas see institutions to be fundamental to democracy, the improvement of the democratic system cannot come from within the institutionalized system.Institutions can stabilize democracy, but are not meant to change society.According to Habermas, only communication action is able to lead us out of our current political predicament.

intervention into the globe and democracy
Although Habermas may come across as a post-metaphysical thinker somewhat austere and reserved, his voice has always been there in dialogue with topical controversial political issues. Over the past thirty years he has written essays of a profound nature,as the xenophobia of race after the break up of the Soviet satellites, bio-genetic engineering(quite literally the future of race),and the strengths and weaknesses within Western institutions.He has to date 9 Volumes(in German only) of incredible "Political Writings".
Here,fellow Amazonians all these dribble reviews really masterbations of detritus are less than useless,Habermas deserves better than this;but a sign of democracy I suppose.
Habermas with this very comprehensive work is trying to intervene into the current paradigm of law democracy and globalization; how financial institutions(asan extension of the law, the distribution of wealth) really cannot provide the necessary stability as they once did for the dispossessed within liberal democracies.
It is fairly certain now with the arrogant drum beatings of Washington that there is a real threat of loss of power if some Western power does move quickly to manipulate what Engels referred to as the co-relation of forces today,like who controls oil(and natural resources);Technology hence (Time)nuclear power,or space militarization (in the Virilio-ian sense) or for instance who will help the new cheap labour factory, China industrialize.
Habermas sees democracy-in-development only in Europe with the formation of the European Union as an activist agent a proxy of intervention from the vagaries and many times anarchy of globalization for the globes working classes.This within the context where Washington sees no equivalent agenda to nurture and desires to jettison all the post-WW2 Atlanticist structures, as the United Nations and their derivatives. These organizations for other reasons have become corrupt,but they still service some parts of the globe who depend upon them for food and medicinal deliveries. The fact that Habermas focuses on the relative strengths of bourgeois laws is indeed his own self-created cul-de-sac as paradigm that there is no alternative to this reality at least not in the forseeable future.I suspect Habermas has been purging himself for quite some time from his early days as Adorno's student from the negative/critical,more classical sides of Marxism that appraises power wherever it exists as an "odometer", a measure for the dispossessed of the globe, do they eat?,or die?,something that embarasses him I suspect.Laws should monitor where the food chains exist, Laws should monitor atrocities,genocides,corrupt leaders.These very laws (within the West)historically have always been frought with reservations contingencies,and are constructed to preserve the staus quo,and can be easily changed and amended when their agency or proxy comes to an end; yes a classical Marxist view still alive although to some detestable. At least for those below the subsistence levels it is somewhat comforting to know that there is a "conscious" within the West someplace, although it is seldom exhibited as for example within the continent of Africa.

I didn't want to review this.... but.....
The reviews for this book are really poor, so I'm going to take a shot at this book....

Habermas in this book is very German. The book isstraightforward: it deals with the dual nature of laws.... i.e. that theideals we establish in laws are conditioned by a sociological process andthen interpreted through the same process. It's not a book that one wouldread for pleasure... it's not a book that one would want to have around toplease girls. It's dry at times, but CAN BE very rewarding. Please, dearGod, do not let this be an introduction to philosophy. But-- as the reviewsabove hint at-- it is an important work by an important author if taken inthe right light and for the right reasons.

I do not intend here to writea review of Habermas: that's way beyond what needs to be done in thissituation. He's not a whole lot of fun though.... ;)... but a brilliantman, nonetheless.... ... Read more

Book Description
"The THEORY OF COMMUNICATIVE ACTION represents a major contribution tocontemporary social theory.Not only does it provide a compelling critique of some of the main perspectives in 20th century philosophy and social science, but it also presents a systematic synthesis of the many themse which have preoccupied Habermas for thirty years." (Times Literary Supplement) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

"monster work"
it took me 1.5 years to read this book and to make an attempt to understand it in its whole power and beauty.
Real contribution to social theory, a great synthesis...
But for ordinary readers there are two ways to approach this book:
1.to undertand the main idea, but even it in only 20-30%
2. to penetrate into the magical world of social philosophy and sociological theory..
you choose...
Thanks to Habermas for such an epical book...

Do not emancipate yourself without it!
I would like remind readers that this book is the first volume of the two that constitute "The Theory of Communicative Action" (the second volume has as subtitle "Lifeworld and System - A Critique of Functionalist Reason").The first volume was published in English in 1984, while the second volume appeared in 1987.The two volumes are not independent books and should be read as a single book.

Habermas can be linked to the group of German philosophers and social theorists associated with the Institute of Social Research, founded in 1924 at the University of Frankfurt.Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, the two most distinguished members of the "Frankfurt School" (as the Institute was nicknamed), developed a social analysis that departed from orthodox Marxism and was known as "critical theory".According to critical theory, the ailments of modern capitalist society were due to its encompassing rationalization, resulting in a complete alienation of the working class.Following Weber's pessimistic diagnostic, Horkheimer and Adorno considered that Enlightenment's dream of a society guided by reason had degenerated into an "iron cage": human beings were condemned to live without freedom, following rules devoid of meaning."Instrumental reason", that is, the manipulative, self-interested, technical use of reason in administration, economics and science, had become so encompassing that there was no hope for escaping from it.

Habermas, who arrived at the Institute of Social Research in the early 1950's, concluded that Horkheimer's and Adorno's analysis of contemporary society hit a dead end.Critical theory, which was supposed to guide individuals in their struggle for emancipation, turned contemplative, pessimistic.The problem with the "old" critical theory, Habermas believed, was that it remained attached to the philosophy of consciousness.In order to put critical theory back to its original track, Habermas switched to the philosophy of language and expanded the concept of reason to include "communicative rationality". With these theoretical moves, Habermas reestablished the centrality of reason as the guiding principle for attaining emancipation. Because language presupposes unrestricted communication and mutual understanding, coordinated action is an always present possibility to speaking subjects.Parting from this philosophical outlook, Habermas developed the concept of "communicative action", defined as "the type of interaction in which all participants harmonize their individual plans of action with one another and thus pursue their illocutionary aims without reservation" (TCA, v.1, p. 294).According to this perspective, the predicaments of modern society are consequence - as Horkheimer and Adorno had argued - of an excessive reliance in instrumental reason (or purposive rationality, has Habermas prefers to call it).However, Habermas argued that there is a way out of this situation: In order to overcome social crises, it is necessary to counterbalance purposive rationality by bringing communicative rationality back into play.

Habermas' communicative action argument was already present in his writings of the early 1960's.In TCA Habermas presents a detailed justification of his theoretical approach and expands it into a social theory aimed at explaining the occurrence of social pathologies.In support of his argumentation, Habermas introduces a new concept of society that intertwine the lifeworld concept (the common pool of knowledge that individuals use in order to attach meaning to the world) and the social system concept.According to this "dual" approach, society evolves by differentiating itself both as system and as lifeworld."Systemic evolution is measured by the increase in society's steering capacity, whereas the state of development of a symbolically structured lifeworld is indicated by the separation of culture, society, and personality" (TCA, v. 2, p. 152).

The argumentation Habermas conducts in TCA is highly abstract at times.This has lead to misunderstandings of his key arguments, particularly of the communicative action concept.According to this distorted interpretation, Habermas had advocated for the establishment of an ideal, utopian society in which all human beings would reach consensus about everything.Taken out of the context of the full argumentation, the communicative action concept acquires a naïve twist that Habermas' detractors - as well as some of his supporters - have contributed to establish. Nevertheless, the reader that endures the abstract aspects of TCA will be recompensed by a bright and clear interpretation of contemporary society. Habermas argument on the limitations of socialist states is particularly enlightening.Leftists will finally understand why democracy should not be seen just as a bourgeois invention and right-wingers will find reasons for not rejoicing at the downfall ofsocialism.

Prospective readers of TCA should be warned that they are at risk of establishing Habermas as a benchmark to every other social theorist. This risk, however, is worth taking.

A classic
I was quite surprised when I noted that there was no review to this book. In fact, this book will be considered in the future as a real classic lecture. As the figure of Habermas becomes more important every day hismost important work become crucial. A must-read. ... Read more

Book Description
"One of the broadest, most comprehensive, elaborate and intensely theoretical works in social theory.Social theory and philosophy may never be the same again."(Philosophy and Social Criticism) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 2
This is the second volume of the two that constitute "The Theory of Communicative Action" (the first volume subtitle is "Reason and the Rationalization of Society"). The first volume was published in English in 1984, while the second volume appeared in 1987.The two volumes are not independent books and should be read as a single book. See review of the two volumes in"The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society" (v. 1).
See review for the two volumes: The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society (The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol1) ... Read more

Book Description
This collection of Habermas's recent essays on philosophical topics continues the analysis begun in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. In a short introductory essay, he outlines the sources of twentieth-century philosophizing, its major themes, and the range of current debates. The remainder of the essays can be seen as his contribution to these debates.

Habermas's essay on George Herbert Mead is a focal point of the book. In it he sketches a postmetaphysical, intersubjective approach to questions of individuation and subjectivity. In other essays, he develops his distinctive, communications-theoretic approach to questions of meaning and validity. The book as a whole expands on his earlier efforts to define a middle ground between nostalgic revivals of metaphysical conceptions of reason and radical deconstructions of reason. ... Read more

Book Description
We live in a time of turbulent change when many of the frameworks that have characterized our societies over the last few centuries – such as the international order of sovereign nation-states – are being called into question. In this new volume of essays and interviews, Habermas focuses his attention on these processes of change and provides some of the resources needed to understand them.

What kind of international order should we seek to create in our contemporary global age? How should we understand the political project of Europe and how can the democratic deficit of the EU be overcome? How should we understand the relation between democracy as popular sovereignty, which has become the defining principle of political legitimacy in the modern world, and the idea of basic human rights embodied in the rule of law?

Habermas brings his formidable powers of analysis and his distinctive theoretical perspective to bear on these and other key questions of the modern age. His analysis is shaped throughout by his commitment to informed public debate and his powerful advocacy of a postnational renewal of the project of constitutional democracy.

Time of Transitions will be essential reading for all students and scholars of sociology and politics, and it will be of interest to anyone concerned with the key social and political questions of our time. ... Read more