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"For those concerned with the relationships between thought and action, KNOWLEDGE AND HUMAN INTERESTS will quickly be recognized as a brilliant book -- and a bold outline for a new social theory." (Times Literary Supplement) ... Read more

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climactic transition in thought
Habermas says in an interview that he has basically followed the same research program since 1970--that is, since "Knowledge and Human Interests." (KHI) In many ways, KHI marks the peak of Habermas's effort to carry out the classic program of the critical theory of the Frankfurt School. In this, one crucial question is how to integrate the individual psychology of Freud with the sociology of Marx. Another is how to integrate a generally Darwinian paradigm into the Continental philosophical tradition stemming from Hegel.
In KHI, Habermas argues that our "interests," by which he means our basic life concerns--almost in a Maslow-like sense--from survival to meaning, are ultimately evolutionarily rooted. Knowledge does "ride on top of" these interests--thus keeping, barely Marx's distinction between "base" and "superstructure"--in the sense that we want to know things because we are the sort of creature who know in order to survive, to live together, to find meaning in life, etc. But since knowledge--culture in all its forms--is the tool we use, as it were, to meet our needs (to address our interests), what we need to pay attention to in order to meet the needs of our bodies and selves is culture, human understanding.
Habermas evidently felt that with KHI he had reached a dead end. During the 1970s (following lectures at Princeton) he set off to ground social theory in social existence--that is, in our relationships as they occur by means of talking with each other. This led to his magnum opus, "The Theory of Communicative Action." His work in the 1980s and 1990s was a defense and elaboration of TCA, especially in the direction of political and legal philosophy.
But in my reading of Habermas, he has remained a secular philosopher of hope from his very first writings in the 1950s. Both in terms of tools--for instance, his use, unusual for a Continental, of Anglo-American philosophy of language, and his use, unusual for a philosopher, of empirical sociology and psychology--and in terms of themes--emancipation, freedom from self-delusion, consensual and informed participation as the guarantor against a repeat of the Nazi disaster--he has remained on a life quest to see that his boyhood under Hitler is never repeated.
KHI is a major step on that path, an effort to summarize a tradition's ability to contribute before he struck out on his own. It is odd for English-world people because of how seriously he takes Freud and Marx. It is dated in its 1960s references and atmosphere of young revolt and idealistic remaking of society, and in its pre-spirituality craze secularism. But it is a magisterial reading of many European authors, including especially Nietzsche, and by no means of interest only to Habermas scholars. Anyone looking for answers as to how to avoid both tyranny and terror while dealing with globalization and pluralism will benefit from Habermas's struggle with the same issues.
Note: not as technical and encumbered by social-scientific jargon as many of his later works. Habermas is no friend to readers, but a "New York Times" regular will be able to manage it.
Recommended for serious readers. ... Read more

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In a provocative argument that ends with his own sharply profiled position, Jürgen Habermas considers the main lines of thought pursued by epistemologists and methodologists of the social sciences - from NeoKantianism to behaviorism. For two decades, the German edition of this classic has been a standard reference point for discussions of the social sciences.

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

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In this elaborate and sympathetic study which places Habermas' project in the context of critical theory as a whole past and future, J. M. Bernstein argues that despite its undoubted achievements, it contributes to the very problems of ethical dislocation and meaninglessness it aims to diagnose and remedy. ... Read more

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A rare systematic thinker, Habermas has furthered our understanding of modernity, social interaction and linguistic practice, societal institutions, rationality, morality, the law, globalization, and the role of religion in multicultural societies. He has helped shape discussions of truth, objectivity, normativity, and the relationship between the human and the natural sciences. This volume provides an accessible and comprehensive conceptual map of Habermas' theoretical framework and its key concepts, including the theory of communicative action, discourse ethics, his social-political philosophy and their applications to contemporary issues. It will be an invaluable resource for both novice readers of Habermas and those interested in a more refined understanding of particular aspects of his work. ... Read more

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Jurgen Habermas, particularly in his master work Theory of Communicative Action (1981), takes us several of the basic insights of the philosophical tradition of reflection initiated by Kant, and sets it on a new and highly original emancipative path.He claims that reflection not only can determine the limits of reasoning about thought and action, but also can grasp the limits that human agents face in freeing themselves form unjust social and economic structures.Human agents can engage in constructive and emancipative communication with others by determining the limits not of their own consciousness, but of the intersubjective structures shared in everyday communication.Reflection Revisited examines Habermas’ own two-stage development of this theory of emancipative reflection and explicates how he applies reflection specifically to the problems of personal identity development and ethics. ... Read more

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Contemporary debate about the public sphere has been dominated by discussion of Jürgen Habermas’s seminal study, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. The contributors to this collection push forward Habermas’s agenda by reflecting on current social processes and events, such as anti-corporate protests and the emergence of the Internet. They also consider alternative perspectives posed by thinkers such as Bakhtin, Bourdieu and Honneth. Combining work by established commentators and new researchers, After Habermas brings fresh perspectives and ideas to bear on debates about the public sphere. ... Read more

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In the past decade the work of Jurgen Habermas has sparked off a series of lively debates over modernity and post-modernity, the nature of language, the interplay of law and politics and the dilemmas of morality. Significantly, these debates unfold in the context of his particular reading of the modern philosophical tradition from the German enlightment to the present period.
In this original interpretation, David Rasmussen provides both guide and critique to the later Habermas encountered in the context of the best of the critical literature that has emerged in recent years. Reading Habermas argues that Habermas' concept of modernity provides the context for the theory of language as well as his approaches to law and ethics.
This book, as its title implies, offers a reading. It explores philosophical options chosen in the light of other, rejected readings. It is a distinctive, readable contribution to the current controversy surrounding the most recent developments in critical theory. ... Read more

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An independently-minded champion of "the project of modernity" in a supposedly post-modern age, Jurgen Habermas (1929- ) is one of the most widely influential thinkers of our times. Habermas: The Key Concepts is an easy to use A-Z guide to a body of work that spans philosophy, sociology, politics, law and cultural theory.Explore Habermas' writings on: capitalism, genetics, law, neo-conservatism, and universal pragmatics. Fully cross-referenced with extensive suggestions for further reading, this is an essential reference guide to one of the most important social theorists of the contemporary era. ... Read more

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The best short introduction to Habermas' work
Habermas' vitally important theoretical work is sometimes considered forbidding or unapproachable to read, and can indeed be rough going forthose without grounding in the history of philosophy and social theory,even though the ideas themselves are clear, logical, and graspable. Braaten's book is the best short introduction to his core ideas, andincludes applications of them to some current public and social issues.Itwill be of great help to anyone wanting an entry point into the ideas ofone of this century's greatest thinkers, and will make it possible forher/him to then read Habermas' work directly.With this book Braaten hasmade a wonderful contribution to contemporary intellectual life. ... Read more

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JÜrgen Habermas is one of the foremost philosophers and social theorists in the world today, but the complexity and breadth of his thought make him often difficult to understand.This book offers a clear, accessible, and reliable introduction to Habermas' work, particularly that which he has written in the 1970s and 1980s when new themes and directions have emerged in his thought.The author explains the ideas that characterize Habermas' later work, locating them in the context of contemporary debates, and demonstrates how they constitute the beginnings of a coherent and distinctive new research program. ... Read more

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The writings of the critical theorists caught the imagination of students and intellectuals in the 1960s and 1970s. They became a key element in the formation and self-understanding of the New Left, and have been the subject of continuing controversy. Partly because of their rise to prominence during the political turmoil of the sixties, and partly because they draw on traditions rarely studied in the Anglo-American world, the works of these authors are often misunderstood.
In this book David Held provides a much-needed introduction to, and evaluation of, critical theory. He is concerned mainly with the thought of the Frankfurt school--Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, in particular--and with Habermas, one of Europe's leading contemporary thinkers. Several of the major themes considered are critical theory's relation to Marx's critique of the political economy, Freudian psychoanalysis, aesthetics, and the philosophy of history. There is also a discussion of critical theory's substantive contribution to the analysis of capitalism, culture, the family, and the individual, as well as its contribution to epistemology and methodology.
Held's book will be necessary reading for all concerned with understanding and evaluating one of the most influential intellectual movements of our time. ... Read more

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great!!
It took a while to get here - nevertheless, not more than I was told of -, but the book is in great conditions.
Thank you.
Rui

The best introduction..
This books provide a clear and simple introduction to the extremely complex topic of critical theory. The book is very rich in substance and detail but at the same time is clear and intelligible to almost anyone who is a familiar with Marxian theory of political economy and the superstructure. I definitely recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Critical Theory. ... Read more

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Philosophical perspective on political issues
This is not a major work, but it is a nice little book, which presents some of Habermas's main ideas succinctly, and applies them to contemporary political issues.The reader is challenged to rethink the political situation. And, especially, as an American, I found the *German* political problems presented, and Habermas's approach to them, thought-provoking.The title surely resonates with Santayana's well-known dictum that those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it. But the book also shows how even *remembering* is itself a part of the problem situation and not straightforwardly a solution to it. ... Read more

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This collection of ten essays offers the first systematic assessment of Jürgen Habermas's Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, a book that defended the rational potential of the modern age against the depiction of modernity as a spent epoch. The essays (of which four are newly commissioned, five were published in the journal Praxis International, and one -- by Habermas -- first appeared in translation in New Critique) are divided into two sections: Critical Rejoinders and Thematic Reformulations.An opening essay by d'Entrèves sets out the main issues and orients the debate between Habermas and the postmodernists by identifying two different senses of responsibility: a responsibility to act versus a responsibility to otherness (an openness to difference, dissonance, and ambiguity). These are linked with two alternative understandings of the primary function of language: action-orienting versus world-disclosing. This is a fruitful way of looking at the issues that Habermas has raised in his attempt to resurrect and complete the project of Enlightenment.Habermas's essay discusses the main themes of his book in the context of a critical engagement with neoconservative cultural and political trends. The main body of essays offer an interesting collection of points of view, for and against Habermas's position by philosophers, social scientists, intellectual historians, and literary critics.SECTIONS & CONTRIBUTORS: Introduction, Maurizio Passerin d'Entrèves. Modernity versus Postmodernity, Jürgen Habermas. Critical Rejoinders: Fred Dallmayr. Christopher Norris. David C. Hoy. James Schmidt. Joel Whitebook. Thematic Reformulations: James Bohman. Diana Coole. Jay M. Bernstein. David Ingram. ... Read more

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Student Protest, Science, and Politics

Translated by Jeremy J. Shapiro ... Read more

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This is a seriously great book
For a long time, Towards a Rational Society topped my list of Desert Island Books, particularly the third chapter, Science and Technology as Rationality. As a social scientist, it encapsulated for me the whole problem with positivist science approaches, as well as making clear the fundamental distinction between purposive rationality and other less instrusive and more community-developing forms of communicative action. It is often seen as ironic that Habermas, a man with a cleft palate who writes in such a turgid and convoluted way, should be a premier exponent of the theory of communication, systemativally distorted or otherwise. Here is a book that shows why and how he is a genius, and in the clearest and most straightforward way. It also clearly shows his debts to Weber and Marx and the earlier critical theorists, while moving substantially on from all of them. ... Read more

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How can the world's religious traditions debate within the public sphere? In this book Nicholas Adams shows the importance of Habermas' approaches to this question. The full range of Habermas' work is considered, with detailed commentary on the more difficult texts. Adams energetically rebuts some of Habermas' arguments, particularly those which postulate the irrationality or stability of religious thought. Members of different religious traditions need to understand their own ethical positions as part of a process of development involving ongoing disagreements, rather than a stable unchanging morality. Public debate additionally requires learning each other's patterns of disagreement. Adams argues that rather than suspending their deep reasoning to facilitate debate, as Habermas suggests, religious traditions must make their reasoning public, and that 'scriptural reasoning' is a possible model for this. Habermas overestimates the stability of religious traditions. This book offers a more realistic assessment of the difficulties and opportunities they face. ... Read more

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The relationship between civil society and public life has become a major topic of discussion in many disciplines, and no single scholarly voice informs this discussion more than that of Jürgen Habermas. His contributions have shaped the nature of debates over critical theory, feminism, cultural studies, and democratic politics. In this book, scholars from a wide range of disciplines respond to Habermas's most directly relevant work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Ranging from political theory to cultural criticism, from ethics to gender studies, from history to media studies, these essays challenge, refine, and extend our understanding of the social foundations and changing character of democracy and public discourse.Craig Calhoun is Professor of Sociology and History and Director of the Program of Social Theory and Cross-Cultural Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ... Read more

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All of these essays focus on the concept of modernity in the philosophical work of Jürgen Habermas - an ambitious and carefully argued intellectual project that invites, indeed demands, rigorous scrutiny.Following an introductory overview of Habermas's work by Richard Bernstein, Albrecht Wellmer's essay places the philosopher within the tradition of Hegel, Marx, Weber, and Critical Theory. Martin Jay discusses Habermas's views on art and aesthetics, and Joel Whitebook examines his interpretations of Freud and psychoanalysis, Anthony Giddens offers a critical reading of Habermas's major work, The Theory of Communicative Action. Richard Rorty criticizes the whole thrust of his program by way of a comparison with the work of the French philosopher of postmodernity, Jean-Francois Lyotard. And Thomas McCarthy concentrates on the question of the selectivity of rationalization processes in the modern age. Habermas himself has three contributions - on Marcuse, on neoconservativism, and a reply to the other essayists.Richard J. Bernstein is T. Wistar Brown Professor of Philosophy at Haverford College. He was editor of the journal Praxis International, in which these essays recently appeared. Habermas and Modernity is included in the series Studies in contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy. ... Read more

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Comprised of classic and newly-commissioned papers from leading theorists, this volume provides a wide-ranging critical introduction to the thought of Jürgen Habermas.Some contributions explore the relation between Habermas's philosophy and the thought of major predecessors, including Kant, Hegel, Marx and Heidegger.Others elucidate the political context of Habermas's thinking, while a final section presents the responses of leading German contemporaries to his work.The result is a more rounded picture of Habermas's oeuvre and achievement than has previously been available.Habermas emerges as a thinker whose outstanding powers of renewal and innovation are inseparable from his engagement with the major traditions of European thought, and his own intellectual and political context. ... Read more