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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

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In dialogue with Jurgen Habermas's communicative ethics, Covenant and Communication constructively explores a covenantal-communicative model of Christian ethics. Author Hak Joon Lee analyzes themes of freedom, equality, and reciprocity in Habermas's theory of communication from the perspective of the Reformed Christian doctrines of covenant and the Trinity. ... Read more

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In this fresh approach to critical religious thinking, Lalonde guides us through the dilemmas of modern Christian theological thought by way of examining Jrgen Habermas's momentous objections to critical theology. Neither accepting nor rejecting Habermas's critique, Lalonde deconstructs Habermas's argument to discover a religious concern that cannot be truly handled by critical theology or Habermas's version of critical theory. In answer to this breach, Lalonde sets out to design a nontheological approach to understanding the religious by expanding the form of critical theory and the content of religious philosophy. With different assists from the work of Michel Foucault, Charles Taylor, and Emmanuel Levinas, Lalonde advances a complex of thinkers and ideas that find "a critical theory of religious insight." In this way, Lalonde's book genuinely develops the religious contribution to critical thought as a whole. ... Read more

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Over the last half decade or so, Jurgen Habermas has increasingly employed the interview format, both as a means of presenting his changing views on philosophical topics in an accessible way, and as a means of debating current social and political issues. This new, expanded edition of "Autonomy and Solidarity" includes an additional five interviews in which Habermas discusses such themes as the history and significance of the Frankfurt School, the social and political development of post-war Germany, the moral status of civil disobedience, the implications of the "Historians' Dispute", and the function of national identity in the modern world. Never before published autobiographical material covering Habermas' early years at the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research is followed by an extended philosophical interrogation of his latest thinking on the relations between ethics, morality and law.With an extended introduction by Peter Dews, exploring the status and prospects of Critical Theory in the light of the recent revolutionary transformations in Europe, "Autonomy and Solidarity" should be of interest and value both to newcomers and those already familiar with Habermas' thought. ... Read more

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By marginalizing methodological and other more specialized theoretical concerns, this book focuses on Habermas’s substantive portrayal of contemporary society and its discontents. Over the last four decades Jürgen Habermas has forged an innovative and much-discussed theory of contemporary capitalist society. Building on Max Weber’s thesis that the dynamic of capitalism actually erodes individual freedom and the meaningfulness of social life—famously resulting in a culture of “specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart”—Habermas traces contemporary social conflict to resistance to this dynamic by a variety of social groups. His theory of “communicative action” attempts to show the possibilities in contemporary society for moving toward a more balanced social life that, unlike other political currents today, would not sacrifice the truly progressive features of complex modern societies.
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This book considers whether there is a legitimate or even necessary place for the perspective of care when addressing questions of universal justice. To this end, it examines two major frameworks of contemporary moral philosophyJand252rgen Habermas's model of discourse ethics and Jacques Derrida's deconstructive ethics of radical singularityin which the contrasting standpoints of communicative reciprocation and care for the absolute otherness of the other are respectively prioritized. ... Read more

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This important new volume brings together Jürgen Habermas's key writings on religion and religious belief. In these essays, Habermas explores the relations between Christian and Jewish thought, on one hand, and the Western philosophical tradition on the other. He often approaches these issues through critical encounters with the work of others, including Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Johann Baptist Metz, and Gershom Scholem.In an introduction written especially for this volume, Eduardo Mendieta places Habermas's engagement with religion in the context of his work as a whole. Mendieta also discusses Habermas's writings in relation to Jewish Messianism and the Frankfurt School, showing how these essays reflect an important yet often neglected dimension of critical theory. The volume concludes with an original extended interview that examines Habermas’s current views on religion and modern society. ... Read more

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The essays in this book - all of them published here for the first time - provide a long-overdue critical discussion of Jürgen Habermas's cascade of ideas. These are topped off by a freshet of original Habermas: in the final essay, he replies to the criticism developed in the preceding contributions and to other recent assessments of his work, provides an important clarification of his earlier views, and reveals the direction of his current thought.Each essay probes a particular theme in Habermas's work, and each presents both an exposition and a critique. Among the subjects covered are Habermas's theory of knowledge-constitutive interests, his account of language and truth, his "overcoming" of hermeneutics, the concept of universal pragmatics, the orientation of his thought relative to the Marxist tradition, and his project of analyzing the crisis tendencies of capitalism within the context of evolutionary theory.The contributors are philosophers and social theorists of international standing, most of them affiliated with German, English, and American universities. They are Agnes Heller, Rudiger Bubner, Thomas McCarthy, Henning Ottmann, Mary Hesse, Steven Lukes, Anthony Giddens, Michael Schmid, Andrew Arato, and the editors. The editors have also contributed a substantial introduction outlining the central contours of Habermas's work and summarizing the main arguments of the essays.John B. Thompson is a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and David Held is Lecturer in Politics, University of York. ... Read more

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Which paradigm of critique -- Foucault's or Habermas's -- is philosophically and practically superior, especially with regard to the nature and role of power in contemporary society? In shaping this collection, Michael Kelly has sought to address this question in relation to the ethical, political, and social theory of the past two decades.Michel Foucault and Jurgen Habermas had only just begun to come to terms with one another's work when Foucault died in 1984; they had even discussed the possibility of a formal debate on "Enlightenment" in the neutral arena of the United States. In the decade since, Habermas and his supporters have continued to respond to Foucault in various ways, but Foucault's followers have not shown as strong an inclination to keep up his side of the dialogue. For this reason an invaluable exchange on the nature and limits of philosophy in the present age has never achieved its full potential.In this anthology Michael Kelly recasts the debate in a way that will open it up for further development. The book starts by juxtaposing key texts from the two philosophers; it then adds a set of reactions and commentaries by theorists who have taken up the two alternative approaches to power and critique. (Two of these essays were written especially for this volume.) The result is a guide for those seeking to understand and build on this important but unfinished debate.Essays by: Michel Foucault. Jürgen Habermas. Axel Honneth. Nancy Fraser. Richard Bernstein. Thomas McCarthy. James Schmidt and Thomas E. Wartenberg. Gilles Deleuze. Jana Sawicki. Michael Kelly. ... Read more

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This important new collection considers Jurgen Habermas's discourse theory from a variety of feminist vantage points. Feminist scholars have been drawn to Habermas's work because it reflects a tradition of emancipatory political thinking rooted in the Enlightenment and engages with the normative aims of emancipatory social movements. The essays in Feminists Read Habermas analyze various aspects of Habermas's work, ranging from his moral theory to political issues of identity and participation. The contributors share a conviction about the potential significance of Habermas's work for feminist reflections on power, norms and subjectivity. ... Read more

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Pusey's lucid introduction to Habermas enables students to get to grips with all aspects of Habermas's rewarding but sometimes difficult work. ... Read more

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This book argues that Jürgen Habermas’ critical theory can be productively developed by incorporating a wider understanding of fantasy and imagination as part of its conception of communicative rationality and communicative pathologies. Given that meaning is generated both linguistically and performatively, MacKendrick argues that desire and fantasy must be taken into consideration as constitutive aspects of intersubjective relations. His aim is to show that Habermasian social theory might plausibly renew its increasingly severed ties with the early critical theory of the Frankfurt School by taking account of these features of practice life, thus simultaneously rekindling the relevance of the nearly forgotten emancipatory intent in his earlier work and rejuvenating an emphasis on the contemporary critique of reason. This innovative new study will be of interest to those focusing on the early writings of Habermas, the writings of the Frankfurt School, and the relation between critical theory, hermeneutics, and psychoanalysis.

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First published in 1984, Cultural Analysis is a systematic examination of the theories of culture contained in the writings of four contemporary social theorists: Peter L. Berger, Mary Douglas, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas.

This study of their work clarifies their contributions to the analysis of culture and shows the converging assumptions that the authors believe are laying the foundation for a new approach to the study of culture. The focus is specifically on culture, a concept that remains subject to ambiguities of treatment, and concentrates on questions concerning the definition and content of culture, its construction, its relations with social conditions, and the manner in which it may be changing. The books demonstrates how these writers have made strides towards defining culture as an objective element of social interaction which can be subjected to critical investigation.