All of these essays focus on the concept of modernity in the philosophical work of Jurgen 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.

This collection of ten essays offers the first systematic assessment of JürgenHabermas's Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, a book that defended the rational potential of themodern age against the depiction of modernity as a spent epoch. The essays (of which four are newlycommissioned, 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 Rejoindersand Thematic Reformulations.An opening essay by d'Entrèves sets out the main issues and orients thedebate between Habermas and the postmodernists by identifying two different senses ofresponsibility: a responsibility to act versus a responsibility to otherness (an openness todifference, dissonance, and ambiguity). These are linked with two alternative understandings of theprimary function of language: action-orienting versus world-disclosing. This is a fruitful way oflooking at the issues that Habermas has raised in his attempt to resurrect and complete the projectof Enlightenment.Habermas's essay discusses the main themes of his book in the context of a criticalengagement with neoconservative cultural and political trends. The main body of essays offer aninteresting 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. JoelWhitebook. Thematic Reformulations : James Bohman. Diana Coole. Jay M. Bernstein. DavidIngram.

This book provides a clear and readable overview of the works of today's most influential German philosopher. It analyses the theoretical underpinnings of Habermas's social theory, and its applications in ethics, politics, and law. Finally, it examines how his social and political theory informs his writing on contemporary, political, and social problems.

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures. Introduction by Thomas McCarthy, translated by Frederick Lawrence.

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. In this book, Stephen White offers a clear, accessible, and reliable introduction to Habermas's work, particularly that which he has written since the publication of Knowledge and human interest (produced in English in 1971). During this period, new themes and directions have emerged in Habermas's thought, which culminated in The Theory of Communicative Action, a massive work that has not hitherto been the subject of extended commentary and analysis. This book is the first to provide a full-length study of Habermas's mature thought. Locating the latter in the context of contemporary debates, White explains Habermas's ideas about action, rationality, communicative ethics, contemporary capitalism, and new social movements, which characterize his later work. He also examines Habermas's interpretation of modernity, showing that although, like his forerunners in the Frankfurt School, Habermas maintains a critical stance towards modernity's instrumentalization of reason, he nonetheless offers a sophisticated defense of the universal significance of other aspects of modern consciousness that are too often forgotten by many recent radical critics of modernity. Throughout, White presents Habermas's work in such a way as to emphasize its coherence, and to demonstrate how it constitutes the beginnings of a distinctive new research program in the social sciences. As a well-researched and lucid account of Habermas's thought, this book will appeal to readers wanting an introduction to the complexity of his ideas, as well as to those already conversant with them. It will also interest social and political theorists concerned with the general theoretical issues that it covers.

This major new contribution forms a constructive comparison of the social theories of Jürgen Habermas and Anthony Giddens that focuses on their approaches to modernity, their endeavours to develop new perspectives, and their critical rethinking of the modernist vision of an autonomous society.

This important new volume brings together Habermas' key writing on religion and religious belief. Habermas explores the relations between Christian and Jewish thought, on the one hand, and the Western philosophical tradition on the other. In so doing, he examines a range of important figures, including Benjamin, Heidegger, Johann Baptist Metz and Gershom Scholem. In a new introduction written especially for this volume, Eduardo Mendieta places Habermas' engagement with religion in the context of his work as a whole. Mendieta also discusses Habermas' writings in relation to Jewish Messianism and the Frankfurt School, showing how the essays in Religion and Rationality, one of which is translated into English for the first time, foreground an important, yet often neglected, dimension of critical theory. The volume concludes with an original extended interview, also in English for the first time, in which Habermas develops his current views on religion in modern society. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in theology, religious studies and philosophy, as well as to all those already familiar with Habermas' work.