Jürgen Habermas is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt and one of the leading philosophers and social and political thinkers in the world today.

"A culminating masterpiece"Alex Ross, The New Yorker"His most ambitious work yet… a work of willed optimism that continues to believe that deep knowledge and cogent arguments can win the day when one treats their reader as intelligent and equally committed to reasonable discourse." Matt McManus, Christian Socialism"The arguments and problems [these volumes] raise will reward anyone interested in critical theory and the state of contemporary social and political thought."Marx and Philosophy

• AcknowledgementsVIII. AT THE PARTING OF WAYS OF POSTMETAPHYSICAL THINKING: HUME AND KANT1. Hume’s Deconstruction of the Theological Heritage of Practical Philosophy(1) Basic concepts of empiricist theory of knowledge(2) Anthropology of religion and religious scepticism(3) The psychological analysis of natural causality(4) The deconstruction of the basic concepts of practical philosophy2. The Anthropological Explanation of Law and Morality(1) An emotivist explanation of the virtues(2) The utility of social virtues(3) The problematic transition from attractive values to obligatory norms(4) The deflation of the normative and the denial of the problem of rational law3. Kant’s Answer to Hume: The Practical Meaning of the Transcendental Turn and its Background in the Philosophy of Religion(1) The transcendental ego and the reconstruction of its operations(2) Critique and appropriating translation of the LutheranHeritage4. The Postmetaphysical Justification of an Inherent Interest of Reason(1) From theoretical to practical philosophy: concept of autonomy and mode of validity of moral obligation(2) Rational faith and the motivational weakness of rational morality(3) Critique of the doctrine of postulates and the idea of the ethical commonwealth(4) The interest of reason in the cosmopolitan condition(5) Preview of motifs of Kant criticismIX. LINGUISTIC EMBODIMENT OF REASON: FROM SUBJECTIVE TO ‘OBJECTIVE’ MIND1. Political, Economic, Cultural and Scientific Impulses for a Paradigm Shift(1) The two constitutional revolutions and the theory of human rights(2) Industrial capitalism and political economy(3) Historical consciousness, history and hermeneutics(4) Herder’s appreciation of the individuality of historical phenomena2. Motives for the Linguistic Turn in Herder, Schleiermacher and Humboldt(1) Herder(2) Schleiermacher(3) Humboldt3. Hegel’s Assimilation of Faith to Knowledge: The Renewal of Metaphysical Thinking after Kant(1) Hegel’s critique of Schleiermacher’s noncognitivist understanding of religion(2) Beyond metaphysics and Kant to the ‘third position of thought’(3) God’s incarnation as a model for the self-mediation of the absolute4. Reason in History: Autonomy versus Self-Movement of the Concept(1) Historical progress in the collective consciousness of freedom(2) Process of formation of free will in law, morality and ethicallife(3) Critical theory of society, conservative theory of the state(4) The controversy over the relationship between morality and ethical life(5) Preview of motifs of Hegel criticismThird Intermediate Reflection: From Objective Mind to Communicative Socialization of Knowing and Acting Subjects(1) A formal pragmatic analysis of Hegel’s concept of totality(2) The paradigm shift from the philosophy of consciousness tothe philosophy of language(3) Problems generated by the disintegration of the HegelianSystemX. THE CONTEMPORANEITY OF THE YOUNG HEGELIANS AND THE PROBLEMS OF POSTMETAPHYSICAL THINKING1. Ludwig Feuerbach’s Anthropological Turn: On the Form of Life of Organically Embodied and Communicatively Socialized Subjects(1) Letter to Hegel and The Essence of Christianity(2) Dependence on nature and communicative socialization of ‘passionate’ subjects2. Karl Marx on the Historical Freedom of Productive and Politically Acting Subjects(1) Sublation of the state in society?(2) The historical-materialist concept of society(3) The ambivalent meaning of the ‘naturalness’ of what exists(4) Development of productive forces and political emancipation(5) The capitalist system as the realm of necessity and the ‘realm of freedom’ as a false abstraction3. Soren Kierkegaard: A Religious Author on the Ethical-Existential Freedom of the Biographically Individuated Subject(1) The paradox of the content of faith and the authenticity of the lived faith(2) The historicity of existence and the stages of life leading to ‘self-selection’(3) The Kantian Socrates and the ethical way of life as an alternative to ethical-religious conversion?(4) History of the reception of the religious author and the open question of ritual4. Interpretive Processes between Truth-Reference and Action-Reference: Peirce as Initiator of Pragmatism(1) Critique of the philosophy of the subject and the consequences of the semiotic turn(2) Rationality and freedom: the pragmatist conception of the problem-solving action of communicatively socialized subjects5. On the Mode of Embodiment of Reason in Research and Political Practices(1) The pragmatic enabling conditions of cooperative research(2) The practices of rational morality and of the democratic constitutional statePostscriptAfterwordOverview: Volumes 1–3 [TBC]NotesBibliographyIndex