J rgen Habermas – författare

Translated by Ciaran Cronin.

In the midst of the current crisis that is threatening to derail the historical project of European unification, Jürgen Habermas has been one of the most perceptive critics of the ineffectual and evasive responses to the global financial crisis, especially by the German political class. This extended essay on the constitution for Europe represents Habermas’s constructive engagement with the European project at a time when the crisis of the eurozone is threatening the very existence of the European Union. There is a growing realization that the European treaty needs to be revised in order to deal with the structural defects of monetary union, but a clear perspective for the future is missing. Drawing on his analysis of European unification as a process in which international treaties have progressively taken on features of a democratic constitution, Habermas explains why the current proposals to transform the system of European governance into one of executive federalism is a mistake. His central argument is that the European project must realize its democratic potential by evolving from an international into a cosmopolitan community. The opening essay on the role played by the concept of human dignity in the genealogy of human rights in the modern era throws further important light on the philosophical foundations of Habermas’s theory of how democratic political institutions can be extended beyond the level of nation-states. Now that the question of Europe and its future is once again at the centre of public debate, this important intervention by one of the greatest thinkers of our time will be of interest to a wide readership.

Over the past 25 years, Jürgen Habermas has presented what is arguably the most coherent and wide-ranging defence of the project of European unification and of parallel developments towards a politically integrated world society. In developing his key concepts of the transnationalisation of democracy and the constitutionalisation of international law, Habermas offers the main players in the struggles over the fate of the European Union (the politicians, the political parties and the publics of the member states) a way out of the current economic and political crisis, should they choose to follow it.

In the title essay Habermas addresses the challenges and threats posed by the current banking and public debt crisis in the Eurozone for European unification. He is harshly critical of the incrementalist, technocratic policies advocated by the German government in particular, which are being imposed at the expense of the populations of the economically weaker, crisis-stricken countries and are undermining solidarity between the member states. He argues that only if the technocratic approach is replaced by a deeper democratization of the European institutions can the European Union fulfil its promise as a model for how rampant market capitalism can once again be brought under political control at the supranational level.

This volume reflects the impressive scope of Habermas?s recent writings on European themes, including theoretical treatments of the complex legal and political issues at stake, interventions on current affairs, and reflections on the lives and works of major European philosophers and intellectuals. Together the essays provide eloquent testimony to the enduring relevance of the work of one of the most influential and far-sighted public intellectuals in the world today, and are essential reading for all philosophers, legal scholars and social scientists interested in European and global issues.

In this new collection of lectures and essays Jurgen Habermas engages with a wide range of figures in twentieth-century thought. The book displays once again his ability to capture the essence of a thinker''s work, his feeling for the texture of intellectual traditions and his outstanding powers of critical assessment.Habermas has described these essays as ''fragments of a history of contemporary philosophy''. The volume includes explorations of the work of Ernst Cassirer, Karl Jaspers and Gershom Scholem, as well as reponses to friends and colleagues such as Michael Thuenissen, Karl-Otto Apel and the writer and film-maker Alexander Kluge. It also includes pieces on the Finnish philosopher Georg Henrik von Wright and the theologian Johann Baptist Metz.This new volume will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Habermas and twentieth-century philosophy.

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.

In this important book Habermas develops his views on a range of moral and ethical issues. Drawing on his theory of communicative action, Habermas elaborates an original conception of ''discourse ethics'', seeking to reconstruct a moral point of view from which normative claims can be impartially judged.

Habermas connects communicative ethics to the theory of social action via an examination of research in the social psychology of moral and interpersonal development. He aims to show that our basic moral intuitions spring from something deeper and more universal than contingent features of our tradition, namely from normative presuppositions of social interaction that belong to the repertoire of competent agents in any society.

Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action confronts directly a variety of difficult and controversial problems which are at the centre of current debates in philosophy and social and political theory.

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

In this wide-ranging work, now available in paperback, Habermas presents his views on the nature of the social sciences and their distinctive methodology and concerns. He examines, among other things, the traditional division between the natural sciences and the social sciences; the characteristics of social action and the implications of theories of language for social enquiry; and the nature, tasks and limitations of hermeneutics. Habermas'' analysis of these and other themes is, as always, rigorous, perceptive and constructive. This brilliant study succeeds in highlighting the distinctive characteristics of the social sciences and in outlining the nature of, and prospects for, critical theory today.

In this new collection of recent essays, Habermas takes up and pursues the line of analysis begun in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. He begins by outlining the sources and central themes of twentieth-century philosophy, and the range of current debates. He then examines a number of key contributions to these debates, from the pragmatic philosophies of Mead, Perice and Rorty to the post-structuralism of Foucault.

Like most contemporary thinkers, Habermas is critical of the Western metaphysical tradition and its exaggerated conception of reason. But he cautions against the temptation to relinquish this conception altogether. In opposition to the radical critics of Western philosophy, Habermas argues that postmetaphysical thinking can remain critical only if it preserves the idea of reason while stripping it of its metaphysical trappings. Habermas contributes to this task by developing further his distinctive approach to problems of meaning, rationality and subjectivity.

This book will be of particular interest to students of philosophy, sociology and social and political theory, and it will be essential reading for anyone interested in the continuing development of Habermas''s project.

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.

Recent developments in biotechnology and genetic research are raising complex ethical questions concerning the legitimate scope and limits of genetic intervention. As we begin to contemplate the possibility of intervening in the human genome to prevent diseases, we cannot help but feel that the human species might soon be able to take its biological evolution in its own hands. ‘Playing God’ is the metaphor commonly used for this self-transformation of the species, which, it seems, might soon be within our grasp.

In this important new book, Jürgen Habermas – the most influential philosopher and social thinker in Germany today – takes up the question of genetic engineering and its ethical implications and subjects it to careful philosophical scrutiny. His analysis is guided by the view that genetic manipulation is bound up with the identity and self-understanding of the species. We cannot rule out the possibility that knowledge of one’s own hereditary factors may prove to be restrictive for the choice of an individual’s way of life and may undermine the symmetrical relations between free and equal human beings.

In the concluding chapter – which was delivered as a lecture on receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for 2001 – Habermas broadens the discussion to examine the tension between science and religion in the modern world, a tension which exploded, with such tragic violence, on September 11th.

In this important book Habermas develops his views on a range of moral and ethical issues. Drawing on his theory of communicative action, Habermas elaborates an original conception of ''discourse ethics'', seeking to reconstruct a moral point of view from which normative claims can be impartially judged.

Habermas connects communicative ethics to the theory of social action via an examination of research in the social psychology of moral and interpersonal development. He aims to show that our basic moral intuitions spring from something deeper and more universal than contingent features of our tradition, namely from normative presuppositions of social interaction that belong to the repertoire of competent agents in any society.

Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action confronts directly a variety of difficult and controversial problems which are at the centre of current debates in philosophy and social and political theory.

In this wide-ranging work, now available in paperback, Habermas presents his views on the nature of the social sciences and their distinctive methodology and concerns. He examines, among other things, the traditional division between the natural sciences and the social sciences; the characteristics of social action and the implications of theories of language for social enquiry; and the nature, tasks and limitations of hermeneutics. Habermas'' analysis of these and other themes is, as always, rigorous, perceptive and constructive. This brilliant study succeeds in highlighting the distinctive characteristics of the social sciences and in outlining the nature of, and prospects for, critical theory today.

In this enormously influential book, Jurgen Habermas examines the deep tensions and crisis tendencies which underlie the development of contemporary Western societies and develops a powerful analysis of the legitimation problems faced by modern states.

Habermas argues that Western societies have succeeded to some extent in stabilizing the economic fluctuations associated with capitalism, but this has created a new range of crisis tendencies which are expressed in other spheres. States intervene in economic life and attempt to regulate markets, but they find themselves confronted by increasing and often conflicting demands. As individuals become increasingly disillusioned, the state is faced with the possibility of a mass withdrawal of loyalty or support - a ''legitimation crisis''.

Widely recognized as a classic of contemporary social and political analysis, Legitimation Crisis sheds light on a range of issues which are central to current debates, from the decline of class conflict and the disillusionment with established political institutions to the crisis of the welfare state. It remains essential reading for students of sociology, politics and the social sciences generally.

In this important volume Habermas outlines the views which form the basis of his critical theory of modern societies. The volume comprises five interlocking essays, which together define the contours of his theory of communication and of his substantive account of social change. ''What is Universal Pragmatics?'' is the best available statement of Habermas''s programme for a theoryof communication based on the analysis of speech acts. In the following two essays Habermas draws on the work of Kohlberg and others to develop a distinctive account of moral consciousness and normative structures. ''Toward a Reconstruction of historical Materialsim'' takes these issues further, offering a wide-ranging reconstruction of Marx''s historical materialsim understood as a theory of social evolution. The final essay focuses on the question of legitimacy and on the legitimation problems faced by modern states. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the key questions of social and political theory today.

Habermas describes Knowledge and Human Interests as an attempt to reconstruct the prehistory of modern positivism with the intention of analysing the connections between knowledge and human interests. Convinced of the increasing historical and social importance of the natural and behavioural sciences, Habermas makes clear how crucial it is to understand the central meanings and justifications of these sciences. He argues that for too long the relationship between philosophy and science has been distorted.

In this extraordinarily wide-ranging book, Habermas examines the principal positions of modern philosophy - Kantianism, Marxism, positivism, pragmatism, hermeneutics, the philosophy of science, linguistic philosophy and phenomenology - to lay bare the structure of the processes of enquiry that determine the meaning and the validity of all our statements which claim objectivity.

This edition contains a postscript written by Habermas for the second German edition of Knowledge and Human Interests.

Theory and Practice is one of Habermas''s major works and is widely recognized as a classic in contemporary and social and political theory.

Through a series of highly original historical studies, Habermas re-examines the relations between philosophy, science and politics. Beginning with the classical doctrine of politics as developed by Aristotle, he traces the changing constellation of theory and practice through the work of Machiavelli, More, Hobbes, Hegel and Marx. He argues that, with the development of the modern sciences, politics has become increasingly regarded as a technical discipline concerned with problems of prediction and control. Politics has thus lost its link with the practical cultivation of character, that is, with the praxis of enlightened citizens.

Theory and Practices includes a major re-assessment of Marx''s work and of the status of Marxism as a form of critique. In an important concluding chapter Habermas examines the role of reason and the prospects for critical theory in our modern scientific civilization.

Jürgen Habermas is well known for his scholarly writings on the theoretical foundations of the human sciences. The New Conservatism brings to light another side of Habermas''s work, showing him to be an incisive commentator on a wide range of contemporary themes.

The 1980s have been a crucial decade in the political life of Western democracies in general, and of the Federal Republic of Germany in particular. The transformations that accompanied a shift from 13 years of Social democratic rule in Germany to government by the conservative Christian Democrats are captured in this series of insightful, often passionate political and cultural commentaries. The central theme uniting the essays is the German problem of ''coming to terms within the past,'' a problem that has important implications outside Germany as well.

Of particular note are the essays on what has come to be known as the Historian''s Debate: Habermas''s attack on the revisionist German historians who have been trying to trivialize and "normalize" the history of the Nazi period, and his defence of the need for a realistic and discriminating approach to the Nazi period and its legacy. Habermas also takes up the recent debate concerning Martin Heidegger''s involvement with Nazism and the rise of the neoconservative movement in Europe and America. In particular, the essay on The New Obscurity combines Habermas''s analysis of the problems of the welfare state with his suggestions for avenues open to utopian impulses today.

In this new collection of recent essays, Habermas takes up and pursues the line of analysis begun in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. He begins by outlining the sources and central themes of twentieth-century philosophy, and the range of current debates. He then examines a number of key contributions to these debates, from the pragmatic philosophies of Mead, Perice and Rorty to the post-structuralism of Foucault.

Like most contemporary thinkers, Habermas is critical of the Western metaphysical tradition and its exaggerated conception of reason. But he cautions against the temptation to relinquish this conception altogether. In opposition to the radical critics of Western philosophy, Habermas argues that postmetaphysical thinking can remain critical only if it preserves the idea of reason while stripping it of its metaphysical trappings. Habermas contributes to this task by developing further his distinctive approach to problems of meaning, rationality and subjectivity.

This book will be of particular interest to students of philosophy, sociology and social and political theory, and it will be essential reading for anyone interested in the continuing development of Habermas''s project.

Here, for the first time in English, is volume one of Jurgen Habermas''s long-awaited magnum opus: The Theory of Communicative Action. This pathbreaking work is guided by three interrelated concerns: (1) to develop a concept of communicative rationality that is no longer tied to the subjective and individualistic premises of modern social and political theory; (2) to construct a two-level concept of society that integrates the ''lifeworld'' and ''system'' paradigms; and (3) to sketch out a critical theory of modernity that explains its sociopathologies in a new way.

Habermas approaches these tasks through a combination of conceptual analyses, systematic reflections, and critical reconstructions of such predecessors as Marx and Weber, Durkheim and Mead, Horkheimer and Adorno, Schutz and Parsons. Reason and the Rationalization of Society develops a sociological theory of action that stresses not its means-ends or teleological aspect, but the need to coordinate action socially via communication. In the introductory chapter Habermas sets out a powerful series of arguments on such foundational issues as cultural and historical relativism, the methodology of Verstehen, the inseparabilty of interpretation from critique. In addition to clarifying the normative foundations of critical social inquiry, this sets the stage for a systematic appropriation of Weber''s theory of rationalization and its Marxist reception by Lukacs, Horkheimer and Adorno.

This is an important book for degree students of philosophy, sociology and related subjects.

This is Habermas''s long awaited work on law, democracy and the modern constitutional state in which he develops his own account of the nature of law and democracy.

A Berlin Republic brings together writings on the new, united Germany by one of their most original and trenchant commentators, Jürgen Habermas. Among other topics, he addresses the consequences of German history, the challenges and perils of the post-Wall era, and Germany''s place in contemporary Europe.

Here, as in his earlier The Past as Future, Habermas emerges as an inspired analyst of contemporary German political and intellectual life. He repeatedly criticizes recent efforts by historical and political commentators to ''normalize'' and, in part, to understate the horrors of modern German history. He insists that 1945 - not 1989 - was the crucial turning point in German history, since it was then that West Germany decisively repudiated certain aspects of its cultural and political past (nationalism and antisemitism in particular) and turned towards Western Traditions of democracy: free and open discussion, and respect for the civil rights of all individuals. Similarly, Habermas deplores the renewal of nationalist sentiment in Germany and throughout Europe. Drawing upon his vast historical knowledge and contemporary insight, Habermas argues for heightened emphasis on trans-European and global democratic institutions - institutions far better suited to meet the challenges (and dangers) of the next century.

In this new collection of lectures and essays Jurgen Habermas engages with a wide range of figures in twentieth-century thought. The book displays once again his ability to capture the essence of a thinker''s work, his feeling for the texture of intellectual traditions and his outstanding powers of critical assessment.Habermas has described these essays as ''fragments of a history of contemporary philosophy''. The volume includes explorations of the work of Ernst Cassirer, Karl Jaspers and Gershom Scholem, as well as reponses to friends and colleagues such as Michael Thuenissen, Karl-Otto Apel and the writer and film-maker Alexander Kluge. It also includes pieces on the Finnish philosopher Georg Henrik von Wright and the theologian Johann Baptist Metz.This new volume will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of Habermas and twentieth-century philosophy.

The Inclusion of the Other contains Habermas''s most recent work in political theory and political philosophy. Here Habermas picks up some of the central themes of Between Facts and Norms and elaborates them in relation to current political debates.

One of the distinctive features of Habermas''s work has been its approach to the problem of political legitimacy through a sustained reflection on the dual legitimating and regulating function of modern legal systems. Extending his discourse theory of normative validity to the legal-political domain, Habermas has defended a proceduralist conception of deliberative democracy in which the burden of legitimating state power is borne by informal and legally institutionalized processes of political deliberation. Its guiding intuition is the radical democratic idea that there is an internal relation between the rule of law and popular sovereignty. In these essays he brings this discursive and proceduralist analysis of political legitimacy to bear on such urgent contemporary issues as the enduring legacy of the welfare state, the future of the nation state, and the prospects of a global politics of human rights.

This book will be essential reading for students and academics in sociology and social theory, politics and political theory, philosophy and the social sciences generally.

This volume brings together Habermas''s key writings on language and communication. Including some classic texts as well as new material which is published here for the first time, this book is a detailed and up-to-date introduction to Habermas''s formal pragmatics, which is a vital aspect of his social theory.

Written from 1976 to 1996, the essays show the extent to which formal pragmatics underpins Habermas''s theory of communicative action. They are presented in chronological order, so that the reader can trace developments and revisions in Habermas''s thought. The volume includes a critical discussion of Searle''s theory of meaning, and Richard Rorty''s neopragmatism. It concludes with Habermas''s recent defence of his theory of communicative action, in which he reaffirms his view that interpretative understanding inescapably involves evaluation.

This book will be an indispensable text for students and academics who want a clear and accessible introduction to the development of Habermas''s theory of communication and its relation to his broader social and political theory.

Does a global economy render the traditional nation-state obsolete? Does globalization threaten democratic life, or offer it new forms of expression? What are the implications of globalization for our understanding of politics and of national and cultural identities?

In The Postnational Constellation, the leading German philosopher and social theorist J?rgen Habermas addresses these and other questions. He explores topics such as the historical and political origins of national identity, the catastrophes and achievements of "the long twentieth century," the future of democracy in the wake of the era of the nation-state, the moral and political challenges facing the European Union, and the status of global human rights in the ongoing debate on the sources of cultural identity. In their scope, critical insight, and argumentative clarity, the essays in The Postnational Constellation present a powerful vision of the contemporary political scene and of the challenges and opportunities we face in the new millennium.

Those unfamiliar with Habermas''s theoretical work will find in this volume a lucid and engaging introduction to one of the world''s most influential thinkers. For readers familiar with Habermas''s writings, The Postnational Constellation provides an invaluable application of his social and political theories to current political realities.

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.

The core of this book is a set of five lectures delivered by Habermas at Princeton in 1971 under the title ''Reflections on the Linguistic Foundation of Sociology''. These lectures offer a preliminary view of what would become The Theory of Communicative Action, and they form an excellent introduction to Habermas''s ideas about communication and society. They lay out the general parameters of Habermas''s project in an accessible way, and situate his work in relation to other theories of society, particularly those of Edmund Husserl, Wilfrid Sellars, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Two additional essays elaborating the themes of the lectures are also included in this volume. ''Intentions, Conventions, and Linguistic Interactions'' is an essay in the philosophy of action that focuses on the validity of social norms and examines the conceptual connections between rules, conventions, norm-governed action, and intentionality. ''Reflections on Communicative Pathology'' addresses the question of deviant processes of socialization and contains an analysis of the formal conditions of systematically distorted communication.

This book was designed as a companion to On the Pragmatics of Communication (1998), which took pieces from Habermas''s later work to create a systematic introduction to his theory of formal pragmatics.

This study offers a systematic reconstruction of the theoretical foundations and framework of critical social theory. It is Habermas'' "magnum opus", and it is regarded as one of the most important works of modern social thought. In this second and final volume of the work, Habermas examines the relations between action concepts and systems theory and elaborates a framework for analyzing the developmental tendencies of modern societies. He discusses in detail the work of Marx, Durkheim, G.H. Mead and Talcott Parsons, among others. By distinguishing between social systems and what he calls the "life-world", Habermas is able to analyze the ways in which the development of social systems impinges upon the symbolic and subjective dimensions of social life, resulting in the kind of crises, conflicts and protest movements which are characteristic of advanced capitalist societies in the late-20th century.

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