An engaging and accessible book of interviews with leading thinkers on the ideas of Jurgen Habermas and threats to democracy and the public sphere Covers urgent and importnat topics such as fake news, experts and expertise, populism, authoritarianism, human rights and the legacy of slavery Includes a Foreword by Habermas

An engaging and accessible book of interviews with leading thinkers on the ideas of Jurgen Habermas and threats to democracy and the public sphere Covers urgent and importnat topics such as fake news, experts and expertise, populism, authoritarianism, human rights and the legacy of slavery Includes a Foreword by Habermas

Across a spectrum of academic disciplines, the topic of globalization is at the forefront of contemporary efforts to understand a dynamically changing world society. How might critical social theory respond creatively to the challenge of thinking and theorizing globalization in its full complexity? Globalizing Critical Theory collects essays by scholars at the forefront of Critical Theory as they confront this timely topic. This book offers readers a chance to see contemporary Critical Theory in its full range from political analyses of a global public sphere, critical race theory, and the politics of memory, to aesthetics and media studies. It includes crucial new essays by Jurgen on the transformations of the global order in the wake of the American invasion of Iraq, and major interventions by Nancy Fraser, Peter Hohendahl, Andreas Huyssen, James Bohman, and others. Globalizing Critical Theory provides a fascinating exploration of how Critical Theory is confronting the question of globalization and how globalization is transforming Critical Theory.

In this unique and comprehensive book, George McCarthy examines the influence of Greek philosophy, literature, arts, and politics on the development of twentieth-century German social thought. McCarthy demonstrates that the classical spirit vitalized thinkers such as Weber, Heidegger, Freud, Marcuse, Arendt, Gadamer, and Habermas. With the romancing of antiquity, they transformed their understanding of the modern self, political community, and Enlightenment rationality. By viewing contemporary social theory from the framework of the classical world, McCarthy argues, we are capable of thinking beyond the limits of modernity to new possibilities of human reason, science, beauty, and social justice.

Across a spectrum of academic disciplines, the topic of globalization is at the forefront of contemporary efforts to understand a dynamically changing world society. How might critical social theory respond creatively to the challenge of thinking and theorizing globalization in its full complexity? Globalizing Critical Theory collects essays by scholars at the forefront of Critical Theory as they confront this timely topic. This book offers readers a chance to see contemporary Critical Theory in its full range-from political analyses of a global public sphere, critical race theory, and the politics of memory, to aesthetics and media studies. It includes crucial new essays by JYrgen on the transformations of the global order in the wake of the American invasion of Iraq, and major interventions by Nancy Fraser, Peter Hohendahl, Andreas Huyssen, James Bohman, and others. Globalizing Critical Theory provides a fascinating exploration of how Critical Theory is confronting the question of globalization-and how globalization is transforming Critical Theory.

"The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere" represents a rare opportunity to experience a diverse group of preeminent philosophers confronting one pervasive contemporary concern: what role does--or should--religion play in our public lives? Reflecting on her recent work concerning state violence in Israel-Palestine, Judith Butler explores the potential of religious perspectives for renewing cultural and political criticism, while J?rgen Habermas, best known for his seminal conception of the public sphere, thinks through the ambiguous legacy of the concept of "the political" in contemporary theory. Charles Taylor argues for a radical redefinition of secularism, and Cornel West defends civil disobedience and emancipatory theology. Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen detail the immense contribution of these philosophers to contemporary social and political theory, and an afterword by Craig Calhoun places these attempts to reconceive the significance of both religion and the secular in the context of contemporary national and international politics.

"The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere" represents a rare opportunity to experience a diverse group of preeminent philosophers confronting one pervasive contemporary concern: what role does--or should--religion play in our public lives? Reflecting on her recent work concerning state violence in Israel-Palestine, Judith Butler explores the potential of religious perspectives for renewing cultural and political criticism, while J?rgen Habermas, best known for his seminal conception of the public sphere, thinks through the ambiguous legacy of the concept of "the political" in contemporary theory. Charles Taylor argues for a radical redefinition of secularism, and Cornel West defends civil disobedience and emancipatory theology. Eduardo Mendieta and Jonathan VanAntwerpen detail the immense contribution of these philosophers to contemporary social and political theory, and an afterword by Craig Calhoun places these attempts to reconceive the significance of both religion and the secular in the context of contemporary national and international politics.

AnHifilich der 600-Jahrfeier der Ruperto-Carola-Univer sitat Heidelberg und parallel zu den tiber das ganze Jahr verteilten vieWiltigen Aktivitaten, Symposien und Festvor tragen der Universitat entschied der Gemeinderat der Stadt Heidelberg, sich nicht nur mit der "Stadt-Heidelberg-Stif tung" und deren Stiftungskapital von 2 Mio. DM, sondern auch mit einer Vortagsreihe an dem Jubilaumsjahr zu beteili gen. Schien es doch legitim, daB die Stadt, die seit sechs Jahrhunderten mit der Universitat lebt, tiber ihre traditions reichste Einrichtung nachdenken wollte. Als Titel der Vortragsreihe bot sich jener Titel an, den Karl Jaspers 1946 seiner Schrift tiber die Heidelberger Uni versitat gegeben hatte: Die Idee der Universitat. 1m Wintersemester 1985/86 und Sommersemester 1986 hielten sechs hervorragende Vertreter interdisziplinarer For schung und Lehre Vortrage, die in diesem Band zusammen gefaBt sind. 1m Wintersemester versuchten die Beitrage des Heidel berger Philosophen und Jaspers-Nachfolgers Prof. Gada mer, des Hamburger Wissenschaftssenators Prof. Meyer Abich und des Vizeprasidenten des Wissenschaftskollegs, Prof. Lepenies, den Standort der Universitat in der Ge schichte, der politis chen Gegenwart der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und im internationalen Vergleich zu bestim men. VI Vorwort 1m Sommersemester konzentrierten sich die Beitrage des Nobelpreistragers Prof. Eigen, Max-Planck-Institut Got tingen, Prof. Lubbe, Zurich und Prof. Habermas, Frank furt, auf die innere Entwicklung der Universitat und die Reformbestrebungen der letzten Jahrzehnte. In seiner Schrift "Die Idee der Universitat" bestimmt Karl Jaspers: "Die Aufgabe der Universitat ist die Wissen schaft. Aber Forschung und Lehre der Wissenschaft dienen der Bildung geistigen Lebens als Offenbarwerden der Wahr heit" ."

translated, edited, and with an introduction by Max Pensky 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, Jurgen Habermas addresses these and other questions. He explores the historical and political origins of national identity, the achievements and catastrophes of the twentieth century, the future of democracy in the wake of the era of the nation-state, the political and moral 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 clarity, the essays present a powerful vision of the contemporary political scene and the opportunities and challenges facing us. Those new to Habermas's work will find in this book a lucid and engaging introduction to one of the twentieth century's most influential thinkers. Those familiar with Habermas's writings will appreciate the application of his social and political theories to current political realities."

Critical Theory originated in the perception by a group of German Marxists after the First World War that the Marxist analysis of capitalism had become deficient both empirically and with regard to its consequences for emancipation, and much of their work has attempted to deepen and extend it in new circumstances. Yet much of this revision has been in the form of piecemeal modification. In his latest work, Habermas has returned to the study of capitalism, incorporating the distinctive modifications of the Frankfurt School into the foundations of the critique of capitalism. Drawing on both systems theory and phenomenological sociology as well as Marxism, the author distinguishes four levels of capitalist crisis - economic, rationality, legitimation, and motivational crises. In his analysis, all the Frankfurt focus on cultural, personality, and authority structures finds its place, but in a systematic framework. At the same time, in his sketch of communicative ethics as the highest stage in the internal logic of the evolution of ethical systems, the author hints at the source of a new political practice that incorporates the imperatives of evolutionary rationality.

The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity is a tour de force that has the immediacy and accessibility of the lecture form and the excitement of an encounter across, national cultural boundaries. Habermas takes up the challenge posed by the radical critique of reason in contemporary French poststructuralism.Tracing the odyssey of the philosophical discourse of modernity, Habermas's strategy is to return to those historical "crossroads" at which Hegel and the Young Hegelians, Nietzsche and Heidegger made the fateful decisions that led to this outcome. His aim is to identify and clearly mark out a road indicated but not taken: the determinate negation of subject-centered reason through the concept of communicative rationality. As The Theory of Communicative Action served to place this concept within the history of social theory, these lectures locate it within the history of philosophy. Habermas examines the odyssey of the philosophical discourse of modernity from Hegel through the present and tests his own ideas about the appropriate form of a postmodern discourse through dialogs with a broad range of past and present critics and theorists.The lectures on Georges Bataille, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Cornelius Castoriadis are of particular note since they are the first fruits of the recent cross-fertilization between French and German thought. Habermas's dialogue with Foucault - begun in person as the first of these lectures were delivered in Paris in 1983 culminates here in two appreciative yet intensely argumentative lectures. His discussion of the literary-theoretical reception of Derrida in America - launched at Cornell in 1984 - issues here in a long excursus on the genre distinction between philosophy and literature. The lectures were reworked for the final time in seminars at Boston College and first published in Germany in the fall of 1985.Jurgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

The Inclusion of the Other contains Habermasa 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 Habermasa 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 is Jurgen Habermas's most concrete historical-sociological book and one of the key contributions to political thought in the postwar period. It will be a revelation to those who have known Habermas only through his theoretical writing to find his later interests in problems of legitimation and communication foreshadowed in this lucid study of the origins, nature, and evolution of public opinion in democratic societies.

In nearly two decades since Samuel P. Huntington proposed his influential and troubling 'clash of civilizations' thesis, nationalism has only continued to puzzle and frustrate commentators, policy analysts and political theorists. No consensus exists concerning its identity, genesis or future. Are we reverting to the petty nationalisms of the nineteenth century or evolving into a globalized, supranational world? Has the nation-state outlived its usefulness and exhausted its progressive and emancipatory role? Opening with powerful statements by Lord Acton and Otto Bauer - the classic liberal and socialist positions, respectively - Mapping the Nation presents a wealth of thought on this issue: the debate between Ernest Gellner and Miroslav Hroch; Gopal Balakrishnan's critique of Benedict Anderson's seminal Imagined Communities; Partha Chatterjee on the limitations of the Enlightenment approach to nationhood; and contributions from Michael Mann, Eric Hobsbawm, Tom Nairn, and Jurgen Habermas.

This volume presents Habermas's most recent contributions to ethical theory, expanding and clarifying his controversial theory of discourse ethics.

Responding to criticisms of his theory, Habermas defends the claim of discourse ethics to a central position in contemporary moral philosophy. He explains and refines the key concepts of his approach and extends the argument in certain key respects, including his treatment of practical reason and of the problems of application and motivation.

The first chapter offers a comprehensive analysis of practical rationality which establishes a clear demarcation between pragmatic, ethical and moral questions and a corresponding differentiation between forms of volition and spheres of practical discourse. Habermas then develops a wide-ranging defence of discourse ethics and provides a masterly critique of the major competing positions, such as those of John Rawls, Bernard Williams, Charles Taylor, Alasdair MacIntyre, Karl-Otto Apel and Albrecht Wellmer.

The remaining chapters defend the basic intention of universalist moral theory in the face of the claims of the neo-Aristotelian ethic of the good and of Horkheimer's scepticism towards reason. An interview with Habermas, covering such topics as the genesis of discourse ethics, the precise import of some of its more controversial elements and its interconnections with the theory of communicative action, concludes the volume.

"Justification and Application "engages with some of the most important and controversial issues in social and political theory and philosophy today. It will be welcomed by students and scholars throughout the social sciences and humanities.