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Jurgen Habermas , wrote the American philosopher Ronald Dworkin on
the occasion of the great European thinker s eightieth birthday, is
not only the world s most famous living philosopher. Even his fame
is famous. Now, after many years of intensive research and in-depth
conversations with contemporaries, colleagues and Habermas himself,
Stefan Muller-Doohm presents the first comprehensive biography of
one of the most important public intellectuals of our time. From
his political and philosophical awakening in West Germany to the
formative relationships with Adorno and Horkheimer, Muller-Doohm
masterfully traces the major forces that shaped Habermas s
intellectual development. He shows how Habermas s life and work
were conditioned by the possibilities offered to his generation in
the unique circumstances of regained freedom that characterized
postwar Germany. And yet Habermas s career is fascinating precisely
because it amounts to more than a corpus of scholarly work, however
original and influential that may be. For here is someone who
continually left the protective space of the university in order to
assume the role of a participant in controversial public debates D
from the significance of the Holocaust to the future of Europe D
and in this way sought to influence the development of social and
political life in an arena much broader than the academy. The
significance and virtuosity of Habermas s many writings over the
years are also fully and expertly documented, ranging from his
early work on the public sphere to his more recent writings on
communicative action, cosmopolitanism and the postnational
condition. What emerges from this biography is a vivid portrait of
one of the great public intellectuals of our time D a unique
thinker who has made an immense and lasting philosophical
contribution but who, when he perceives that society is not living
up to its potential for creating free and just conditions for all,
becomes one of its most rigorous and persistent critics.
'Even the biographical individual is a social category', wrote
Adorno. 'It can only be defined in a living context together with
others.' In this major new biography, Stefan Muller-Doohm turns
this maxim back on Adorno himself and provides a rich and
comprehensive account of the life and work of one of the most
brilliant minds of the twentieth century.
This authoritative biography ranges across the whole of Adorno's
life and career, from his childhood and student years to his years
in emigration in the United States and his return to postwar
Germany. At the same time, Muller-Doohm examines the full range of
Adorno's writings on philosophy, sociology, literary theory, music
theory and cultural criticism. Drawing on an array of sources from
Adorno's personal correspondence with Horkheimer, Benjamin, Berg,
Marcuse, Kracauer and Mann to interviews, notes and both published
and unpublished writings, Muller-Doohm situates Adorno's
contributions in the context of his times and provides a rich and
balanced appraisal of his significance in the 20th Century as a
whole.
Muller-Doohm's clear prose succeeds in making accessible some of
the most complex areas of Adorno's thought. This outstanding
biography will be the standard work on Adorno for years to come.
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