Overview

Jürgen Habermas is Germany's most important postwar philosopher, the leading figure of the Frankfurt School in this period. He is best known for the concept of the public sphere, which forms the basis of his communicative understanding of democratic politics. Habermas has not only theorized the public sphere-he has also taken part in it through frequent commentary on current social, political, and cultural issues. Yet since Habermas's extensive public-facing writings have been overlooked, his philosophy has often been criticized as apolitical. This book transforms our understanding of Habermas by focusing on his work as a public intellectual, showing how he has shaped debates far beyond the ivory tower. Peter J. Verovšek argues that while Habermas maintains a strict separation between his academic and his public-facing writings, he has also ensured that these two aspects of his work are part of a consistent whole. The book highlights the development of Habermas's views over time and the changing nature of his public interventions. His early political writings focused on questions tied to the particular situation of postwar West Germany, but since 1989 he has increasingly turned his attention to the future of Europe and global politics more broadly. Verovšek sheds light on the interrelationship between Habermas's participation in the public sphere and his theoretical work, demonstrating that his political engagement is crucial to understanding his philosophy. In a moment when public debate is under threat, this book offers timely new insight into Habermas's lifelong project of defending the public sphere-both in theory and in practice.

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9780231213028

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Reviews

This book is an extraordinary accomplishment, bringing together nearly seven decades of Habermas’s journalistic writings with his theoretical work to cast new light on both. Drawing on Habermas’s newly collected archives, Verovšek illuminates Habermas’s unique understanding of the public intellectual as a democratic citizen who is at once an irritant to public discourse and a synthesizer of inchoate cultural and social trends. -- Seyla Benhabib, Professor Emerita, Yale University and Senior Research Scholar, Columbia Law Verovšek's study of Habermas brings together philosophically rich and compelling theoretical analysis with engrossing biographical and historical details, touching on some of the most important political and social events of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Within the intense and sustained scrutiny of Habermas' work, Verovšek offers an entirely new and original perspective. -- Simone Chambers, University of California, Irvine Jürgen Habermas stands as the last and greatest public intellectual of our time. In this extraordinarily thoughtful book, Peter Verovšek guides us through Habermas’s career in the public sphere to show why the very ideal of the public intellectual now seems threatened with extinction. For all those who care about the future of reasonable discussion in our now-embattled democracies, this is an instructive—indeed, crucial—study. -- Peter E. Gordon, Harvard University

Author Information

Peter J. Verovšek is senior assistant professor in history and theory of European integration at the University of Groningen. He is the author of Memory and the Future of Europe: Rupture and Integration in the Wake of Total War (2020).

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