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 Jürgen 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 (A Columbia / SSRC Book)

History

BUTLER, JUDITH

Habermas, Jürgen

Taylor, Charles

West, Cornel

World

Columbia University Press

Philosophical-Political Profiles (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)

Based on the new German edition of Philosophisch-politische Profile which has attracted serious and widespread attention, this book includes thirteen pieces written by Habermas between 1958 and 1978 - the most important of those in the German edition, plus additional articles.  In these essays, Habermas offers a clear and strikingly personal examination of major modern German philosophers and cultural critics, focusing particularly on the content of their thought in relation to their respective political and biographical contexts.  Contents: Does Philosophy Still Have a Purpose?; The German Influence (Heidegger); The Figures of Truth (Jaspers); Karl Löwith's Stoic Retreat from Historical Consciousness; A Marxist Schelling (Bloch); A Primal History of Subjectivity and Self-Affirmation Gone Wild (Adorno); Imitated Substantiality (Gehlen); Consciousness-raising or Rescuing Critique-On the Relevance of Walter Benjamin; Herbert Marcuse on Art and Revolution; Hannah Arendt's Concept of Power; The Hidden Torah (Gershom Scholem); Urbanizing the Heideggerian Province-In Praise of Hans-Georg Gadamer.  Philosophical-Political Profiles is included in the series, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought.

Philosophical-Political Profiles

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Mit Pr

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. Jürgen 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 Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)

MIT Press]

For two decades the German edition of this book has been a standard reference point for students of the philosophy of the social sciences in Germany. Today it still stands as a unique and masterful guide to the major problems and possibilities in this field. On the Logic of the Social Sciences foreshadowed the direction in which methodological discussions have traveled since it appeared and anticipated the problems they presently face. Habermas's statement of the principal issues is concise and elegant, and his own original resolution of them is of continuing relevance. He considers the main lines of thought pursued by epistemologists and methodologists of the social sciences, from neo-Kantianism to behaviorism, and from problems of measurement to those of interpretive logic, in a sustained and provocative argument that involves analysis and critique at every point and ends with his own sharply profiled position. Beginning with the turn of the century debates on the distinction between natural and cultural sciences, Habermas discusses the relationship between sociology and history. He takes up the problem of a general theory of social action, focusing first on the nature of "interpretive understanding" and then on the scope and limits of functionalist explanation. In the concluding sections, he draws on psychoanalysis and classical social theory to sketch the outlines of his view of sociology as a critical theory of the present. Along the way he provides a great deal of material that is useful in understanding his own work. Jürgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. On the Logic of the Social Sciences is included in the series Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

On the Logic of the Social Sciences (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought) (English and German Edition)

Nicholsen, Shierry Weber

Stark, Jerry A.

This collection of Habermas's recent essays on philosophical topics continues the analysis begun in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity.  In a short introductory essay, he outlines the sources of twentieth-century philosophizing, its major themes, and the range of current debates. The remainder of the essays can be seen as his contribution to these debates.  Habermas's essay on George Herbert Mead is a focal point of the book. In it he sketches a postmetaphysical, intersubjective approach to questions of individuation and subjectivity. In other essays, he develops his distinctive, communications-theoretic approach to questions of meaning and validity. The book as a whole expands on his earlier efforts to define a middle ground between nostalgic revivals of metaphysical conceptions of reason and radical deconstructions of reason. Jürgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt.  The Essays: The Horizon of Modernity is Shifting. Metaphysics after Kant. Themes in Postmetaphysical Thinking. Toward a Critique of the Theory of Meaning. Peirce and Communication. The Unity of Reason in the Diversity of Its Voices. Individuation through Socialization: On George Herbert Mead's Theory of Subjectivity. Philosophy and Science as Literature?

Postmetaphysical Thinking: Philosophical Essays (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)

Business & Money

Economics

In Between Facts and Norms, Jürgen Habermas works out the legal and political implications of his Theory of Communicative Action (1981), bringing to fruition the project announced with his publication of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in 1962. This new work is a major contribution to recent debates on the rule of law and the possibilities of democracy in postindustrial societies, but it is much more. The introduction by William Rehg succinctly captures the special nature of the work, noting that it offers a sweeping, sociologically informed conceptualization of law and basic rights, a normative account of the rule of law and the constitutional state, an attempt to bridge normative and empirical approaches to democracy, and an account of the social context required for democracy. Finally, the work frames and caps these arguments with a bold proposal for a new paradigm of law that goes beyond the dichotomies that have afflicted modern political theory from its inception and that still underlie current controversies between so-called liberals and civic republicans. The book includes a postscript written in 1994, which restates the argument in light of its initial reception, and two appendixes, which cover key developments that preceded the book. Habermas himself was actively involved in the translation, adapting the text as necessary to make it more accessible to English-speaking readers.

Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)

Rehg, William

The MIT Press

edited by Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff Since its appearance in English translation in 1996, JÃ¼rgen Habermas's Between Facts and Norms has become the focus of a productive dialogue between German and Anglo-American legal and political theorists. The present volume contains ten essays that provide an overview of Habermas's political thought since the original appearance of Between Facts and Norms in 1992 and extend his model of deliberative democracy in novel ways to issues untreated in the earlier work. Habermas's theory of democracy has at least three features that set it apart from competing positions. First, it combines a concern with questions of normative justification with an empirical analysis of the social conditions necessary for the realization of democratic institutions. Second, at the heart of his model is the assertion of an internal relationship between liberalism and democracy. On this account, the rights of the individual that are central to liberalism can be guaranteed only within a constitutional framework that at the same time fosters democratic rights of political participation through the public sphere. Finally, Habermas defends a conception of universal human rights that is not only sensitive to cultural differences but also calls for legal and political institutions that facilitate the cultivation of cultural and religious identities within pluralistic societies. These essays demonstrate the extraordinary power of Habermas's theory of democracy through a further engagement with Rawls's political liberalism and through original contributions to current debates over nationalism, multiculturalism, and the viability of supranational political institutions.

The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)

De Greiff, Pablo

In 1971 Habermas delivered the Gauss Lectures at Princeton University. These pivotal lectures, entitled "Reflections on the Linguistic Foundation of Sociology," anticipate The Theory of Communicative Action and offer an excellent introduction to it. They show why Habermas considers the linguistic turn in social philosophy to be necessary and contain the first formulation of formal pragmatics, including an important discussion of truth. In these lectures and two additional essays, Habermas outlines an intersubjective approach to social theory that takes the concepts of meaning and communication to be central. In doing so, he situates his project relative to other influential accounts of how meaning is constituted, in particular those of Edmund Husserl, Wilfrid Sellars, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. He examines the nature of social interaction and its connection to communication, developing a linguistic conception of convention and intentionality. He also offers an account of social and individual pathologies using the concept of systematically distorted communication. Taken together, these analyses contribute significantly to current debates in the philosophy of action and language.

On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction: Preliminary Studies in the Theory of Communicative Action (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)

The Liberating Power of Symbols: Philosophical Essays (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)

In this collection, Jurgen Habermas engages with a wide range of twentieth-century thinkers. The essays display Habermas's appreciation for various intellectual traditions, his ability to distill the essence of other authors' work, and his outstanding critical powers.Habermas has described these essays as "fragments of a history of contemporary philosophy." They include explorations of the work of Ernst Cassirer, Karl Jaspers, and Gershom Scholem, as well as responses to friends and colleagues such as Karl-Otto Apel, writer and filmmaker Alexander Kluge, and Michael Thuenissen. The book also includes pieces on the theologian Johann Baptist Metz and the Finnish philosopher Georg Henrik von Wright.

rgen

Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God and Modernity (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)

This important new volume brings together Jürgen Habermas's key writings on religion and religious belief. In these essays, Habermas explores the relations between Christian and Jewish thought, on one hand, and the Western philosophical tradition on the other. He often approaches these issues through critical encounters with the work of others, including Walter Benjamin, Martin Heidegger, Johann Baptist Metz, and Gershom Scholem.In an introduction written especially for this volume, Eduardo Mendieta places Habermas's engagement with religion in the context of his work as a whole. Mendieta also discusses Habermas's writings in relation to Jewish Messianism and the Frankfurt School, showing how these essays reflect an important yet often neglected dimension of critical theory. The volume concludes with an original extended interview that examines Habermas's current views on religion and modern society.

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