The Philosophy of Jürgen Habermas: A Critical Introduction

Jürgen Habermas seeks to defend the Enlightenment and with it an emphatical, uncurtailed conception of reason against the post-modern critique of reason on the one hand, and against so-called scientism (which would include critical rationalism and the greater part of analytical philosophy) on the other. His objection to the former is that it is self-contradictory and politically defeatist; his objection to the latter is that, thanks to a standard of rationality derived from the natural sciences or from Weber's concept of purposive rationality, it leaves normative questions to irrational decisions. Habermas wants to offer an alternative, trying to develop a theory of communicative action that can clarify the normative foundations of a critical theory of society as well as provide a fruitful theoretical framework for empirical social research.

This study is a comprehensive and detailed analysis and sustained critique of Habermas' philosophical system since his pragmatist turn in the seventies. It clearly and precisely depicts Habermas' long chain of arguments leading from an analysis of speech acts to a discourse theory of law and the democratic constitutional state. Along the way the study examines, among other things, Habermas' theory of communicative action, transcendental and universal pragmatics and the argument from performative contradictions, discourse ethics, the consensus theory of truth, Habermas' ideas on developmental psychology, communicative pathologies and social evolution, his theory of social order, the analysis of the tensions between system and lifeworld, his theory of modernity, and his theory of deliberative democracy. For all Habermas students this study will prove indispensable.


Author: Uwe Steinhoff
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 08/31/2009
Pages: 304
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.35lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.00w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780199547807

Review Citation(s):
Choice 03/01/2010

About the Author

Uwe Steinhoff is the author of On the Ethics of War and Terrorism as well as of articles on ethics, political philosophy, epistemology and postmodernism. He is Assistant Professor at the Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Hong Kong, and Senior Research Associate in The
Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War.

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