Reading Habermas

In the past decade the work of Jurgen Habermas has sparked off a series of lively debates over modernity and post-modernity, the nature of language, the interplay of law and politics and the dilemmas of morality. Significantly, these debates unfold in the context of his particular reading of the modern philosophical tradition from the German enlightment to the present period. In this original interpretation, David Rasmussen provides both guide and critique to the later Habermas encountered in the context of the best of the critical literature that has emerged in recent years. Reading Habermas argues that Habermas' concept of modernity provides the context for the theory of language as well as his approaches to law and ethics. This book, as its title implies, offers a reading. It explores philosophical options chosen in the light of other, rejected readings. It is a distinctive, readable contribution to the current controversy surrounding the most recent developments in critical theory.

David M. Rasmussen is Professor of Philosophy at Boston College. He is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Philosophy and Social Criticism, the Philosophy and Social Criticism Book Series, and Cultural Hermeneutics. He is the author of Reading Habermas, Symbol and Interpretation, and Mythic-Symbolic Language and Philosophical Anthropology, editor of Universalism vs. Communitarianism: Contemporary Debates in Ethics and co-editor of The Narrative Path and The Final Foucault.