
The Philosopher
Habermas and Us
Philipp Felsch(Author)
Polity Press
1st Edition
Published on 24. October 2025
Book
Hardback
208 pages
978-1-5095-6769-0 (ISBN)
Description
Juergen Habermas is the voice of a generation. One of the world's most influential philosophers and Germany's greatest living intellectual, he has shaped debates, both academic and public, for more than half a century. For as long as the cultural historian Philipp Felsch can remember, Habermas has been around: as an admonishing voice of reason, as the moral conscience of post-Holocaust German society, as the son of his grandparents' neighbours in Gummersbach. Is the philosopher's intellectual supremacy coming to an end today, or are his ideas gaining new relevance in the crisis times in which we now find ourselves?
To answer this question, Felsch plunged anew into Habermas's voluminous work and travelled to his home to talk with him over tea and cake about the concerns that have motivated him, the people who have influenced him and the controversies in which he has been involved. Can the ideas that the philosopher has championed throughout his career - universalism, reason, dialogue - be of any help to us now as we face the major challenges of the twenty-first century?
This compelling account of a strikingly original thinker is also a portrait of an epoch that bears his imprint and a glimpse of a future we could embrace.
To answer this question, Felsch plunged anew into Habermas's voluminous work and travelled to his home to talk with him over tea and cake about the concerns that have motivated him, the people who have influenced him and the controversies in which he has been involved. Can the ideas that the philosopher has championed throughout his career - universalism, reason, dialogue - be of any help to us now as we face the major challenges of the twenty-first century?
This compelling account of a strikingly original thinker is also a portrait of an epoch that bears his imprint and a glimpse of a future we could embrace.
Reviews / Votes
"During his long and distinguished career as Europe's leading public intellectual, Juergen Habermas sought to build bridges between post-metaphysical critical theory and progressive political practice. In this artfully crafted profile, Philipp Felsch reveals the intellectual and personal drama, with all its triumphs and disappointments, that accompanied this remarkable effort."Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley
"Between about 1980 and 2020, the philosopher Juergen Habermas was the informal 'state philosopher' of the Federal Republic of Germany. The distinguished cultural historian Philipp Felsch has written a magisterial account of how he came to acquire this status - and how in the 2020s he lost it - by locating his developing thought in the context of contemporary politics."
Raymond Geuss, University of Cambridge
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Publishing group
John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 218 mm
Width: 142 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
390 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5095-6769-0 (9781509567690)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
10/2025
1st Edition
Wiley
€19.99
Available for download
Persons
Philipp Felsch is Professor of Cultural History at Humboldt University, Berlin.
Translated by Tony Crawford.
Translated by Tony Crawford.
Content
An Afternoon in Starnberg
In the Upside-down World
Perpetrators and Victims
Farewell to Profundity
The Consciousness of the Present
The Centre Does Not Hold
Running the Gauntlet in Frankfurt
Rocket Science for a Better Society
What We Must Presuppose
The Stigma of the Spoken
Uncanny Germany
Theory of the Loss of Meaning
Was That Really Necessary?
Taxonomy of the Counter-Enlightenment
Distance and Thymos
J'accuse
Back from the Future
History and Memory
Stirrings of Postnational Feeling
The Primacy of Global Domestic Politics
On War
The Philosopher of the Universal Provinces
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Notes
In the Upside-down World
Perpetrators and Victims
Farewell to Profundity
The Consciousness of the Present
The Centre Does Not Hold
Running the Gauntlet in Frankfurt
Rocket Science for a Better Society
What We Must Presuppose
The Stigma of the Spoken
Uncanny Germany
Theory of the Loss of Meaning
Was That Really Necessary?
Taxonomy of the Counter-Enlightenment
Distance and Thymos
J'accuse
Back from the Future
History and Memory
Stirrings of Postnational Feeling
The Primacy of Global Domestic Politics
On War
The Philosopher of the Universal Provinces
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Notes