This philosophical-political profile offers the first of its kind intellectual reconstruction of HabermasOs defining existential and historical situations, his generational profile and interventions, his impact on as well as the discontents that his life work generates in others. Written as a lively dramatic engagement with major themes of HabermasOs adult life in postwar Germany, the entire study occupies a unique place between the standard genres of a biography and a theoretical commentary on the oeuvre. In this work the reader is taken on a journey with Habermas through the 20th-century...

Over the past four decades, Charles Taylor's work as an intellectual historian, epistemologist, and normative political theorist has made him a leading figure in contemporary social philosophy. In Charles Taylor: Thinking and Living Deep Diversity, Mark Redhead examines the problem of political fragmentation, the problem of how to accommodate narrowly defined groups while promoting allegiance to a larger polity, through an analysis of Taylor's thought and politics. Redhead argues that Taylor's work evinces a gallant, though unsucessful confrontation with fragmentation that dramatically...

More than any other public figure, VOclav Havel has reflected on the opportunities and dilemmas facing humankind as a result of the collapse of Communism. In VOclav Havel: Civic Responsibility in the Postmodern Age, James F. Pontuso argues that Havel's life as a dissident and political leader, his political philosophy, and his plays must be understood as connected to one another. Pontuso skillfully explores these connections and explains Havel's prescriptions for political life.

Nichols examines the major writings of Alexandre Koj_ve, and clarifies the character and brings to light the importance of his political philosophy. This is an essential assessment of Koj_ve which considers the works that preceded his turn to Hegel, seeks to articulate the character of his Hegelianism, and reflects in detail on the two different meanings that the end of history had in two different periods of his thought.

This book offers a fresh perspective on Richard Rorty by situating his work in the arena of political theory. Reinterpreting Rorty's much-maligned antirepresentationalism as a Romantic affirmation of the power of imaginative writing, Voparil firmly grounds Rorty in an American tradition that includes not only James and Dewey, but Emerson, Whitman, and James Baldwin, and initiates an overdue reassessment of this important thinker's value to the political discourse of the 21st century.

Since the publication of Victor Farias's Heidegger and Nazism, the discussion about the political significance of Martin Heidegger's thinking has been distorted. Because of his association with the Third Reich, some have dismissed Heidegger out of hand while others have sought to explain away certain connections. What is often lost in the writing of critics and advocates alike is an honest assessment of Heidegger as a political thinker and a frank interest in understanding his work. Martin Heidegger: Paths Taken, Paths Opened takes Heidegger's philosophy on its own terms and explores the...

The engaging and inquiring mind of French philosopher Jacques Maritain reflected on subjects as varied as art and ethics, theology and psychology, and history and metaphysics. Maritain's work on the theoretical groundings of politics arose from his diverse studies. In this book, distinguished theologian and political scientist James V. Schall explores Maritain's political philosophy, demonstrating that Maritain understood society, state, and government in the tradition of Aristotle and Aquinas, of natural law and human rights and duties. Schall pays particular attention to the ways in which...

In Martin Buber: The Hidden Dialogue, Dan Avnon analyzes and reconstructs Buber's corpus of mature writings. Avnon's novel reading of Buber's diverse writings on the Bible, Christianity, Judaism, philosophy, socialism, Zionism, and the Jewish-Arab conflict is based on his discovery of a 'hidden' code of writing that grants Buber's apparently eclectic works and literary styles a coherent and unifying hermeneutic center. The term 'hidden dialogue' refers to the dialogue that takes place between reader and text, between diverse communities, and between humanity and creation. An essential...

This concise and penetrating analysis introduces students to the life and thought of one of the giants of twentieth- century French intellectual life. Portraying Raymond Aron as a great defender of reason, moderation, and political sobriety in an era dominated by ideological fervor and philosophical fashion, Brian Anderson demonstrates the centrality of political reason to Aron's philosophy of history, his critique of ideological thinking, his meditations on the perennial problems of peace and war, and the nature of conservative liberalism. This accessible study of Aron's thought and the...

During his distinguished academic career, Eric Voegelin was described as the most important philosopher of history and consciousness since Toynbee; a political theorist of exceptional scope and erudition; a theologian with profound insights into the nature of religious experience. Similarly, Voegelin has been interpreted by his critics using virtually every ideological label available: fascist, communist, liberal, conservative, existentialist, fideist, socialist, reactionary, Jew, Catholic, and Protestant. Regardless of such efforts to characterize his writings using such neat categories,...