This philosophical-political profile offers the first of its kind intellectual reconstruction of Habermas's 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 Habermas's 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...

Scottish philosopher John Macmurray's intriguing career makes the job of classifying his work difficult by contemporary academic modes of categorization. Despite his extensive writings on political principles and politics and significant influence on numerous British politicians, he never regarded the political sphere as an end in itself. Above all, he was a political philosopher determined to place politics into a wider, more comprehensive, metaphysical and religious framework. In this long-overdue analysis of Macmurray, Frank Kirkpatrick traces the development of Macmurray's thought with...

Nichols examines the major writings of Alexandre Kojeve, and clarifies the character and brings to light the importance of his political philosophy. While emphasizing the political dimension of Kojeve's thought, Nichols treats all his major published writings and shows how the remarkably varied parts of Kojeve's intellectual endeavor go together. This is an essential assessment of Kojeve 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...

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...

Richard H. Bell analyzes the social and political thought of Simone Weil, paying particular attention to Weil's concept of justice as compassion. Bell describes the ways in which Weil's concept of justice stands in contrast with liberal 'rights-based' views of justice, and focuses upon central aspects of Weil's thought, including 'attention, ' human suffering and 'affliction, ' and the importance of 'a spiritual way of life' in reshaping the individual's role in civic life. Simone Weil: The Way of Justice as Compassion is a valuable addition to the scholarship on this important thinker and a...