Includes bibliographical references (pages 545-558) and index.

* Table of Contents * Acknowledgements * Preface * Prologue: The Other among his Peers * Part I: Catastrophe and Emancipation * Chapter 1: Disaster Years as Normality. Childhood and Youth in Gummersbach * Born in 1929 * Turning point: 1945 * Chapter 2: At University in Gottingen, Zurich and Bonn * Doctorate on the philosophy of Schelling * Speaking out as a freelance journalist * The beginnings of a career as a public intellectual * Part II: Politics and Critique * Chapter 3: Education intellectuelle in Cafe Marx * Mutual trust between Habermas and the Adornos * Horkheimer s animosities towards the dialectical Mr H. * The most promising intellectual * Chapter 4: Under the Aegis of Conflicting Personalities: Abendroth and Gadamer * A man of the democratic left * Positions in the dispute over the right form of critique and good politics * Chapter 5: Back in Frankfurt. Torn between Academic Work and Political Practice * In search of an epistemological foundation for critique * Thinking with the protest movement against the protest movement * In the line of fire from his own side * A new track in philosophical thought * Chapter 6: In the Ivory Tower of Social Scientific Research * Between Academic Management and Research * A theory about the impossibility of not learning * The minefield of political interpretations in the German Autumn * Resignation * Part III: Science and Commitment * Chapter 7: Genius Loci: In Frankfurt for the Third Time * The major work * The theory of action * System and lifeworld * Everyday life in Frankfurt * Chapter 8: New Projects * Under the spell of the philosophy of law * Morality and law * Chapter 9: Battles over the Politics of Ideas * Opinion leader of the new left? * The historians debate * Habermas as a sceptic towards reunification * Chapter 10: Against Germanomania and Nationalism * Habermas s ambiguous attitude towards military interventions * The Asylum Debate * A memorial to the murdered Jews * Part IV: Cosmopolitan Society and Justice * Chapter 11: Critique as a Vocation. The Transition into the Third Millennium * A plea for freedom of the will and the inviolability of the person * The philosopher as globetrotter * Many honours and an affair * Chapter 12: The Taming of Capitalism and the Democratization of Europe * Democratic politics D a counterbalance to capitalism? * European integration * On the way to a democratically constituted world order * Chapter 13: Philosophy in the Age of Postmetaphysical Modernity * What can I know? - Linguistic pragmatics as a form of naturalism and realism * What should I do? From the demand of virtue to the assumption of rationality * What may I hope? Religion in a post-secular society * What is Man? Language and Intersubjectivity * Chapter 14: Books at an Exhibition * Consciousness-Raising and Rescuing Critique * Epilogue: The Inner Compass * Notes * Appendix * * Genealogy * Chronology * List of Habermas s lectures and seminars * Bibliography * List of archives * Illustration credits * Index

Jurgen Habermas , wrote the American philosopher Ronald Dworkin on the occasion of the great European thinker s eightieth birthday, is not only the world s most famous living philosopher. Even his fame is famous.