Stefan Müller-Doohm

‘Jürgen 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.’ Now, after many years of intensive research and in-depth conversations with contemporaries, colleagues and Habermas himself, Stefan Müller-Doohm presents the first comprehensive biography of one of the most important public intellectuals of our time. From his political and philosophical awakening in West Germany to the formative relationships with Adorno and Horkheimer, Müller-Doohm masterfully traces the major forces that shaped Habermas’s intellectual development. He shows how Habermas’s life and work were conditioned by the possibilities offered to his generation in the unique circumstances of regained freedom that characterized postwar Germany. And yet Habermas’s career is fascinating precisely because it amounts to more than a corpus of scholarly work, however original and influential that may be. For here is someone who continually left the protective space of the university in order to assume the role of a participant in controversial public debates Ð from the significance of the Holocaust to the future of Europe Ð and in this way sought to influence the development of social and political life in an arena much broader than the academy. The significance and virtuosity of Habermas’s many writings over the years are also fully and expertly documented, ranging from his early work on the public sphere to his more recent writings on communicative action, cosmopolitanism and the postnational condition. What emerges from this biography is a vivid portrait of one of the great public intellectuals of our time Ð a unique thinker who has made an immense and lasting philosophical contribution but who, when he perceives that society is not living up to its potential for creating free and just conditions for all, becomes one of its most rigorous and persistent critics.

A Biography

Habermas

«Paladín de la modernidad» y «maestro de la comunicación», «polemista de Fráncfort» y «conciencia moral pública de la cultura política»: tales son algunos de los epítetos de los que se ha hecho merecedor Jürgen Habermas. Con razón se ha dicho de él que «no solo es el filósofo vivo más famoso del mundo, sino que su propia fama es famosa». Pero si su figura como pensador resulta noticiable, y hasta puede parecer fascinante, es porque supo abandonar una y otra vez el ámbito protegido de la vida académica para intervenir en los debates de la esfera pública. «Es la irritabilidad», dice el propio Habermas de sí mismo, «lo que convierte a un sabio en intelectual». Reconstruir el intrincado entrelazamiento entre el oficio del filósofo y teórico social y el oficio del intelectual público es el objeto de esta biografía.Por ello, sus páginas no se limitan a narrar, de la mano de los textos del propio Habermas, la gestación y maduración de una obra filosófica ingente a través de sus distintas etapas, que han supuesto la elaboración de una «teoría de la acción comunicativa» plasmada en un lenguaje y un estilo de pensar inconfundibles. Revelan, además, la entraña de ese colosal esfuerzo de comprensión teórica en el afán de sentar las bases de una cultura política democrática y deliberativa. De ahí la presencia, en esta biografía, de las controversias que han agitado la opinión pública alemana e internacional, como la polémica de 1953 sobre Heidegger, las protestas estudiantiles de 1967, la disputa de los historiadores de 1986, los distintos debates sobre el rearme y la desobediencia civil, la reunificación alemana, la Unión Europea, el asilo político, la tecnología genética, el conflicto de Kosovo o las guerras del Golfo, o la discusión, que se prolonga hasta hoy, sobre el lugar de la religión en la sociedad postsecular.«La razón comunicativa», recuerda Habermas, «es ciertamente una tabla insegura y vacilante, pero no se ahoga en el mar de las contingencias, aun cuando tal estremecimiento en alta mar sea el único modo como puede 'dominar' las contingencias.

Una Biografía

Jürgen Habermas

'Even the biographical individual is a social category', wroteAdorno. 'It can only be defined in a living context together withothers.' In this major new biography, Stefan Muller-Doohm turnsthis maxim back on Adorno himself and provides a rich andcomprehensive account of the life and work of one of the mostbrilliant minds of the twentieth century. This authoritative biography ranges across the whole of Adorno'slife and career, from his childhood and student years to his yearsin emigration in the United States and his return to postwarGermany. At the same time, Muller-Doohm examines the full range ofAdorno's writings on philosophy, sociology, literary theory, musictheory and cultural criticism. Drawing on an array of sources fromAdorno's personal correspondence with Horkheimer, Benjamin, Berg,Marcuse, Kracauer and Mann to interviews, notes and both publishedand unpublished writings, Muller-Doohm situates Adorno'scontributions in the context of his times and provides a rich andbalanced appraisal of his significance in the 20th Century as awhole. Muller-Doohm's clear prose succeeds in making accessible some ofthe most complex areas of Adorno's thought. This outstandingbiography will be the standard work on Adorno for years to come.

Adorno

Richard Klein

Johann Kreuzer

Das Handbuch präsentiert den Diskussionsstand zu Werk und Wirkung Theodor W. Adornos und bietet inhaltliche wie methodische Werkzeuge für die Auseinandersetzung mit dieser für die deutschsprachigen Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften des 20. Jahrhunderts prägenden Gestalt. Dokumentation und Bestandsaufnahme einerseits, Kritik und Neudeutung andererseits sind die Ziele eines Unternehmens, in dem es nicht um die Verbreitung einer kodifizierten Lehre geht, sondern um die Darstellung und Analyse der Problemstellungen und Denkmöglichkeiten, für die Adorno exemplarisch steht. – Zentrales Anliegen des Handbuchs ist der spezifisch interdisziplinäre Charakter des Adornoschen Philosophierens. Dessen Potential erschöpft sich nicht in fachgebundener Forschung, sondern wird in der kritischen Verschränkung von Kunst, Musik, Philosophie und den Fachwissenschaften virulent. Für schulbedingte Verengungen ist kein Platz. Die über 40 Beiträger lassen vielmehr die verschiedenen Zugangsweisen und Temperamente in der Auseinandersetzung mit Adornos Werk deutlich werden. Für die 2. Auflage wurde das Handbuch grundlegend durchgesehen, aktualisiert und um 17 Einträge erweitert.

Leben – Werk – Wirkung

Adorno-Handbuch

'Even the biographical individual is a social category', wrote Adorno. ‘It can only be defined in a living context together with others.’ In this major new biography, Stefan Müller-Doohm turns this maxim back on Adorno himself and provides a rich and comprehensive account of the life and work of one of the most brilliant minds of the twentieth century. This authoritative biography ranges across the whole of Adorno's life and career, from his childhood and student years to his years in emigration in the United States and his return to postwar Germany. At the same time, Muller-Doohm examines the full range of Adorno's writings on philosophy, sociology, literary theory, music theory and cultural criticism. Drawing on an array of sources from Adorno's personal correspondence with Horkheimer, Benjamin, Berg, Marcuse, Kracauer and Mann to interviews, notes and both published and unpublished writings, Muller-Doohm situates Adorno's contributions in the context of his times and provides a rich and balanced appraisal of his significance in the 20th Century as a whole. Müller-Doohm's clear prose succeeds in making accessible some of the most complex areas of Adorno's thought. This outstanding biography will be the standard work on Adorno for years to come.

Stefan Müller-Doohm

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