Joining me for his second appearance, Philipp Felsch explores the life and thought of Jürgen Habermas, one of the most influential philosophers of the modern era and Germany’s foremost living public intellectual. We trace Habermas's roots in the Marxist tradition, his role in the Frankfurt School, relationship to Adorno and Horkheimer, to his influential presence during the May 68 period across West Germany.

We discuss why Habermas’s theory of the public sphere has been so influential, and why he came to be so widely revered as a philosopher, especially within American academia. We then examine how Habermas abandoned Marxism in his turn to develop a comprehensive theory of communication. Habermas is known as an admonishing voice of reason, as the moral conscience of post-Holocaust German society but in the wake of October 7th and his uncritical position on the genocide in Gaza, Habermas's intellectual supremacy seems to be coming to an end today.

Learn more about Philipp's new book, The Philosopher: Habermas and Us (translated by Tony Crawford) https://bit.ly/4qjpFTC