Jürgen Habermas 
The New Conservatism 
Cultural Criticism and the Historian’s Debate

Jürgen Habermas is well known for his scholarly writings on
the theoretical foundations of the human sciences. The New
Conservatism brings to light another side of Habermas’s work,
showing him to be an incisive commentator on a wide range of
contemporary themes.

The 1980s have been a crucial decade in the political life of
Western democracies in general, and of the Federal Republic of
Germany in particular. The transformations that accompanied a shift
from 13 years of Social democratic rule in Germany to government by
the conservative Christian Democrats are captured in this series of
insightful, often passionate political and cultural commentaries.
The central theme uniting the essays is the German problem of
‘coming to terms within the past, ‘ a problem that has important
implications outside Germany as well.

Of particular note are the essays on what has come to be known
as the Historian’s Debate: Habermas’s attack on the revisionist
German historians who have been trying to trivialize and
‘normalize’ the history of the Nazi period, and his defence of the
need for a realistic and discriminating approach to the Nazi period
and its legacy. Habermas also takes up the recent debate concerning
Martin Heidegger’s involvement with Nazism and the rise of the
neoconservative movement in Europe and America. In particular, the
essay on The New Obscurity combines Habermas’s analysis of
the problems of the welfare state with his suggestions for avenues
open to utopian impulses today.

Table of Content

Introduction by Richard Wolin.

Translator’s Preface.

1. Neoconservatism.

2. The New Obscurity:.

The Crisis of the Welfare State and the Exhaustion of Utopian
Energies.

3. Heinrich Heine and the Role of the Intellectual in
Germany.

4. The Idea of the University:.

Learning Processes.

5. The Horrors of Autonomy:.

Carl Schmitt in English.

6. Work and Weltanschauung:.

The Heidegger Controversy from a German Perspective.

7. Taking Aim at the Heart of the Present:.

On Foucault’s Lecture on Kant’s What is
Enlightenment?.

8. Culture and Politics.

9. A Kind of Settling of Damages.

10. Historical Consciousness and Post-Traditional
Identity:.

The Federal Republic’s Orientation to the West.

About the author

Jürgen Habermas is a German philosopher and sociologist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theories on communicative rationality and the public sphere. In 2014, Prospect readers chose Habermas as one of their favourites among the ‘world’s leading thinkers’.