Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Habermas, Jürgen - Martin Jay (review date 9 November 1986)

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Martin Jay (review date 9 November 1986)

SOURCE: "Standing Up to Paris and Bitburg," in The New York Times Book Review, November 9, 1986, p. 26.

[In the following review, Jay suggests that Autonomy and Solidarity "provides a marvelous point of entry" into Habermas's thought.]

One of the major ironies of contemporary thought is surely the fact that a champion of enlightened rationality is now more likely to speak German than French. No one represents this reversal of roles more clearly than the Frankfurt philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas. Vigorously defending what he calls the "uncompleted project of modernity" as an emancipatory learning process, he has come squarely into conflict with French poststructuralists such as Jacques Derrida and Jean-François Lyotard.

Mr. Habermas's targets, to be sure, have also been domestic, as evidenced by his courageous intervention in the German debate following President Reagan's...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Jürgen Habermas with Boris Frankel (interview date November 1973)
   2. Martin Jay (review date 9 November 1986)
   3. Onora O'Neill (review date 22 November 1990)
   4. Douglas Kellner (review date March 1992)
   5. David Weberman (review date July 1992)
   6. Frederick J. Antczak (review date November 1992)
   7. Peter Dews (review date 13 May 1993)
   8. William Outhwaite (review date May 1994)
   9. Per Fjelstad (review date November 1994)
   10. Dieter Misgeld (review date March 1995)
   11. Richard A. Posner (review date 6 May 1996)
   12. Cass R. Sunstein (review date 18 August 1996)
   13. Timothy Dykstal (review date Fall 1996)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright