The Philosopher

"During his long and distinguished career as Europe's leading public intellectual, Jurgen Habermas sought to build bridges between post-metaphysical critical theory and progressive political practice. In this artfully crafted profile, Philipp Felsch reveals the intellectual and personal drama, with all its triumphs and disappointments, that accompanied this remarkable effort."
Martin Jay, University of California, Berkeley

"Between about 1980 and 2020, the philosopher Jurgen Habermas was the informal 'state philosopher' of the Federal Republic of Germany. The distinguished cultural historian Philipp Felsch has written a magisterial account of how he came to acquire this status – and how in the 2020s he lost it – by locating his developing thought in the context of contemporary politics."
Raymond Geuss, University of Cambridge

"Felsch's accessible history of the philosopher as a public intellectual brings fresh, often arresting insights into Habermas as a cultural and political phenomenon, a central figure in the construction of the postwar German republic, its intellectual horizons and generational conflicts."
Financial Times

"An engaging and insightful study of Habermas's influence, weaving together the personal, the public and the intellectual in twenty short chapters"
Times Literary Supplement

"Felsch's Habermas and Us provides some welcome clarity on his political trajectory, alongside other helpful insights. Felsch emphasizes Habermas's status as part of a lucky generation of Germans: Born early enough to have witnessed the horrors of Nazism firsthand but late enough to have escaped moral culpability."
Liberal Currents