Out now in English: "Also a History of Philosophy", volume 1

Also a History of Philosophy
Volume 1: The Project of a Genealogy of Postmetaphysical Thinking
by Jürgen Habermas
(Polity, August 2023)

448 pages

This is the first of the three volumes of Jürgen Habermas's book on the history of philosophy - "Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie" (Suhrkamp, 2019). Translated by Ciaran Cronin.

Preface [preview]

Part I. On the Question of a Genealogy of Postmetaphysical Thinking

  1. Crisis Scenarios and Narratives of Decline in Major Twentieth-Century Philosophical Theories
  2. Religion as a "Contemporary" Formation of Objective Mind?
  3. The Occidental Path of Development and the Claim to Universality of Postmetaphysical Thinking
  4. Basic Assumptions of the Theory of Society and Programmatic Outlook

Part II. The Sacred Roots of the Axial Age Traditions

  1. Cognitive Breakthrough and Preservation of the Sacred Core
  2. Myth and Ritual Practices
  3. The Meaning of the Sacred
  4. The Path to the Axial Age Transformation of Religious Consciousness

Part III. A Provisional Comparison of the Axial Age World Views

  1. The Moralization of the Sacred and the Break with Mythical Thought
  2. The Repudiation of "Paganism" by Jewish Monotheism
  3. The Buddha’s Teaching and Practice
  4. Confucianism and Taoism
  5. From the Greek "Natural Philosophers" to Socrates
  6. Plato’s Theory of Ideas – in Comparison

First Intermediate Reflection: The Conceptual Trajectories of the Axial Age

 

See my bibliography on Jürgen Habermas's book (Reviews, articles, book chapters and books in German, English, French, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish).

 

The Table of Contents of Volume 2 and 3

Volume 2: The Occidental Constellation of Faith and Knowledge

Part IV. The Symbiosis of Faith and Knowledge in Christian Platonism and the Emergence of the Roman Catholic Church

  1. Early Christianity: The Proclaiming and the Proclaimed Jesus
  2. The Encounter of Christianity with Hellenism in the Graeco-Roman Environment of the Empire
  3. Plotinus and Augustine: The Christian Transformation of Platonism
  4. Augustine and the Church between Institution of Salvation and Secular Power

Part V. Christian Europe: Progressive Differentiation of sacerdotium and regnum, Faith and Knowledge

  1. Church, Society and State in “Christian Europe”
  2. The Challenges posed by Aristotle for Thirteenth-Century Theology
  3. The Answers of Thomas Aquinas
  4. Ontologization of Aristotelian Ethics and Reconstruction of Practical Philosophy

Part VI. The via moderna: Philosophical Orientations for Scientific, Religious and Socio-Political Modernity

  1. Ushering in a Paradigm Shift: Duns Scotus
  2. William of Ockham: The Janus Face of the “Nominalist Revolution”
  3. The Functional Differentiation of Law and Politics and a New Form of Social Integration

Part VII. The Separation of Faith and Knowledge: Protestantism and Philosophy of the Subject

  1. Luther’s Break with Tradition and the Transformation of Law
  2. Theological, Social and Political Orientations for Modern Rational Law
  3. The Context of the Rational Law: Socio-Historical Dynamics and Scientific Development
  4. The Paradigm Shift to Philosophy of the Subject and the Resulting Problem of the Justification of Binding Norms

Second Intermediate Reflection: The Caesura of the Separation of Faith and Knowledge

 

Volume 3: Rational Freedom. Traces of the Discourse on Faith and Knowledge

Part VIII. At the Parting of Ways of Postmetaphysical Thinking: Hume and Kant

  1. Hume’s Deconstruction of the Theological Heritage of Practical Philosophy
  2. The Anthropological Explanation of Law and Morality
  3. Kant’s Answer to Hume: The Practical Meaning of the Transcendental Turn and its Background in the Philosophy of Religion
  4. The Postmetaphysical Justification of an Inherent Interest of Reason

Part IX. Linguistic Embodiment of Reason: From Subjective to “Objective” Mind

  1. Political, Economic, Cultural and Scientific Impulses for a Paradigm Shift
  2. Motives for the Linguistic Turn in Herder, Schleiermacher and Humboldt
  3. Hegel’s Assimilation of Faith and Knowledge: The Renewal of Metaphysical Thinking after Kant
  4. Reason in History: Autonomy versus Self-Movement of the Concept

Third Intermediate Reflection: From Objective Mind to Communicative Socialization of Knowing and Acting Subjects

Part X. The Contemporaneity of the Young Hegelians and the Problems of Postmetaphysical Thinking

  1. Ludwig Feuerbach’s Anthropological Turn: On the Form of Life of Organically Embodied and Communicatively Socialized Subjects
  2. Karl Marx and the Historical Freedom of Productive and Politically Acting Subjects
  3. Søren Kierkegaard: A Religious Author on the Ethical-Existential Freedom of the Biographically Individualized Subject
  4. Interpretive Processes between Truth-Reference and Action-Reference: Peirce as Initiator of Pragmatism
  5. On the Mode of Embodiment of Reason in Research and Political Practices

Postscript

Afterword

Notes on the Translation  

     

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