Habermas, Nietzsche, and Critical Theory

by Babette E. Babich (Editor)

Beginning with Jürgen Habermas's 1968 reflection on Nietzsche's criticisms of knowledge and science, the essays in this volume engage Nietzsche's challenge to the Frankfurt School tradition of critical theory as well as other social and political theories of modernity and postmodernity. Juxtaposing Habermas and Nietzsche for the sake of the "future" of critical theory, the essays in this collection draw variously on Marx and Weber as well as Horkheimer and Adorno, Benjamin, Foucault, and others.

The distinguished authors in this book argue that critical theory is best served by responding to challenges such as those associated with identity politics and globalization and including an authentic engagement with Nietzsche.

This important volume features contributions by Babette E. Babich, Karin Bauer, Howard Caygill, Rebecca Comay, Fred Dallmayr, Josef Früchtl, Jürgen Habermas, Dominique Janicaud, Alexander Nehamas, David Owen, Max Pensky, Holger Schmid, Tracy B. Strong, James Swindal, and Bernhard Taureck.

355 pages, Hardcover

First published August 31, 2004

About the author

Babette Babich (born 14 November 1956, New York City) is an American philosopher known for her studies of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Adorno, and Hölderlin as well as for her work in aesthetics, including music, philosophy of music, the history of ancient Greek sculpture, and Continental philosophy, especially the philosophy of science and technology and including ancient science. She has also made substantive contributions to scholarly discussion of the role of politics in institutional philosophy (the analytic-continental divide) as well as gender in the academy. A student of Hans-Georg Gadamer, she also worked with Jacob Taubes and Paul Feyerabend. In 1996, Babich founded (and edits) the journal New Nietzsche Studies in her capacity as Executive Director of the Nietzsche Society, named in homage to the spirit of David B. Allison's The New Nietzsche.