title: Habermas and the Public Sphere (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)
author: Craig Calhoun
description: In this book, scholars from a wide range of disciplines respond to Habemas's most directly relevant work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.
zlib_text: ![](Images/cover00194.jpeg)
  
  **Habermas**
  
  Jürgen Habermas is one of the most important German philosophers and social
  theorists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century . His work has
  been compared in scope with Max Weber’s, and in philosophical breadth to that
  of Kant and Hegel.
  
  In this much-needed introduction Kenneth Baynes engages with the full range of
  Habermas’s philosophical work, addressing his early arguments concerning the
  emergence of the public sphere and his initial attempt to reconstruct a
  critical theory of society in _Knowledge and Human Interests_. He then
  examines one of Habermas’s most influential works, _The Theory of
  Communicative Action,_ including his controversial account of the rational
  interpretation of social action. Also covered is Habermas’s work on discourse
  ethics, political and legal theory, as well as his views on the relation
  between democracy and constitutionalism, and arguments concerning human rights
  and cosmopolitanism.
  
  The final cha