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Habermas currently ranks as one of the most influential
philosophers in the world. Bridging continental and Anglo-
American traditions of thought, he has engaged in debates with
thinkers as diverse as Gadamer and Putnam, Foucault and Rawls,
Derrida and Brandom. His extensive written work addresses topics
stretching from social-political theory to aesthetics,
epistemology and language to philosophy of religion, and his
ideas have significantly influenced not only philosophy but also
political-legal thought, sociology, communication studies,
argumentation theory and rhetoric, developmental psychology and
theology. Moreover, he has figured prominently in Germany as a
public intellectual, commenting on controversial issues of the
day in German newspapers such as Die Zeit. However, if one looks
back over his corpus of work, one can discern two broad lines of
enduring interest, one having to do with the political domain,
the other with issues of rational