Legitimation Crisis

Rating:
Summary: Habermas' Opus is Timely!
Review: The German political and social philosopher Jurgen Habermas is heir to the semantically rich tradition of Frankfurt School thinkers. These men (and sadly, they are mainly men, although Hannah Arendt is in some sense in this circle) were seriously threatened by the collapse of the Weimar Republic. Their decision to go into exile in the United States should probably be controversial. It is a question being considered by many Americans in the present time, no doubt. Habermas is profoundly influenced by Marx, Weber, Freud, and Talcott Parsons, and wrote this book in the context of uprisings against the Viet Nam War. What we are seeing right now, a contested election in which the very structure of the United States government is being questioned by people who wonder whether the electoral college truly represents the will of the people, could be illuminated by careful study of this book. I commend it to the attention of anyone who would better understand a moment in United States history which has been descibed as a constitutional crisis.