Since the 1960s, Jürgen Habermas has made lasting contributions to political philosophy, philosophy of language, social theory, moral theory, philosophy of law, and other areas, as his work involves many topics in the human sciences and contemporary life, recently including views on bioethics, religious meaning, naturalism, and the future of Europe. (He’s well-known in Europe as a public intellectual).

He discursively finds reason for democratic humanity in the nature of our communicative life, but he greatly exemplifies his own interdisciplinary view of philosophy by providing a rigorous way to integrate views of language, moral consciousness, social evolution, political life, etc. without metaphysicalism.

Since he’s been most influential among theorists in the social sciences, his comprehensively philosophical character is commonly marginalized in accounts of his work. Contrary to this tendency, professors James Bohman and William Rehg provide an authoritative synopsis of Habermas’s philosophical development and career for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Good introduction to Habermasian thinking is:

• chapter 6 of his The Postnational Constellation, “Conceptions of Modernity”
• chapter 1 of his Justification & Application, “On the Pragmatic, the Ethical, and the Moral Employments of Practical Reason”

For subscribers, there are interviews and articles in the group “Files” section, including major articles by Habermas.