Stefan Müller-Doohm

Jürgen Habermas is one of the most prolific authors of the last hundred years, and has just recently added a two-volume history of western philosophy to his tally. It is a shame that Stefan Müller-Doohm’s biography was published before Habermas’s Auch Eine Geschichte der Philosophie, but such is Habermas’ productivity that any book written about him is likely to be slightly outdated by its publication. Indeed, he may well have published another book by the time we get half-way through this review.

Müller-Doohm’s biography will remain valuable regardless. He brings to the task great skill as an historian of critical theory and as a writer: he studied with Adorno and Horkheimer and wrote a biography of the former. Müller-Doohm’s Habermas is well organized and clear, as well as extremely well researched. Müller-Doohm does not offer full or extensive analyses of Habermas’ ideas, but that is not the task of a biography, which should put those ideas in historical and personal context. At this, Müller-Doohm succeeds admirably. Habermas appears here in the lights of post-war German history, of his own extensive, idiosyncratic philosophical reading, and of the professional structures that he navigates so successfully.

See the full review here: https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/reviews/18204_habermas-a-biography-by-stefan-mu...… (mehr)