SOURCE: A review of Autonomy and Solidarity and Postmetaphysical Thinking, in Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 23, No. 3, May, 1994, pp. 456-58.

Below, Outhwaite detects Habermas's "practical-political concerns" in Autonomy and Solidarity and outlines his philosophical approach in Postmetaphysical Thinking.

The first edition of Autonomy and Solidarity: Interviews with Jürgen Habermas, published in 1986, rapidly established itself as the fast track into an understanding of Habermas's life and work, as well as an indispensable complement to his own massive oeuvre and the equally massive accretion of secondary literature which surrounds it. This new edition contains five further interviews from the period 1985–90, and Peter Dews has extended his excellent introduction with a new postscript.

As Dews notes, Habermas is now giving more and more interviews. Dews has therefore had to be more selective this time, choosing some of the interviews from Eine Art Schadensabwicklung (1987) and Die nachholende Revolution (1990) which best illustrate Habermas's relation...