Habermas: An Intellectual Biography - Paperbackby Matthew G. Specter (Author) This book follows postwar Germany's leading philosopher and social thinker, J rgen Habermas, through four decades of political and constitutional struggle over the shape of liberal democracy in Germany. Habermas's most influential theories of the public sphere, communicative action, and modernity were decisively shaped by major West German political events: the failure to de Nazify the judiciary, the rise of a powerful