Introduction 25
creative reconceptualization of Germany’s political relationship
to the West. It also shows the interplay between his philosophi-
cal account of modernity (including the critique of poststructur-
alism) and his political interventions in Historikerstreit and in the
Euromissile controversy.
Chapter 5 is the first sustained attempt to contextualize
Habermas’s imposing statement of his mature political theory,
Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of
Democracy (1992). It shows how the work subtly reflects the hopes
raised by German reunification and the disillusionment expe-
rienced in its wake. It describes Habermas’s intellectual agenda
in 1984 –9 when he began work on the book. It recounts how
Habermas aligned himself with the jurists who in 1989 –90 argued
that a reunified Germany required an entirely new constitution.
The chapter explores how Habermas’s republican commitment to
self-determination vied for primacy with his anxieties as a liberal.
Habermas feared that absorption of the former East Germany would
jeopardize his life’s work: the liberalization and Westernization of
German political culture. Bet wee n Fa c t s an d No r m s is not only a kind
of epitaph for the Bonn Republic but also a surprisingly revealing
testament – the closest thing we have to Habermas’s intellectual
autobiography.^93
No other scholar has argued for the centrality of the legal theme
in Habermas’s oeuvre as a whole; most prefer to characterize his
Between Facts and Norms as a decisive marker of a “legal turn” or a
“liberal turn” in his thought, the two being used interchangeably.
This study argues that there is no such turn. 1968 has been framed
as the turning point at which Habermas “devolved” from progres-
sive leftist to “reform-minded legal scholar.”^94 But this notion of a
“turn” obscures dramatic continuities in Habermas’s thought: His
political analysis since publication of The Structural Transformation
of the Public Sphere has been framed in the language of German legal
theory. This pervasive leitmotif attests not only to Habermas’s per-
sonal fascination with the law but also to the consistency of his com-
mittment to the goal of a “radical reform” of German politics and
political culture. This book vigorously rejects the claim that the
arc of Habermas’s career as a political theorist can be characterized
(^93) Author’s conversation with Ulrich Preuss, July 2001 , Cortona.
(^94) Matŭstìk, Jürgen Habermas, 93.