26 Habermas: An intellectual biography
as one that moves from “radicalism to resignation.”^95 Habermas is
aware that some readers on the left believe that Between Facts and
Norms betrays the traditions of the Frankfurt School: “Even if read-
ers do not always see the ‘end of critical theory’ in [my] project,
they frequently think it defuses the critique of capitalism and just
gives in to political liberalism.”^96 This study defends Habermas
from these charges, arguing that Habermas’s renovated liberal ideal
is not only a radical solution to the problem of German statism but
also an important contribution to progressive political theorizing
generally.
Habermas’s repeated interventions in West German public
constitutional and political debates over four decades illustrate
the struggle of German civil society with the state. The German
Empire, the Weimar Republic, and the Third Reich bequeathed
both authoritarian and democratic ideas about law and constitutions
to the postwar Federal Republic. Habermas’s career as a theorist is
a dramatic effort to work through, preserve, and transform those
legal legacies into a usable past. In the intellectual work of Jürgen
Habermas, one can trace the itinerary of the West German transi-
tion to a liberal-democratic republic.(^95) William Scheuerman, “From Radicalism to Resignation: Democratic
Theory in Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms,” in Peter Dews, ed.,
Habermas: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999 ), 153–77.
(^96) Habermas, “Response to His Critics,” Cardozo Law Review 17:4 –5 ( 1996 ), pt.
II, 1545.