Philipp Felsch

The Philosopher by Philipp Felsch explores the influence and continued relevance of Jürgen Habermas, one of the world’s most influential philosophers and Germany’s greatest living intellectual. For more than half a century, Habermas has shaped both academic and public debates, serving as an admonishing voice of reason and the moral conscience of post-Holocaust German society. Felsch, a cultural historian, reflects...

Nietzsche’s reputation, like much of Europe, lay in ruins in 1945. Giving a platform to a philosopher venerated by the Nazis was not an attractive prospect for Germans eager to cast off Hitler’s shadow. It was only when two ambitious antifascist Italians, Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, began to comb through the archives that anyone warmed to the idea of...

Theory – a magical glow has emanated from this word since the sixties. Theory was more than just a succession of ideas: it was an article of faith, a claim to truth, a lifestyle. It spread among its adherents in cheap paperbacks and triggered heated debates in seminar rooms and cafés. The Frankfurt School, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, Adorno, Derrida, Foucault: these...