Although Jürgen Habermas is one of postwar Europe’s leading philosophers and public intellectuals, the secondary literature often portrays him as an apolitical thinker with little interest in “real politics.” This article demonstrates that from the beginning of his career Habermas was an intensely political thinker, who tried to mediate his political convictions and philosophical interests. Drawing on articles he produced as a freelance journalist before arriving at the Institute for Social Research in 1956—as well as the correspondence contained in the Habermas archives at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main—the article shows that Habermas sought to combine his political and philosophical interests from the start. It argues that these relatively unknown and understudied texts highlight the development of Habermas’s understanding of the relationship of theory to practice and also help explain his attraction to the Frankfurt School in general, as well as to Theodor Adorno specifically.
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