SOURCE: A review of The Past as Future, in Southern Humanities Review, Vol. 30, Fall, 1996, pp. 375-79.

In the review below, Dykstal questions Habermas's standard of "the norm" in The Past as Future.

Conversation is indispensable to Jürgen Habermas. In the German philosopher's "theory of communicative action," the values that sustain a good conversation—that is, one that produces greater understanding—are perhaps the only transhistorical imperative that we have. We speak in order to be understood, and we can use that desire for understanding to criticize whatever—from material deprivations to immaterial, or ideological, distortions—would defeat it. Given the indispensability of conversation to Habermas, this interview with the German journalist Michael Haller, conducted between the close of 1990 and March 1991, and covering such topics as the Persian Gulf War, German unification, and the future of Europe, is something of an event. Habermas has given interviews before, but...