SOURCE: "The New Restoration," in London Review of Books, Vol. 12, No. 22, November 22, 1990, p. 13.

In the review below, O'Neill examines various themes of The New Conservatism in terms of Habermas's engagement with contemporary cultural and political debates, concluding that his work proves that "philosophical writing may be engagé without being ephemeral."

Should philosophers be politically committed, engagés in the manner of Socrates or of Sartre? Or should they adopt an aloof and distanced posture, like Plato after his early political disappointments, who views concern with this-worldly affairs as (at best) a conscientious return from the heights to 'the cave'? Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are surely the two most distinguished political philosophers of our day, and their work exhibits many parallels: but on this deeply political matter they are worlds apart.

John Rawls's writing is scrupulously, evenly distant from political and cultural controversy. Although he is quite...