SOURCE: A review of Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action and The New Conservatism, in Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 21, No. 2, March, 1992, pp. 278-79.

In the following review, Kellner outlines the main concerns of Habermas's thought in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action and The New Conservatism.

Jürgen Habermas's New Conservatism and Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action are collections of his recent essays on his major political and theoretical concerns of the 1980s. The New Conservatism assembles articles which provide critiques of recent forms of conservative thought, while the articles in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action present his latest positions in philosophy, the social sciences, and ethics. Together, these collections provide an excellent survey of Habermas's intellectual and political concerns of the last decade.

On the whole, Habermas is a deft practitioner of the art of political polemics. His essays are clearly written, accessible to a broad public, and possess a...