<P>This critique of French philosophy and the history of German philosophy is a tour de force that has the immediacy and accessibility of the lecture form and the excitement of an encounter across national cultural boundaries as Habermas takes up the challenge posed by the radical critique of reason in contemporary French postmodernism. The lectures on Georges Bataille, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, and Cornelius Castoriadis are of particular note, since they are the first fruits of the recent cross-fertilization between French and German thought.Jurgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt.</P>