Foucault : an introduction /

The idea of this series of introductory volumes on important contemporary, Continental social and political philosophers is excellent. Regrettably, these first volumes are too unevenly done to promise a series of consistent help to beginners. Fink-Eitel's Foucault is more successful than its two companions. Readers will need some prior acquaintance with Nietzsche, Freud, and possibly French structuralism, but Fink-Eitel's discussion of the shifts in Foucault's thinking from Madness and Civilization to the incomplete History of Sexuality volumes is insightful and is not bound to Foucault's own terminology. However, real beginners are still well advised to consult the prefaces by Foucault translator Alan Sheridan, as well as his study, Michel Foucault: The Will to Truth (CH, May'81). Horster's Habermas contains a general essay on Habermas, a more specific essay on Habermas's recent theory of communication by Willem van Reijen, and an interview with Habermas himself. Unfortunately, most undergraduates will find Horster's style often as difficult to negotiate as Habermas's own. Moreover, although he presents all the important ideas for a general understanding of Habermas, Horster's treatment remains too abstract to help most beginners. Van Reijen's essay is easier to read, but the Habermas interview is hard to follow and too contextualized in the German scene for novices. Beginners are still better served by relevant sections from Richard J. Bernstein's The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory (CH, Feb'77) or his Beyond Objectivism and Relativism (CH, May'84), or (for early Habermas) by Raymond Geuss's compact The Idea of Critical Theory (CH, Apr'82), or perhaps by the longer scholarly studies by Thomas McCarthy (The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas, CH, Jan'79), David Ingram (Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason, CH, Jul'87), or Stephen White (The Recent Work of Jurgen Habermas, 1987). Adorno contains five short chapters by Van Reijen on Adorno's earliest work critical of traditional Enlightenment and positivist epistemology, a sixth chapter by Peter Schiefelbein on Negative Dialectics, and a seventh by Hans-Martin Lohmann on Adorno's last work, Aesthetic Theory. None of these scholars succeeds very well in breaking out of Adorno's own difficult style and terminology. Beginners are still better served by Martin Jay's Adorno (CH, Jan'85) and relevant sections of his The Dialectical Imagination (1973). Finally, all three volumes show little sensitivity to more recent feminist critiques of contemporary social and political theory, e.g., Nancy Fraser's Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (1989). R. M. Stewart Austin College