Abstract

Two questions were addressed to my existential biography of Habermas: Is my use of existential categories to discuss his theorycompatible with his recovery of the publicity of facts and norms? Can I concede a secular reading of anamnestic solidarity to Habermas and retain this conception to sustain a Benjaminian-Kierkegaardian openness of history? The best answer would be to reprint Habermas’s astonishing autobiography from Kyoto (his thank you speech on the occasion of the Koyto Award on 11 November 2004). The second best is first to situate it and then take up the two questions in light of his self-presentation.