William Rehg at Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews:
In his magisterial, three-volume Also a History of Philosophy (AHP; German: Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie, 2 Vols., Suhrkamp 2019), Habermas sets forth an extended historical defense of central elements of Western modernity, specifically its commitment to ideals of moral egalitarianism, universal human rights, and constitutional democracy. Habermas argues that these commitments emerged from collective learning processes, which AHP reconstructs in detail, beginning in Volume I with the transition from mythical thought to the great religious-metaphysical systems that emerged in Eurasian cultures during the so-called Axial Age (c. 800-300 B.C.E.). Volumes II and III then trace the Western “discourse of faith and knowledge” from the encounter between Greek philosophy and Christianity, through the Middles Ages and into modernity, when philosophy declared its independence from religion. NDPR reviews of Volumes II and III are already available.[1] Here I review Volume I, which comprises three lengthy chapters. The preface and first chapter set forth the motivations, method, and assumptions that structure the “project” announced by the subtitle, “a genealogy of postmetaphysical thinking”. Chapters II and III focus on the origins of religion in myth and ritual (II) and the Axial Age (III).
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