In this collection, Jurgen Habermas engages with a wide range of twentieth-century thinkers. The essays display Habermas's appreciation for various intellectual traditions, his ability to distill the essence of other authors' work, and his outstanding critical powers.

Habermas has described these essays as "fragments of a history of contemporary philosophy." They include explorations of the work of Ernst Cassirer, Karl Jaspers, and Gershom Scholem, as well as responses to friends and colleagues such as Karl-Otto Apel, writer and filmmaker Alexander Kluge, and Michael Thuenissen. The book also includes pieces on the theologian Johann Baptist Metz and the Finnish philosopher Georg Henrik von Wright.