ABSTRACT
This chapter examines post–Second World War thought from two different directions. First, it finds a difference in approach to human freedom between thinkers behind the Iron Curtain and those who lived in the West, seeing the former as true heirs of the European intellectual tradition. Second, it shows how much of post-war Western thought was tied up in longer-term discussions about the Enlightenment’s legacy. It pays particular attention to Roland Barthes (1915–1980), Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), Michel Foucault (1924–1984), Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002), Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929), Vaclav Havel (1936–2011), Reinhart Koselleck (1923–2006), Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), and Alfred Sauvy (1898–1990).
