Global markets expand, societies fragment, and democracy risks hollowing out. It is within this tension—already central to Jürgen Habermas’s early reflections on mass media and the gradual “refeudalization” of the public sphere—that his legacy acquires renewed urgency. This dossier traces that trajectory, bringing together an obituary by Giancarlo Bosetti, an interview with Seyla Benhabib, and a selection of Habermas’s own writings from Reset DOC and Reset‘s archives. Across these contributions, a coherent thread emerges: that of a thinker who broke with both the illusions of Marxist statism and the lingering shadows of nazi totalitarianism, and who instead insisted on the fragile yet demanding foundations of democratic life grounded in communication among free and equal citizens.

From his critique of the commodification of public discourse to his defense of a politically integrated Europe as a necessary horizon for democracy in a globalized world, Habermas never relinquished the conviction that legitimacy must be constructed rather than presumed. Even his later engagement with the post-secular can be understood in this light—not as a retreat, but as an effort to replenish the moral resources that liberal societies appear increasingly unable to generate from within. What ultimately emerges is less a fixed doctrine than a sustained intellectual endeavor: an attempt to hold together what modernity itself persistently pulls apart—markets and democracy, law and participation, pluralism and cohesion.