Social scientists all over the nation are eagerly awaiting the visit of world-class sociologists Anthony Giddens and Jurgen Habermas, who will visit Taiwan for the first time early next year, the National Science Council (NSC) said yesterday.
At the invitation of the NSC, Giddens, director of the London School of Economics and Political Science, is expected to visit Taiwan on Jan. 5.
The Guardian newspaper has referred to Giddens as "the most quoted sociologist of our time."
Giddens is the author, among many other books, of The Third Way, a book described by one distinguished British commentator as a "landmark" in laying the intellectual foundations of center-left politics after the death of socialism.
An internationally renowned scholar, Giddens has become one of the idols of Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian (
In the period before the last presidential election campaign, DPP candidate Chen, at Giddens' invitation, spoke at the London School of Economics in late 1999.
Another world-class sociologist, Jurgen Habermas of Germany, who represents the second wave of "Critical Theory," is scheduled to visit Taiwan for the first time next March.
William Outhwaite, a sociologist from the University of Sussex in the UK, writes in one of his books that "Habermas combines a deep grounding in the philosophical tradition with a remarkable openness to a wide variety of contemporary philosophical and social theories."
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