Jürgen Habermas

Theory

Jürgen Habermas's main aim has been to construct a social theory that advances the goals of human emancipation, while maintaining an inclusive universalist moral framework. The framework rests on the argument (called "universal pragmatics") that all speech acts have an inherent telos (the Greek word for "purpose" or "goal") ? the goal of mutual understanding, and that human beings possess the communicative competence to bring about such understanding. Habermas built the framework out of the speech-act philosophy of Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin, and John Searle, the sociological theory of the interactional constitution of mind and self of Mead, the theories of moral development of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, and the discourse ethics of his Heidelberg colleague Karl-Otto Apel.

Related Topics:
Human emancipation - Universalist - Universal pragmatics - Speech acts - Telos - Understanding - Speech-act philosophy - Wittgenstein - J. L. Austin - John Searle - Theory of the interactional constitution of mind and self - Mead - Jean Piaget - Lawrence Kohlberg - Karl-Otto Apel

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Within sociology, Habermas's major contribution is the development of a comprehensive theory of societal evolution and modernization focusing on the difference between communicative rationality and rationalization on the one hand and strategic/instrumental rationality and rationalization on the other. This includes a critique from a communicative standpoint of the differentiation-based theory of social systems developed by Niklas Luhmann, a student of Talcott Parsons.

Related Topics:
Societal evolution - Modernization - Theory - Social system - Niklas Luhmann - Talcott Parsons

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His defence of modern society and civil society has been a source of inspiration to others, and is considered a major philosophical alternative to the varieties of poststructuralism. He has also offered an influential analysis of late capitalism.

Related Topics:
Modern society - Civil society - Poststructuralism - Late capitalism

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Habermas sees the rationalization, humanization, and democratization of society in terms of the institutionalization of the potential for rationality that is inherent in the communicative competence that is unique to the human species. Habermas believes communicative competence has developed through the course of evolution, but in contemporary society it is suppressed or weakened by the way in which major domains of social life, such as the market, the state, and organizations, have been given over to or taken over by strategic/instrumental rationality, so that the logic of the system supplants that of the lifeworld.

Related Topics:
System - Lifeworld

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Habermas is famous as a teacher and mentor. Among his most prominent students have been the political sociologist Claus Offe (professor at Humboldt University of Berlin), the sociological theorist Hans Joas (professor at the Free University of Berlin and at the University of Chicago), the theorist of societal evolution Klaus Eder, the social philosopher Axel Honneth (the current director of the Institute for Social Research), and the American philosopher Thomas McCarthy.

Related Topics:
Claus Offe - Humboldt University of Berlin - Hans Joas - Free University of Berlin - University of Chicago - Evolution - Klaus Eder - Axel Honneth - Thomas McCarthy

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Habermas is famous as a public intellectual as well as a scholar; most notably, in the 1980s he used the popular press to attack historians (i.e., Ernst Nolte and Andreas Hillgruber) who, arguably, had tried to demarcate Nazi rule and the Holocaust from the mainstream of German history, explain away Nazism as a reaction to Bolshevism, and partially rehabilitate the reputation of the German Army, or Wehrmacht, during World War II. (The so-called "Historikerstreit," or "Historians' Quarrel" was not at all one-sided, because Habermas was himself attacked by eminent scholars like Joachim Fest and Klaus Hildebrand.) More recently, Habermas has been outspoken in his opposition to the American invasion of Iraq. He is perhaps most famous outside of Germany for his conceptualization of the public sphere.

Related Topics:
Public intellectual - Ernst Nolte - Andreas Hillgruber - Nazi - Holocaust - Bolshevism - Wehrmacht - World War II - Historikerstreit - Joachim Fest - Klaus Hildebrand - American invasion of Iraq - Public sphere

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Habermas visited the People's Republic of China in April 2001 and received a big welcome. He gave numerous speeches under titles such as "Nation-States under the Pressure of Globalisation." Habermas was also the 2004 Kyoto Laureate in the Arts and Philosophy section. He traveled to San Diego and on March 5, 2005, as part of the University of San Diego's Kyoto Symposium, gave a speech entitled The Public Role of Religion in Secular Context, regarding the evolution of separation of Church and State from neutrality to intense secularism.

Related Topics:
People's Republic of China - Globalisation - Kyoto Laureate - Arts - Philosophy - San Diego - University of San Diego - Kyoto Symposium - Religion - Church - State - Secularism

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Habermas and Jacques Derrida engaged in somewhat acrimonious disputes beginning in the 1980s, which resulted in a refusal of extended debate or talking past one another of what were perhaps Europe's two most influential philosophers. Following Habermas's publication of "Beyond a Temporalized Philosophy of Origins: Derrida" (in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity), Derrida, citing Habermas as an example, remarked that, "those who have accused me of reducing philosophy to literature or logic to rhetoric ... have visibly and carefully avoided reading me" ("Is There a Philosophical Language?," p. 218, in Points...). Others prominent in deconstruction, notably Jean-François Lyotard, engaged in more extended polemics againt Habermas, whereas Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe found these polemics counterproductive (in hindsight they probably contributed to a rift within deconstruction), as they tended to circle around what one may regard as overinvestment in an opposition between modernism and postmodernism — these terms were occasionally elevated to totemic if not cosmological importance in the 1980s, due in no small part to works by Lyotard and Habermas and their often enthusiastic and sometimes uncautious reception in American universities. It may not be unreasonable to generalize that schematic terminology such as poststructuralism, trafficked heavily in the United States but virtually unknown in France yet imported into some of Habermas's readings of his French contemporaries, inflected their exchanges with the vitriol of the "culture wars" which had begun to rage in the American academy and helped overheat matters at a time when many prominent European academics saw strategic value and career opportunities in extending their influence in America, arguably the world's largest market for academic imports. In short: although the differences between Habermas and Derrida (if not deconstruction generally) were profound but not necessarily irreconcilable, they were fueled by polemical responses to mischaracterizations of those differences, which in turn sharply inhibited meaningful discussion.

Related Topics:
Jacques Derrida - Deconstruction - Jean-François Lyotard - Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe - Modernism - Postmodernism - Poststructuralism

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In the aftermath of 9/11 Derrida and Habermas established a limited political solidarity and put their previous disputes behind them in the interest of "friendly and open-minded interchange," as Habermas put it. After laying out their individual opinions on 9/11 in Giovanna Borradori's Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, Derrida wrote a foreword expressing his unqualified subscription to Habermas's declaration, alternatively titled "The 15th of February, or: What Binds the Europeans. – A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy—First of all, in Core-Europe? or ?Our Renewal. After the War: The Rebirth of Europe? (unfortunately, no authorized translation of this text is freely available in English). Habermas has offered further context for this declaration in an interview. Quite distinct from this, Geoffrey Bennington, a close associate of Derrida's, has in a further conciliatory gesture offered an account of deconstruction intended to provide some mutual intelligibility. Derrida was already extremely ill by the time the two had begun their new exchange, and the two were not able to develop this such that they could substantially revisit previous disagreements or find more profound terms of discussion before Derrida's death. Nevertheless, this late collaboration has encouraged some scholars to revisit the work of both and revisit positions of both, recent and past, vis-a-vis the other.

Related Topics:
9/11 - Giovanna Borradori's - Geoffrey Bennington

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