This paperback edition contains a new greatly expanded bibliography of Habermas's work.

Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität / Archivzentrum UBA Ffm Bestand Na 60 Beschreibung Identifikation (kurz) Laufzeit: 1950-1994 -/- Bestandsgeschichte: Jürgen Habermas (geb. 1929), Professor für Philosophie und Sozio-logie an der Goethe-Universität (1964-1971, 1975-1982 und 1983-1994) und Direktor des Max-Planck-Instituts zur Erforschung der Lebensbedingungen der wissenschaftlich-technischen Welt, ab 1980 Max-Planck-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften, (1971-1981), gilt als einer der bedeutendsten lebenden deutschen Philosophen der Gegenwart. Ha-bermas rezipierte die Kritische Theorie und entwickelte darüber hinausgehende Theo-rien in der Sozialphilosophie. Die Unterlagen wurden von Jürgen Habermas (...) im Frühjahr 2010 an das Archivzentrum abgegeben. Findmittel: verzeichnet Weitere Angaben (Bestand) Zusatzinformationen: Der Vorlass von Jürgen Habermas ist komplett verzeichnet, je-doch nur für die Korrespondenzen 1954 - 1994 online freigeschaltet. Alle anderen Ver-zeichnungseinheiten sind hier nicht einsehbar. Gliederung: 1. Korrespondenzen 2. Lehre und wissenschaftliche Arbeit 3. Monographien und Aufsatzbände 4. Sammlungen -/- https://arcinsys.hessen.de/arcinsys/llist?nodeid=g156869&page=1&reload=true&sorting=41 . (shrink)

Luca Corchia, Jürgen Habermas. A bibliography: works and studies (1952-2013). With an Introduction by Stefan Müller-Doohm, Pisa, Arnus University Books, 2013, pp. 606.

In this article I place Jurgen Habermas' recent turn to a "post-secular society" in the context of his previous defence of a "postmetaphysical" view of modernity. My argument is that the concept of "postsecular" introduces significant normative tensions for the formal and pragmatic view of reason defended by Habermas in previous work. In particular, the turn to a "post-secular society" threatens the evolutionary narrative that Habermas espoused in The Theory of Communicative Action, The Philosophical Discourse of (...) Modernity or Postmetaphysical Thinking, according to which modern "communicative" reason dialecticlly supersedes religion. If this narrative is undermined, I argue, the claim to universality of "communicative" reason is also undermined. Thus, the benefits Habermas seeks to obtain from translation of religion are offset by a destabilization of tenets central to a "postmetaphysical" view of modernity. (shrink)

The paper discusses Habermas` contribution to a debate between him and Joseph Ratzinger, at the time the prefect of the Congregation for the Catholic faith. Habermas is criticized for his tendency to adopt openly anti-enlightenment positions.

Habermas’s postmetaphysical reading of Kierkegaard is paradigmatic for his understanding of religion. It shows, why Habermas reduces religion to fideism. Therefore the paper reconstructs Habermas’s reception of Kierkegaard and compares it with the accounts of Dieter Henrich and Michael Theunissen. Furthermore it demonstrates how Habermas makes use of Kierkegaard’s dialectics of existence to formulate his postmetaphysical thesis of a cooperative venture.

Jürgen Habermas ha dedicato più di trent’anni dei suoi studi alle scienze sociali al fine di definire, attraverso la ricostruzione delle tradizioni di pensiero in esse presenti, un quadro teorico di riferimento che orienti i programmi della ricerca storico-sociale. Al pari dei grandi classici del pensiero sociologico, egli ha cercato di affrontare i “problemi della società nel suo insieme” esplicitando gli assunti, i metodi e gli obiettivi della teoria sociale come presupposto indispensabile per un’indagine che ampli i confini disciplinari (...) della sociologia, da un lato, alla riflessione filosofica, dall’altro alla ricerca storiografica. Nel lungo itinerario della sua formazione scientifica questo programma rappresenta il filo conduttore nell’analisi dei “sistemi culturali”, dei “sistemi sociali”, dei “sistemi della personalità” e, soprattutto, nella “teoria dell’evoluzione sociale”, dalla ricostruzione delle condizioni necessarie alla genesi antropologica delle forme socio-culturali di vita – l’“ominizzazione” – sino all’esame della logica e della dinamica di sviluppo delle “formazioni sociali” che egli suddivide in primitive, tradizionali, moderne e contemporanee. Nella Postfazione all’edizione italiana di Profili politico-filosofici (2000), una raccolta che contiene scritti di quarantacinque anni di studi (1953-1998), Leonardo Ceppa sottolinea i due aspetti essenziali dell’opera di Habermas: “la coerenza teorica” e il “carattere assimilatorio”. Habermas non è un pensatore “rivoluzionario” ma un “riformista” che, ricorrendo a un’immagine ingegneristica, all’isolamento del “pensiero che scava fossati” preferisce “costruire ponti” tra i campi del sapere. Questa ricerca si segnala per il tentativo di recepire criticamente le acquisizioni specialistiche delle scienze sociali e della filosofia finalizzando questa tensione apprenditiva alla costruzione di un quadro generale. Nato dai nostri colloqui seminariali, di cui mantiene la forma dialogica dei “turni di parola”, il presente volume focalizza lo sguardo sulle società contemporanee – ripercorrendone la struttura, le sfide presenti e gli scenari futuri – e sulla funzione sociale della sociologia. Ne scaturisce un’indagine di fenomeni fondamentali per comprendere le trasformazioni della modernità: la modernizzazione, il capitalismo organizzato, lo stato sociale, la democrazia politica, la diversità culturale, l’opinione pubblica nell’epoca dei media, la globalizzazione, la crisi ecologica, le disuguaglianze mondiali, i conflitti nazionalistici, il terrorismo islamico, la secolarizzazione, l’ingegneria genetica, l’integrazione europea e la politica mondiale. Nel riordinare i temi sociologici da lui proposti abbiamo cercato di sistemare l’analisi delle società contemporanee a un livello che non si accomodi sul piano dei commenti troppo facili che gli intellettuali, i politici e la gente comune amano fare sull’attualità e che, mantenendo una visione d’insieme sull’opera, chiarisca il testo e i suoi punti ciechi. Il volume si propone come uno strumento di lavoro che accompagni a una lettura critica. Sullo sfondo rimane la domanda se Habermas riesca davvero a conseguire, nei suoi itinerari attraverso la “storia delle idee”, la coerenza logica e la profondità d’indagine necessarie a “sistematizzare” le ricerche delle scienze sociali. Alcune perplessità avvalorate dal confronto con i testi e con la letteratura critica ci hanno suggerito di riservare ai problemi metodologici uno studio specifico che chiarisca il concetto di “scienza ricostruttiva” e ne illustri le applicazioni nell’ambito delle teorie della riproduzione culturale, della socializzazione e dell’evoluzione delle formazioni sociali – uno studio le cui linee sono solo anticipate nell’Introduzione. Il programma di ricerca e la sua recezione critica, relativamente agli assunti della teoria dell’evoluzione sociale. Riprendendo una felice espressione di Karl Popper, ci auguriamo di aver raggiunto la chiarezza argomentativa e la semplicità linguistica dovuta al lettore, confidando nella “cooperazione amichevole-ostile di molti scienziati”. (shrink)

The evolution of Habermas follows that of Rawls in Political Liberalism, where the principles of justice are traced back to a historical background and no longer derived from an original position as in A Theory of Justice; and even Rawls, curiously enough, while he made his own the criticism in a broad sense Hegelian, of opponents such as Walzer,continued not to recognize the debt he now owed them. Appropriations of the opponents' objections, withdrawals disguised as victories, ad hoc distinctions (...) and so on, are common staple in disputes between thinkers, phenomena that it would be too easy to dismiss with accusations of tendentiousness or lack of rigour. -/- . (shrink)

In the near future we may be able to manipulate human embryos through genetic intervention. Jürgen Habermas has argued against the development of technologies which could make such intervention possible. His argument has received widespread criticism among bioethicists. These critics argue that Habermas's argument relies on implausible assumptions about human nature. Moreover, they challenge Habermas's claim that genetic intervention adds something new to intergenerational relationships pointing out that parents have already strong control over their children through education. (...) In this paper a new approach to Habermas's theory is suggested which makes clear that he has a strong point against genetic intervention. A more charitable reading of Habermas with respect to his assumptions concerning human nature is presented. Moreover, Habermas's assumption concerning the power of genetic controlling is evaluated. By means of a close comparison of genetic and educational control it is shown that Habermas's argument relies on much weaker assumptions than generally understood. (shrink)

In texts such as “Richard Rorty’s Pragmatic Turn” Jürgen Habermas defends a theory that associates, on the one hand, the truth-claim raised by a speaker for a proposition p with, on the other hand, the requirement that p be “defendable on the basis of good reasons […] at any time and against anybody”. This, as is known, has been the target of criticisms by Rorty, who−in spite of agreeing with Habermas on the central tenet that the way of (...) evaluating our beliefs must be argumentative practice−declares that the only “ideal presupposed by discourse” is “that of being able to justify your beliefs to a competent audience”. We will consider two texts from 1971, -surprisingly neglected in most approaches to the debate-, in which Habermas did include such a “competence condition” to elucidate the notion of truth. We will discuss whether there are good reasons to relinquish such a condition and to refer, instead, only to the formal or procedural properties of argumentative exchanges, as Habermas does in presenting the notion of “ideal speech situation”. As we will try to argue, there are no such good reasons. (shrink)

Since Jürgen Habermas' speech for the Peace Price of the German Book Trade in October 2001, secular reason – personified by one of its main protagonists – has been able to debate with religion anew. For the purpose of an unbiased encounter between philosophy and religion, Habermas introduced the term “postsecular” back then in order to emphasize that this dialogue was inevitably necessary, all the more in the face of religiously motivated terrorism. Nonetheless, this willingness to debate was (...) accompanied by the conviction that secular reason itself, as a matter of fact, would be “ideologically neutral”. However, taking the necessity of accomplishing the confrontation with “world” (Weltbewältigung) seriously, the reflection on world view as a whole unveils its implied tasks of granting metaphysical and existential certainty (metaphysische Sicherheit), therefore resulting in the statement that there cannot be a neutral world view at all. Only dialogue as exchange of beliefs generates the general framework within which the discursive issues of world views are separated from their existential aspects, thus enabling a reasonably conducted debate without endangering the existential certainty of its participants. As a consequence, the neutrality of world views exclusively rests in dialogue and is no unique feature of secular reason at all. Eventually, this leads to the reconsideration of the conditions that must be given for an argument to be called “rational”. The article tries to point out that an argument in political contexts, whether given by a religious or a secular person, should only be acknowledged rational if it takes at least all living people – regardless of their group affiliations – into account. (shrink)

Seguendo l’esposizione data in (Orsi 2012), riguardante una comparazione fra alcuni aspetti dell’opera di Carl Schmitt e di Jürgen Habermas in filosofia politica, centrata sulla nozione di ordine ed inquadrata, nelle sue basi, entro la sociologia delle religioni di Max Weber, sarà possibile, oltre l’individuazione in essa di un comune punto di convergenza fra il pensiero dei questi autori nella nozione di ordine, portare avanti, su un piano teoretico di livello superiore, un ulteriore raffronto più orientato verso la metodologia (...) della ricerca filosofica così come intesa da Martin Heidegger, la quale permetterà tra l’altro di vedere sia Schmitt che Habermas da un altro possibile punto di vista prospettico. (shrink)

Nella Premessa al "Discorso filosofico della modernità" (1985) Habermas scrive, in maniera enfatica, che il tema, ricco di sfaccettature, della “modernità come progetto in-compiuto” segna l’inizio la sua riflessione e dagli anni ’80 “non gli ha dato più pace”. In effetti, la “modernità” si presenta come un “oggetto d’analisi obbligato” anche solo dal punto di vista del necessario auto-chiarimento disciplinare. È con la formazione delle società moderne che si differenziano come “forme del sapere specialistico”, la scienza politica, l’economia politica, (...) l’antropologia culturale e la sociologia. Ed è, ancora, dalla prospettiva della “riflessione filosofica” che si avvia dal tardo secolo XVIII una rinnovata consapevolezza intellettuale intorno alla coscienza storica del tempo moderno, ai principi costitutivi del “nuovo mondo” e alle “cesure” rispetto alla cultura passata. Non si deve, però, ridurre il concetto di modernità alla visione filosofica del mondo. Anche questa prospettiva – peraltro presente negli scritti di Habermas –, deve essere ricondotta all’interno del programma di ricerca della “teoria dell’evoluzione sociale”, considerando assieme i processi di “razionalizzazione culturale” del mondo vitale e la “differenziazione” di nuovi “principi di organizzazione sociale” rispetto a quelli con cui si erano riprodotte le formazioni tradizionali. Il merito dei suoi studi, una volta ricondotti a unità, è di seguire la trasformazione delle sfere culturali di valore alla luce dei problemi che coinvolgono la riproduzione delle strutture sociali e delle forme di vita tradizionali, mediando le esigenze della teorizzazione astratta e le vicende della storia con-creta. In tal senso, egli segue la tradizione di ricerca dei classici del pensiero sociale, da Comte sino alla scuola di Parsons, attraverso Marx, Durkheim e Weber. Dopo aver esposto in che cosa consiste, secondo il nostro Autore, il “razionalismo occidentale”, qui, ci limitiamo a fornire un indice ragionato dei temi con cui Habermas ha ricostruito il concetto “formazione sociale moderna” attraverso l'analisi degli “albori della modernità”, delle “società capitalistico-liberali” e delle “società contemporanee”. (shrink)

El presente trabajo reconstruye argumentativamente el sentido de la idea de una ciudadanía postsecular desde la perspectiva de Jürgen Habermas, a la luz de su trayectoria y producción bibliográfica. En primer lugar, ofrecemos una periodización de su trayectoria intelectual de acuerdo con la atención prestada y la consideración que juega la cuestión religiosa en cada una de las fases. Sobre la base de esta periodización y visión de conjunto, nos es posible apresar el sentido intrateórico del concepto normativo de (...) postsecularización, y mostrar hasta qué punto esta tesis constituye un giro en la trayectoria intelectual de Habermas. Después, exponemos críticamente el sentido de las últimas posturas habermasianas sobre el papel de la religión en la esfera pública. Por último, profundizamos en la idea de traducción de contenidos religiosos como propuesta de “secularización no aniquiladora” y como proceso de aprendizaje común para el conjunto de la ciudadanía. (shrink)

In his book, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, and especially in the “Excursus on Leveling the Genre Distinction between Philosophy and Literature” (pp. 185-210), Jürgen Habermas criticizes the work of Jacques Derrida. My aim in this paper is to show that this critique turns upon itself. Habermas accuses Derrida of effacing the distinctions between literature and philosophy. Derrida indeed works to subvert the distinction between fictional and argumentative writing, but in doing so he works with the genres he (...) is mixing. It is Habermas’ own insistence on subordinating all genres to argumentative rationality that truly effaces these genre distinctions. (shrink)

There is a fundamental incompatibility between a developmental orientation to education and instrumental and scientistic conceptions of rationality that dominate educational inquiry. An expanded conception of rationality is provided in the critical theory of Jurgen Habermas. This study draws on Habermas' work to present a theory of inquiry that is consistent with a developmental perspective. I distinguish three interdependent realms of experience--the objective world of nature, the intersubjective world of society and the subjective world of each individual. (...) Then, I argue that current conceptions of rationality tend to reduce personal and interpersonal experience to the objective material realm. Under prevailing conceptions, human action is rational when it pursues valued ends guided by knowledge about the world and effective means-ends relationships. Both theories of knowledge and theories of value in these conceptions are inadequate for a developmental orientation. -/- First, knowledge is defined as justified true belief. Theories of truth are based on the correspondence of beliefs with an external world; theories of justification are based on perceptual certainty. These conceptions objectify experience by making experience an object of natural science and instrumental action separate from and external to the person. Such conceptions reduce experience to the objective material dimension and cannot adequately account for the personal and interpersonal dimensions of human experience and understanding. -/- Second, because value claims are not capable of justification by these standards, they are considered ultimately irrational and treated as subjectively held empirical properties of individuals. The only standard of rationality is efficiency and economy in the selection of means. Ethics is reduced to empirical science. But the removal of practical questions from public discourse divests action of ethical significance. With its strict separation of descriptive and normative domains, empirical-analytic inquiry can neither acknowledge its standard of instrumental efficiency nor reach into the practical arena to guide the selection of values and ends that orient and gude human action. Practical questions that cannot be framed in terms of technical problems cannot be taken seriously. -/- Whereas these conceptions of rationality are generally derived from theories of experienced based on individual consciousness, Habermas looks to language for a more adequate account of the intersubjective nature of experience. This account provides an expanded conception of rationality with theories for justifying beliefs and actions that incorporate the personal and interpersonal dimensions of experience so critical to a developmental perspective. Through an analysis of the universal pragmatic structure of language directed to the resolution of problematic truth claims and moral claims, this study presents a consensus theory of truth (for a more adequate theory of knowledge) and a communicative theory of ethics (based on a more adequate theory of human values). -/- The concept of truth refers to a universal pragmatic convention of the unforced agreement of an ideal community of inquirers. Ethical conduct is guided by norms that reflect a rational general will and that regulate genuine human needs. Problematic truth claims and moral claims are discursively justified by the force of the better argument under the conditions of an anticipated "ideal speech situation" inherent in the very structure of communication. Furthermore, a theory of inquiry is developed in which inquiry processes are represented as historically evolved extensions of developmental process in the three realms of experience. Three interrelated forms of inquiry are derived--empirical-analytic, hermeneutic and critical. I derive each from its respective experiential realm, and indicate the logic of inquiry, object domain, and kind of knowledge gained from each. -/- An exploration of the relationship between inquiry and development provides a foundation for a developmental orientation to education. Finally, the theory is contrasted with prevailing inquiry approaches in education and illustrated with an application to a particular educational problem. (shrink)

The so-called debate between Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls concentrated mainly on the latter’s political liberalism. It dealt with the many aspects of Rawls’s philosophical project. In this article, I focus only on one of them, namely the epistemic or cognitivistic nature of principles of justice. The first part provides an overview of the debate, while the second part aims to show that Habermas has not misinterpreted Rawls’s position. I argue that Habermas rightly considers Rawls’s conception of (...) justice as a moral one. In the last part, I discuss two key questions raised by Habermas. The first concerns the relation between justification and acceptance of the principles of justice. The second concerns the relation between two validity terms: truth and reasonableness. (shrink)

Al centro della riflessione della filosofia e delle scienze sociali, il concetto di cultura ha assunto uno spettro di significati difficilmente riassumibile in una definizione che non sia multidimensionale. Numerose sono le province di significato in cui tale concetto ricorre riflessivamente portando in primo piano ordini di realtà e punti di vista analitici differenziati. Oltre all’identità multiforme le analisi della cultura presentano sul piano storico un contesto di genesi prettamente moderno la cui rilevanza è crescente. Accanto alla coltivazione dello “spirito”, (...) come erudizione e raffinatezza personale, saranno le scienze storiche e l’antropologia, tra l’inizio e la fine dell’‘800, a dischiudere la nuova conoscenza verso quella “tela di ragno” di rappresentazioni, costumi e disposizioni di cui gli esseri umani sono, al contempo, artefici e prodotto. Il presente volume sistematizza le complesse riflessioni di Jürgen Habermas sulle forme di sapere “implicite” ed “esplicite” alla base dei processi di comprensione e di apprendimento: il linguaggio simbolico e grammaticale, il senso comune, le immagini del mondo (la mitologia, le religioni e la metafisica), le sfere di valore specialistiche (le scienze e le tecniche, le morali e il diritto, l’estetica e le arti), i loro prodotti e le procedure, ma anche le competenze cognitive, sociali ed espressive necessarie per “maneggiare” tali argomenti. Si tratta di una ricostruzione che, all’interno di un “programma di ricerca” che Habermas recupera dai classici del pensiero sociologico, lascia emergere la riproduzione culturale come una sfera analiticamente distinta della società ma interdipendente con i processi di integrazione sociale e di socializzazione. (shrink)

According to Jürgen Habermas, his Theory of Communicative Action offers a new account of the normative foundations of critical theory. Habermas’ motivating insight is that neither a transcendental nor a metaphysical solution to the problem of normativity, nor a merely hermeneutic reconstruction of historically given norms, is sufficient to clarify the normative foundations of critical theory. In response to this insight, Habermas develops a novel account of normativity, which locates the normative demands of critical theory within the (...) socially instituted practice of communicative understanding. Although Habermas has claimed otherwise, this new foundation for critical theory constitutes a novel and innovative form of “immanent critique.” To argue for and to clarify this claim, I offer, in section 1, a formal account of immanent critique and distinguish between two different ways of carrying out such a critique. (shrink)

Habermas's collection of essays "The Future of Human Nature" is of particular interest for two sorts of reasons. For those interested in bioethics, it contains a genuinely new set of arguments for placing serious restrictions on using prenatal genetic technologies to “enhance” offspring. And for those interested in Habermas’s moral philosophy, it contains a number of new developments in his “discourse ethics”—not the least of which is a willingness to engage in applied ethics at all. -/- The real (...) key to Habermas’s argument is that human personhood and moral agency presuppose certain modes of relating to oneself that are threatened by the asymmetrical way in which genetic enhancements would presumably work. Thus, instead of taking up and then extending familiar normative concerns about unequal opportunities or the criteria for moral personhood, Habermas believes that the emerging technologies of genetic enhancement demand genuinely new arguments, and he proposes to focus on the effects of genetic programming on whether the agent can consider herself free and equal—effects, that is, regarding what one might call the reflexive attitudinal preconditions for moral agency. -/- Like contractarians and Kantians more generally, Habermas faces difficulties accommodating the intuition that we might have obligations toward potential persons. The difficulty is particularly pronounced in the case of Habermas’s “discourse theory of morality,” since it construes the moral point of view in terms of processes of deliberation among all those affected by the norm at issue which the participants consider in the deliberative process to be open, fair, and inclusive. Future generations do not fit neatly into this deliberative process, nor do prepersonal humans. Moral norms adjudicated in such discourse clearly affect their interests, but they cannot themselves participate in the discourse. In the past, Habermas and other “discourse ethicists” have tried to address this worry by introducing “advocatory discourses.” But this move threatens to undo a distinctive, appealing feature of Habermas’s moral theory: the pragmatist insistence on the innovative, critical, unpredictable discourse generated by actual participants in discourse and the refusal (contra Rawls, in particular) to rely on hypothetical representatives. -/- In The Future of Human Nature, Habermas ventures a different strategy,focused on expanding what he calls the “ethical” domain, which differs from the “moral” domain in being a matter of a community’s articulation of its core values and conception of the good. Previously, Habermas distinguished “ethical-existential” and “ethical-political” domains, as a matter of who an individual or a community, respectively, is and wants to be. In the present book, Habermas makes the remarkable move of introducing the category of the “species-ethical,” which is supposed to be the domain of questions raised by the human species as a whole about the question of what it is to be human. This theoretical move extends further steps Habermas had already taken in speaking of ethical solidarity within the global community. -/- . (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas ist nicht der Erste, der in den letzten Jahren zu der Diagnose gelangt ist, dass das Internet und die sozialen Medien zu einem dramatischen Wandel der politischen Öffentlichkeit geführt hätten, mit gravierenden Folgen für die Existenzbedingungen der westlichen Demokratien. Aber wenn er, einer der international bedeutendsten und wirkmächtigsten politischen Theoretiker der letzten Jahrzehnte, sich dazu äußert, wie sich die „Struktur der Öffentlichkeit“ wandelt und was das für die Demokratie bedeutet, dann hat das einen besonderen Stellenwert.

Glauben und Wissen bei Habermas In dem zweibändigen Spätwerk "Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie" (2019) hat Habermas eine umfassende Genealogie nachmetaphysischen Denkens vorgelegt. In einer Tagung an der Universität Wien im Jahr 2021 sind die zehn Hauptkapitel des opus magnum analysiert worden. Da das nachmetaphysische Denken nach Habermas aus den okzidentalen Diskursen über die Beziehungen zwischen „Glauben und Wissen“ hervorgegangen ist, beziehen sich die Beiträge auf ein breites Spektrum an Themen: • einerseits auf die geistigen Aufbrüche der (...) Achsenzeit und die christlichen Theologien und Philosophien von der Spätantike bis zu Luther • andererseits auf die Philosophie der Aufklärung, die sich nach Habermas mit Hume und Kant in zwei Stränge aufspaltet, auf Hegel als Begründer des Diskurses der Moderne und auf das nachidealistische Denken von Feuerbach bis Peirce. Zu den detailreichen Studien über seine Geschichte der Philosophie nimmt zudem Habermas in einer Replik ausführlich Stellung. (shrink)

Myths – symbolically dense narratives in wide cultural circulation that resist critical scrutiny – are often thought to be counterproductive to political discourse, but they are also ubiquitous in contemporary culture and society. Just two years apart, Jürgen Habermas and Hans Blumenberg developed contrasting visions of how we ought to respond to the myths in our society. By reconstructing their disagreement, this paper uncovers the distinctive challenge of balancing a commitment to political emancipation with the distinctive opacity of myths (...) to critical reason. I argue for an alternative approach to myths than those in the theoretical mainstream, taking Blumenberg’s relatively neglected position as a starting point. Blumenberg invites us to pay closer attention to the cognitive needs that necessitate the generation of myths, while simultaneously reminding us of our own creative agency to reinvent them. (shrink)

Lo studio della personalità umana ha impegnato, per lungo tempo, la riflessione di Habermas non solo perché egli interessato a indagare l’apporto delle funzioni soggettive al processo di riproduzione simbolica delle altre componenti del mondo vitale e, viceversa, come queste forniscano il contesto socio-culturale dell’ontogenesi. Il confronto con l’epistemologia genetica di Piaget, Kohlberg e Selman, la psicologia sociale di Mead e la psicoanalisi freudiana dischiude, soprattutto, l’orizzonte interpretativo all’interno dal quale Habermas ricercava un modello per la configurazione metodologica (...) delle scienze sociali in una prospettiva ricostruttiva. Questa è la ragione fondamentale per cui è opportuno interessarsi al tentativo habermasiano di applicare il modello ricostruttivo nel campo della teoria della socializzazione. (shrink)

In this paper I examine Habermas’ conception of the market in The Theory of Communicative Action (TCA). Habermas’ characterization of the market as norm-free has been controversial and I discuss three objections to it: the claims that it (1) conflates of action types, types of action coordination and spheres of action, (2) cannot account for the normative structure of the social organization of labour, and (3) that it makes impossible to make moral judgments about behaviour in the market. (...) I conclude that while some of these objections are unfounded, we have reason to revise Habermas’ substantive claims about the market. I also stress the importance of distinguishing between the TCA’s methodology and its time-diagnostic thrust. Next, I assess the colonization thesis through a case study of the commodification of higher education. I conclude that this thesis remains plausible, but that it needs to be supplemented with a theory of ideology. (shrink)

In response to Professor Rorty’s reaction to Professor Habermas’s paper in this symposium, I confess that I am still not sure I understand Rorty’s hostility to ideals such as the ideal of truth. Such ideals as the ideal of truth -- and ideals like those of reason and morality surely stand and fall with the ideal of truth -- seem plainly to have an enormous pragmatic value. They lure us out of our too-constrained, too-limited ethnocentric or idiosyncratic frames of (...) reference. It is always possible, of course, that such ideals may be abused; they have frequently been deployed, in particular, as clubs used to beat down views and modes of behavior that are threatening or otherwise disliked. But they need not be abused. Their proven and potential value is quite extraordinary. They offer us standards which pay explicit respect to the principle that the criteria we use for evaluating ideas and modes of behavior should be nonethnocentric and nonidiosyncratic. They offer us standards that we can appeal to in luring ourselves or others to step outside of our relatively narrow present points of view here and now and toward a broader perspective that can serve us better tomorrow and elsewhere. (shrink)

Abstract According to Habermas' colonization thesis, reification is a social pathology that arises when the communicative infrastructure of the lifeworld is 'colonized' by money and power. In this paper I argue that, thirty years after the publication of the Theory of Communicative Action, this thesis remains compelling. However, while Habermas offers a functionalist explanation of reification, his normative criticism of it remains largely implicit: he never explains what is wrong with reification from the perspective of the people whose (...) social relations are reified. As a result, Habermas cannot explain why only some forms of colonization lead to reification effects. In particular, he suggests that reification effects result from the juridification of communicatively structured domains of action but not from the commodification of labour power. I criticize this argument and suggest that if the normative dimension of the colonization thesis is made explicit, a more nuanced explanation of reification becomes possible. (shrink)

The essay ends addressing the fracture lines dividing the European Left as far as the integration process is concerned, also among those who disapprove of the levelling of social democracy with its dominant austerity policies imposed by communitarian institutions. A “duel on the Left” – we one would have written – all the more interesting because Martinelli compares two German intellectuals, both hostile to the lasting compromise of the Große Koalition that governs the country and on which the destiny of (...) the European Union depends. Wolfgang Streeck, director of the Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung in Cologne, and Jürgen Habermas, the grand maestro of critical theory. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas has emerged as a sharp, and occasionally harsh, critic of the Bush administration’s policies since the Iraq war. Habermas has developed this critique in several of his short pieces and interviews, some of which are available in fine collections in both English and other languages. However, the occasional and journalistic character of Habermas’ political interventions often hide the theoretical basis of his critique. In this paper, I argue that Habermas’ critique of the Bush administration’s (...) foreign policy emanates from, and is founded upon, his conception of modernity, and specifically his views about the relationship between “particularity” and “generality.” The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate how Habermas’ critique can actually be read as a critique of particularism, which Habermas sees operating behind American (and British) foreign policy, and which, in his view, compromises the key achievements of modernity (especially in its Kantian version.). (shrink)

In Italien war die Rezeption von Jürgen Habermas über die Jahrzehnte konstant; bibliographischen Daten zufolge steht Italien nach Deutschland und den USA an dritter Stelle. Dennoch lautet unsere These, dass das Forschungsprogramm von Habermas in der italienischen scientific community marginal war – insofern ist im soziologischen Sinne Pierre Bourdieus eher von einem akademisch-wissenschaftlichen »Feld« zu sprechen, da es bezogen auf die Habermas-Rezeption keine Homogenität und Identität gibt.

In The Future of Human Nature, Jürgen Habermas raises the question of whether the embryonic genetic diagnosis and genetic modification threatens the foundations of the species ethics that underlies current understandings of morality. While morality, in the normative sense, is based on moral interactions enabling communicative action, justification, and reciprocal respect, the reification involved in the new technologies may preclude individuals to uphold a sense of the undisposability of human life and the inviolability of human beings that is necessary (...) for their own identity as well as for reciprocal relations. Engaging with liberal bioethics and Catholic approaches to bioethics, the article clarifies how Habermas’ position offers a radical critique of liberal autonomy while maintaining its postmetaphysical stance. The essay argues that Habermas’ approach may guide the question of rights of future generations regarding germline gene editing. But it calls for a different turn in the conversation between philosophy and theology, namely one that emphasizes the necessary attention to rights violations and injustices as a common, postmetaphysical starting point for critical theory and critical theology alike. In 2001, Jürgen Habermas published a short book on questions of biomedicine that took many by surprise.[1] To some of his students, the turn to a substantive position invoking the need to comment on a species ethics rather than outlining a public moral framework was seen as the departure from the “path of deontological virtue,”[2] and at the same time a departure from postmetaphysical reason. Habermas’ motivation to address the developments in biomedicine had certainly been sparked by the intense debate in Germany, the European Union, and internationally on human cloning, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, embryonic stem cell research, and human enhancement. He turned to a strand of critical theory that had been pushed to the background by the younger Frankfurt School in favor of cultural theory and social critique, even though it had been an important element of its initial working programs. The relationship of instrumental reason and critical theory, examined, among others, by Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse and taken up in Habermas’ own Knowledge and Interest and Theory of Communicative Action became ever-more actual with the development of the life sciences, human genome analysis, and genetic engineering of human offspring. Today, some of the fictional scenarios discussed at the end of the last century as “science fiction” have become reality: in 2018, the first “germline gene-edited” children were born in China.[3] Furthermore, the UK’s permission to create so-called “three-parent” children may create a legal and political pathway to hereditary germline interventions summarized under the name of “gene editing.”In this article, I want to explore Habermas’ “substantial” argument in the hope that philosophy and theology become allies in their struggle against an ever-more reifying lifeworld, which may create a “moral void” that would, at least from today’s perspective, be “unbearable”, and for upholding the conditions of human dignity, freedom, and justice. I will contextualize Habermas’ concerns in the broader discourse of bioethics, because only by doing this, his concerns are rescued from some misinterpretations.[1] Jürgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature.[2] Ibid., 125, fn. 58. 8[3] Up to the present, no scientific publication of the exact procedure exists, but it is known that the scientist, Jiankui He, circumvented the existing national regulatory framework and may have misled the prospective parents about existing alternatives and the unprecedented nature of his conduct. Yuanwu Ma, Lianfeng Zhang, and Chuan Qin, "The First Genetically Gene‐Edited Babies: It's “Irresponsible and Too Early”," Animal Models and Experimental Medicine ; Matthias Braun, Meacham, Darian, "The Trust Game: Crispr for Human Germline Editing Unsettles Scientists and Society," EMBO reports 20, no. 2. (shrink)

Habermas’ theory of communicative action is explored as an orientation to the question of understanding which negotiates a pathway between two opposing (and complementary) theoretical frameworks—namely, hermeneutical-relational and empirical-analytical frameworks. His perspective grounds speech, action and understanding in the ethics of human relations. In his approach, understanding is fixed by particular events or situations about which intersubjective agreement must be achieved through the offer and acceptance of reasons that simultaneously orient actors to three worlds: the objective, the social and (...) the personal worlds. This approach raises the question as to whether the process of abstracting from the particular event to the general form, through such rational discourse, might create systems of understanding which silence individual expression and naming, particularly if such expression involves an identity that is not shared with others in the group. In other words, is the origin of an event or situation necessarily a null point for all actors? As this question is explored, metaphor comes to the fore as a complementary process of showing that which cannot be grounded in the dominant system of understanding. The pivot role of naming in the formal structure of Godel’s First Incompleteness Theorem for Number Theory demonstrates the challenge to Habermas’ theory. (shrink)

The purpose of the paper is to analyze the thesis that an agreement between representatives of two different cultures can and should be reached at a theoretical level. The author tries to verify the Theory of Communicative Action proposed by Jürgen Habermas in the light of philosophical reflections of American neopragmatist Stanley Fish. Habermas is one of the most important and widely read social theorists in the post-Second World War era. He is also one of the authors of (...) the concept of deliberative democracy, which holds that, for a democratic decision to be legitimate, it must be preceded by authentic deliberation – disinterested exchange of reasons – not merely the aggregation of preferences that occurs in voting. The foundation of deliberative democracy is, according to the German thinker, a communicative action based on communicative rationality. Stanley Fish, in turn, is one of the most eminent American philosophers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The main area of his scientific activity is the theory of literature, law, and history. In the course of his reflections, Fish constructed the concept of an interpretive communities, which implies an original view on the nature of the process of cognition, status of human convictions or beliefs, nature of communication situation and capabilities of theory. The final conclusion stemming from the reflection on Fish’s philosophy explains why Habermas’ theory is not an adequate tool to reach an intercultural agreement. (shrink)

The essay describes some crucial moments in the intellectual biography of Ralf Dahrendorf and Jürgen Habermas, focusing on their frequent relationships in the first forty years. This research shows that, beyond the many divergences, what linked them in an enduring sodality was a radically democratic orientation that was consolidated in some epochal caesuras of German history: the advent of the Third Reich, the Second World War and the Anglo-American liberal “re-education”, the “normalization” of the Adenauer era, the crisis of (...) democracy and the protest of the “Sixty-eight”. (shrink)

Collocandosi nell’ambito della “sistematica” delle teorie sociologiche, il saggio intende compendiare le analisi sulla socializzazione e individualizzazione che Jürgen Habermas ha elaborato per lo più in modo frammentario. Saranno evidenziati la collocazione delle riflessioni sull’ontogenesi nel quadro delle scienze sociali, i presupposti dell’originale approccio “ricostruttivo” e i lineamenti della logica di sviluppo dei processi di apprendimento cognitivi, relazionali e identitari che dalla prima infanzia conducono alla maturità, segnalando da ultimo taluni aspetti critici che la letteratura potrebbe indagare.

In this article, Shea aims to overturn Jürgen Habermas’s characterization of Nietzsche in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity as a postmodern irrationalist. On Habermas’s account, Nietzsche employs Wille zur Macht both as a principle by which to invalidate the claims of metaphysics and as a primordial “other” to reason that unmasks reason as an expression of domination. If Habermas’s reading is correct, Nietzsche’s work is ultimately incoherent since it either lapses back into metaphysics or puts forward a (...) self-refuting anti-metaphysics. Contrary to Habermas, Shea argues that Nietzsche’s theoretical inquiries result from a considered methodological decision on the part of Nietzsche to suspend metaphysical interpretations. For this reason, Wille zur Macht can be read as the fabrication of a post-metaphysical principle for interpreting life rather than as a purported insight into the ultimate nature of reality and thus as a genuine alternative to the trappings of both metaphysical and anti-metaphysical philosophies. (shrink)

Jurgen Habermas has argued that carrying out pre-natal germline enhancements would be inimical to the future child's autonomy. In this article, I suggest that many of the objections that have been made against Habermas' arguments by liberals in the enhancement debate misconstrue his claims. To explain why, I begin by explaining how Habermas' view of personal autonomy confers particular importance to the agent's embodiment and social environment. In view of this, I explain that it is possible (...) to draw two arguments against germline enhancements from Habermas' thought. I call these arguments ‘the argument from negative freedom’ and ‘the argument from natality’. Although I argue that many of the common liberal objections to Habermas are not applicable when his arguments are properly understood, I go on to suggest ways in which supporters of enhancement might appropriately respond to Habermas' arguments. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to discern intersections between the intellectual path of the young Habermas and the issues addressed by the Positivismusstreit, the dispute between Popper and Adorno about methodology in the social sciences. I will present two perspectives, focusing on different temporal moments and interpretative problems. First, I will investigate the young Habermas’ relationship to the intellectual tradition of the Frankfurt School: his views on philosophy and the social sciences, normative bases of critical theory and (...) political attitudes. Second, I will reconstruct Habermas’ contemplation of the Positivismusstreit, in light of his social scientific research programme in the 1960s. The thesis supported is that Habermas developed a position diverging from those of Adorno and Horkheimer, and that his position reasserted the agenda of the ‘first critical theory’. This article highlight the discontinuity between the first and the second generation of the Frankfurt School, the constructive openness to other philosophical and sociological traditions, as well as the aporias of a theory of knowledge not yet oriented towards the programme of reconstructive sciences. (shrink)

Jürgen Habermas’s two-volume Theory of Communicative Action is at once an attempt to develop a socially-based theory of action as an alternative to the subjectivist and individualist underpinnings of much of social theory, a “two-level concept of society that connects the ‘lifeworld’ and ‘system’ paradigms,” a critical theory of modernity which retains the enlightenment ideal of rationally-grounded societies, and a theory of meaning rooted in a developmental logic of world­historical rationality. Habermas seeks to find a via media between (...) totalitarian closure and relativism, to show why the modernist project of a universal reason is still viable, and to propose a “public” discourse of rationally-grounded argumentative speech, or communicative action, as his answer. Despite the widespread attention Habermas’s work has received, and despite my sympathy for issues Habermas has raised, I show why his project is fundamentally flawed because of its uncritical assumption that only critical rationality can provide a legitimate standard for communicative reason: reasonableness is far more than that constricted view. These flaws become particularly evident in examining his analyses of myth, action, lifeworld, George Herbert Mead, and the “three spheres” of modernity. (shrink)

In 2004 Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger participated in a debate on the ‘pre-political moral foundations of the free-state’. Their contributions showed broad agreement on the role of religion in today’s Western secular state and on areas of collaboration and mutual enrichment between Modernity and Christianity in Europe and the West. They diverged regarding the need or not of a common cultural background prior to the existence of the polity. Their diverging point becomes all the more fascinating to the (...) extent that the matter requires wider empirical, analytical and normative research before it can be settled. Nevertheless, the implications that derive from one or the other possibility are very different in terms, for instance, of immigration and citizenship policies. This is already clear in Europe and is becoming more evident in general in Western democracies. (shrink)