50377461 Jurgen Habermas

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Mar 4, 2011

Contemporary Literary Criticism | Habermas, Jrgen - Introduction

Jrgen Habermas 1929

German social philosopher and cultural critic.

The following entry presents criticism of Habermas's work through 1996.

INTRODUCTION

Widely regarded as the most influential philosopher in late-twentieth-century Germany,

Habermas has focused his career on the nature of the public realm. His scholarly writings

have influenced a broad range of disciplines, including philosophy, social theory,

hermeneutics, anthropology, linguistics, ethics, educational theory, and public policy.

Beginning with Strukturwandel der Offenlichkeit(1962; The Structural Transformation of

the Public Sphere), Habermas has produced major works on the development of public

discourse, the relation between radical theory and political practice, the conflicting

influences informing human understanding, crises of legitimacy in the modern state and

capitalist society, social evolution, and communicative social action. Habermas's best-known

and most accomplished theory is a synthesis of linguistic philosophy and sociological

systems theory. In addition he has formulated what has come to be called "discourse

ethics," a normative philosophy which postulates how moral consensus is achieved through

public discussion by a community of rational, self-interested subjects. Habermas's dense

essays possess a sharp critical edge that requires reflection about a wide range of

contemporary political, cultural, and theoretical issues. Often characterized as a modern

proponent of thephilosophe of the Enlightenment, Habermas also has publicly denounced

violations of civil rights and historical revisionism of the Holocaust. Douglas Kellner hasremarked that Habermas is "very much a public intellectual who involves himself in the key

social and political debates of the day."

Biographical Information


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Born June 18, 1929, in Dsseldorf and raised in Nazi Germany, Habermas was deeply

affected by the moral and political unrest of his youth. After World War II, he attended the

universities at Gttingen, Zrich, and Bonn, where he received his Ph.D. in 1954. During the

late 1950s, he turned radical while serving as Theodor Adorno's assistant at the University

of Frankfurt, where he studied the works of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. Written as his

"habilitation" (a dissertation qualifying a person to become a professor) at Marburg in 1961,

the widely acclaimed Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere established Habermas's

reputation as a social scientist, endearing him to the Leftist student movement and earning

him a lecturing position in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg in 1962. The next year

he published the essay collection Theorie und Praxis (1963; Theory and Practice). Habermas

left Heidelberg in 1964, taking a position as professor of philosophy and sociology at

Frankfurt where he met and began associations with members of the so-called Frankfurt

School of critical theoryAdorno, Max Horkheimer, and Herbert Marcuse. Here, Habermaswrote the pivotal Erkenntnis und Interesse (1968;Knowledge and Human Interests)

and Toward A Rational Society(1970), both of which granted him recognition as the new

theoretical force of Frankfurt. In 1971, he assumed the directorship of the Max-Planck-

Institut in Starnberg, where he produced Philosophisch-politische

Profile (1971), Legitimationsprobleme im Sptkapitalismus (1973; Legitimation Crisis),

and Communication and the Evolution of Society(1979). By 1982 Habermas had achieved

renown as a great philosopher, especially with the publication of his two-volume

masterpiece, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (1982; The Theory of Communicative

Action). Habermas resumed teaching philosophy and sociology at Frankfurt in 1983, and

since then he has continued to lecture and write; among his recent publications

are Moralbewusstsein und Kommunikatives Handeln (1983; Moral Consciousness and

Communicative Action), The Philosophical Discourse of

Modernity(1987), Nachmetaphysisches Denken (1988; Postmetaphysical Thinking), The

New Conservatism (1990), and Faktizitt und Geltung(1992; Between Facts and Norms).

Major Works

Habermas's scholarly writings strive for a comprehensive critical theory of contemporary

society. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere traces the development and

eclipse of the public sphere in modern society and contains the seeds of Habermas's

formulation of discourse ethics and communicative action. The essays collected in Theory

and Practice elaborate the relation between theory and practice through criticism of

positivism, reason, philosophy, and politics. Zur Logik der Sozialwissenschaften (1967; On


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the Logic of the Social Sciences) compares and analyzes positivistic, functional, and

behaviorist approaches and historical, narrative, and hermeneutical approaches to social

theory, demonstrating the limitations and inadequacies of each approach. Habermas's first

systematic development of his ideas, Knowledge and Human Interests formulates a

tripartite cognitive theory comprising the "technical interest" of the empirical-analytical

sciences; the "practical interest" of the historical-hermeneutical sciences; and the

"emancipatory interest" of critical social sciences. Legitimation Crisis treats crises of

economic life, motivation, rationality, and legitimacy in advanced capitalist

societies. Communication and the Evolution of Societycontains Habermas's revision of

Marxist historical materialism in terms of his theory of communicative action. The Theory of

Communicative Action interprets Habermas's theories of social action and of modernity in

the context of the classic theoretical positions of Marx, Max Weber, George Mead, and

Talcott Parsons, among others. The articles in Moral Consciousness and CommunicativeAction present Habermas's evolved positions in philosophy, the social sciences, and ethics,

while defending a notion of critical rationality rooted in his theories of communicative action

and discourse ethics. Illuminating some key themes found in his previous

works, Postmetaphysical Thinking focuses on the nature of reason and the question of

metaphysics, attempting to hold a middle position that is postmetaphysical without

relinquishing the role of reason and philosophy. Between Facts and Norms addresses the

question of political legitimacy by developing new understandings of law, democracy, and

the relationship between them in terms of "deliberative politics." However, Habermas's

works often speak to audiences who do not follow his basic work in philosophy or social

theory. He practices the communicational ethics that he defends theoretically by

contributing pieces to a range of contemporary cultural and political debates. Toward a

Rational Societyfeatures essays on student protests of the 1960s, the democratization of

German universities, the role of technology and science as ideology, and the "scientization"

of politics and public opinion. The biographical sketches in Philosophical-Political

Profiles focus on select twentieth-century philosophers, notably Martin Heidegger, Walter

Benjamin, and Hannah Arendt. The lectures in the Philosophical Discourse of

Modernityengage the current debates about modernity versus postmodernity in light of thecritical theories of such writers as Freidrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, and Jacques

Derrida. The New Conservatism reflects on contemporary neoconservatism and recent

German debate about its Nazi past. Critics usually concede that the interview

collectionsAutonomy and Solidarity(1986) and The Past as Future (1994) offer "a

marvelous point of entry" into Habermas's thought, as Martin Jay put it.


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Critical Reception

Since he began to formulate his discourse ethics in the 1970s, Habermas has often been

accused, from various directions, of confusing a principle of political democracy with one of

morality. Peter Dews has observed that "Habermas, when sympathetically interpreted, has

failed to capture philosophically our core sense of morality, while offering a compelling basis

for the regulation of public issues through discussion and collective decision-making." Jay

perhaps has summarized best the critical reaction to Habermas's thought: "To his admirers,

Habermas has accomplished a much-needed reconstruction of historical materialism by

incorporating insights ranging from ordinary language philosophy and hermeneutics to

developmental psychology and sociological systems theory. To his detractors, the result has

been an amalgam of ill-fitting elements that merits comparison more to Rube Goldberg than

with that of Marx." Yet Onora O'Neill has concluded that Habermas's achievement

demonstrates that "philosophical writing may be engag without being ephemeral."

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50377461 Jurgen Habermas