Jürgen Habermas is a German philosopher and
social theorist, a leading representative of the Frankfurt School. This school of thought developed
at the Institute for Social Research founded in Frankfurt, Germany, and it
introduced a style of analysis known as critical theory. Critical theory draws
on the ideas of German political philosopher Karl Marx in its studies of the sources of
domination and authority in society that restrict human freedom.
In his later work Habermas turned his
theory of communicative action to the domains of politics and law. He became an
advocate of “deliberative democracy,” in which a government’s laws and
institutions would be a reflection of free and open public discussion. Habermas
assumes that many Western beliefs—for example, the legitimacy of private
property—would have to be revised if they were subject to uncoerced and
unlimited discussion by free and equal human beings. In the democracy he
envisions, men and women, aware of their interest in autonomy (self-governance)
and responsibility, would agree to adhere only to the better-reasoned argument.
As Seyla Benhabib, a professor of political
theory at Harvard, explains: "Habermas believes human social life rests on
our capacity to have more or less clear communication with each other." We
communicate—to paraphrase Descartes—therefore our society exists.
A rather antiquated, idealistic message to
be spreading, some might think, in a world of abusive talk-show hosts,
misogynistic rap groups and earphone-encased teen-agers. Habermas is, to be
sure, as concerned about pop culture as the next philosopher. But he continues
to believe that somewhere behind the better of our attempts to communicate with
each other, there have to be some shared values, shared respect and
acknowledged equality. He sees the participants in conversations, in other
words, as playing on the same teams. And as they talk together, Habermas
insists, they make an effort to employ reason.
Habermas' theory, she explains, calls into
question a belief that is widely held by cynical and fashionable thinkers on
the right and the left: the belief that human behaviour should be seen as a
battlefield upon which each of us is merely out for our own strategic
interests. In our "communicative actions," the right sees selfish
individuals struggling to get a leg up on each other; the postmodern left sees
the powerful exploiting the powerless; but Habermas sees, of all things, a kind
of cooperation. Indeed, he shares with Socrates an almost utopian belief in the
wholesomeness of debate and discussion.
Habermas is perhaps the last major thinker
to embrace the basic project of the Enlightenment, a project for which he is
often attacked. This suggests that the Enlightenment was a struggle, which
began 200 years ago, in the name of reason, against tyranny, superstition and
inequity. Voltaire and Thomas Jefferson saw themselves as involved in that
struggle. Kant also developed these thoughts and Habermas has contributed to
it, too.
But the Enlightenment, you see, left open a
crucial question: How does reason -- at whose behest so much has been
challenged -- justify itself? Reason has undercut our belief in the spiritual,
in the traditional. What is to prevent reason from challenging the reason of
the Modern era? When the media pay attention to Habermas, it is usually to pair
him in this theoretical debate over issues surrounding postmodernism. By
defending Reason and progress and that real truth can be found through
'communicative action', Habermas usually in the minority in the contemporary
philosophical conference circuit.
Foucault, Gadamer, Lyotard, Derrida, etc. are
often set up as his opponents who suggest that in the postmodern age humans
aren't seen as having universal impulses or sharing a common ground.
Postmodernists have no use for such generalizations. Human attitudes, they
insist, vary as much as human cultures do. Japanese see things differently than
Swedes. Metallica lovers probably see things differently than those who fancy
Counting Crows. The world, postmodernists maintain, is full of egocentric and
ethnocentric biases, full of complexities. Attempts to squeeze it into smooth,
rectangular packages—in philosophy or in architecture—are futile and foolish.
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