Interview: "Jürgen Habermas Still Believes in Modernity"

Interview with Habermas in "The Nation":

"Jürgen Habermas Still Believes in Modernity" [open access]

Excerpt:

Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins: The origins of critical theory lie in Marxism, psychoanalysis, and the critique of power, ideology, and domination. These ideas are less present in your book [Also a History of Philosophy], even though they played a major role in your previous works. Where do you situate your book in relation to critical theory in the broad sense?

Jürgen Habermas: In the preface to my book, I referred to the 1937 essay by Horkheimer and Marcuse, “Philosophy and Critical Theory,” from the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, which can be considered the founding document of Critical Theory. I remain indebted to this source for the basic social-theoretical assumptions that informed the background of my history of philosophy. But these assumptions themselves are not the theme of the book. On the other hand, if you ask what has become of my connection to the tradition of Western Marxism, I would remind you that the research of Critical Theory was focused from its beginnings on explaining the unexpected stability of capitalism despite all its crises. And as far as my involvement in West German day-to-day politics was concerned, I must confess that, as a leftist, I was mainly preoccupied with the struggle to liberalize the political mentality of a population that initially remained deeply attached to the Nazi regime.

As far as capitalist development was concerned, a revolutionary transformation of the liberal economic order established since the end of the Second World War was in any case no longer feasible under the conditions of systemic competition with the Soviet regime. And since the end of the Cold War even less so. From the postwar period onwards, my own interest was directed toward welfare state reforms that, if sufficiently radical, could change capitalist democracies beyond recognition. However, in the shadow of the declining superpower, we are currently witnessing the emergence of new fronts with the infiltration of liberal democracies from the right, both nationally and globally Currently, we would be satisfied if our capitalist democracies could defend themselves against a takeover by right-wing populism—but even that might well be no longer possible without extensive reforms of capitalism.

***

Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins has posted Jürgen Habermas's answer to a question about Hegel — one that didn’t make it into the published version of the interview — on Bluesky. You can read it here (pdf).

Michel Rosenfeld: Habermas’ Paradigms of Law and Dialectics

Michel Rosenfeld has uploaded a new paper on Habermas:

“Habermas’ Paradigms of Law and Dialectics” [open access]

(Cardozo Legal Studies Research Paper, no. 2025-16)

Abstract:

"In his magisterial Between facts and norms: contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy, published in the 1990’s, Jürgen Habermas argues for a proceduralist deliberative legal paradigm consistent with his discourse ethics. Relying on Kant and Rousseau, Habermas’ deliberative proceduralism considers constitutions and other important laws legitimate if they discursively call for a consensus as being both universalizable and self-given among all those subjected to them. The 1990’s saw a proliferation of national and transnational constitutions or constitution-like legal regimes throughout the globe. This prompted Habermas, with special focus on the EU, to promote the concept of “constitutional patriotism” as a means toward proceduralist legitimation of legal regimes binding together otherwise largely divergent populations.

Much has changed by the mid-2020’s with the rise of anti-pluralistic populism and illiberalism. Does this undermine the attractiveness or viability of Habermas’ proceduralist legal paradigm?

This chapter maintains that it does if Habermas’ treatment of the sequence of the three legal paradigms that he analyzes—the legal bourgeois one, followed by the social welfare one, which eventually yields to the proceduralist one—is approached dialectically. On the surface, Habermas’ theory is undialectical and he explicitly parts company with Hegel and Marx. Nevertheless, the chapter argues that Habermas’ treatment of his three paradigms is best understood dialectically. Habermas himself postulates that all legal paradigms confront the dialectics between legal and factual equality. Moreover, considering the differences between Habermas’ theory and Kant’s and Rousseau’s, on the one hand, and certain key affinities between Habermas and Hegel, on the other, leads to the conclusion that the dialectical interpretive perspective is thee most rewarding. Notably, it follows from this that the mid2020’s require a transition to a fourth paradigm that must be, at least in part, substantive."

Ute Habermas-Wesselhoeft dies at 95

Günter Rohrbach - "Ein wunderbarer Mensch" (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 14-06-2025)

Elisabeth von Thadden - "Die Ermöglicherin. Zum Tod von Ute Habermas-Wesselhoeft" (Die Zeit, 18-06-2025)

Speaking Out Against the Trump Administration

Letter: Prize-winning political scientists speak out

From Francis Fukuyama and others

(Financial Times online, May 23, 2025)

It is from a position of scholarly responsibility that we, as winners of the Johan Skytte Prize in political science — an award recognising the most significant contributions to the field — speak out. 

We are deeply concerned about recent actions taken by the Trump administration that undermine the independence and academic freedom of research universities, colleges and scholarly institutions. 

In the words of Harvard president Alan Garber: “No government, regardless of which party is in power, should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and what areas of study and research they can pursue.” 

We strongly support these values. As award-winning political scientists who do not know each others’ political affiliations, we collectively fear that the current actions of the US government are a threat to the rule of law and civil peace, and we condemn the tools being used to achieve the administration’s goals. Specifically, we condemn the US government’s use of extortion to coerce independent institutions to act in accordance with the administration’s preferences; its illegal detention and deportation of hundreds of our international students and our international faculty colleagues; its deliberate fostering of bitterness among students and faculty on hundreds of university campuses in America; its punishing of researchers unrelated to the charges against their universities; its fear-mongering against those with whom the president disagrees; its short-sighted and senseless cuts to basic research that benefits the US and the world; and its encroachments on academic freedom and the core mission of American universities and colleges. 

These actions threaten the world’s leading free and open society. Decades of political science research show that societies that are open and pluralistic, with high levels of both individual and political rights, are more prosperous, more peaceful and more effective than autocracies that are closed and stagnant. President Donald Trump and his administration are on a spectacularly dangerous path. 

We, the authors of this letter, have been awarded the annual Johan Skytte Prize at Uppsala University for outstanding contributions to political science. As political scientists we have learnt how easily voters can be swayed to support anti-democratic candidates; but it is democratic and civic institutions, ones that Trump seeks to dismantle, that often save us from ourselves. 

Our concern is that American universities will not be able to continue to be the best and most innovative in the world, attracting brilliant minds from around the world to flourish in a community of students and peers. 

The price of such a disastrous future is incalculable. 

Francis Fukuyama, Stanford University 

Peter J Katzenstein, Cornell University 

Jane Mansbridge, Harvard University 

Pippa Norris, Harvard University 

Robert Axelrod, University of Michigan (emeritus) 

David Collier, University of California, Berkley (emeritus) 

Jon Elster, Columbia University (emeritus) 

Martha Finnemore, George Washington University, Washington, DC 

Robert E. Goodin, Australian National University (emeritus) 

Jürgen Habermas, Johan Wolfgang Goethe-Universität, Frankfurt am Main (emeritus) 

Robert O. Keohane, Princeton University (emeritus) 

Herbert P. Kitschelt, Duke University 

David D. Laitin, Stanford University 

Arend Lijphart, University of California, San Diego (emeritus) 

Margaret Levi, Stanford University 

Carole Pateman, University of California, Los Angeles (emerita) 

Robert D. Putnam, Harvard University (emeritus) 

Adam Przeworski, New York University (emeritus) 

Philippe Schmitter, European University Institute (emeritus) 

Rein Taagepera, University of California, Irvine (emeritus) 

Alexander Wendt, Ohio State University

Peter Niesen: Felmon Davis (1.1.1949–7.5.2025)

The philosopher Felmon Davis passed away at the age of 76 on May 7, 2025 in his adopted home of Mannheim, Germany. Before his retirement in 2018, he was Professor of Philosophy at Union College, Schenectady, NY. He grew up in Philadelphia and attended Haverford College. This is where he met Richard Bernstein and was first introduced to the thought of Jürgen Habermas. After taking his BA at Haverford with distinction, he went on to Princeton to do his PhD with Richard Rorty. In 1974-75, he spent a year in Munich to engage with the researchers at the Starnberg Max Planck Institute during Habermas’ tenure there. After Rorty had departed for the University of Virginia, Davis completed his thesis under the supervision of Raymond Geuss. The dissertation analyzed the notion of ‘unavoidability’ in Habermas’ theory of communicative action, in a critical attempt to clarify its sources of normativity. From the late 1980s, he regularly visited Frankfurt, later Gießen Universities, first as a DAAD scholar. He soon established himself as a highly regarded figure among colleagues and students, whom he treated with unflagging curiosity and egalitarian respect.

Felmon Davis’s research centered on moral theory and the philosophy of religion. He tried to convince his Frankfurt friends of a meta-ethically realist interpretation of discourse ethics, which he defended in a 1994 article entitled “Discourse Ethics and Ethical Realism. A Realist Re-Alignment of Discourse Ethics” in the European Journal of Philosophy. His style in philosophical debate was not adversarial, but invitational: He thought it his duty to present his position as attractive as possible in order to invite colleagues to join him. In the late 1990s, he pre-empted much of the current philosophical discussion on the notion of race, and about its origins in the history of philosophy, in a review of Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze’s path-breaking reader Race and the Enlightenment (Constellations, 1998) and in ‘Rassendiskurs, Gerechtigkeit und Demokratie in den USA. Eine Fallstudie‘ in Hauke Brunkhorst’s collection Demokratischer Experimentalismus (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1998).

In later years, he focussed on the epistemic credentials of religion. As a non-believer, having been brought up in a Catholic family, he vehemently opposed the liberal exclusion of religious discourse from the political public sphere, without thereby awarding it claims to rationality. The upshot of his decade-long reflection can be found in his chapter on Habermas on monotheism in the Habermas Handbook (C. Lafont, R. Kreide, H. Brunkhorst (eds.), NY: Columbia UP, 207-218), and especially in his article ‘Habermas's Expressivist Theology: Chalice Half-Full?’ (Las Torres de Lucca. International Journal of Political Philosophy 2012), probably the only paper to elucidate Habermas’ view of religion with Simon Blackburn’s theory of morality. His dialectical skills are shown to great effect in a recorded debate on the rationality of Christianity with William Lane Craig. He was an early adapter to all things digital and to computer ethics and metaphysics in particular.

After their retirement, Felmon Davis and his spouse Elisabeth Egetemeyr relocated to Mannheim, Germany. Davis was a regularly visitor and guest at Regina Kreide’s doctoral colloquium in Political Theory at Gießen University. His reputation was legendary among the students he met and taught at Frankfurt, Darmstadt, Gießen and Hamburg. He increasingly despaired of the political development of the U.S., but always aimed at some reconciliation, at least on an epistemological level, as in his unpublished paper on ‘Democracy and the Religious Right’ (2019, on ResearchGate). He taught his final course on “Fear, Truth, and Democracy” in the Winter of 2021/22 at Hamburg University.

We’re privileged to have known him.

Peter Niesen, Hamburg, 9.5.2025

See also: "The Union community mourns philosopher Felmon Davis"

Neues Buch: Was ist Sozialphilosophie?

Was ist Sozialphilosophie? 

von Martin Saar

(Suhrkamp Verlag, 2025)

175 S.

Kurzbeschreibung

Seit den schulbildenden Aufsätzen Max Horkheimers vor fast 100 Jahren führt der Begriff "Sozialphilosophie" Konnotationen mit sich, die mehr als die Untersuchung eines philosophischen Gegenstands neben anderen erwarten lassen, nämlich einen spezifischen, kritischen Zugang zu ihrem Objekt: der zeitgenössischen Gesellschaft. In dieser Sammlung programmatischer Texte geht Martin Saar dem Einsatz, dem Gestus, den Verfahren und den Grundbegriffen einer solchen gesellschaftskritischen Reflexion nach. Er zeichnet das Profil einer auch heute noch schlagkräftigen, zeitdiagnostisch motivierten Form des Denkens, das sich nah an die faktischen Kämpfe und Realitäten unserer politischen und sozialen Welt heranwagt.

Inhalt [Leseprobe]

Einleitung. Kritik, Theorie und die Philosophie des Sozialen

1. Die Kunst, Abstand zu nehmen. Überlegungen  zur Logik der Sozialkritik

2. Macht und Kritik

3. Ordnung – Praxis – Subjekt. Oder: Was ist Sozialphilosophie?

4. Kritik, Gesellschaft, Widerstand

5. Philosophie in ihrer (und gegen ihre) Zeit

6. Immanente Normativität

7. Kritische Theorie nach der ontologischen Wende

Martin Saar ist Professor für Sozialphilosophie an der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main.

Habermas distances himself from Google's “Habermas Machine”

I have previously pointed out that the researchers behind the so-called “Habermas Machine” seem to have only a limited grasp of Jürgen Habermas’s work. Affiliated with Google DeepMind, these researchers developed an AI tool intended to mediate deliberation – and named it after him without his approval.

Habermas himself has now publicly distanced himself from the project, saying that his name is apparently being used for promotional purposes.

This is reported in an article in Süddeutsche Zeitung (April 16, 2025), in which Habermas also argues that the researchers have misunderstood his theory.

In response, Google DeepMind has stated that it has “no intention of using the name Habermas in connection with any project or service in the future.”

Suhrkamp director was a member of the Nazi Party

The German weekly newspaper "Die Zeit" published an article on April 10 revealing that the later Suhrkamp director Siegfried Unseld (1924-2002) voluntarily joined the NSDAP shortly before his 18th birthday in 1942. 

"Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" has asked a number of Suhrkamp authors if they were aware of this membership. 

Jürgen Habermas states to the newspaper (April 11): "Ich hatte keine Ahnung von Siegfried Unselds Eintritt in die Partei: ebenso wenig Alexander Kluge. Ich glaube auch nicht, dass er mit einem der mir bekannten engeren Autoren darüber je gesprochen hat. Aber spielt der Umstand als solcher wirklich eine Rolle für die Beurteilung der Lebensleistung dieses Mannes?"

See Patrick Bahners' comment "Theorie und Praxis. Habermas spricht über Unselds schweigen" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, April 12). 

Symposium: "The Crisis of Western Democracies"

A number of German political scientists, historians, and sociologists participated this week in a symposium in Munich on “The Crisis of Western Democracies: Causes and Possible Solutions”, organized by the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation. 

Among the participants were: Hauke Brunkhorst, Christoph Möllers, Rainer Forst, Wolfgang Merkel, Günter Frankenberg, Smail Rapic, Stefan Müller-Doohm, Klaus Günther, Hannes Kuch, and Norbert Frei. For health reasons, Jürgen Habermas was unable to participate.

You can read two reports from the meeting:

* Johan Schloemann - Demokratie verteidigen? Klingt leider viel zu defensiv [Süddeutsche Zeitung; paywall]

* Michael Hesse - Wenn die Polarnacht wartet [Frankfurter Rundschau; open access]

Deliberation and Voting

Forthcoming issue of "Res Publica" on deliberation and voting:

* Suzanne A. Bloks & Dorota Mokrosinska - Rethinking Democratic Decision-Making: Integrating Deliberation and Voting (Open access)

* Cristina Lafont - Deliberation and Voting: An Institutional Account of the Legitimacy of Democratic Decision-Making Procedures [Abstract]

* Ana Tanasoca - Proportionality in Its Place: Weighted Internal Deliberation (Open access)

* Pierre-Étienne Vandamme - The Right to Expressive Voting Methods [Abstract]

* Simone Chambers & Mark E. Warren - Why Deliberation and Voting Belong Together (Open access)

* Suzanne A. Bloks - Heterogeneous Electoral Constituencies Against Legislative Gridlock (Open access)

* Alice el-Wakil - Referendums, Initiatives, and Voters’ Accountability (Open access)

* Stefan Rummens & Raf Geenens - Lottocracy Versus Democracy (Open access)

* Claudia Landwehr & Armin Schäfer - The Promise of Representative Democracy: Deliberative Responsiveness (Open access)

New book: Reconsidering Habermas’s Colonization Thesis

Reconsidering Habermas's Colonization Thesis

A Critical Theory of Neoliberalism

by Roderick Condon

(Routledge, 2025)

240 pages

Description

This book reconsiders Habermas’s critique of capitalism as a foundation for a critical theory of neoliberalism. Taking criticisms into account, the author refines and redevelops Habermas’s system-lifeworld paradigm in three parts, focusing on system, lifeworld, and communication. The exposition unfolds through a new synthesis and convergence, from within Habermas’s frame, of Axel Honneth, Niklas Luhmann, Talcott Parsons, and Karl Marx. This synthesis is interwoven with an account of the neoliberal turn, such that social theory is historically contextualized and neoliberalism theoretically explained at one and the same time. The end result is a reconstruction of the colonization thesis in a new theory of relinguistification, advancing a communicative, dialectical, and reflexive theory of reification.

Contents [Preview]

1. Introduction - Neoliberalism and Contemporary Critical Theory: A Return to Habermas

2. Social Evolution and the Colonization of the Lifeworld: Neoliberalism and the Blockage of Moral Learning

Part 1: Social Structure and The Evolution of Society

3. Theorizing the Economy: Habermas, Honneth, and Luhmann

4. System-Lifeworld Refined

Part 2: Cultural Structure and the Evolution of Worldviews

5. Habermas and Parsons: Capitalism and Democracy as Evolutionary Logics

6. Modern Culture, Mediation Problems, and Political Ideologies

Part 3: Communicative Structure and the Making of History

7. From Colonization to Relinguistification: Reframing Habermas

8. Colonization as Relinguistification: A Critical Theory of Neoliberalism

9. Conclusion

Essays by Seyla Benhabib on Critical Theory and Law

At the Margins of the Modern State

Critical Theory and Law 

by Seyla Benhabib

(Polity Books, March 2025)

212 pages

Description

Facile expressions such as “Eurocentrism” and “demise of the West and the rise of the rest” miss the real challenge in this situation: how to extend moral, legal and political universalism to address the experiences of the multitude of humanity for whom western modernity has brought not only equality but also subordination, not only emancipation but also domination. Benhabib argues that rethinking this universalist project and participating in world-building together can be achieved by reconstructing and retrieving the best insights of critical social theory in the Frankfurt tradition and the liberal Kantianism of Rawls and Dworkin. In that spirit, this volume addresses state and popular sovereignty, Third World approaches to International Law, the 1951 Refugee Convention, and climate change legislation, while focusing on the changing fortunes of the European Union and cosmopolitanism. Benhabib engages with postcolonial thinkers and argues that, although validity claims and relations of domination and inequality are often intermixed, it is possible to reconstruct the insights of international law to serve a more inclusive universalism and world-building. 

Contents

Part One: The European Modern State from Hegel to Habermas

1. The Specter of Popular Sovereignty in Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms. After Three Decades

2. Hegel’s Concept of the Person and International Human Rights [Lecture: video]

3. Restructuring Democracy and the Idea of Europe (with Stefan Eich)

Part Two: Democracy and Normativity Beyond Borders

4. Ronald Dworkin and The Normative Orders of International Law

5. Beyond the Hermeneutics of Suspicion. Reconstructing Cosmopolitan

 Law [Lecture: video]

6. The End of the 1951 Refugee Convention? Dilemmas of Sovereignty, Territoriality, and Human Rights

Part Three: Sovereignty and Cosmopolitanism and After Europe

7. Sovereignty and Constituent Power

8. Politics in a Planetary Age. The Globe as World, Earth and Planet

9. Habermas’s New Phenomenology of Spirit: Two Centuries after Hegel

10. Conclusion. In Defense of Rational Indignation