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

New essay by Habermas on Europe

New essay by Jürgen Habermas in "Süddeutsche Zeitung (March 22, 2025):

"Für Europa" [paywall]

Zu Donald Trump, dem geopolitischen Umbruch und der Übertölpelung unseres Kontinents. Zugleich eine Warnung vor der Rhetorik der Verfeindung und ein Plädoyer für die Freundschaft mit unseren Nachbarn

dts-nachrichtenagentur.de - "Habermas rät zu militärischer Stärkung der EU"

English version: “Europe Must Go Ahead with its Integration and Self-Defense” (Reset DOC, 03-04-2025, open access) 

Excerpt:

Nicht als hätten die maßgebenden nationalen Politiker des Westens – und im weiteren Sinne der G-7-Länder – je in ihren politischen Perspektiven nahtlos übereingestimmt; aber geteilt haben sie stets das gemeinsame Hintergrundverständnis ihrer Zugehörigkeit zu „dem“ Westen unter Führung der USA. Diese politische Größe ist mit dem jüngsten Regierungsantritt von Donald Trump und dem damit in Gang gekommenen Systemwechsel der USA zerfallen, auch wenn formell das Schicksal der Nato einstweilen noch eine offene Frage ist. Aus europäischer Sicht hat dieser Epochenbruch tiefgreifende Konsequenzen – sowohl für den weiteren Verlauf und ein mögliches Ende des Krieges in der Ukraine, wie für die Notwendigkeit, die Bereitschaft und die Fähigkeit der Europäischen Union, auf die neue Situation eine rettende Antwort zu finden. Andernfalls gerät auch Europa in den Strudel der absteigenden Supermacht. (....)

Ganz unabhängig vom Erfolg scheint Trump mit seiner Hinwendung zu Putin anzuerkennen, dass die USA trotz ihres wirtschaftlichen Übergewichts die weltweite Vorherrschaft einer Supermacht verloren, jedenfalls den politischen Anspruch eines Hegemons aufgegeben haben. Der Ukrainekrieg hat die geopolitischen Kräfteverschiebungen nur beschleunigt – den unverkennbar globalen Aufstieg Chinas und die längerfristigen Erfolge des ehrgeizigen Seidenstraßenprojekts einer strategisch klugen chinesischen Regierung, sodann die ehrgeizigen Ansprüche des konkurrierenden Indien und schließlich die wachsenden weltpolitischen Ansprüche von Mittelmächten wie Brasilien, Südafrika, Saudi-Arabien und anderen Ländern. In ähnlicher Weise sprunghaft ist der südostasiatische Raum in Bewegung. Nicht zufällig ist im vergangenen Jahrzehnt die Literatur zur Neuordnung einer multipolaren Welt auffällig schnell gewachsen. Diese Veränderung der geopolitischen Lage, die durch die Spaltung des Westens nur noch eine Dramatisierung erfahren hat, rückt die aktuelle Aufrüstung der Bundesrepublik in eine ganz andere Perspektive, als uns die höchst spekulativen Annahmen über eine aktuelle Bedrohung der EU durch Russland suggerieren.

Aus meiner Sicht hat sich die Stimmung in unserem Lande – auch forciert von einer einseitigen politischen Meinungsbildung – in den Sog einer gegenseitigen Verfeindung mit dem Aggressor hineinziehen lassen. Selbstverständlich ist der letzte Beschluss des abgewählten Bundestages auch ein unverkennbares Signal der Entschlossenheit, die Ukraine nicht zum Opfer eines über ihre Köpfe hinweg beschlossenen Deals werden zu lassen. Aber unsere auf längere Fristen geplante Aufrüstung dient vor allem einem anderen Ziel: Die Mitgliedsländer der Europäischen Union müssen ihre militärischen Kräfte stärken und bündeln, weil sie sonst in einer geopolitisch in Bewegung geratenen und auseinanderbrechenden Welt politisch nicht mehr zählen. Nur als eine selbständig politisch handlungsfähige Union können die europäischen Länder ihr gemeinsames weltwirtschaftliches Gewicht auch für ihre normativen Überzeugungen und Interessen wirksam zur Geltung bringen. (....)

Comments:

* Rüdiger Suchsland (Telepolis)

* Florian Illies (Die Zeit)

* Björn Schumacher (Junge Freiheit)

* Thomas Schmid (Die Welt)

* Martin Schulze Wessel (Der Spiegel)

* Thomas Ribi (Neue Zürcher Zeitung)

* Jan Opielka (Berliner Zeitung)

* Hélène Miard-Delacroix (Deutschlandfunk Kultur)

* Michael Hesse (Frankfurter Rundschau)

* Norbert Frei (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

* Christian Geyer (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

Fritz W. Scharpf turns 90

"Fritz W. Scharpf wird 90 Jahre alt" (Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung 12-02-2025)

Jürgen Kaube - "Verflechtung als Falle" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 12-02-2025)

Uli Kreikebaum - "Dieser Kölner ist unbekannter Star der Wissenschaft" (Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, 12-02-2025)

An interview with Fritz Scharpf: "Die SPD ist womöglich ein Auslaufmodell" (Frankfurter Rundschau 13-02-2025)

The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism

The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism

by Matthew McManus

(Routledge, 2025)

268 pages

Description

Providing a comprehensive critical genealogy of liberal socialism from a sympathetic but critical standpoint, Matthew McManus traces its core to the Revolutionary period that catalyzed major divisions in liberal political theory to the French Revolution that saw the emergence of writers like Mary Wollstonecraft and Thomas Paine who argued that liberal principles could only be inadequately instantiated in a society with high levels of material and social inequality to John Stuart Mill, the first major thinker who declared himself a liberal and a socialist and who made major contributions to both traditions through his efforts to synthesize and conciliate them. McManus argues for liberal socialism as a political theory which could truly secure equality and liberty for all.

Contents [Preview]

Introduction: Retrieving Liberal Socialism 

1. What is Liberal Socialism? 

Part I: The Origins of Liberal Socialism  

2. Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity  

3. Thomas Paine’s Denaturalization of Inequality  

4. Mary Wollstonecraft and the Egalitarian Rights of Man and Woman  

Part II: The Maturation of Liberal Socialism  

5. John Stuart Mill-The First Liberal Socialist  

6. Karl Marx’s Critique of Liberalism 

7. Ethical Socialism and Social Democratic Reformism  

8. C.B Macpherson’s Critique of “Possessive Individualism”  

9. John Rawls’ Just Society 

10. On Racial and Black Radical Liberalism  

Part III: The Future of Liberal Socialism 

11. Chantal Mouffe, Norberto Bobbio, and Axel Honneth-Agonistic Liberal Socialism and the Dialectics of Recognition 

12. A Future For Liberal Socialism?

Matthew McManus is a lecturer in Political Science at the University of Michigan. 

New book on John Rawls: Justice and Reciprocity

Justice and Reciprocity

by Andrew Lister

(Oxford University Press, 2024)

304 pages

Description

"Justice and Reciprocity" examines the place of reciprocity in egalitarianism, focusing on John Rawls’s conception of ‘justice as fairness’. Reciprocity was central to justice as fairness, but Rawls wasn’t fully explicit about the concept or its diverse roles. The book’s main thesis is threefold. First, reciprocity is not simply a fact of human psychology or a duty to return benefits, but a limiting condition on general duties. Second, such conditions are a natural consequence of thinking of equality as a relational value. However, third, we can identify limits on this conditionality, which explain how some duties of justice can be unconditional. The book explores the ramifications of this argument in a series of debates about distributive justice in which Rawls’s theory has played an organizing role: the justice of productive incentives, duties to future generations, unconditional basic income, and global justice. In each domain, thinking about reciprocity as a limiting condition rather than simply a duty helps explain otherwise puzzling aspects of justice as fairness, in some cases making the view more plausible, but in others underlining limits of the view that will be unappealing to egalitarians of a more unilateral bent. The overall aim of the book is to show that reciprocity involves more than returning benefits, and that limiting justice with reciprocity conditions need not make justice implausibly undemanding. In this way, I hope to rehabilitate reciprocity for egalitarianism.

Contents

1. Reciprocity and Egalitarianism [Preview]

2. Reciprocity as Motivation

3. Reciprocity as Duty

4. Reciprocity as Limiting Condition

5. Role Reversal and the Difference Principle

6. Cooperation, Competition, and Incentives

7. Future Generations

8. Unconditional Basic Income

9. Global Justice

10. Conclusion

Andrew Lister is Associate Professor, Department of Political Studies at Queen's University. See his blog here.

James Rosenberg: Essays on John Rawls and Social Theory

A doctoral dissertation by James Rosenberg, Harvard University:

"Essays on John Rawls and Social Theory" (2024) 

Dissertation advisor: Michael Rosen.

Abstract:

"How does Rawlsian political philosophy relate to social theory? Rawls thought that principles of justice must be developed in light of social theory. I argue that his own social theory, that of society as a fair system of cooperation, is responsible for some of the limitations of the Rawlsian framework. The dissertation uses Rawls’s insight about the relationship between political philosophy and social theory to internally criticize Rawlsian political philosophy with respect to its capacity to diagnose and offer adequate prescriptions against the injustices it criticizes. Each of the chapters attempt to elaborate on Rawls’s own methodological thesis that political philosophy must be in dialogue with social theory."

50 Best Political Philosophy Blogs in 2025

I am honored to be ranked number 2 on this list:

50 Best Political Philosophy Blogs and Websites in 2025