Axel Honneth's critique of Jürgen Habermas's "Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie" (Suhrkamp, 2019):
"Secular Reason? A Minor Query about a Major Work" (New German Critique, vol. 49, no. 2 (2022), pp. 1-14). Free access.
The article originally appeared in "Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie", vol. 69, no. 2 (2021).
by Jürgen Habermas
(Suhrkamp Verlag, September 2022)
109 pages
Table of Contents [Preview]
1. Vorwort
2. Überlegungen und Hypothesen zu einem erneuten Strukturwandel der politischen Öffentlichkeit (pp. 9-67)
A revised version of an essay originally published in Martin Seeliger & Sebastian Sevignani (eds.), Ein neuer Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit? (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2021), pp. 470-500. English: "Reflections and Hypotheses on a Further Structural Transformation of the Political Public Sphere", Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 39, no. 4 (2022), pp. 145-171.
3. Deliberative Demokratie. Ein Interview (pp. 69-87)
An abridged version of "Interview with Jürgen Habermas", in: André Bächtiger, John S. Dryzek, Jane Mansbridge & Mark E. Warren (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Deliberative Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) pp. 871-882.
4. Was heißt "deliberative Demokratie"? Einwände und Missverständnisse (pp. 89-109)
A revised version of "Foreword", in: Emilie Prattico (ed.), Habermas and the Crisis of Democracy. Interviews with Leading Thinkers (London: Routledge, 2022), pp. xiii-xix.
The new issue of "Analyse & Kritik" (vol. 44. no. 1, 2022) features articles on the social bases of political theory:
* Katrina Forrester - Liberalism and Social Theory after John Rawls [PDF]
* Joel Isaac - Durkheimian Thoughts on "In the Shadow of Justice" [Abstract]
* Steven Lukes - Capitalism, Justice, and the Boundaries of Liberalism [Abstract]
* William Clare Roberts - Whose Realism? Which Legitimacy? Ideologies of Domination and Post-Rawlsian Political Theory [Abstract]
* Brad Baranowski - How to Do Things with Justice: Professor Rawls, 1962–1971 [Abstract]
* Bruce Kuklick - John Rawls and R. M. Hare: A Study of Canonization [Abstract]
Thanks to David A. Reidy for the pointer!
From a session at the Catholic Academy in Berlin in June 2022: A lecture by Professor Vittorio Hösle on Jürgen Habermas's "Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie" (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2019):
* Lecture by Professor Vittorio Hösle (Notre Dame University): "Postmetaphysisch, Postsäkular? Jürgen Habermas über Glauben und Wissen" [36 minutes]
[See also Hösle's extensive review of Habermas's book in "Philosophische Rundschau"]
* Comments by Professor Thomas M. Schmidt (Goethe University Frankfurt am Main) [12 minutes]
* Comments by Professor Gesine Schwan (Humboldt-Viadrina Governance Platform, Berlin) [16 minutes]
The latest issue of "The Tocqueville Review" (vol. 43, no. 1) features articles on John Rawls's "A Theory of Justice":
* Catherine Audard & Michel Forsé - "Rawls's A Theory of Justice at Fifty: Introduction"
* Michael J. Sandel - "Remembering Rawls" [2002]
* James T. Kloppenberg - "John Rawls and "Our Tradition" of Democracy"
Abstract:
The notion of a clear distinction between Rawls's liberalism and social democracy rests on a caricatured conception of the liberal tradition and Rawls's place in it. From Rousseau, John Adams, and Madison through Tocqueville to Dewey, notable political theorists have sought to balance the two principles at the core of Rawls's A Theory of Justice. In this essay I sketch the ways in which American thinkers and activists escaped the cages in which commentators have tried to confine them, not only the false binary between liberalism and democratic socialism but also that between secularism and religious belief. As Rawls himself tried to make clear in his later writing, his ideal of justice drew from earlier theorists who understood the constitutive role of social interaction and inherited traditions, and he envisioned a society with room for people animated by comprehensive philosophical and religious ideas not shared by everyone else. Rawls's political liberalism, historicist as well as pluralist, was attuned as much to the threat inequality poses to freedom as to the endangered status of freedom in mass society. Rawls's ideas, especially as articulated in his book Justice as Fairness, remain a vital resource for social democrats who prize social and economic equality as well as individual liberty.
* Céline Spector - "De Rousseau à Rawls. La théorie de la justice comme «utopie réaliste»?"
* David A. Reidy - "Rawls and Racial Justice in The United States"
Abstract: It has become increasingly common for students and scholars to criticize Rawls's work as irrelevant, or worse, when it comes to issues of race and justice. Though he clearly judges both structural and systemic racial hierarchy and interpersonal racial disrespect to be non-controversially unjust, Rawls does not much explore, either in his ideal theory or in his non-ideal theory, issues at the intersection of race and justice. In this essay, drawing from both his texts and biography, I highlight some of Rawls's thoughts on, and the seriousness with which he approached, these matters. Though I do not attempt to answer all the criticisms that have been raised regarding Rawls's approach to issues of race and justice, I answer a few and to point the way toward resources that might prove fruitful in answering others. With respect to issues of race and justice, there are good reasons, better than critics typically acknowledge, to continue exploring the extent to which working from within a Rawlsian framework we can successfully think through our aspirational ideals and eliminate existing injustices.
* Philippe Van Parijs - "Qu'est-ce qu'une Europe juste ? Dialogue avec John Rawls" [2019]
* Claude Gamel - "Cheminement d'un économiste dans l'œuvre de John Rawls"
* Thomas Ferretti - "Justice Between Individuals: John Rawls and the Demands of Political Liberalism"
Abstract: John Rawls proposed "A Theory of Justice" (1971) aiming at building consensus in democratic societies. In the middle of the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and the Civil Rights movement, while Americans were strongly divided, Rawls' political liberalism offered a method to build political agreement between people with different and conflicting values and interests, to preserve peace and other benefits of stable social cooperation. Fifty years on, while authors like Katrina Forrester (2019 a, b) suggest moving on from the ideal of political consensus, other voices such as Catherine Audard (2019) remind us of the relevance of public reason in a world full of divisions. This paper builds a dialogue between these two influential authors to assess the legacy and relevance of Rawls' political philosophy today.
Jürgen Habermas has received the order "Pour le Mérite" for sciences and arts, Germany’s highest Order of Merit.
The list of recipients of the order includes: Jan Assmann (2020), Onora O'Neill (2014), Ralf Dahrendorf (2003), Umberto Eco (1998), Gershom Scholem (1981), Karl Popper (1980), and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1971).
A paperback edition of Jürgen Habermas's "Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie" is now available. It features a new "Afterword" by Habermas - "Nachwort zur Taschenbuchausgabe", vol. 2, pp. 811-833.
The "Afterword" has the following sections:
1. Warum Glauben und Wissen?
2. Die Bedeutung der Alternative zwischen Hume und Kant
3. Warum "auch" eine Geschichte der Philosophie?
4. Desozialisierung der Weltbilder
5. Detranszendentalisierte Vernunft und Emanzipation zur Freiheit
6. Die Motivationsschwäche der Vernunftmoral
7. Vernunft in der Geschichte - was bleibt davon?
Section 2, 5, and 7 reuse text from Jürgen Habermas, "Rückblick eines Autors", Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie, vol. 69, no. 2 (2021), pp. 231-240. English: "An Author's Retrospective View", Constellations, vol. 28, no. 1 (2021), pp. 5-10. But the entire text has been rewritten.
In the new edition, Habermas has also corrected a number of factual and linguistic errors, but not all. The corrections are not highlighted. It has the advantage that the page numbers are the same as in the first edition.
The paperback edition also contains a useful name index.
Ed. by Reinhard Hesse
(Berlin: Lit Verlag, 2022)
236 pages
Table of contents [Preview]
"Einige einleitende und weierführende Gedanken" - Reinhard Hesse
1. Mein Bildungsgang - Karl-Otto Apel
2. Autobiographische Retrospektive - Karl-Otto Apel
3. Zur Retrospektive von Karl-Otto Apel - Jürgen Habermas (New essay!)
4. Karl-Otto Apel und die Zerstörung des moralischen Selbstbewusstseins - Vittorio Hösle
5. Sisyphos Karl-Otto Apel - Peter Naumann
6. In Erinnerung an meinen Vater - Dorothea Apel
7. My intellectual Biography in the Context of Contemporary Philosophy - Karl-Otto Apel
8. Kommentar zum Kapitel "Taking Issue with Habermas and others ..." Ein Missverständnis - Reinhard Hesse
9. Rekonstruktion der Vernunft durch Transformation der Transzendental-philosophie (Interview) - Karl-Otto Apel
10. Gespräch mit Hauke Brunkhorst und Micha Brumlik (Interview) - Karl-Otto Apel
11. Apel und die Deutschen, das besondere Volk - Reinhard Hesse
12. Kondolenzschreiben von Bundespräsident Frank-Walter Steinmeier
Gewidmet Frau Judith Apel aus Anlass des 100. Geburtstages ihres Mannes.
See also my blog posts:
* "New essays in honor of Karl-Otto Apel" (March 2020)
Timothy Snyder's response to Habermas's "Krieg und Empörung" / "War and Indignation" (Süddeutsche Zeitung, April 29, 2022):
(Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, June 26, 2022)
English version:
"Jürgen Habermas and Ukraine: Germans have been involved in the war, chiefly on the wrong side" (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, online June 27, 2022).
Interviews with Leading Thinkers
Ed. by Emilie Prattico
(London: Routledge, June 2022)
220 pages
Table of contents
Foreword [Preview], by Jürgen Habermas
Introduction, by Emilie Prattico
1. Can some basic rights and liberties be given up to safeguard democracy? (With an interview with Hauke Brunkhorst)
2. How does actual deliberation confer legitimacy to democratic decisions? (With an interview with Cristina Lafont)
3. Why is "fake news" a crisis of democracy? (With an interview with Michael Lynch)
4. How can we build a public sphere together and share it in a world characterized by divisiveness and tribalism? (With an interview with Barbara Fultner)
5. Can democracy survive without the voice of experts? (With an interview with Kenneth Baynes)
6. How dangerous are the current forms of authoritarianism we are seeing take hold all over the world? (With an interview with Maria Pia Lara)
7. What does the public sphere look like with new technologies? (With an interview with Gertrud Koch)
8. What duties do we owe descendants of slaves and how do we reckon with our antidemocratic and oppressive past? (With an interview with Lorenzo Simpson).
From Jürgen Habermas's foreword:
"Emilie Prattico has used the lens of a discourse-theoretic conception of deliberative democracy to engage eight prominent colleagues in stimulating interviews. They critically illuminate the various ways that a sound democratic regime depends upon the deliberative milieu of an inclusive public sphere. The deliberative conception of democracy directs our attention to recent trends that point to another structural transformation of the public sphere in the digital age. Given the demands that democratic opinion- and will-formation place upon a more or less well-functioning public sphere, the emergence of “new media” has been a mixed blessing. Indeed, certain aspects of social media communication signal a worrisome backslide toward a special kind of political regression."
Emilie Prattico is Director of Strategy at BCG BrightHouse, Paris. She studied philosophy at the University of Oxford, and at Northwestern University, where she studied with Habermas. Since completing her doctoral work "Is Democracy Egalitarian or Epistemic? A Habermasian Perspective on Deliberative Democracy" (2013), she has focused her work on pushing for more ambitious climate action on the part of governments and companies. She co-author (with Edward Cameron) of the book "The New Corporate Climate Leadership" (Routledge, 2021).
Adam Tooze on Habermas's essay on the war in Ukraine:
"After the Zeitenwende: Jürgen Habermas and Germany’s new identity crisis"
(The New Statesman, online 12-05-2022)
Responses to Jürgen Habermas's "Krieg und Empörung" / "War and Indignation" (Süddeutsche Zeitung, 29-04-2022):
"Selbst der Philosoph Jürgen Habermas muss sich für seine kluge und differenzierende Betrachtung der deutschen Waffenexport-Diskussion als “Putinversteher” verunglimpfen lassen. Daran merkt man, wie verrückt manche Debatte geworden ist." (Sigmar Gabriel, FOCUS 19/2022, May 7, 2022)
"Es ist wohl eher eine Frage des persönlichen Temperaments, ob man die Chance wahrnimmt und vor allem die Mühe auf sich nimmt, als Intellektueller öffentlich zu polarisierenden Fragen Stellung zu nehmen. Man muss mit Feindseligkeiten leben lernen. Und manchmal setzt man sich jahrzehntelanger Häme aus. Im Laufe der Zeit habe ich mich andererseits auch an eine Menge Lobreden gewöhnen dürfen." (Jürgen Habermas, Kölnische Rundschau 17-06-2004)
Johannes Schneider - "Im Land der Strohmänner", Die Zeit online 29-04-2022
Nora Bossong - "Er sieht uns ein bisschen naiver, als wir sind", Deutschlandsfunk Kultur online 29-04-2022
Thomas Schmid - "Wo Jürgen Habermas irrt – und wo er richtig liegt", Die Welt online 29-04-2022
Thomas Ribi - "Die Ukraine darf nicht verlieren", Neue Zürcher Zeitung 30-04-2022
Simon Strauss - "Hart verteidigte Illusionen", Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 30-04-2022
Gregor Dotzauer - "Aufrüstung und Entrüstung", Der Tagesspiegel 30-04-2022
Andreas Fanizadeh - "Gepard, Marder, Leopard und Co", taz - die Tageszeitung 30-04-2022
Karlheinz Weißmann - "Politikfremdheit als Methode", Junge Freiheit online 01-05-2022
Christian Rath - "Zurückhaltung ist gefährlich", taz - die Tageszeitung online 02-05-2022
Bernd Stegeman - "Churchill oder Habermas?", Cicero online 02-05-2022
Georg Diez - "Der deutsche Weg", Die Zeit online 02-05-2022
Marcel Fratzscher - "Die Hysterie der Ukraine-Debatte hilft Putin", Die Zeit online 03-05-2022
Thomas Risse - "Argumente und/oder Emotionen – Zum Beitrag von Jürgen Habermas in der Süddeutschen Zeitung", SCRIPTS (blog), 04-05-2022
Armin Thurnher - "Der Kriegskritiker Jürgen Habermas und seine Kritiker", Falter 04-05-2022
Ukraine's Ambassador to Germany Andrij Melnyk on Twitter.
Listen to Patrick Breitenbach's podcast – "Reflektion zum Habermas Artikel “Krieg und Empörung”"
