JÜRGEN HABERMAS
A PRACTICAL SENSE SOCIOLOGIST AND A KANTIAN MORALIST IN A NUTSHELL
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/eph.v19i2.1Keywords:
humanism, Habermas, Kantian theories, religionAbstract
This paper is a short introduction to Habermas’s life and philosophy. It outlines his views on society, religion, morality and politics. It begins with his ‘methodological pragmatism’ which emphasizes the performative and intersubjective role of language. This rejects the “philosophy of consciousness” and sees society as a medium in which we live. Society is not an aggregate of individuals or a unity but a complex, multifarious, intersubjective structure with many different overlapping spheres. Habermas is essentially a social scientist and his concern about society refers to the problem of how a social order and integrity can be maintained in a modern democratic and secular society. He believes that religion will survive a long time and is unsure whether philosophy will ever triumph over religion but is convinced that it can deal with our religious heritage with more sensitivity than hitherto. Habermas proposes a moral discourse theory based on the universalizability of social norms. In his political system, he combines the ideal of liberal democracy based on human rights with the ideal of republicanism based on popular sovereignty. He is nevertheless critical of some aspects of liberalism. Overall, Habermas foresees the danger to modern society to social groups that feel themselves to be alienated and marginalized from the mainstream.
References
Jürgen Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other, translated by C. Cronin and P. de Greiff, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998 [1996]).
Jeffrey Tate, “Habermas for Humanists,” in Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism, Vol. 15, pp. 59-76, 2007.
Jürgen Habermas, Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, translated by T. Burger and F. Lawrence, (Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, 1962).
Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, translated by Thomas McCarthy, Vols. 1-2, (Cambridge UK: Polity Press, 1981).
Jürgen Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, translated by Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen, (Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1990).
Maeve Cooke, ed., On the Pragmatics of Communication, (Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, 2000).
Jürgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, translated by F. Lawrence, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987).
Jürgen Habermas, Justification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics, translated by Ciaran P. Cronin, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994).
Jürgen Habermas, “A Conversation about God and the World.” In Jürgen Habermas, Time of Transitions, edited and translated by Ciaran Cronin and Max Pensky, (Polity Press, Cambridge, UK: 2006), pp. 147-169.
Jürgen Habermas, Joseph Ratzinger, Dialectics of Secularization. On Reason and Religion, edited with a Foreword by Florian Schuller, translated by Brian McNeil, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005).
Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms, translated by William Rehg, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996).
Craig Calhoun, ed., Habermas and the Public Sphere, (Cambridge, MA: the MIT Press, 1995).
Lawrence Kohlberg, Essays on Moral Development, (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981, 1984), Vols. 1, 2.
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, revised edition, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971).
James Gordon Finlayson, Habermas. A Very Short Introduction, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Henry Le Roy Finch, Wittgenstein, (Rockport: Element Books, 1995).
