Quotes & Sayings About Habermas

Freedom may never be conceived merely negatively, as the absence of compulsion. Freedom conceived intersubjectively distinguishes itself from the arbitrary freedom of the isolated individual. No one is free until we are all free. — Jurgen Habermas

Partisans fight on familiar territory with professed political objectives to conquer power. This is what distinguishes them from terrorists. — Jurgen Habermas

For Habermas, scientism means science's belief in itself: that is, 'the conviction that we can no longer understand science as one form of knowledge, but rather must identify knowledge with science'. — Simon Critchley

The uncertainty of the danger belongs to the essence of terrorism. — Jurgen Habermas

Only one who takes over his own life history can see in it the realization of his self. Responsibility to take over one's own biography means to get clear about who one wants to be. — Jurgen Habermas

I take as my fundamental starting point the fundamental distinction between work and interaction — Jurgen Habermas

Reaching and understanding is the process of bringing about an agreement on the presupposed basis of validity claims that are mutually recognized. — Jurgen Habermas

The avant-garde understands itself as invading unknown territory, exposing itself to the dangers of sudden, shocking encounters, conquering an as yet unoccupied future ... The avant-garde must find a direction in a landscape into which no one seems to have yet ventured. — Jurgen Habermas

For the normative self-understanding of modernity, Christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. Universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. This legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. Up to this very day there is no alternative to it. And in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. Everything else is idle postmodern talk. — Jurgen Habermas

Positivism stands or falls with the principle of scientism, that is that the meaning of knowledge is defined by what the sciences do and can thus be adequately explicated through the methodological analysis of scientific procedures. — Jurgen Habermas

The only knowledge that can truly orient action is knowledge that frees itself from mere human interests and is based in Ideas in other words knowledge that has taken a theoretical attitude. — Jurgen Habermas

Norms appearing in the form of law entitle actors to exercise their rights or liberties. However, one cannot determine which of these laws are legitimate simply by looking at the form of individual rights. Only by bringing in the discourse principle can one show that each person is owed a right to the greatest possible measure of equal liberties that are mutually compatible. — Jurgen Habermas

The parliament no longer is an 'assembly of wise men chosen as individual personalities by privileged strata, who sought to convince each other through arguments in public discussion on the assumption that the subsequent decision reached by the majority would be what was true and right for the national welfare.' Instead it has become the 'public rostrum on which, before the entire nation (which through radio an television participates in a specific fashion in this sphere of publicity), the government and the parties carrying it present and justify to the nation their political program, while the opposition attacks this program with the same opennes and develops its alternatives. — Jurgen Habermas

Perhaps at a later point important developments will be traced back to September 11. But for now we do not know which of the many scenarios will actually hold in the future. — Jurgen Habermas

Manhattan ... capital of the 20th century, a city that has fascinated me for more than three decades. — Jurgen Habermas

If the September 11 terror attack is supposed to constitute a caesura in world history, it must be able to stand comparison to other events of world historical impact. — Jurgen Habermas

The difference between political terror and ordinary crime becomes clear during the change of regimes, in which former terrorists become well-regarded representatives of their country. — Jurgen Habermas

The interpretation of a case is corroborated only by the successful continuation of a self-formative process , that is by the completion of self-reflection , and not in any unmistakable way by what the patient says or how he behaves — Jurgen Habermas

I shall develop the thesis that anyone acting communicatively must, in performing any speech act, raise universal validity claims and suppose that they can be vindicated. — Jurgen Habermas

government is legitimate not so much because it represents the 'general will', but because its policies are, ideally and counterfactually, the result of the public deliberation of all who are concerned by the decision — Frederic Vandenberghe

I consider Bush's decision to call for a war against terrorism a serious mistake. He is elevating these criminals to the status of war enemies, and one cannot lead a war against a network if the term war is to retain any definite meaning. — Jurgen Habermas

Although objectively greater demands are placed on this authority, it operates less as a public opinion giving a rational foundation to the exercise of political and social authority, the more it is generated for the purpose of an abstract vote that amounts to no more than an act of acclamation within a public sphere temporarily manufactured for show or manipulation. — Jurgen Habermas

The usage of the words "public" and "public sphere" betrays a multiplicity of concurrent meanings. Their origins go back to various historical phases and, when applied synchronically to the conditions of a bourgeois society that is industrially advanced and constituted as a social-welfare state, they fuse into a clouded amalgam. Yet the very conditions that make the inherited language seem inappropriate appear to require these words, however confused their employment. — Jurgen Habermas

Only by externalization, by entering into social relationships, can we develop the interiority of our own person. — Jurgen Habermas

All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects that [the norm's] general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone's interests, and the consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities for regulation. — Jurgen Habermas

The task of universal pragmatics is to identify and reconstruct universal conditions of possible mutual understanding. — Jurgen Habermas

I cannot imagine a context that would some day, in some manner, make the monstrous crime of September 11 an understandable or comprehensible political act. — Jurgen Habermas

Science can only be comprehended epistemologically , which means as one category of possible knowledge , as long as knowledge is not equated either effusively with the absolute knowledge of a great philosophy or blindly with scientistic self-understanding of the actual business of research. — Jurgen Habermas

Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems. — Jurgen Habermas

The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor. — Jurgen Habermas

The mantra of the new historicists was "we have betrayed ourselves." Since their emergence, there have been more or less interesting paradigm shifts having mainly to do with Habermas and the increased focus on media studies, but the talismanic word has never ceased to be "history." — Paul Fry

As medium for reaching understanding, speech acts serve: a) to establish and renew interpersonal relations, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of legitimate social orders; b) to represent states and events, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of existing states of affairs; c) to manifest experiences that is, to represent oneself- whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the subjective world to which he has privileged access. — Jurgen Habermas

Today's Islamic fundamentalism is also a cover for political motifs. We should not overlook the political motifs we encounter in forms of religious fanaticism. — Jurgen Habermas

From a moral point of view, there is no excuse for terrorist acts, regardless of the motive or the situation under which they are carried out. — Jurgen Habermas

The rule that science is the only way to know something is itself unscientific; it cannot be tested. So the claim
that only science can demonstrate truth actually flunks its own test, since it cannot validate itself! — Gary R. Habermas

Philosophy's position with regard to science, which at one time could be designated with the name "theory of knowledge," has been undermined by the movement of philosophical thought itself. Philosophy was dislodged from this position by philosophy. — Jurgen Habermas

The clever, albeit fragile, coalition against terrorism brought together by the U.S. government might be able to advance the transition from classical international law to a cosmopolitan order. — Jurgen Habermas

Historically, terrorism falls in a category different from crimes that concern a criminal court judge. — Jurgen Habermas

In the U.S.A. or Europe there is no realistic way to estimate the type, magnitude, or probability of the risk, nor any way to narrow down the potentially affected regions. — Jurgen Habermas

The scientistic faith in a science that will one day not only fulfill, but eliminate, personal self-conception through objectifying self-description is not science, but bad philosophy. — Jurgen Habermas

Since the intervention in Afghanistan, we suddenly began to notice when, in political discussions, we found ourselves only among Europeans or Israelis. — Jurgen Habermas

The speaker must choose a comprehensible [verstandlich] expression so that speaker and hearer can understand one another. — Jurgen Habermas

Some of those drawn into the holy war had been secular nationalists only a few years before. If one looks at the biographies of these people, remarkable continuities are revealed. — Jurgen Habermas

Perhaps September 11 could be called the first historic world event in the strictest sense: the impact, the explosion, the slow collapse - a gruesome reality literally took place in front of a global public. — Jurgen Habermas

And Habermas: mutual understanding in unrestrained communicative action unfolded by rationality is the omega point of individual and social evolution itself. — Ken Wilber

The state is in danger of falling into disrepute due to the evidence of its inadequate resources. — Jurgen Habermas

The scenarios of biological or chemical warfare painted in detail by the American media during the months after September 11 only betray the inability of the government to determine the magnitude of the danger. — Jurgen Habermas

After September 11, the European governments have completely failed. They are incapable of seeing beyond their own national scope of interests. — Jurgen Habermas

Each murder is one too many. — Jurgen Habermas

Given currency by Jrgen Habermas in the late l980s, 'constitutional patriotism' has emerged as an appealing principle for post-national political allegiance. Jan-Werner Mller traces the long postwar history of the concept, takes honest account of the conservative critiques it has provoked, but proposes that it can serve as a robust norm for European Union citizenship. This is a profound meditation with real importance for contemporary political society. — Charles S. Maier

[Critical social science attempts] to determine when theoretical statements grasp invariant regularities of social action as such and when they express ideologically frozen relations of dependence that can in principle be transformed. — Jurgen Habermas

A threatened nation can react to uncertain dangers solely through administrative channels, to the truly embarrassing situation of perhaps overreacting. — Jurgen Habermas

One never really knows who one's enemy is. — Jurgen Habermas

Disappointment over nationalistic authoritarian regimes may have contributed to the fact that today religion offers a new and subjectively more convincing language for old political orientations. — Jurgen Habermas

The misery in war-torn Afghanistan is reminiscent of images from the Thirty Years' War. — Jurgen Habermas

Osama bin Laden, the person, more likely serves the function of a stand-in. Compare the new terrorists with partisans or conventional terrorists in Israel. These people often fight in a decentralized manner in small, autonomous units, too. — Jurgen Habermas

What was new was the symbolic force of the targets struck. The attackers did not just physically cause the highest buildings in Manhattan to collapse; they also destroyed an icon in the household imagery of the American nation. — Jurgen Habermas

Today, the language of the market penetrates every pore and forces every interpersonal relation into the schema of individual preference. — Jurgen Habermas

Since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents, they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities. — Jurgen Habermas

Of course, I strongly sympathized with Habermas and the philosophers representing the Frankfurt school, but I also saw the lack of conceptual clarity, and perceived the not-so-revolutionary self-importance in the epigones of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas. — Thomas Metzinger

Subjects who reciprocally recognize each other as such, must consider each other as identical, insofar as they both take up the position of subject; they must at all times subsume themselves and the other under the same category. At the same time, the relation of reciprocity of recognition demands the non-identity of one and the other, both must also maintain their absolute difference, for to be a subject implies the claim of individuation. — Jurgen Habermas

I would in fact tend to have more confidence in the outcome of a democratic decision if there was a minority that voted against it, than if it was unanimous ... Social psychology has amply shown the strength of this bandwagon effect. — Jurgen Habermas

Instead of the international police action we had hoped for during the war in Kosovo, there are wars again - conducted with state-of-the-art technology, but still in the old style. — Jurgen Habermas