Written by | Beijing News reporter Li Yongbo
One night in April 2001, near Ritan Park in Beijing, Habermas was surrounded by Cui Jian, the "father of Chinese rock," Jiang Wen, the filmmaker, Xu Xing, the philosopher Zhou Guoping, and media reporters, all hoping to hear from the "greatest philosopher of the post-industrial revolution" the road issues of China's modernization process, society and culture under the market economy, and what role intellectuals can play in public society. Perhaps, no scholar can be like him, surrounded by such a group of people with very different identities and dazzling groups. Habermas's visit to China is considered to be a testing ground for the Frankfurt School in China.
Jürgen Habermas (born 18 June 1929) was a German writer, philosopher, sociologist, and second-generation figure of the Frankfurt School.
"You have to learn to face people's hostility in your life." Fifteen years ago today, on his seventy-fifth birthday, Habermas said in an interview with the media. Recognized as "the most influential thinker of our time", this German philosopher, with the help of complex and profound ideological theories and a large and complete topic system, has continued to maintain a high degree of media exposure around the world with highly impactful and controversial discourse since he emerged at the age of twenty-four, influencing intellectual discourse and public agenda in a combative way of discourse.
Between academic research and public discourse, Habermas has always found his own unique seat; between personal trumpets and public noise, Habermas knows how to position the right criticism and good politics in arguments. These have also allowed him to push himself into the double torment between academic research and political practice, and at the same time, because of his public political intervention, we are constantly reminded to re-explore the realities of democracy and its boundaries. Whether it was his early popularity for criticizing Heidegger's Nazi problems, or his current active defense of the European Union, which is in turmoil, Habermas spent his life exploring the future and possibilities of democracy.
As the second generation of the Frankfurt School, Habermas's critical theory not only influenced academic discourse, but also continued to play a role in the public sphere:
In Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, he makes a historical genealogical exploration of the formation and disintegration of the public sphere, hoping to continue the social function of the public sphere in the late capitalist period; in Knowledge and Human Interests, he examines the role and status of modern science and technology in modern society, providing an insightful reference for our understanding of the present; in Theory and Practice, Habermas develops a new critical theoretical philosophical framework; and then in the two-volume imperial tome The Theory of Communicative Behavior. Hopefully, through a rational deliberative process, we will come up with different solutions on how to reshape society, and while expecting policy to remain open to criticism and modification, we will also make corrections to the system; of course, in the face of the world's turn, Habermas has re-evaluated and analyzed the crisis of capitalist society, exploring new possibilities for the healthy development of global democracy...
Since the 1950s, Jürgen Habermas, who is well-versed in the media, has constantly launched one flirtation after another to the times in a tone of heated debate, thinking about how to deepen the cause of democracy. Of course, habermas has long been controversial due to his aggressive personality. In any case, this "thinker who does not want to be a thinker" has been fighting for the future of the world and the future of the times for ninety years. Whether it is academic research or public controversy, as he himself puts it: "If there is one thing that intellectuals, who often attack their own kind and proclaim their own demise, are intolerable, it is to become cynical." ”
On this occasion, there are only wishes: Happy Birthday, Habermas!
Happy Birthday Habermas! (Video Producer: Intern Wei Xiaolin)
One
Reflections on the Historical Responsibility of the Germans: An Indictment of Heidegger
Jürgen Habermas was born at the time of the global economic crisis. The burden of life was constantly heating up ultra-nationalist sentiment in Germany, and the Weimar Republic, once seen as a democratic ideal, was crumbling. Later historians often refer to Habermas and his peers as the "anti-aircraft gun generation."
（anti-aircraft generation）
Because their childhood and adolescence were spent during Nazi Germany, the vast majority of them joined the Hitler Youth, a paramilitary organization whose training mission was to have these teenage children operate anti-aircraft guns and shoot down Allied fighters over the German mainland.
Habermas was no exception, having been a member of the Hitler Youth and having been ordered to operate anti-aircraft guns at the age of 15. In fact, Habermas later revealed that his father was a "passive supporter" of the Nazis during World War II, and also admitted that he once believed in the so-called Nazi worldview as a young man.
However, compared with his peers, the young Habermas still maintains a certain sobriety and alienation from ultra-nationalism. This may be due to the fact that he has a congenital physical defect with cleft lip and palate. On the one hand, the language barrier makes him an "outsider" in mainstream society; on the other hand, the long-term discrimination of the surrounding people has also made Habermas more morally sensitive.
The Biography of Jürgen Habermas: Intellectuals and Public Life, by Stephen Müller-Dom, translator: Liu Feng, edition: Sohn ∣ Social Sciences Academic Press, June 2019
In 1945, World War II ended. This changed the course of German history and completely changed the direction of the German teenager's life. The Nuremberg Trials and documentaries about Nazi concentration camps made Habermas painfully aware of the inhumane persecution and bloodshed of his fellow Germans against the Jews. The huge shock not only made Habermas feel ashamed and grieved by the deep sins of his own people, but also prompted him to become enthusiastic about participating in the discussion of public affairs. The young man who survived World War II was determined to take Germany's post-war reconstruction for granted.
Unlike Jaspers, Hannah Arendt, or Theodore Adorno, Habermas was neither Jewish nor persecuted by the Nazis. His reflections on Nazi history did not come from a naked threat to life, but from a profound introspection that came squarely. What responsibility should the Germans bear in this man-made disaster? Many people did not have the courage to look back on this unbearable past, including the German academic elite at that time, Martin Heidegger.
Heidegger can be said to be Habermas's guide in philosophy, and Habermas's doctoral dissertation takes Heidegger's ontology as the starting point of argument. But when Habermas read a passage from the newly published Introduction to Metaphysics in 1953, the devout student felt "incomparable shock" in his heart. Introduction to Metaphysics includes Heidegger's 1935 lecture at the University of Freiburg. It speaks of "the inner truth and greatness of this movement". Habermas couldn't believe his eyes, and Germans who lived through that era wouldn't misunderstand the fascist meaning of the term.
Without hesitation, Habermas, who had not yet graduated from college at the time, spent a few days writing a harsh criticism and publishing it in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. In this condemnation, Habermas did not vigorously condemn Heidegger's position during the Nazi period, but only angered Heidegger for allowing the 1935 lecture to be published without revision; he still refused to admit his mistakes years after the end of World War II.
Habermas in his youth.
As soon as this article was published, it caused an explosive discussion in German intellectual circles. Some appreciated his courage, but many more were defending Heidegger. Heidegger himself denies this outright. On the other hand, the debate between Habermas and Heidegger opened up a great debate on Germany's historical attitude towards World War II for the next 30 years. In 1986, a large number of historians responded to The New Historical Policy of West German Chancellor Kohl in an attempt to pave the way for revisionist history by acquitting Nazi acts. Habermas, 57, wrote in Die Zeitung that Germans' moral identity is closely linked to "acknowledging shared responsibility for Nazi crimes" and that germany's historical traditions need to be "critically inherited."
Looking back at the young Habermas's critique of Heidegger, the two sides of the debate are so disparate: on the one hand, the famous philosophical master, on the other hand, the 24-year-old university student. But the controversy marks Habermas's official entry into what he calls the "public sphere," fulfilling the responsibilities of a true intellectual for more than half a century.
The Chinese translation of some of Habermas's works, The Theory of Communicative Behavior (translated by Cao Weidong; Shanghai People's Publishing House, October 2018), The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (translated by Cao Weidong; translated by Yilin Publishing House, January 2011), and Between Facts and Norms (translated by Tong Shijun; Life, Reading, and Xinzhi Triptych Bookstore, September 2014).
Two
Rebuilding the public sphere in post-war Germany
What kind of person can be called an intellectual? What kind of relationship should be maintained between intellectuals and society? Such discussions have been going on since the Dreyfus affair in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and in the Federal Republic of Germany after the 1960s, debates about the role and responsibilities of intellectuals have been in full swing.
Habermas also had a clear view of the social role of intellectuals. He believes that a person does not have the identity of an intellectual simply because he is an intellectual authority or has professional knowledge. Intellectuals are made because the person actively participates in the dialogue, providing a point of view for or against a thing. Beginning with questioning Heidegger, Habermas put himself in the midst of all kinds of arguments, believing that within the framework of the "theory of communicative behavior" he had constructed, the truth was always getting clearer and clearer.
In the late 1970s, there was an air of rebellion all over the world. Left-wing radical forces in West Germany were hard to suppress, and a group of left-wing militants split into terrorist organizations that wantonly set fires, kidnappings, and murders in West Germany, eventually triggering the "German Autumn" event that changed the political climate of West Germany as a whole. Some conservative scholars have attributed the ideological roots of the radicals to the Frankfurt School and the critical theories they advocated, which has made Habermas sit still.
In his response to Sontheimer, Habermas rebuked him in slogan-style language for linking critical theory with terrorism. This enduring polemic with liberal conservatives was not only an academic debate around the subject of the "Enlightenment," but also a public sphere against the rapid shift in West Germany to conservatism in the late 1970s.
In this polarized confrontation, Habermas still believed in the existence of "communicative rationality" and believed in a relatively simple criterion: whether intellectuals can be accepted by the public depends entirely on whether the arguments can be verified in public discussion, rather than imposing their own interpretations.
In 1981, Habermas completed the two-volume Theory of Communicative Behavior, a masterpiece that officially introduced him into the ranks of the most concerned thinkers of our time. Over the decades, he has also used the practice of public domain debate to support his institutional kingdom.
Cover of Suhrkamp Verlag, reprinted in 1995.
Three
The Last "European"
Italy's Weekly Express interviewed Habermas, 66, in 1995. When the reporter asked, "What does it mean for you to be a German now?" Habermas replied, "Make sure people don't forget the revelatory day of 1945 because of that happy day in 1989." ”
Beginning in the 1990s, as German unification progressed, Habermas gradually turned his attention to political theory, law, and religious issues. As countless Germans poured into the streets to cheer for the dramatic fall of the Berlin Wall, the philosopher, who had been "contradictory," tried to distance himself from the sharp turn of history. The unification of the land worried him, and the idea of power nationalism was slowly revived without people noticing. He prefers the term "unity" to "unification.".
For two consecutive years, from 1990 to 1992, Habermas wrote in The Time, criticizing the compulsive "territorial fetishism, which seems to allow us to acquire some kind of heritage by merging with the GDR." "But in fact, this seriously damages the political self-consciousness of the nation, making it impossible to have a process of unification of some degree of reciprocity between the two sides."
The fait accompli of German reunification has led Habermas to worry that Germany's great power paranoia may recur. His early experiences and reflections on Nazi history made him deeply suspicious of nationalism and the nation-state built on it. Is there a better alternative? Following Kant's conception of global citizenship, Habermas conceived of an ideal future world: a "world civil society" in which social self-regulation is democratic, and the European Union is the prototype of this ideal society.
Habermas and Herman Van Rompuy (the first permanent president of the Council of Europe) engage in a philosophical and political dialogue.
Today, there may be no one else in the whole of Europe, like Habermas, eagerly awaiting the day when Europe can become a political unity without borders.
Habermas argues that the answer to the EU's collapse is definitely not a nationalist retreat like Brexit, but a change in the elitist management model and a strengthening of horizontal decision-making mechanisms. That is to say, the root of the problem lies in the hegemonic position of great governments such as Germany and France in the European Union, depriving most people of the right to make democratic decisions.
After discussions on European integration, Habermas turned to international law. In the 1999 Kosovo War, he was criticized for writing in support of NATO's military intervention, with commentators saying that Habermas in 1968 was already on the front lines of the anti-Vietnam War, forgetting the self-serving hegemonism of the United States three decades later. Four years later, during the Iraq War, Habermas criticized the U.S. military policy. After the 1990s, Habermas also participated in the debate on public topics such as genetic technology and bioethics, naturalism and freedom, and constantly made himself a controversial figure...
What is it that makes this thinker, who is nearly ninety years old, constantly involved in public affairs throughout his life, and has left his mark on himself in all kinds of fierce debates, even if he is wounded all over his body? Is it a character that is prone to anger? The media often portrayed Habermas as an angry old man. At the very least, Habermas must have known the cost of breaking his silence. In a 2004 interview, he said, "As an intellectual,...... You have to learn to face people's malice in your life. Sometimes it can endure malice for decades. ”“...... But if there's one thing you can't tolerate, it's to become cynical. ”
Author: Li Yongbo Editor: Xu Yuedong
Proofreader: Zhai Yongjun