Habermas
Jürgen Habermas (born 18 June 1929), one of the most important contemporary German philosophers, is the backbone of the second generation of the Frankfurt School of Western Marxism, because of the complexity and depth of his ideas, the system is grand and complete, Habermas is recognized as "the most influential thinker of our time", Wilby called him "the contemporary Hegel" and "the greatest philosopher of the post-industrial revolution", occupying a pivotal position in Western academia. In 2015, he was awarded the Kruger Lifetime Achievement Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences by the Library of Congress. In 1986, he was awarded the Leibniz Prize.
On the relationship between philosophy, science and literature
This article is excerpted from Post-Metaphysical Thought
Translators: Cao Weidong, Fu Degen
Publisher: Yilin Publishing House, 2012-04
Jurists such as Savigny, historians such as Burckhardt, psychologists such as Freud, philosophers such as Adorno, etc., they are also outstanding writers. The German Language and Poetry Association awards the Prize for Scientific Prose once a year. Neither Kant nor Hegel could accurately express their ideas without giving a new form to the traditional professional language they had inherited. Compared with physics, the propositional connotations stated by philosophy and all the humanities cannot be separated from the rhetorical forms of statements. As Marie Hesse said, even theory does not completely abandon metaphor, because new theoretical models, ideas, problems, etc. are revealed by metaphors through an intuitive grasp of the source of understanding before everyday language. Without a language revolution, it is impossible to radically change traditional forms of knowledge and scientific habits: this relationship is probably indisputable.
Freud was also a great writer. We think so, of course, not to say that his scientific genius manifests itself in the linguistic creativity of his beautiful prose. He was able to discover the New World not by unparalleled writing talent, but by objective clinical observation, reasoning ability, sensitivity, and fearlessness, perseverance, curiosity, etc., which are the good qualities of a creative scientist. Reading Freud's work as literature would not be inappropriate for anyone.
But the question is, are they merely literary works or are they first and foremost literary works? Not so long ago, our answer was clear; however, now the voice of opposition is getting louder and louder. Is the question of truth really a sufficient criterion for the traditional boundaries between science and literature? Influential deconstructivism calls into question the classifications that are taken for granted. Later Heidegger also distinguished between thinkers and poets. But in his case, Anaximander's work is no different from that of Hölderlin and Trakl. Paul de Mann's interpretation of Rousseau is no different from proust and Rilke's. Nor did Derrida discriminate between Husserl, Saussure and Aalto. Isn't it whimsical to think that the works of Freud and Joyce can be categorized using some of the characteristics inherent in what seem to be the concepts of classic theory and fiction?
Our newspapers and cultural periodicals still distinguish between professional books and literary works, and the different columns are divided into different sections: first fiction, followed by the exploration of truth; first the creation of poets and writers, followed by the works of philosophers and scientists (as long as they are of the same interest). It was indeed a bold challenge for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to publish on the front page of the literary supplement the works of philosophers, and not the works of spiritual history that they were adept at their disposal, but rather essayistic contemplation and notes. After a little humility, the critic began to explain the challenge: "In the future, when we speak of outstanding writers in the country, it is impossible not to mention the name of Blumenberg. His compositions, notes, and philosophical narratives are a combination of essays, notes, and philosophical narratives, in a word, and he creates stories of disillusionment with world history that stretch endlessly. The best parts of it are comparable to Borges's satirical prose. "What I am interested in is not these praises, but the removal of literary barriers. A short comment on the cover has warned that the author has no doubt about "the uncertainty of the classification of their works."
Tempora mutantur (times are changing). About thirty years ago, Adorno published Minima Moralia, when neither the author nor the reader had any literary problems. This brilliant philosopher was at the same time a great writer, and his aphorisms and meditations did not prevent the critic from thinking that his collection of aphorisms should be read as his principal philosophical work; for no one doubted that any short and pithy fragment could reveal the whole theoretical system. So, what is involved here is two different things, or is it just a different understanding of the same thing?
The elimination of the literary distinction between philosophy and science and literature shows that philosophical discussion has a new understanding of literature; philosophical discussion takes place in the context of the shift from the philosophy of consciousness to the philosophy of language, that is, linguistics to such a situation. Linguistics' approach to stripping away the legacy of Juche philosophy is crude. Only by completely expelling such elements as self-consciousness, self-determination, and self-actualization from the basic concepts of philosophy can language gain independence (and thus replace subjectivity), become an epoch-making order of existence, a dazzling signifier and a discourse full of competition and exclusion from each other. Thus, the boundaries between literal and metaphorical meaning, logic and rhetoric, serious discourse and fictional discourse, etc., are washed away by the general wave of textual movements (which thinkers and poets have set off together). This idea probably dates back to early Heidegger, structuralism, and late Heidegger.
The subject is self-related in the process of self-knowledge, regards himself as an object, and thus fails to make himself a subject with primitive creativity, so the subject falls into a strange circle. This has attracted attention as early as Fichte. In Being and Time, Heidegger breaks this cycle by analyzing the existence in the world. In his view, theoretical or objectified thinking was a derivative of the primitive practical worldview; he later explained that objectivist tendencies echoed the subjectivity of insisting on defending the self. The idea of embodying and dominating things has a place in the history of modern metaphysics between Descartes and Nietzsche. This critique can be said to be the idealistic counterpart of marx and Weber's materialistic materialistic critique. All attempts to break the shackles of the fundamental concept of thought centered on the subject in the philosophy of consciousness are conducive to a shift to the linguistic paradigm, which was originally accomplished in the field of analytic philosophy and is not at all about instrumental rational criticism. But the concepts of language thus laid down have taken on different directions of development; the key is whether they simply transform or more or less completely reject the rational concepts elucidated from Kant to Hegel.
The tendency of communication theory to begin with Humboldt, taking the mode of language understanding as the starting point, and revealing the interpenetrating perspective and mutually recognized structure of the "self" of self-consciousness, self-determination, self-realization, etc., thus overcoming the philosophy of subjectivity. The cognitive self-relation and the practical self-relation will be completely deconstructed, so that the traditional concept of reflective philosophy becomes the concept of inter-subject cognition, free interaction, and socialized individual.
The structuralist tendency began with Saussure, starting with a system of linguistic rules. It reduces the activity of the subject with the ability to speak and act, and is in the practice of language, to the basic structure and generative laws of grammar, in order to overcome the philosophy of the subject. In this way, subjectivity loses its original power to create the world. Levy Strauss extended this tendency to anthropology, where he wanted to use the wild mind as a mirror to see through the philosophy of subjectivity, which was a generalization of the fantasistic self-understanding of modern society. However, this deconstruction does not in any way concern the observant scientist himself, whose ethnographic vision is directed against the phenomena he trusts, and insists on seeing them as the nameless result of mental activity in an unconscious state.
Post-structuralist thinkers abandon this scientist self-understanding and the last link in the modern concept of reason it adheres to. They followed late Heidegger and took the linguistic model as a matter of truth as a starting point, for which they saw the modern interpretation of the world as an epoch-making event that at the same time enabled the occurrence of the inner world to be predetermined and possible. Of course, Derrida argues that this is an event within the scope of metaphysical history; Foucault points out that it is an event that arises in the changing structure of power and knowledge. Late Heidegger conceived of language as a home for spontaneous existence, so that the conception of existence at all levels maintained a transcendental connection with the original existence. Foucault even swept away the last remaining fragile relationship with truth in the philosophy of history. All validity requirements produce discursive meaning. At the same time, they will penetrate deeply into the discourse that is always spontaneous—at the mercy of their mutually restrictive "Hazardspiel." This notion calls for "sacrificing the subject of knowledge" and replacing science with genealogy. Genealogy "explores our origins, the language we speak, and the laws that govern us in order to reveal heterogeneous systems that prohibit all identity under the guise of the self."
After the collapse of transcendental subjectivity, the spearhead of analysis is directed at the nameless linguistic events that make the worlds out of themselves and collude with each other, and in the entire history of existence and in all the practice of the inner world, language events have existed innately, even through the loose boundaries of the self, the author and their works, and penetrated into all things. Such an analysis "leads to the dissolution of the self, thus filling the world with thousands of lost events in an empty synthesis." For Foucault, Derrida, and the post-structuralists, there is no doubt about this: "The dissolution of philosophical subjectivity, its diffusion in the language that invalidates it, and its diversification in the space that arises from its absence, is probably a fundamental structure of contemporary thought." After structuralism, this trend of thought made the transcendental subjectivity disappear without a trace, causing the system of world connections, speech perspectives, and validity requirements within the language interaction itself to disappear from people's vision. But without this system of associations, the distinction between the real level, between fiction and reality, between everyday practice and transcendental experience, between corresponding texts and genres, cannot be discussed, and of course, is meaningless. The home of existence is swept into the vortex of the aimless tide of language.
Micro-lessons are recommended
01 20 philosophers daigo-inspired life strategies
Ordinary people study philosophy, not to learn, but to get inspiration from philosophy, and then match it to their own life experience, constantly thinking, doubting, reflecting... Thus organizing into your own philosophy and finding ways to deal with various problems.
This philosophy course will focus on 20 "big problems" in life, such as loneliness, love and hate, life and death, confusion, and desire, each of which is divided into 5 lectures, telling you about the thought systems of 20 ancient and modern philosophers such as Heidegger, Aristotle, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Camus, Plato, and Sartre, and explore their own life strategies.
02 104 wisdom courses spanning the 2000 history of philosophy
This course does not pursue "efficiency", does not throw textbook introductions to philosophy directly to you, but carefully "grinds" difficult ideas into vivid stories and easy telling, and takes you a little bit to understand the long history of philosophy and the essence of philosophers' thought through 104 courses in a whole year.
The presenter will analyze the essence of 20 classic philosophical works such as "Existence and Time", "Republic", "Meditations", and "Drinking Chapters" for you. It covers ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, early modern Western European philosophy, German classical philosophy, existentialism and postmodernism.
03 Philosophies and inspirations of 100+ literary and artistic works
At the beginning of each lesson, the presenter will cut in with a movie, a novel or a piece of music, on the one hand, in order to start from vivid emotional experience and realization, and then rise to philosophical questions and reflections, so that the audience can more easily open the door to philosophical thinking.
On the other hand, in addition to the function of entertainment, good literary and artistic works also contain a life experience and a possibility of life. Deeply understand the connotation behind literary and artistic works, do not stick to the self, better understand others, and understand the external world.