Habermas, Jürgen
Jürgen
Habermas (b. 1929) has been the most important intellectual in Germany
since the early 1960s. A prolific member of the second generation of the
Frankfurt
School, he has contributed seminally to German public life in fields
ranging from sociology to philosophy and political science. From 1949 to
1954 he attended the universities of Göttingen and Bonn, receiving his
doctorate in philosophy with a dissertation on F. W. J. Schelling.
Although his education was rather traditional, in the mid-1950s he became
acquainted with central works in the Marxist tradition. His interest in critical theory led him in 1956 to Frankfurt,
where he became an assistant to Theodor
W. Adorno at the Institute for Social Research. After teaching in
Heidelberg and Frankfurt, he became director of the Max Planck Institute
for Research into the Living Conditions of the Scientific-Technical World
in 1971. In 1983 he returned to Frankfurt as a professor in the Department
of Philosophy.Habermas's interdisciplinary research has touched on matters important
to students of literature at several points. Perhaps his most influential
work for literary studies in Germany was the book Strukturwandel der
Öffentlichkeit (1962, The Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere). The "public sphere" is a realm in which opinions are
exchanged between private persons unconstrained (ideally) by external
pressures. Theoretically open to all citizens and founded in the family,
it is the place where something approaching public opinion is formed. It
should be distinguished both from the state, which represents official
power, and from the economic structures of civil society as a whole. Its
function is actually to mediate between society and state; it is the arena
in which the public organizes itself, formulates public opinion, and
expresses its desires vis-à-vis the government.Habermas's discussion makes clear that the public sphere is not a
given for every type of society; nor does it possess a fixed status. The
Middle Ages had no public sphere in the sense in which Habermas defines
it, but rather a sphere of representation of feudal authority. Only in the
eighteenth century, with the breakdown of religious hegemony and the rise
of the middle class, does a public sphere emerge. The liberal model of the
public sphere, in which private individuals and interests regulate public
authority and in which property owners speak for humanity, is eventually
transformed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries into a realm in
which the activities of reasoning and the formulation of public opinion
are superseded by mass consumption and publicity.Habermas's hypothesis of a "literary public sphere" as an anticipation
of the political public sphere found tremendous resonance among literary
critics in Germany during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Particularly
provocative were the notion of the commodification of art in the
eighteenth century and the discussion of the various institutions in which
art and criticism occurred (coffeehouses, moral weeklies). Habermas also
made important observations on the rise of new genres, pointing out that
the publication of correspondence as a literary form and the emergence of
the psychological novel are reactions to a restructuring of the
relationship between author, text, and reader. Intimacy as a matter for
public scrutiny in fictional works depends on and fosters the legitimation
of the public utterance of private opinions.Habermas's debate with the ontological tradition of Hermeneutics,
represented by Hans-Georg Gadamer, also has implications for literary
theory. Although he agreed with the necessity for historicization, he
objected primarily to the political implications contained in Gadamer's
affirmation of "authority," "tradition," and "the classical." Habermas
criticizes the conservative nature of Gadamer's dialogical stance because
of its non- reflexive affirmation of tradition. In order for emancipation
to occur, we must possess the ability to reflect upon and to reject
pernicious or regressive aspects of our heritage. Connected with this,
Habermas believes that Gadamer's hermeneutics excludes precisely the
social moment inherent in all linguistic interchange. Although Habermas,
unlike Michel
Foucault, posits in his later work communication free from domination
as a regulative principle, he nonetheless takes Gadamer to task for
ignoring the place of power and hegemony in dialogue.Habermas's work during the 1980s, in particular Der philosophische
Diskurs der Moderne (1985, The Philosophical Discourse of
Modernity), thrust him into the center of controversy concerning the
concepts of modernity and postmodernity. Opposing Jean-François
Lyotard's notion of the postmodern condition, Habermas contends that
modernity poses for us a task that must still be completed. Habermas's
notion of modernity stems from the tradition of German idealism, in
particular from G.
W. F. Hegel, who posited subjectivity as the key for comprehending the
modern world (see also German
Theory and Criticism: 1. Sturm und Drang / Weimar Classicism and 2.
Romanticism). The constellation between modernity, consciousness, and
rationality that crystallized in his philosophy had three distinct fates
in post-Hegelian thought. The progressive neo-Hegelians, such as Karl
Marx, operating with a more modest notion of reason, continued the project
of modernity. The new conservatives, who reduced reason (Vernunft)
to understanding (Verstand) and affirmed scientifistic notions of
rationality, jettisoned any critical element in the project. The young
conservative faction, which draws its inspiration from Friedrich
Nietzsche and includes most adherents to poststructuralism, abandons
reason altogether and falls into nihilism or anarchy. Habermas's
contention is therefore that those who feel that they have gone beyond the
project of modernity are deceiving themselves. There is no escape from the
problems raised by subjectivity and enlightenment, only a continuation, a
trivialization, or a pseudoradicalization of the initial premises.Habermas's own solution to the project of modernity involves
a return to a path abandoned early in Hegel's writings. He posits
intersubjectivity as a way to avoid the dilemmas inherent in the
"philosophy of consciousness." Instead of proceeding from the isolated
subject confronting the objective world, Habermas opts for a model that
considers human beings in dialogue with each other to be the foundation
for emancipatory social thought. By differentiating between instrumental
reason, which has unfortunately achieved hegemony in the modern world, and
communicative reason, which has the potential to transform societies into
genuine democracies, Habermas can retain a critical edge to reflections on
modernity while explicating a positive program for change. In his magnum
opus, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (1981, The Theory of
Communicative Action), Habermas develops his views on communicative
rationality in the endeavor to rethink the original project of critical
theory along intersubjective lines. His criticism of postmodernity is thus
an outgrowth of a larger philosophical view that affirms the Enlightenment
principles of emancipation and progress, while refusing to abandon the
critical potential of modernity.Robert C. Holub
Notes and Bibliography
Karl-Otto Apel et al., Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik (1971); Jürgen Habermas, Der philosophische Diskurs der Moderne (1985, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence, 1987), Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit: Untersuchen zu einer Kategorie der bùrgerlichen Gesellschaft (1962, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger, 1989), Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (2 vols., 1981, The Theory of Communicative Action, trans. Thomas McCarthy, 1983-87).
Richard J. Bernstein, ed., Habermas and Modernity (1985); Raymond Guess, The Idea of a Critical Theory: Habermas and the Frankfurt School (1981); David Held, Introduction to Critical Theory: Horkheimer to Habermas (1980); Robert C. Holub, Jürgen Habermas: Critic in the Public Sphere (1991); David Ingram, Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason (1987); Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas (1978); David M. Rassmussen, Reading Habermas (1990); Tom Rockmore, Habermas on Historical Materialism (1989); Rick Roderick, Habermas and the Foundations of Critical Theory (1986); John B. Thompson and David Held, eds., Habermas: Critical Debates (1982); Stephen White, The Recent Work of Jürgen Habermas: Reason, Justice, and Modernity (1988).
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