Jürgen Habermas Still Believes in Modernity

Philosophy is certainly a scientific way of thinking, and its mode of developing a scientifically enlightened self-understanding also calls for a scientific approach to processing scientific knowledge of relevance for the lifeworld or to dealing with invasive political changes. However, it is easy to confuse this special role of philosophy with science in general, because scientific activity developed largely within the institutional framework of philosophy until modern natural science emerged and became independent. But in my view, philosophy is distinguished as such by its mode of developing a general self-understanding regarding everything that bears on the background of our orienting knowledge of the world. In this respect, philosophy is certainly not just one among other sciences. It articulates our self-understanding by responding to new knowledge and new life situations, insofar as they disrupt and expand our previous understanding of the world and ourselves.

It is no coincidence, for instance, that my book concludes with chapters on the enabling conditions of cooperative research and on the practices of rational morality and constitutional democracy. Since they are the result of lengthy philosophical learning processes, such achievements can, at worst, be suppressed, but not without leaving traces in history to which later generations can return. Throughout its history, and especially since the advent of modern science, philosophy has repeatedly responded in a similar manner to the increase in knowledge of events in the world and, more broadly, to shocks to our self-understanding.

DSJ: But surely philosophy does not only have an interpretive role, but also generates its own knowledge?

JH: Yes, in this sense philosophy’s own field of research naturally includes the conditions of possibility for perception and knowledge in general as well as those for action and speech. However, its actual theme is more general—as I said, a methodically guided elucidation of that general understanding of the world and of ourselves, on which we and our contemporaries are always already relying for orientation in our life. But a history of philosophy must also address the changes that its role undergoes within its own society. Its most conspicuous role is to make critical contributions to the legitimization of the respective form of political rule.

DSJ: In any case, the book sees the power of modern reason in connection with the development of early religions and ancient worldviews.

JH: It may seem surprising that I make the discourse on faith and knowledge the subject of a history of Western philosophy at all. There are several reasons for this. First, Karl Jaspers convinced me when he argued that Western philosophy belongs to the worldviews that emerged during the so-called axial age, i.e., around the middle of the first millennium BCE, in five or six most advanced civilizations of the time. That is why, before presenting the history of philosophy in the narrow sense, I first offered a brief comparison of the origins of Judaism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism, together with classical Greek philosophy up to Plato. This puts the history of Western philosophy at least into perspective. For despite ambitious intercultural discourses sparked by special occasions, we still lack a sufficiently systematic comparison of the historical paths of the major traditions mentioned, which still extend into contemporary political discourses. Conflicting interests are one thing; however, the justifications for them are the only currency in which the pressing problems that must be negotiated in an economically integrated global society can be solved cooperatively.

In our context the examination of the axial age moreover reminds us that modern Western philosophy also emerged from the combination of two worldviews with quite opposed structures. The combination of Platonism and the teachings of early Christianity, which came about during the Roman Empire, influenced Western philosophy for one and a half millennia. I am particularly interested in the momentous consequences that the biblical legacy had as a result. On the one hand, it shaped the ontological presuppositions of modern natural science through nominalism; on the other hand, it determined the history of European natural law through the reception of Roman law.

Today, I think it is especially important to recall how the development toward modern rational natural law, accelerated by the Wars of Religion, already led to Kant’s idea of a “general condition of right” binding on all states. According to this idea, a globally valid system of universal and strictly binding laws should ensure that citizens of all countries are entitled to the same individual rights in principle. The present concept of human rights reflects the principles of Kant’s moral theory: the universality, the individualistic character, and the binding validity of justified norms. However, the historical, political, and social context in which this abstract idea can be realized was first taken seriously by Hegel and the great thinkers who followed him, albeit in a profoundly critical vain. Feuerbach, Marx, Kierkegaard, and the American pragmatists were the first to engage simultaneously with both Kant and Hegel and their religious heritage, thus setting the stage for contemporary philosophy.

DSJ: Your critique of “scientific rationality,” formulated in the late 1960s, exposes scientism as an ideology that legitimizes capitalist societies by reducing rationality to problem solving, politics to administration, and social change to efficiency. In your current book, scientism functions as a response to the loss of metaphysical security, comparable to the literalism of fundamental Christians. How would you describe your attitude toward knowledge and science? Has this attitude changed?

JH: I have never criticized scientific rationality as such. Philosophy also makes use of this rationality. Then as now, my reservations were never directed against scientific enlightenment, much less against the sciences themselves, but rather against the claim to construct a “worldview” based on the results of the various sciences. This tendency was most evident in the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle, which became influential again after the Second World War through the well-known émigrés in the United States. Quite independently of their own important philosophical work, it is that intention which I always found misleading.

The idea of a “scientific worldview” disregards the necessity of connecting up with an understanding of self and the world that philosophy always already encounters among people in the everyday lifeworld. For even in the allusion to the holistic nature of a “picture” of the world as a whole, contained in the notion of a “worldview,” something of the character of that background understanding already present and found in “our” lifeworld is mirrored—and that background understanding is never fully objectifiable. Scientism does not seek to explicate and, if necessary, correct common sense as such with philosophical interpretations, but to replace it with a scientifically constructed worldview.

In the 1960s, I criticized above all the political consequences of that idea, namely the disenfranchisement of democratic citizens by politicians who wanted to use such indoctrination to promote a supposedly unavoidable technocratic regime. That should again sound pretty familiar in the United States of Elon Musk.

DSJ: How influenced are you in the intention of your history of philosophy by Theodor W. Adorno, who assumed that theological content would change and migrate into the realm of the secular?

JH: Adorno was convinced that theological contents will not survive unless they get translated in secular terms. This idea has always moved me. In my book I have traced step by step how the above-mentioned development of Christian natural law into modern rational natural law leads to a discursive justification of basic rights and human rights. In this way, philosophy can provide a reasonable justification of the constitutional principles of the democratic rule of law against the presently growing potential of right-wing extremism. Thus philosophy can provide the constitutional state with a completely different kind of support than the legal positivist view, which ultimately bases the claim to validity of a constitution not on the power of good reasons, but solely on the expression of the will of the legislator.

DSJ: Max Weber is well known for his distinction between facts and values, or between science and politics. According to Weber, science can produce universal knowledge, but cannot create meaning. Meaning can only arise from the interpretation of facts through values. If we follow Weber here, we simultaneously leave the realm of universal truth and are confronted with “rationally incompatible worldviews.” Unlike Weber, you do not share the pessimistic understanding of history that results from Weber’s argument.

JH: Max Weber’s perspective is that of a sociologist and historian who sees history as a battlefield of rival belief systems. Today, history itself lends credence to this perspective, as shown by obvious examples such as the renewed conflict between the nuclear powers India and Pakistan. On the other hand, Weber did not yet have to deal with the counterexample of the establishment of an international order based on human rights. The fact that the United Nations emerged from the horrors of the Second World War may explain why this legal system is recognized by 193 nations. In our context, however, what is interesting is the general fact that norms can claim precedence over the particular values of their various addressees as long as the validity of these norms rests on their being generally recognized. Such consent can be based on compromises and thus on the contingent agreement of different interests. However, this is a shaky basis, since interests can change at any time. For this reason, the validity of legal norms must rest in principle on good reasons that are convincing to all of their addressees. Max Weber fails to recognize the rationality that recognized norms may claim over mere value orientations. Therefore, whether it will be possible to tame the bellicosity of the major powers remains an open political question for the time being. The idea that world history is and remains a slaughterhouse must not be taken as a fact grounded in human nature.

DSJ: The origins of critical theory lie in Marxism, psychoanalysis, and the critique of power, ideology, and domination. These ideas are less present in your book, even though they played a major role in your previous works. Where do you situate your book in relation to critical theory in the broad sense?

JH: In the preface to my book, I referred to the 1937 essay by Horkheimer and Marcuse, “Philosophy and Critical Theory,” from the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, which can be considered the founding document of Critical Theory. I remain indebted to this source for the basic social-theoretical assumptions that informed the background of my history of philosophy. But these assumptions themselves are not the theme of the book. On the other hand, if you ask what has become of my connection to the tradition of Western Marxism, I would remind you that the research of Critical Theory was focused from its beginnings on explaining the unexpected stability of capitalism despite all its crises. And as far as my involvement in West German day-to-day politics was concerned, I must confess that, as a leftist, I was mainly preoccupied with the struggle to liberalize the political mentality of a population that initially remained deeply attached to the Nazi regime.

As far as capitalist development was concerned, a revolutionary transformation of the liberal economic order established since the end of the Second World War was in any case no longer feasible under the conditions of systemic competition with the Soviet regime. And since the end of the Cold War even less so. From the postwar period onwards, my own interest was directed toward welfare state reforms that, if sufficiently radical, could change capitalist democracies beyond recognition. However, in the shadow of the declining superpower, we are currently witnessing the emergence of new fronts with the infiltration of liberal democracies from the right, both nationally and globally Currently, we would be satisfied if our capitalist democracies could defend themselves against a takeover by right-wing populism—but even that might well be no longer possible without extensive reforms of capitalism.

DSJ: You witnessed Germany’s partition after World War II, its unification and the Cold War’s end, and its rise to the leading liberal political economic power on the European continent. Could you have ever imagined the current upheaval being a possibility in the 1990s at a time in which many embraced a philosophy of history that suggested the arrival of history’s end?

JH: Well, I never believed in that naïve idea. However, the current abrupt break with the history of Germany’s continuous rise under the protection of the United States came as a surprise. For me, however, this does not have the meaning of a break with a “philosophy of history” in the usual understanding of the term that sees history progressing toward a goal. After all, this is a different matter from my own endeavor to seek the tailwind of encouraging learning processes on which we can draw, in full awareness of historical contingencies—learning processes with which it would be wise to seek to connect today. Trump’s decision to turn his back on the political tradition of the West has obviously left Germany and Europe as a whole in a rather difficult situation.

DSJ: The Alternative für Deutschland looks to have achieved the status of a mainstream political party, as recently evidenced by Christian Democrats growing willingness to cooperate with it, and especially on anti-immigration policies. Are you stunned by the AfD?

JH: Yes, the continued growth of a party whose leaders are so closely associated with fascist ideas—so closely that even Marine Le Pen’s party in France wants nothing to do with them—is alarming, especially because we have yet to find a plausible explanation for its constant growth. If a key reason is that many voters are overwhelmed by the complexity of the problems that national governments are increasingly grappling with and that these voters are seeking simple solutions in familiar national settings, then I see no easy way out. After the defection of the United States and the political disintegration of the West, the EU has no choice except to change course from its half-hearted status quo policy and develop the ability to act collectively in global politics. Above all, the urgent need to develop a common European defense policy points toward stronger European integration. In a world of geopolitical turmoil, how else can the European states—even Germany as a single state—be taken seriously in international politics? On the other hand, the new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is still living in the world of Wolfgang Schäuble and views the European question through the blinkers of German economic policy. Given the global political upheavals, I don’t think that the new German government has the necessary stature to meet the extraordinary challenges. It seems unlikely that Europe will be able to escape the maelstrom of the declining superpower and the associated risks.