A Lion in Winter

Jrgen Habermas remains an indispensable guide to the unfinished project of democratic

consciousness and enlightenment.

By Peter E. Gordon September 14, 2016

Jrgen Habermas at the Munich School of Philosophy, 2008. (Wikimedia / Creative Commons 3.0)

Not far from Berlins Brandenburg Gate lies the Holocaust Memorial, a vast grid of nearly 3,000
concrete blocks that span a field of 19,000 square meters and vary in height. Some rise only to the
knees; others loom above the head as one descends the sloping plain to its center. The memorial
was built only after a protracted debate as to whether such a sobering reminder of the darkest
chapter in Germanys past should stand at the heart of the nations newly refounded capital.

Jrgen Habermas: A Biography

By Stefan Mller-Doohm; Daniel Steuer, trans.

Following the memorials inauguration in May 2005, a reporter for the weekly Die Zeit took note
of a solitary visitor, a gentleman with snow-white hair who was standing near an ice-cream van.
His hand is pensively holding his chin. He is looking at the people surging amid the stelae, the
catch-me-if-you-can games of the pubescent, the photo-shooting fathers, exhausted pensioners.
The man is standing there in silence. He observes the whole scene as if he were watching a
sociological experiment. But he has an air of dissatisfaction. What is he thinking? No
comment. says the man. He does not want to talk about it in public, not yet. As the reporter
leaves, the mans white hair can still be seen among the crowd.

The pensive man with the snow-white hair was the philosopher and social theorist Jrgen
Habermas, who for more than six decades has played the part of gadfly in modern Germany, just
as Socrates did in ancient Athens. Even at his ripe agehe is now 87Habermass passion
remains undiminished. As a public intellectual, however, he may seem an unlikely hero. We live in
an age when what some of us still fondly call the public sphere has grown thick with
personalities who prefer the TED Talk to the printed word and the tweet to the rigors of rational
argument. For Habermas, its clear that without the constant exercise of public deliberation,
democracy will collapse, and this means that citizens must be ready to submit their arguments to
the acid bath of rational criticism. The debates that preceded the construction of the Holocaust
Memorial brought bitter memories to the surfacethe novelist Martin Walser complained of a
monumentalization of our disgracebut for Habermas, a willingness to engage productively in
self-criticism is a prerequisite for democratic consciousness. National pride in the conventional
sense leaves him cold: In an essay for Die Zeit, he responded to Walser, emphasizing that anyone
who views Auschwitz as our shame is more interested in the image others have of us than in the
image German citizens retrospectively form of themselves in view of the breakdown of civilization,
in order to be able to look each other in the face and show each other respect. Habermas argues
instead for constitutional patriotism, a sense of loyalty to the principles and procedures of the
modern democratic state.

The ideal that most animates Habermas is a belief in the possibility of a genuinely critical and self-
reflexive form of modern consciousness that can serve as the groundwork for politics. But for this
very reason, he is a thinker who embraces complexity over dogma and has little interest in
theatrical display. After a recent visit to a philosophy seminar in Munich, Habermas left students
with the impression that he is not a charismatic figure. The students never experienced any
rhetorically incisive statements or any of the charming tolerance that bends over backwards to
achieve compromise and accepts any statement, no matter how absurd, which is so common in
the humanities today. Nor did they observe any posturing in the style of a grand master. But
they could still recognize the passion in his deliberation: When Habermas thinksand, at some
point, he thought so intensely that he apologized for his stutteringyou always get the
impression that he is, in fact, entering into an intellectual wrestling match with a problem.

For the assessment of a philosophers legacy there can be no objective measure. But few would
contest the verdict that Habermas has achievedin both his philosophical work and in his role as
a public intellectuala place of enduring significance that surpasses that of any other thinker in
our time. The definitive new biography by Stefan Mller-Doohm, first published in German two
years ago and now available in an English translation by Daniel Steuer, lays out the evidence for
this conclusion with great care and enormous sympathy for its protagonist.

The sympathy is justified. Since his earliest years as a philosopher and public critic, Habermas has
served as a kind of moral compass, not only in Germany but across Western Europe. Even for
those of us who have not had the privilege of working with him, his guidance has proved
indispensable. It is, of course, a strange experience to read a biography of a still-living author. But
we can only be thankful that he is still with us and has not yet grown tired of his task as defender
of what he calls the unfinished project of modernity.

Habermas was born in June of 1929, at a moment when the chances for democracy in modern
Germany seemed uncertain. The Weimar Republic had achieved only a partial political equilibrium
after the disastrous hyperinflation of the early 20s, and compromise between the political
factions on the left and right remained possible thanks chiefly to the great coalition of the center
engineered by Gustav Stresemann, the conservative statesman who served as chancellor in 1923
and then as foreign minister until the fall of 1929. Stresemanns death, nearly coincident with the
stock markets collapse, signaled the beginning of the end for German democracy. The centrist
coalition began to unravel; the Social Democrats tried to sustain the government, despite the fact
that the German president, the aged and decorated war hero Paul von Hindenburg, was opposed
to the republic.

Ernst Habermas, Jrgens father, was the son of a Protestant parson and conservative in his
political beliefs. In the spring of 1933, soon after Hitler came to power, Ernst joined the Nazi Party,
and with the outbreak of war in 1939 volunteered for military service in the Wehrmacht. Jrgen
was only 10 years old when he became a member of the Deutsches Jungvolk and later the Hitler
Youth. But this was hardly an act of ideological convictionmembership at the time was
compulsoryand Jrgen escaped paramilitary training by announcing his intention of becoming a
physician. It is not irrelevant to note that Habermas was born with a cleft palate and in his early
years endured a series of surgical procedures that left him (as he would himself observe) with a
strong feeling for human fragility and interdependency. Medical textbooks at the time listed his
own condition among the hereditary diseases, a fact that may have enhanced his resistance to
Nazi indoctrination. In February 1945, the 15-year-old received notice to join the Wehrmacht for
the final desperate battle against the armies of the invading Allies, but by a strange twist,
Habermas was absent when the military police knocked at the door. Soon thereafter, the
Americans arrived, and the war was over.

The German statesman Helmut Kohl, who is a year younger than Habermas, has spoken of the
blessing of late birth. Both men belong to what the historian Dirk Moses has called the forty-
fivers, the generation of German politicians and intellectuals too young to have seen active
military service during the Third Reich but old enough to have known the horrors of the war. Many
in this generation did not wish to dwell on uncomfortable questions about national responsibility.
Defining 1945 as a Stunde null (or zero hour), they readily embraced the anticommunism that
swept through Western Europe as an ideological warrant for the Marshall Plan, and in the
following years adopted an attitude of cool pragmatism as West Germany underwent the three
decades of recovery and transformation known as the economic miracle.

Konrad Adenauer, the first chancellor of the Federal Republic and the standard-bearer for the
conservative Christian Democratic Union, campaigned under the slogan Keine Experimente! (No
experiments!). For Habermas, however, the tyranny hed witnessed as a child wasnt a license for
present conformity but instead a spur to political criticism. Refusing to forget what had happened
in his own country, he became a tireless opponent of all conservative and nationalist values and a
fierce champion of what is typically called Vergangenheitsbewltigung, or working through the
past. Memories of the Hitler era may also explain Habermass personal indifference to
charismatic authority. Even in the most challenging and technical aspects of his philosophy, one
can sense a devotion to the ideal of a public sphere that draws its power from nothing else than
rational debate. If theres a single principle that animates his entire philosophy, it is that power
alone is not justification: The only force that can be valid within a democratic system is what he
calls the unforced force of the better argument. Sustaining this principle is what distinguishes
democracy from tyranny.

Habermas came to this idea after several trials, and only after he had worked through his own
attachments to the less rational strains in German intellectual history. In his uncles library, he
found works by Kant and Nietzsche; he turned the basement kitchen into a private sanctum where
he would loudly declaim lines from Thus Spake Zarathustra. But in the end, he later recalled,
the associations with the decrepit slogans of the Nazisbecame too embarrassing. By 1948, his
studies had shifted from medicine to history, philosophy, German literature, and economics; he
found himself especially captivated by the opaque rustling of existentialism.

After brief periods of study in Gttingen and Zurich, he moved in 1950 to the department of
philosophy at the University of Bonn, where he struck up a friendship with Karl-Otto Apel, a
somewhat older recent graduate who had worked under the philosopher Erich Rothacker.
Rothackers entanglement with the Third Reich had been extensivehed even offered radio
lectures for Goebbelss Ministry of Propagandabut at first his influence on the young Habermas
was considerable. Then in his early 20s, Habermas focused on topics such as philosophical
anthropology and Wilhelm von Humboldts philosophy of language. At the center of his studies,
however, was Martin Heidegger. In academic essays and in newspaper pieces, he adopted
Heideggers characteristic mannerisms, with allusions to the concealment of entities and the
emergence of the sign. By early 1954, Habermas had concluded his doctorate with a dissertation
on the absolute and history in the philosophy of Friedrich Schelling, the early-19th-century
thinker whose legacy flowed into the darker tributaries of modern irrationalism.

In the summer of 1953, however, Habermas was confronted with the scandal of Heideggers
political past. Apel gave his friend a copy of Heideggers An Introduction to Metaphysics, a book
first published in 1935. In the new edition, a reference to the inner truth and greatness of
National Socialism remained in place, without explanation and with only minor modifications.
Habermas, outraged, responded with an essay published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
The lecture of 1935, he wrote, mercilessly unmasks the fascist colouring of that time. What
troubled him most of all was Heideggers failure to offer any explanation after 18 years: Was the
planned murder of millions of human beings, Habermas asked, a mere signpost along the
history of being? Or was it not the foremost duty of thoughtful people to clarify the
accountable deeds of the past and keep the knowledge of them alive? It was time, Habermas
declared, to think with Heidegger against Heidegger. This moment of political reckoning brought
his early phase of existential enthusiasm to a decisive end. For his biographer, however, the
incident also marked a turning point in the young scholars career. Though Habermas typically
avoided confrontation at home, Heidegger belonged to the same generation as his own father; his
condemnation of Germanys most celebrated philosopher took considerable courage. With this
act, the 24-year-old had become a public critic.

For many sons and daughters who came to maturity in the 50s, the conservative climate of the
Federal Republic of Germany could be stifling. For Habermas, intellectual guidance came from
abroad when Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimerthe two leading members of the Marxist-
oriented Institute for Social Research, who had spent the war years in the United Statesreturned
from exile. Habermas corresponded with Adorno for the first time in December 1955 and became
his personal assistant and an official member of the newly refounded institute in early 1956. The
philosophical intensity of the Frankfurt scene inspired him. The stated aims of the institute spoke
to his own emergent belief that philosophy could best succeed in a multidisciplinary alliance with
sociology. Critical theory meant opposing the mythologies of fascism and reawakening the
repressed energies of enlightenment. In an early radio program, Habermas extolled the Jewish
heritage drawn from the German spirit as a gift that was now indispensable for our own life and
survival. But he found the culture at the institute somewhat exotic. I felt like a figure from a
novel by Balzac, Habermas recalled, the awkward and uneducated boy from the country whose
eyes are opened by the city. Adorno embodied a style of German-Jewish erudition that the Nazis
had done their best to destroy. Time, Habermas noted, had two dimensions. The institute was
thoroughly modern but also a remnant of the past.

Habermas is rightly seen as an incarnation of the Frankfurt School in its second generation. But
in intellectual temperament, he is quite distinct from his teachers. From the start, his associations
with Adorno were very warm, but he had difficulty with Horkheimer, who regarded him with
suspicion and feared that the young mans public criticism of the West German rearmament
program would bring the institute into disrepute. Many years later, following Horkheimers death
in 1973, Habermas was able to read the full text of a private letter to Adorno in which Horkheimer
denounced their student as a revolutionary who would help the gentlemen in the East.
Horkheimer demanded that Habermas resign. Adorno refused, but relations between Horkheimer
and Habermas remained strained. In 1959, Habermas left the institutea risky decision for a
young scholar who was now married with two children. His wife, Ute, was surprised. But with the
support of the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, Habermas received a fellowship to complete his
habilitation on the idea of the public sphere, and in 1961 he secured an assistant professorship
in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg.

The Transformation of the Public Sphere, published a year later, contained many of the themes
that Habermas would develop later in his career. It is often mischaracterized as a purely historical
study because it takes note of bourgeois institutions like newspapers and coffeehouses. But the
truth is that the book combines historical sociology with philosophy; it traces both the genesis and
betrayal of a certain ideal of critical publicity that the European bourgeoisie held out as a promise
and yet could never fully realize, thanks to the power and property constraints of bourgeois
society. If theres a single polestar for this argument, it is Kants ideal of the Enlightenment as an
age of criticism. But its Marxist tonalities are no less profound: Critics who find Habermas too
credulous in his devotion to public reason miss the fact that his book ends with a grim comment
on the refeudalization of the public sphere. With the rise of mass-media forms and the distorting
influence of money on communication, the ideal of rational criticism that once helped the
bourgeoisie wrest itself free from the ancien rgime now threatens to dissolve. Publicity,
Habermas warns, has begun to resemble once again what it was in the feudal age: a mere
performance.

This argument pays homage to the earlier 1944 study by Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialectic of
Enlightenment, which explores the simultaneously emancipatory and oppressive impact of reason
in world history. But whereas the earlier book prosecutes its case with literary allusion and bracing
abstraction, Habermas takes care to sustain a bond with social reality. It is this sober and more
realistic strain in his thinking that most characterizes his mature work as both a social theorist and
a public intellectual.

Throughout the 1960s, Habermass reputation grew. In 1961, he participated in the famous
positivism dispute and openly criticized Karl Popper for cultivating a form of bisected
rationalism that dispensed with moral-political concerns and delimited reasons scope to natural-
scientific and technical affairs. In 1964, upon Horkheimers retirement, Habermas accepted an
offer to assume his teachers chair in philosophy at Goethe University in Frankfurt. Memories of
these times give the impression of a brilliant professor who possessed a healthy dose of self-
deprecating humor. During a lecture in the universitys largest auditorium, a student interrupted
to ask if Habermas could express himself a little less complicatedly, for it was so difficult to
understand him. One half of the audience applauded. He promised to do his best in order to be
intelligible, Habermas replied, whereupon the other half of the audience started booing. To those
who were now booing, Habermas continued, he could promise that his good intentions were
bound to fail.

Formidable in his scholarship, Habermas had become, by the late 1960s, a bold and sometimes
controversial voice in German politics. He signed a declaration to West German Chancellor Ludwig
Erhard that demanded an end to the bombing of Vietnam, and he criticized the national leaders of
the Social Democratic Party (including Willy Brandt) for their readiness to compromise with
conservatives. In the summer of 1967, the police shooting of the 27-year-old Benno Ohnesorg led
to student demonstrations across the Federal Republic. Following the young mans funeral,
Habermas spoke at a conference in defense of the student movement: It was and still is the task
of the student opposition to compensate for the lack of theoretical perspective, the lack of critical
awareness of cover-ups and the branding of others as heretics, the lack of radicalness in the
interpretation and implementation of our social and democratic constitution. His support for the
students, however, was not absolute. When Rudi Dutschke, a leader of the student radicals,
alluded to alternative forms of action and the possible use of violence, Habermas warned that
a voluntaristic ideology could easily slip from utopianism into what he called left-wing fascism.
The phrase carried a considerable sting, especially for young radicals who had cultivated a self-
image as opponents of the fascist past. A decade later, Habermas himself would say that he had
reacted a tad too much as a bourgeois intellectual. But in retrospect, his warning seems
prescient: By the late 1970s, a group of leftist militants had split off into the so-called Red Army
Faction in association with Andreas Baader and Ulrike Meinhof and descended into acts of arson,
kidnapping, and murder. The moral derangement of these years was only enhanced when German
conservatives seized the opportunity to level against Habermas the absurd charge that he had
furnished a left-wing theory for terrorism.

The German Autumn of 1977 ushered in a new decade of conservative ascendancy under the
chancellorship of Helmut Kohl. In 1985, when Ronald Reagan visited West Germany on the
occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Allies victory in World War II, he first visited Bergen-
Belsen (the site of a former concentration camp) and then paid a visit to a military cemetery near
the town of Bitburg, where Kohl had organized a ceremony to commemorate the dead. Among the
graves of German soldiers were those for members of the Waffen SS. Stunned by the offense,
Habermas published an essay in Die Zeit in which he accused Kohl of a disposal of the past. The
following year brought the opening phases of the Historikerstreit, or historians dispute, when
Habermas identified conservative and nationalist trends in contemporary historiography that
sought to relativize the crimes of the Third Reich. After the collapse of the Communist bloc, as
West Germany pressed toward reunification with its eastern neighbor, Habermas again feared a
resurgent nationalism that would subjugate democracy to economic might. German interests,
he lamented, were being weighed and enforced in German Marks.

In an age of mass media, those who style themselves as public intellectuals often seem more
interested in performance than in genuine dialogue. For Habermas, however, true criticism is
possible only in the volatile exchange of arguments between subjects. This commitment to the
ideal of rational communication, undistorted by asymmetries of power, received its most
elaborate treatment in 1981, when he published the monumental two-volume Theory of
Communicative Action. The fruit of a full decade of research and over 1,000 pages in length, the
book signaled what some have called a linguistic turn in critical theory. But the term can be
misleading. Inspired by extensive reading in American pragmatism (especially the semiotics of
Charles Sanders Peirce), Habermass inquiry into what he and his colleague Karl-Otto Apel
described as the formal pragmatics of language did not entail a turning of attention away from
society. The rationality that Habermas sets out to explore is a kind of immanent utopia, the
delicate filigree of rational communication that we fashion with others and rely on whenever we
aim toward mutual understanding. It is a social creationintersubjective, not merely
instrumentaland its telos is the unforced ideal of agreement. Skeptics may respond that
Habermas expects too much from human reason, but his crucial insight is difficult to evade
without falling into self-contradiction. The moment one opts for genuine communication, one has
already taken on board the expectation of intelligibility. Every act of communication, however, is a
potential risk, leaving itself exposed to criticism. But this is what gives language its democratic
edge. For Heidegger, language was the house of Being, a conservative idea that ceded to
language an anonymous power beyond human amendment or appeal. For Habermas, however,
language is a fragile and cooperative project that comes alive only in the space between subjects.
Open-ended and potentially universal in its reach, it is the house of mundane reason.

Critics sometimes mistake Habermas for a cool-minded logician when, in fact, his rationalism
entails a richly textured theory of modern society. Borrowing from both Weber and Marx along
with insights from anthropology, Habermas proposes that we think of society as a dynamic union
between the lifeworld (our ongoing project of communication through which we reproduce
cultural meaning) and the system (the infrastructure of economy and administration that gives
the social order its stability). Ideally, the system serves the lifeworld: Through the process of
rational deliberation, we offer proposals and counterproposals for how we might restructure
society, and we modify the system as we go along with the expectation that all policies remain
open to criticism and revision. The lifeworld is the place of inherited meaning, but also the site
where old meanings are scrutinized and dismantled. Unlike poststructuralists such as Foucault,
who see language as a network of power that conditions all possibility, Habermas looks to
language as a solvent against the calcified structures of tradition. Discourse is not an institution,
he explains; it is a counter-institution par excellence.

But Habermas is a realist about the social utility of the system. Although he still draws a great deal
from the Marxist critique of capitalism, he is at heart a reformist social democrat who has made
his peace with the endurance of private property and the bureaucratic structures of the modern
welfare state. The problem, in his view, is that all too often the fragile lines of communication are
distorted or even broken by economic interestsand when this happens, the system can take on
the opacity and independence of merely technical imperatives that resist our control. The
imperatives of the system can then colonize the lifeworld, resulting in a condition that Marx
called reification: Society confronts us like a frozen and uncanny thing, no longer a reflection of
our collective aims.

While working on the theory of communicative action, Habermas served as director of the Max
Planck Institute in Starnberg, a wealthy suburb some 30 kilometers from Munich, where he and his
family also made their home. In 1981, he resigned from the institute and took up the position as
professor of philosophy in Frankfurt. On his office wall, he hung a photograph of Adorno, who died
in 1969 and whom Habermas has called the only genius I have met in my life.

For the last three and a half decades, Habermass interests have only expanded. His 1985 work,
The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, brought him into confrontation with poststructuralist
readers, especially in North America, who did not welcome his criticism of luminaries like Derrida
and Foucault. Two years before, however, Habermas had met privately with Foucault on several
occasions in Paris, during which time at least some of his philosophical misgivings about his French
colleague had dissipated. Upon Foucaults death in June 1984, Habermas published a tribute to
the philosopher as a partner in thinking through the legacies of the Enlightenment, the theme for
a conference theyd been planning together.

In the years since Germanys reunification, Habermas has increasingly turned his attention to
questions of political theory, law, and religion. In Between Facts and Norms (1992), he sought to
fill in the institutional basis of his discourse ethics by rethinking the relationship between legality
and democracy. Although he officially retired in 1994, even today he sustains remarkable energy
both as a scholar and a critic in the public sphere. The first years of the new millennium revivified
his concern for the future of the European Union and drew him into the international controversy
over the United States military attack on Iraq. In February 2003, huge crowds throughout
Europes major cities demonstrated against the Bush administrations planned invasion. That May,
just after Bush engineered his public-relations stunt of landing on an aircraft carrier decked out
with a Mission Accomplished banner, Habermas coauthored a statement with Derrida,
published simultaneously in German in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and in French in
Libration, in which they referred to the February demonstrations as a sign of the birth of a
European public. Europe, they wrote, must throw its weight onto the scales at the international
level and within the UN in order to counterbalance the hegemonic unilateralism of the United
States. At global economic summits and in the institutions of the WTO [World Trade Organization],
the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, it should bring its influence to bear in
shaping the design of a future global domestic politics.

The recent crises of the EU, both financial and political, havent shaken Habermass belief in
strengthening the institutions of democratic solidarity that can permit the emergence of a truly
European identity. The proper response to globalization, in his view, is not nationalistic withdrawal
(as in the recent Brexit vote), but enhanced regulation and a support for horizontal procedures of
decision-making against the executive federalism imposed from above by policy leaders in both
Germany and France. Even today, Habermas hasnt ceased to defend Kants ideal of a genuinely
cosmopolitan public sphere in which the bonds of reason transcend the old boundaries of national
belonging.

In the penultimate chapter of the new biography, Mller-Doohm makes explicit the comparison to
Kant when he offers a helpful anatomy of the four major themes of Habermass work according to
the four questions that Kant, in his Lectures on Logic, sees as defining philosophy in this
cosmopolitan sense: What can I know?, What should I do?, What can I hope for?, and
What is a human being? It is no exaggeration to say that Habermas has succeeded in
demonstrating that these four questions are really one: We can only know the essence of our
humanity if we sustain our commitment to the moral and political ideals that will permit humanity
as a whole to realize its highest aspirations. Unlike Kant, Habermas is a thinker of late modernity;
he no longer subscribes to the lofty belief in philosophy as the queen of the sciences. Instead, as
a critical theorist in the tradition of his teachers, he embraces a conception of post-metaphysical
thinking that sustains an alliance with the rest of the human sciences and remains responsive to
its own social-historical context. Although genuinely metaphysical knowledge is no longer the
rightful province of philosophical speculation, Habermas still cleaves in his own way to what
Adorno once called metaphysics at the moment of its fall. In our capacity for rational
communication and in our appeal to a morality that leaves no one behind, there lies (in
Habermass phrase) a moment of unconditionality. While it lacks the prestige of a metaphysical
absolute, it still bears a trace of the older idealism. Habermas calls it an absolute that has become
fluid as a critical procedure. Mundane reason, in other words, isnt wholly mundane: In its
modest commitment to rational argumentation, it keeps alive the universalizing impulse of the
monotheistic religions when it strives to break free of its own conditions and points beyond all
particular forms of life.

We live in an age of such deflated expectations that too many of us are now ready to equate
intellect with cynicism, as if we could hope for little more from public intellectuals than irony and
polemic. We owe to Habermas an enduring model of fidelity to a higher ideal. Among the many
honors that he has received over the course of his career, the Kyoto Prize in 2004 served as an
occasion for Habermas to affirm his faith in the standards of communicative reason. It is hardly
surprising that we fail to live up to these standards, he observed, but that in no way devalues
the standards themselves. For if there is one thing that intellectualsa species that has so often
attacked its own kind and pronounced its demisecannot allow themselvesit is to become
cynical.
Un len en invierno

Jrgen Habermas sigue siendo una gua indispensable para el proyecto inacabado de la conciencia
democrtica y la iluminacin.

Por Peter E. Gordon 14 de septiembre de 2016

Jrgen Habermas en la Escuela de Filosofa de Munich, 2008. (Wikimedia / Creative Commons 3.0)

No muy lejos de la Puerta de Brandenburgo de Berln se encuentra el Memorial del Holocausto,

una gran red de cerca de 3.000 bloques de hormign que abarcan un campo de 19.000 metros
cuadrados y varan en altura. Algunos se elevan hasta las rodillas; Otros se alzan sobre la cabeza
cuando uno desciende la llanura inclinada hacia su centro. El monumento fue construido
solamente despus de un discusin prolongado sobre si tal un recordatorio serio del captulo ms
oscuro en el pasado de Alemania debe estar en el corazn de la capital nuevamente refundada de
la nacin.

Jrgen Habermas: Una biografa

Por Stefan Mller-Doohm; Daniel Steuer, trans.

Despus de la inauguracin del monumento en mayo de 2005, un reportero del semanario Die Zeit
tom nota de un visitante solitario, "un caballero con el pelo blanco como la nieve" que estaba de
pie cerca de una furgoneta de helado. Su mano sostiene pensativamente su barbilla. l est
mirando a la gente que afloja en medio de las estelas, los juegos del catch-me-si-usted-puede del
pubescent, de los padres de la foto-shooting, de los pensionistas exhaustos. El hombre est
parado all en silencio. "Observa toda la escena" como si estuviera observando un experimento
sociolgico. "Pero l tiene un aire de insatisfaccin. Qu est pensando? "No hay comentarios",
dice el hombre. "No quiere hablar de ello en pblico, todava no". Cuando el reportero se va, el
"pelo blanco" del hombre an se puede ver entre la multitud.

El hombre pensativo con el cabello blanco como la nieve fue el filsofo y terico social Jrgen
Habermas, que durante ms de seis dcadas ha desempeado el papel de gadfly en la Alemania
moderna, al igual que Scrates en la antigua Atenas. Incluso a su edad madura, ahora tiene 87
aos. La pasin de Habermas no ha disminuido. Como un intelectual pblico, sin embargo, puede
parecer un hroe improbable. Vivimos en una poca en que lo que algunos de nosotros todava
llamamos cariosamente "la esfera pblica" se ha vuelto grueso con personalidades que prefieren
la TED Talk a la palabra impresa y el tweet a los rigores del argumento racional. Para Habermas,
est claro que sin el ejercicio constante de la deliberacin pblica, la democracia se derrumbar, y
esto significa que los ciudadanos deben estar dispuestos a presentar sus argumentos al bao cido
de la crtica racional. Los debates que precedieron a la construccin del Memorial del Holocausto
trajeron amargos recuerdos a la superficie -el novelista Martin Walser se quej de "una
monumentalizacin de nuestra deshonra" -pero para Habermas, la voluntad de participar
productivamente en la autocrtica es un requisito previo para la conciencia democrtica . En un
ensayo para Die Zeit, respondi a Walser, haciendo hincapi en que "todo aquel que ve a
Auschwitz como" nuestra vergenza "est ms interesado en la imagen que otros tienen de
nosotros que en la imagen de los ciudadanos alemanes Retrospectivamente se forman a s mismos
en vista de la ruptura de la civilizacin, a fin de poder mirarse en la cara y mostrarse respeto
mutuo ". Habermas argumenta en lugar de" patriotismo constitucional ", un sentido de lealtad a
los principios y procedimientos de El Estado democrtico moderno.

El ideal que ms anima a Habermas es la creencia en la posibilidad de una forma genuinamente

crtica y autorreflexiva de la conciencia moderna que pueda servir de base para la poltica. Pero
por esta misma razn, es un pensador que abarca la complejidad sobre el dogma y tiene poco
inters en la exhibicin teatral. Despus de una reciente visita a un seminario de filosofa en
Munich, Habermas dej a los estudiantes con la impresin de que l "no es una figura
carismtica." Los estudiantes "nunca experimentaron declaraciones retricas incisivas o cualquiera
de la tolerancia encantadora que se inclina hacia atrs para lograr compromisos y Acepta cualquier
declaracin, por absurda que sea, que es tan comn en las humanidades de hoy ". Tampoco
observaban ninguna" postura en el estilo de un gran maestro ". Pero todava podan reconocer la
pasin en su deliberacin:" Cuando Habermas piensa Y, en algn momento, pens tan
intensamente que se disculp por su "tartamudez", siempre tiene la impresin de que, de hecho,
est entrando en un combate de lucha intelectual con un problema ".

Para la evaluacin del legado de un filsofo no puede haber una medida objetiva. Pero pocos se
opondran al veredicto que Habermas ha logrado, tanto en su obra filosfica como en su papel de
intelectual pblico, un lugar de significacin perdurable que sobrepase el de cualquier otro
pensador de nuestro tiempo. La nueva biografa definitiva de Stefan Mller-Doohm, publicada por
primera vez en alemn hace dos aos y ahora disponible en una traduccin al ingls por Daniel
Steuer, expone con gran cuidado y enorme simpata a su protagonista la evidencia de esta
conclusin.

La simpata est justificada. Desde sus primeros aos como filsofo y crtico pblico, Habermas ha
servido como una especie de brjula moral, no slo en Alemania sino a travs de Europa
occidental. Incluso para aquellos de nosotros que no hemos tenido el privilegio de trabajar con l,
su gua ha demostrado ser indispensable. Es, por supuesto, una experiencia extraa leer una
biografa de un autor todava vivo. Pero slo podemos estar agradecidos de que l todava est
con nosotros y no se haya cansado de su tarea como defensor de lo que l llama el "proyecto
inacabado de la modernidad".

Habermas naci en junio de 1929, en un momento en que las posibilidades de democracia en la

Alemania moderna parecan inciertas. La Repblica de Weimar haba logrado slo un equilibrio
poltico parcial despus de la desastrosa hiperinflacin de principios de los aos 20, y el
compromiso entre las facciones polticas de izquierda y derecha continu siendo posible gracias
principalmente a la "gran coalicin" del centro dirigida por Gustav Stresemann, Conservador que
sirvi como canciller en 1923 y luego como ministro de Relaciones Exteriores hasta el otoo de
1929. La muerte de Stresemann, casi coincidente con el colapso del mercado de valores, seal el
comienzo del fin de la democracia alemana. La coalicin centrista comenz a desenredarse; Los
socialdemcratas trataron de sostener al gobierno, a pesar de que el presidente alemn, el hroe
de la guerra de edad y adornado Paul von Hindenburg, se opona a la repblica.

Ernst Habermas, padre de Jrgen, era el hijo de un prroco protestante y conservador en sus
creencias polticas. En la primavera de 1933, poco despus de Hitler lleg al poder, Ernst se uni al
Partido Nazi, y con el estallido de la guerra en 1939 se ofreci como voluntario para el servicio
militar en la Wehrmacht. Jrgen tena slo 10 aos cuando se convirti en miembro del Deutsches
Jungvolk y ms tarde en la Juventud Hitleriana. Pero esto no fue un acto de conviccin ideolgica -
la afiliacin en ese momento era obligatoria- y Jrgen escap del entrenamiento paramilitar
anunciando su intencin de convertirse en mdico. No es irrelevante notar que Habermas naci
con un paladar hendido y en sus primeros aos sufri una serie de procedimientos quirrgicos que
le dejaron (como l mismo observara) con un fuerte sentimiento de fragilidad humana e
interdependencia. Los libros de texto mdicos en ese momento enumeraban su propia condicin
entre las "enfermedades hereditarias", un hecho que pudo haber aumentado su resistencia al
adoctrinamiento nazi. En febrero de 1945, el joven de 15 aos recibi la noticia de unirse a la
Wehrmacht para la batalla final desesperada contra los ejrcitos de los aliados invasores, pero por
un extrao giro, Habermas estaba ausente cuando la polica militar llam a la puerta. Poco
despus, los estadounidenses llegaron y la guerra termin.

El estadista alemn Helmut Kohl, que es un ao ms joven que Habermas, ha hablado de la

"bendicin del nacimiento tardo". Ambos hombres pertenecen a lo que el historiador Dirk Moses
ha llamado los "cuarenta", la generacin de polticos e intelectuales alemanes Demasiado joven
para haber visto un servicio militar activo durante el Tercer Reich pero lo suficientemente mayor
como para haber conocido los horrores de la guerra. Muchos en esta generacin no quisieron
insistir en preguntas incmodas sobre la responsabilidad nacional. Definiendo 1945 como Stunde
null (o "hora cero"), abrazaron fcilmente el anticomunismo que barri Europa occidental como
una orden ideolgica para el plan de Marshall, y en los aos siguientes adopt una actitud del
pragmatismo fresco mientras que Alemania Occidental sufri los tres Dcadas de recuperacin y
transformacin conocida como el "milagro econmico".

Konrad Adenauer, primer canciller de la Repblica Federal y portaestandarte de la Unin

Demcrata Cristiana conservadora, hizo campaa bajo el lema Keine Experimente! ("No
experimentos!"). Para Habermas, sin embargo, la tirana que haba presenciado cuando era nio
no era una licencia para la conformidad presente, sino un estmulo para la crtica poltica.
Rechazando olvidar lo que haba sucedido en su propio pas, se convirti en un oponente
incansable de todos los valores conservadores y nacionalistas y un feroz campen de lo que se
llama tpicamente Vergangenheitsbewltigung, o "trabajar a travs del pasado." Las memorias de
la era de Hitler tambin pueden explicar el Habermas Indiferencia personal a la autoridad
carismtica. Incluso en los aspectos ms desafiantes y tcnicos de su filosofa, se puede sentir una
devocin al ideal de una esfera pblica que extrae su poder de nada ms que un debate racional.
Si hay un solo principio que anima toda su filosofa, es que el poder por s solo no es justificacin:
la nica fuerza que puede ser vlida dentro de un sistema democrtico es lo que l llama "la fuerza
no forzada del mejor argumento". Distingue a la democracia de la tirana.

Habermas lleg a esta idea despus de varias pruebas, y slo despus de haber trabajado a travs
de sus propios apegos a las tensiones menos racionales en la historia intelectual alemana. En la
biblioteca de su to, encontr obras de Kant y Nietzsche; Convirti la cocina del stano en un
santuario privado donde l deca en voz alta lneas de As hablaba Zaratustra. Pero al final,
record ms tarde, las asociaciones con las consignas viciadas de los nazis ... se volvieron
demasiado embarazosas. En 1948, sus estudios haban pasado de la medicina a la historia, la
filosofa, la literatura alemana y la economa; Se encontr especialmente cautivado por el "opaco
crujido" del existencialismo.

Despus de breves perodos de estudio en Gttingen y Zurich, se traslad en 1950 al

departamento de filosofa de la Universidad de Bonn, donde inici una amistad con Karl-Otto Apel,
un graduado recin mayor que haba trabajado bajo el filsofo Erich Rothacker . El enredo de
Rothacker con el Tercer Reich haba sido extenso -haba incluso ofrecido conferencias radiofnicas
para el Ministerio de Propaganda de Goebbels- pero al principio su influencia en el joven
Habermas era considerable. Luego, a los 20 aos, Habermas se centr en temas como la
antropologa filosfica y la filosofa del lenguaje de Wilhelm von Humboldt. En el centro de sus
estudios, sin embargo, estaba Martin Heidegger. En los ensayos acadmicos y en los peridicos,
adopt los manierismos caractersticos de Heidegger, con alusiones al "ocultamiento de
entidades" y "la aparicin del signo". A principios de 1954 Habermas haba concluido su doctorado
con una disertacin sobre "lo absoluto y la historia "En la filosofa de Friedrich Schelling, pensador
de principios del siglo XIX cuyo legado fluy hacia los afluentes ms oscuros del irracionalismo
moderno.

Sin embargo, en el verano de 1953, Habermas se enfrent al escndalo del pasado poltico de
Heidegger. Apel dio a su amigo una copia de la Introduccin a la Metafsica de Heidegger, un libro
publicado por primera vez en 1935. En la nueva edicin, una referencia a "la verdad interior y la
grandeza" del nacionalsocialismo permaneci en su lugar, sin explicacin y con pequeas
modificaciones. Habermas, indignado, respondi con un ensayo publicado en el Frankfurter
Allgemeine Zeitung. "La conferencia de 1935", escribi, "desenmascara despiadadamente la
coloracin fascista de aquella poca". Lo que ms le preocup fue que Heidegger no ofreci
ninguna explicacin despus de 18 aos: Fue el "asesinato planeado de millones de seres
humanos" Habermas pregunt, un mero sealizador a lo largo de la "historia del ser"? O no era
"el deber primordial de las personas pensantes aclarar las obras responsables del pasado y
mantener el conocimiento de ellas vivas?" Era el momento, Habermas declar, "pensar con
Heidegger contra Heidegger". Este momento de recuento poltico trajo Su temprana fase de
entusiasmo existencial a un final decisivo. Para su bigrafo, sin embargo, el incidente tambin
marc un punto de inflexin en la carrera del joven erudito. Aunque Habermas normalmente
evitaba la confrontacin en casa, Heidegger perteneca a la misma generacin que su propio
padre; Su condena del filsofo ms famoso de Alemania tom coraje considerable. Con este acto,
el joven de 24 aos se haba convertido en un crtico pblico.
Para muchos hijos e hijas que llegaron a la madurez en los aos 50, el clima conservador de la
Repblica Federal de Alemania podra ser sofocante. Para Habermas, la orientacin intelectual
vena del exterior cuando Theodor Adorno y Max Horkheimer -los dos principales miembros del
Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales orientado hacia el marxismo, que haban pasado los aos de
la guerra en los Estados Unidos- regresaron del exilio. Habermas se corresponda con Adorno por
primera vez en diciembre de 1955 y se convirti en su asistente personal y miembro oficial del
recin fundado instituto a principios de 1956. La intensidad filosfica de la escena de Frankfurt le
inspir. Los propsitos declarados del instituto hablaban de su propia creencia emergente de que
la filosofa podra tener xito en una alianza multidisciplinaria con la sociologa. "Teora crtica"
significaba oponerse a las mitologas del fascismo y despertar las energas reprimidas de la
iluminacin. En un programa de radio temprano, Habermas exalt "la herencia juda sacada del
espritu alemn" como un regalo que ahora era "indispensable para nuestra propia vida y
supervivencia". Pero l encontr la cultura en el instituto algo extica. "Me sent como una figura
de una novela de Balzac", record Habermas, "el muchacho torpe e inculto del pas cuyos ojos son
abiertos por la ciudad". Adorno encarn un estilo de erudicin judo-alemana de que los nazis
haban hecho lo mejor para destruir. "El tiempo", dijo Habermas, "tena dos dimensiones". El
instituto era completamente moderno, pero tambin un remanente del pasado.

Habermas es visto correctamente como una encarnacin de la Escuela de Frankfurt en su

"segunda generacin". Pero en el temperamento intelectual, es muy distinto de sus maestros.
Desde el principio, sus relaciones con Adorno fueron muy calurosas, pero tuvo dificultad con
Horkheimer, que lo miraba con recelo y tema que la crtica pblica del joven al programa de
rearme de Alemania Occidental despreciara al instituto. Muchos aos ms tarde, despus de la
muerte de Horkheimer en 1973, Habermas pudo leer el texto completo de una carta privada a
Adorno en la que Horkheimer denunciaba a su estudiante como un revolucionario que ayudara a
"los caballeros de Oriente." Horkheimer exigi que Habermas renunciara. Adorno se neg, pero las
relaciones entre Horkheimer y Habermas se mantuvieron tensas. En 1959, Habermas abandon el
instituto, una decisin arriesgada para un joven acadmico que estaba casado y tena dos hijos. Su
esposa, Ute, se sorprendi. Pero con el apoyo del filsofo Hans-Georg Gadamer, Habermas recibi
una beca para completar su habilitacin sobre la idea de la "esfera pblica", y en 1961 obtuvo una
ctedra de filosofa en la Universidad de Heidelberg.

La transformacin de la esfera pblica, publicada un ao ms tarde, contena muchos de los temas

que Habermas desarrollara ms tarde en su carrera. A menudo se caracteriza errneamente como
un estudio puramente histrico porque toma nota de las instituciones burguesas como los
peridicos y los cafs. Pero la verdad es que el libro combina la sociologa histrica con la filosofa;
Traza tanto la gnesis como la traicin de un cierto ideal de publicidad crtica que la burguesa
europea defenda como una promesa y que, sin embargo, nunca pudo concretarse plenamente
gracias a las limitaciones de poder y propiedad de la sociedad burguesa. Si hay una sola estrella
polar para este argumento, es el ideal de Kant de la Ilustracin como una "era de la crtica". Pero
sus tonalidades marxistas no son menos profundas: los crticos que encuentran a Habermas
demasiado crdulo en su devocin a la razn pblica pierden el hecho de que su El libro termina
con un sombro comentario sobre la "refeudalizacin" de la esfera pblica. Con el surgimiento de
las formas de los medios masivos y la influencia distorsionadora del dinero en la comunicacin, el
ideal de la crtica racional que una vez ayud a la burguesa a liberarse del antiguo rgimen
amenaza con disolverse. La publicidad, advierte Habermas, ha comenzado a asemejarse una vez
ms a lo que era en la poca feudal: una mera representacin.

Este argumento rinde homenaje al estudio de 1944 de Adorno y Horkheimer, Dialctica de la

Ilustracin, que explora el impacto simultneamente emancipador y opresivo de la razn en la
historia del mundo. Pero mientras que el libro anterior prosigue su caso con la alusin literaria y la
abstraccin que ataca, Habermas toma cuidado de sostener un lazo con la realidad social. Es esta
cepa sobria y ms realista en su pensamiento que ms caracteriza su trabajo maduro como un
terico social y un intelectual pblico.

A lo largo de los aos 60, la reputacin de Habermas creci. En 1961, particip en la famosa
"controversia del positivismo" y critic abiertamente a Karl Popper por cultivar una forma de
"raciocinio bisecado" que prescinda de las preocupaciones poltico-morales y delimitaba el
alcance de la razn a los asuntos naturales, cientficos y tcnicos. En 1964, tras la jubilacin de
Horkheimer, Habermas acept una oferta para asumir su ctedra de profesor en filosofa en la
Universidad Goethe de Frankfurt. Las memorias de estos tiempos dan la impresin de un profesor
brillante que posea una dosis sana de humor autodepreciable. Durante una conferencia en el
auditorio ms grande de la universidad, un estudiante interrumpi para preguntar si Habermas
"podra expresarse un poco menos complicado, porque era tan difcil de entenderlo. La mitad de la
audiencia aplaudi. Prometi hacer todo lo posible para ser inteligible, respondi Habermas, con
lo cual la otra mitad de la audiencia empez a abuchear. Habermas continu diciendo a los que
ahora abucheaban que poda prometer que sus buenas intenciones iban a fracasar.

Formidable en su erudicin, Habermas se haba convertido, a finales de los aos sesenta, en una
voz audaz ya veces polmica en la poltica alemana. Firm una declaracin al canciller de Alemania
Occidental, Ludwig Erhard, que exiga el fin del bombardeo de Vietnam y critic a los lderes
nacionales del Partido Social Demcrata (incluido Willy Brandt) por su disposicin a
comprometerse con los conservadores. En el verano de 1967, el tiroteo policial de Benno
Ohnesorg, de 27 aos, condujo a manifestaciones estudiantiles en toda la Repblica Federal.
Despus del funeral del joven, Habermas habl en una conferencia en defensa del movimiento
estudiantil: "Fue y sigue siendo la tarea de la oposicin estudiantil compensar la falta de
perspectiva terica, la falta de conciencia crtica de encubrimientos y la La falta de radicalidad en
la interpretacin y aplicacin de nuestra constitucin social y democrtica ". Sin embargo, su
apoyo a los estudiantes no era absoluto. Cuando Rudi Dutschke, lder de los radicales
estudiantiles, aluda a "formas alternativas de accin" y "el posible uso de la violencia", Habermas
advirti que una "ideologa voluntarista" podra fcilmente deslizarse del utopismo a lo que llam
"fascismo de izquierda . "La frase llevaba un aguijn considerable, especialmente para los jvenes
radicales que haban cultivado una imagen de s mismos como opositores del pasado fascista. Una
dcada ms tarde, el propio Habermas dira que haba "reaccionado demasiado como un
intelectual burgus". Pero en retrospectiva, su advertencia parece presciente: a finales de los aos
setenta, un grupo de militantes izquierdistas se haba separado en el llamado Red Army Faction en
asociacin con Andreas Baader y Ulrike Meinhof y descendi a actos de incendio premeditado,
secuestro y asesinato. El trastorno moral de estos aos slo se intensific cuando los
conservadores alemanes aprovecharon la oportunidad para confrontar con Habermas la absurda
acusacin de haber proporcionado una "teora de izquierda" para el terrorismo.

El "Otoo alemn" de 1977 inaugur una nueva dcada de ascendencia conservadora bajo la
cancillera de Helmut Kohl. En 1985, cuando Ronald Reagan visit Alemania Occidental con motivo
del 40 aniversario de la victoria de los Aliados en la Segunda Guerra Mundial, visit por primera
vez Bergen-Belsen (el sitio de un antiguo campo de concentracin) y luego visit un cementerio
militar Cerca de la ciudad de Bitburg, donde Kohl haba organizado una ceremonia para
conmemorar a los muertos. Entre las tumbas de los soldados alemanes estaban las de los
miembros de las Waffen SS. Aturdido por el delito, Habermas public un ensayo en Die Zeit en el
que acusaba a Kohl de una "disposicin del pasado". El ao siguiente trajo las fases iniciales del
Historikerstreit, o "disputa de historiadores", cuando Habermas identific a conservadores y
nacionalistas Tendencias de la historiografa contempornea que buscaban relativizar los crmenes
del Tercer Reich. Despus del colapso del bloque comunista, mientras Alemania occidental
presionaba hacia la reunificacin con su vecino del este, Habermas tema de nuevo un
nacionalismo resurgente que subyugara a la democracia al poder econmico. "Los intereses
alemanes," se lament, estaban siendo "pesados y reforzados en las marcas alemanas".

En una era de los medios de comunicacin de masas, aquellos que se llaman a s mismos como
intelectuales pblicos a menudo parecen ms interesados en el rendimiento que en el dilogo
genuino. Para Habermas, sin embargo, la verdadera crtica slo es posible en el intercambio voltil
de argumentos entre sujetos. Este compromiso con el ideal de comunicacin racional, no
distorsionado por las asimetras de poder, recibi su tratamiento ms elaborado en 1981, cuando
public la monumental Teora de la Accin Comunicativa de dos volmenes. El fruto de una
dcada completa de investigacin y ms de 1.000 pginas de longitud, el libro seal lo que
algunos han llamado un "giro lingstico" en la teora crtica. Pero el trmino puede ser engaoso.
La investigacin de Habermas sobre lo que l y su colega Karl-Otto Apel describi como la
"pragmtica formal" del lenguaje, no inspiraron una lectura extensa en el pragmatismo americano
(especialmente la semitica de Charles Sanders Peirce). La racionalidad que Habermas se propone
explorar es una especie de utopa inmanente, la delicada filigrana de la comunicacin racional que
formamos con los dems y en la que nos apoyamos siempre que apuntamos a la comprensin
mutua. Es una creacin social-intersubjetiva, no meramente instrumental- y su telos es el ideal no
forzado de acuerdo. Los escpticos pueden responder que Habermas espera demasiado de la
razn humana, pero su discernimiento crucial es difcil de evadir sin caer en la auto-contradiccin.
En el momento en que se opta por una comunicacin genuina, ya se ha asumido la expectativa de
inteligibilidad. Todo acto de comunicacin, sin embargo, es un riesgo potencial, dejndose
expuesto a la crtica. Pero esto es lo que da al lenguaje su ventaja democrtica. Para Heidegger, el
lenguaje era la "casa del Ser", una idea conservadora que ceda al lenguaje un poder annimo ms
all de la enmienda o apelacin humana. Para Habermas, sin embargo, el lenguaje es un proyecto
frgil y cooperativo que slo se activa en el espacio entre sujetos. Abierto y potencialmente
universal a su alcance, es la casa de la razn mundana.

Los crticos a veces confunden a Habermas con un lgico lcido cuando, de hecho, su racionalismo
conlleva una teora ricamente texturizada de la sociedad moderna. Tomando prestado tanto de
Weber como de Marx junto con las ideas de la antropologa, Habermas propone que pensamos en
la sociedad como una unin dinmica entre el "mundo de la vida" (nuestro proyecto actual de
comunicacin a travs del cual reproducimos el significado cultural) y el "sistema" Economa y
administracin que le da al orden social su estabilidad). Idealmente, el sistema sirve al mundo de
la vida: A travs del proceso de deliberacin racional, ofrecemos propuestas y contrapropuestas
para cmo reestructurar la sociedad, y modificamos el sistema a medida que avanzamos con la
expectativa de que todas las polticas permanezcan abiertas a la crtica y revisin. El mundo de la
vida es el lugar del significado heredado, pero tambin el sitio donde los viejos significados son
escudriados y desmantelados. A diferencia de los postestructuralistas como Foucault, que ven el
lenguaje como una red de poder que condiciona todas las posibilidades, Habermas mira al
lenguaje como un disolvente contra las estructuras calcificadas de la tradicin. El discurso "no es
una institucin", explica; "Es una contrainstitucin por excelencia".

Pero Habermas es realista sobre la utilidad social del sistema. A pesar de que todava extrae
mucho de la crtica marxista del capitalismo, l es en el fondo un socialdemcrata reformista que
ha hecho su paz con la resistencia de la propiedad privada y las estructuras burocrticas del estado
de bienestar moderno. El problema, a su juicio, es que con demasiada frecuencia las frgiles lneas
de comunicacin son distorsionadas o incluso rotas por intereses econmicos, y cuando esto
sucede, el sistema puede asumir la opacidad y la independencia de los simples imperativos
tcnicos que resisten nuestro control. Los imperativos del sistema pueden entonces "colonizar" el
mundo de la vida, dando como resultado una condicin que Marx llam "reificacin": la sociedad
nos confronta como una cosa congelada y misteriosa, ya no como un reflejo de nuestros objetivos
colectivos.

Mientras trabajaba en la teora de la accin comunicativa, Habermas sirvi como director del
Instituto Max Planck en Starnberg, un suburbio rico a unos 30 kilmetros de Munich, donde l y su
familia tambin hicieron su hogar. En 1981, dimiti del instituto y ocup el cargo de profesor de
filosofa en Frankfurt. En la pared de su oficina, colg una fotografa de Adorno, que muri en
1969 y que Habermas ha llamado "el nico genio que he conocido en mi vida".

Durante los ltimos tres aos y medio, los intereses de Habermas se han ampliado. Su obra de
1985, El discurso filosfico de la modernidad, lo llev a la confrontacin con lectores
postestructuralistas, especialmente en Amrica del Norte, que no acogi con agrado su crtica de
luminarias como Derrida y Foucault. Dos aos antes, Habermas se haba reunido en privado con
Foucault en varias ocasiones en Pars, tiempo durante el cual al menos algunas de sus dudas
filosficas acerca de su colega francs se haban disipado. Despus de la muerte de Foucault en
junio de 1984, Habermas public un tributo al filsofo como socio en el pensamiento a travs de
los legados de la Ilustracin, el tema de una conferencia que haban estado planeando juntos.

En los aos transcurridos desde la reunificacin de Alemania, Habermas ha vuelto cada vez ms su
atencin a las cuestiones de la teora poltica, el derecho y la religin. In Between Facts and Norms
(1992), trat de llenar la base institucional de su "tica del discurso" al repensar la relacin entre
legalidad y democracia. Aunque se retir oficialmente en 1994, an hoy mantiene una notable
energa tanto como erudito como como crtico en la esfera pblica. Los primeros aos del nuevo
milenio revivieron su preocupacin por el futuro de la Unin Europea y lo atrajeron hacia la
controversia internacional por el ataque militar de Estados Unidos contra Irak. En febrero de 2003,
una gran multitud en las principales ciudades de Europa se manifest en contra de la planeada
invasin de la administracin Bush. En mayo, justo despus de que Bush diseara su truco de
relaciones pblicas para aterrizar en un portaaviones adornado con una bandera "Misin
Cumplida", Habermas coautoriz una declaracin con Derrida, publicada simultneamente en
alemn en Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung y en francs en Libration, En la que se refiri a las
manifestaciones de febrero como un signo del "nacimiento de un pblico europeo". Europa,
escribieron, "debe lanzar su peso a las escalas a nivel internacional y dentro de la ONU para
contrarrestar el unilateralismo hegemnico de los Estados Unidos. En las cumbres econmicas
mundiales y en las instituciones de la OMC (Organizacin Mundial del Comercio), el Banco Mundial
y el Fondo Monetario Internacional, debera ejercer su influencia en la configuracin del diseo de
una poltica domstica mundial futura ".

Las recientes crisis de la UE, tanto financieras como polticas, no han sacudido la creencia de
Habermas en el fortalecimiento de las instituciones de solidaridad democrtica que pueden
permitir el surgimiento de una identidad verdaderamente europea. La respuesta adecuada a la
globalizacin, a su juicio, no es la retirada nacionalista (como en el reciente voto de Brexit), sino
una regulacin reforzada y un apoyo a los procedimientos horizontales de toma de decisiones
contra el "federalismo ejecutivo" Alemania y Francia. An hoy, Habermas no ha dejado de
defender el ideal de Kant de una esfera pblica genuinamente cosmopolita en la que los vnculos
de la razn trascienden los viejos lmites de la pertenencia nacional.

En el penltimo captulo de la nueva biografa, Mller-Doohm hace explcita la comparacin con

Kant cuando ofrece una anatoma til de los cuatro temas principales de la obra de Habermas de
acuerdo con las "cuatro preguntas" que Kant, en sus Conferencias sobre Lgica, ve como
Definiendo "filosofa en este sentido cosmopolita": "Qu puedo saber?", "Qu debo hacer?",
"Qu puedo esperar?" Y "Qu es un ser humano?" No es exagerado decir que Habermas ha
logrado demostrar que estas cuatro preguntas son realmente una: slo podemos conocer la
esencia de nuestra humanidad si mantenemos nuestro compromiso con los ideales morales y
polticos que permitirn a la humanidad entera realizar sus ms altas aspiraciones. A diferencia de
Kant, Habermas es un pensador de la modernidad tarda; Ya no se adhiere a la elevada creencia en
la filosofa como "reina de las ciencias". En cambio, como terico crtico en la tradicin de sus
maestros, abraza una concepcin del "pensamiento post-metafsico" que sostiene una alianza con
el resto De las ciencias humanas y sigue siendo sensible a su propio contexto socio-histrico.
Aunque el conocimiento genuinamente metafsico ya no es la provincia legtima de la especulacin
filosfica, Habermas sigue clavando a su manera lo que Adorno llam una vez "metafsica en el
momento de su cada". En nuestra capacidad de comunicacin racional y en nuestro llamamiento
a una moralidad que No deja a nadie atrs, se encuentra (en la frase de Habermas) "un momento
de incondicionalidad". Aunque carece del prestigio de un absoluto metafsico, todava lleva un
rastro del idealismo ms antiguo. Habermas lo llama "un absoluto que se ha vuelto fluido como un
procedimiento crtico". En otras palabras, la razn mundana no es totalmente mundana: en su
modesto compromiso con la argumentacin racional, mantiene vivo el impulso universalizante de
las religiones monotestas cuando se esfuerza Para liberarse de sus propias condiciones y "puntos
ms all de todas las formas particulares de la vida".

Vivimos en una poca de expectativas tan desinfladas de que muchos de nosotros estamos
dispuestos a igualar el intelecto con el cinismo, como si pudiramos esperar poco ms de los
intelectuales pblicos que la irona y la polmica. Debemos a Habermas un modelo duradero de
fidelidad a un ideal superior. Entre los muchos honores que ha recibido a lo largo de su carrera, el
Premio Kyoto en 2004 sirvi como una ocasin para Habermas de afirmar su fe en los estndares
de la razn comunicativa. "No es sorprendente que no cumplamos estos estndares", observ,
"pero que de ninguna manera devala los estndares mismos. Pues si hay una cosa que los
intelectuales -una especie que tan a menudo ha atacado a su propia especie y pronunciado su
desaparicin- no pueden permitirse ... se vuelve cnico ".