Habermas's importance.

 

Why was Habermas important? The answer is that there were some useless academic availability cascades which needed to shed their Leftist genealogy & accommodate the global shift to market based economies. Habermas helped ensure that credential seeking cretins could get a PhD in useless shite while 'virtue signalling' that they liked Democracy & Public Debate & saying boo to Nazism. 

Peter J. Verovšek, author of Jürgen Habermas: Public Intellectual and Engaged Critical Theorist, writes in Project Syndicate. 

Jürgen Habermas, who died recently at 96, was a titan of postwar philosophy.

He borrowed some ideas which had currency in the Fifties or even into the Sixties. But advances in STEM subjects, mathematical logic, politics, & econ, as well as the Computer revolution rendered those ideas obsolete & increasingly foolish.  

His theory of the public sphere,

was nonsense- more particularly in the German context 

which grounds political legitimacy

which just means who holds legal authority. In East Germany, it was some puppet of the Soviets. In West Germany, it was some dude acceptable to NATO.  

in reasoned debate rather than electoral outcomes,

We might want that to be the case. We might also want pigs to be able to fly around shitting on the heads of our enemies. But the thing simply can't happen. True, if people in Parliament want to pretend that 'reasoned debate' decides outcomes, then that would be the outcome. But it would be mere pretence.  

was one of the most influential ideas in modern democratic thought.

Modern democratic wishful thinking. I personally feel that all legislators should set a good example by undergoing gender reassignment surgery to express support for trans people. Different people have different desiderata. The question is whether it is reasonable to want the thing. You might say 'what's wrong with wanting legislators- or voters come to that- participating in reasoned debate before deciding things?' The answer is that it is a waste of fucking time.  

It was an idea for its time, and one that is increasingly being questioned in ours.

It was a stupid idea. You can have Senators making fine speeches but everybody knows that decisions are made in 'smoke filled rooms' or, more efficiently, by a handful of Meda Tycoons & a bunch of plutocrats who pump billions into PACs.  

Born in Düsseldorf in 1929, Habermas’s life changed completely in 1945.

He was fortunate to live in a part of Germany occupied by the Western powers. He got his start under Adorno.  The US occupation forces supported the Frankfurt School after World War II because their critical theory was seen as a valuable intellectual tool for denazification, fostering democratic values, and opposing communism. Habermas moved to the Left under his PhD supervisor Wolfgang Abendroth. This gave him some credibility as a 'radical' (e.g. opposing the Vietnam War) during the Sixties. He had no truck with extremists (e.g. Baader Meinhof) & was cautious about reunification. That is the context for his 'constitutional patriotism'. After the fall of the Soviet Union & the reunification of Germany he retained salience as a supporter of European integration. Some may have respected his opposition to the Iraq war but nobody thought he had any actual influence. 

The realization that he had grown up under a criminal regime

like Stasi rule in East Germany? Sovietization collapsed the economy in 1952. Meanwhile West Germany experienced an 'Economic Miracle'. One could say that the US wanted a counterbalance to Adenauer who had nuclear ambitions for his country. Thus, Brandt became acceptable to NATO. This is why it was worthwhile for the US to tacitly support Leftists like Habermas.  

– and his perpetual fear that Germany would experience a political relapse – shaped his life and work.

Terence McCarthy's life and work was shaped by the perpetual fear that George III might re-conquer America. He used his own shit to write anti-British slogans on the walls of his padded cell.  

But he leaves behind a world that seems to be dismantling everything he defended,

Like what? German democracy? The EU? Oh. This silly man means Trump.  

both as a scholar

a stupid one 

and as a politically engaged public intellectual.

with zero political influence.  

Habermas is usually seen as the leader of the second generation of the Frankfurt School, an intellectual movement devoted to the critical analysis of society.

It was useless. Still cretins need stupid shite to get a PhD in.  

But unlike his predecessors – including his mentor, Theodor W. Adorno, and luminaries such as Max Horkheimer and Herbert Marcuse – Habermas saw linguistic communication as the foundation of human social interaction.

People can talk. True, they don't bother most of the time because there are more efficient ways to 'signal' or 'screen'.  

In his view, language is not just a series of rules

It isn't. We understand Yoda perfectly well. The dream of finding an 'i-language' was associated with talking computers like HAL in 2001. The e-language approach- based on Statistics & 'reinforced' learning- succeeded. Chomsky & i-language turned out to be useless.  

that allows individuals to share information and coordinate with one another;

Schelling won a Nobel Prize for showing how 'focal' solutions to coordination games remove the need for talking. Consider Schelling's work on segregation as arising without any pre-planning or consultation. David Lewis's 'Conventions' was based on Schelling's ideas. Habermas ignored all the really useful results produced by his contemporaries. Communication is information theoretic & features strategic games. It isn't about following rules or defining a 'competent speaker'.  

rather, in engaging linguistically, we also recognize the other as an individual who understands what we are saying and has the capacity and freedom to respond to it.

Nonsense! We spend a lot of time talking to babies & puppy dogs & the neighbour's cat who, sadly, is the only member of the Institute of Socioproctology even since I was suspended because of allegations of sexual self-abuse.  

Habermas developed the implications of this idea in a series of path-breaking books, including The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1962),

Which ignored the fact that this happened earlier in Spain & Holland than England or France.  

The Theory of Communicative Action (1981), and Between Facts and Norms (1992).

I have discussed both elsewhere.  

The ills of modern society, he argued, can be ameliorated by

smart people with domain expertise 

ensuring that the operations of the economy and government are subordinated to informed, critical, public discourse,

should we consult stupid bores like Habermas before deciding whether to raise or lower interest rates? No. There are highly trained civil servants in close touch with leading market-makers who should make this decision. An interesting twist is that it may be optimal to signal that the interest rate has changed without specifying what it is.  

where “the unforced force of the better argument” can assert itself.

The better argument may be wrong. The expert may be tongue-tied but has a superior intuition.  

The American legal theorist Ronald Dworkin once remarked that even Habermas’s “fame is famous.”

Elvis Presley was famous. Nobody gave a shit about stupid Professors of worthless subjects.  

But though aware of his status, he was extremely generous, making time to discuss his work with young scholars like me.

The problem with teaching nonsense is you have to spend time with cretins.  

At guest seminars accompanying his frequent lecture tours, he would go around the room introducing himself by name to all the starstruck students.

This was fortunate because many people thought he was Marilyn Monroe. Hang on. Didn't Marilyn die back in the Sixties. Fuck me, that's a gagaga ghost! Call Scooby Doo! 

Habermas was an active participant in the public sphere he had theorized, a relentless provocateur who shaped nearly every major postwar German debate.

There may have been such debates. But it was the French or the Americans who told Germany what to do.  

He had a unique ability to identify what was not being said but needed to be brought to light,

e.g. the assumption that he was the ghost of Marilyn Monroe.  

which he combined with a constructive effort to advance whatever outcome he deemed not only desirable, but also possible.

You can't advance shit by teaching shit or writing shitty books.  

His critics often disparaged his theory of politics and society as one based on the example of a graduate seminar.

in a shitty non-STEM subject 

But Habermas knew how the world really works.

It ignores shitheads. Still, at least he was making money from his shitty books  

He knew that the public sphere is often wild and chaotic,

It isn't. People are better behaved in public. My wife didn't beat me in the shopping mall. She waited till we got home. 

and he displayed an astonishingly high tolerance for conflict and contestation when participating in it.

So do I. I don't want my head kicked in by crazy Lesbians who contest my claim to be the ghost of Marilyn Monroe. 

And he did so frequently, speaking out on a wide array of issues, including the 1968 student movement (with which he later broke, owing to some leaders’ refusal to renounce revolutionary violence), violations of civil liberties, attempts to relativize the Holocaust, immigration policy, and German reunification.

He was actually less crazy than some of his peers. But that doesn't mean he wasn't stupid & useless.  

His capacity to provoke outrage never diminished.

Why didn't he demand the extermination of Jews in Israel? How utterly shitty a Nazi was he? 

Most recently, his responses to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s military offensive in Gaza drew strident condemnations from his critics, who saw his pacifistic concerns about the return of war to Europe and his worries about rising anti-Semitism as out of step with the times. Yet both concerns were rooted in his recognition that the Holocaust remains central to German politics.

Fuck the Holocaust. Immigration is the most important issue in German politics.  

While Habermas indelibly shaped politics and culture in postwar Germany,

He had zero influence. German politics & culture was in the hands of the occupying powers.  

he increasingly turned his attention outward following the Cold War.

Because German politics & culture was as boring as shit.  

During this period of rapid globalization, he became increasingly concerned about the rise of international finance and global market forces.

He didn't understand economics. Maybe globalisation had something to do with 'colonisation'. What he didn't get is that it was China which drove globalisation by getting rid of cost push inflation in the manufacturing sector.  

He responded by championing a revised, democratically empowered European Union, which he saw as the only vehicle capable of subordinating transnational markets to democratic self-determination.

Poland & the Baltic Nations greatly benefitted. The German 'growth & stability' pact as well as booming capital goods exports to China, etc., meant there was a feel good factor in that nation. Sadly, they didn't modernize their financial sector & neglected infrastructure renewal. That is why they are facing a recession.  

Habermas emphasized that public intellectuals’ success should not be measured in terms of outcomes,

unless they aren't shit.  

but in terms of their ability to improve the quality of public debate by

not babbling stupid shit? No. That's the only thing Habermas could babble.  

ensuring that important but overlooked arguments and voices receive a fair hearing.

We don't want the right argument to get a 'fair hearing'. We want it to lead to the right action. This is best done by leaving the matter in the hands of those with domain expertise. 

Still, it must have been difficult for him to see how often his fellow participants in public debate rejected his positions.

He wasn't debating people who made decisions. He was talking to equally senile & useless people.  

After long seeming unbothered, he recently admitted his despair at the fact that the postwar world he had worked so tirelessly to help construct

did you know, Habermas set up NATO & the EU? He was the driving force behind GATT. As President of the World Bank he enabled China to rise.  

was gradually being dismantled “step by step.”

by Trump? It would be fair to say he has fundamentally changed the nature of NATO. The good news is that the EU is developing countervailing power. The world is becoming multi-polar. There will be no more 'Summits for Democracy' or pi-jaw about Human Rights. But such things were useless in any case.  

He lived long enough to witness the rise of a new generation of political leaders who do not share his commitment to dialogue, multilateralism, international law, and democracy.

It is natural to be committed to stuff which keeps your people on top. Sadly, non-Whites think it is their turn to dominate.  

As both a philosopher and public intellectual, Habermas was not the quietist, non-political thinker many of his critics make him out to be.

He was stupid & useless. Still, this is a guy who had been in the Hitler Youth. He was a living link with Germany at its most German.  

In keeping with the practical commitments of the Frankfurt School to which he belonged, he heeded the Marxist call for a philosophy that not only interprets the world but also seeks to change it.

By making less of it Marxist.  

It thus seems only fitting that he passed away on the morning of March 14, the anniversary of Karl Marx’s death.

And that of Stephen Hawking. Hawking was smart. He knew Math. Marx & Habermas weren't smart at all.  

At a time when democracy is in decline

i.e. guys we don't like are getting elected 

and the international order is increasingly defined by arbitrary strength

which has been the case since Sargon of Akkad.  

rather than legitimate power,

which just means power exercised with legal authority.  

Habermas’s communicative approach will be missed.

Because, now he is dead, people will forget how to speak. They will revert to slinging their faeces at each other. Whatever else you might say about Rawls & Habermas, at least they were potty trained.