Habermas’ neue Phänomenologie des Geistes: Zwei Jahrhunderte nach Hegel

Jürgen Habermas’s opus magnum, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie, synthesises his impressive work of the last half century. His thesis is that the modern project of the normativity of “rational freedom” can be reconstructed as a learning process of the conflictual dialogue between reason and faith, philosophy and religion in the West. Furthermore, under conditions of a world society, cross-cultural communication across lifeworlds, based on such normative principles, is possible. I argue that Habermas’s argument recapitulates a claim first made in The Phenomenology of Spirit by Hegel, who presented the normativity of modernity through a narrative unfolding between two epistemological standpoints, namely, that of consciousness and “we.” Just like Hegel, in order to defend the idea of a Lernprozess, Habermas too must presuppose a unified subject called “we;” furthermore the development of such subjectivity unfolds in a homogeneous temporal process that is then assumed to be the same for all mankind. I call this a form of “historicism,” and juxtapose recent historical writing that presents the narrative of modernity and the emergence of world-society as a much more diverse and fractured process than Hegel’s and Habermas’s methodology. “Die Einbeziehung der Anderen,” I argue, must involve including the voices of those others who do not experience the normative of modernity as a process like the one unfolding between faith and reason in the West. Nevertheless, I conclude that this plea for a more complex narrative that “provincialises Europe,” (Dipesh Chakrabarty) is not a rejection of the normative legacy of modern rationality and freedom that are based on the ideals of fallibilism, refutability and revisability through a rational community of inquirers.

A Genealogy of Faith and Freedom

The review highlights how Habermas reconstructs the historically constitutive function of religious thought regarding essential categories through which to appropriate our practical freedom. It articulates the three essential bifurcations taken along the way: to opt for Judeo-Christian dialogism versus other axial age world religions; for a Lutheran Kantianism of an unconditional normativity versus an empiricist naturalism; and for the hermeneutic discovery of a validity-oriented communicative agency versus a Hegelian metaphysics. Recognizing our normative indebtedness to religious roots in modernity is to enable the renewal of an unabashed commitment to 'rational freedom,' thus serving as a bulwark against currently fashionable scientistic worldviews. Such a hermeneutic genealogy may also provide one promising resource to reconstruct shared normative ideals in a cross-cultural dialogue.

Habermas’s Politics of Rational Freedom: Navigating the History of Philosophy between Faith and Knowledge

Despite his hostility to religion in his early career, since the turn of the century Habermas has devoted his research to the relationship between faith and knowledge. His two-volume Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie is the culmination of this project. Spurred by the attacks of 9/11 and the growing conflict between religion and the forces of secularization, I argue that this philosophy of history is the centerpiece of an important turning point in Habermas’s intellectual development. Instead of interpreting religion merely as part of the history of postmetaphysical thinking, Habermas now sees it as a crucial normative resource for both philosophy and social cohesion in the future aswell. Despite its backward-looking approach,my basic thesis is that this book is best understood as a forward-looking appeal for a tolerant, self-reflective democratic politics that brings religious and secular citizens together dialogically through the cooperative use of their rational freedom.

Alcibiades’ Akrasia: Reason for Wrongdoing?

I will argue that, due to the level of attention given to comparing and contrasting Socratic Intellectualism with the Republic, the question of the possibility of akrasia in Plato’s thought has not yet been adequately formulated. I will instead be focusing on Plato’s Symposium, situating Alcibiades at its epicentre and suggesting that his case should be read as highlighting some of Plato’s concerns with Socratic Intellectualism. These concerns arise from the following position of Socratic Intellectualism: knowing the greater good will necessarily entail doing good, and will thereby remove the motivational content of prior knowledge of what is good. Through Alcibiades, Plato explores the possibility of a negative reaction to knowledge of the greater good. Importantly, rather than simply arising as a result of being overcome by the passions, Alcibiades’ negative reaction assumes that rational freedom is required to reject the greater good (virtue) in favour of the lesser.

El idealismo jurídico kantiano : una crítica de la crítica

La intención del presente artículo se concreta en delimitar los fundamentos idealistas de la filosofía del derecho kantiana. Para Kant, deducir una justificación absolutamente racional de la forma de lo jurídico implica vincular esa racionalidad directamente con la idea de libertad. A su vez, esta libertad racional sólo puede resolverse legítimamente en la paz que facilita el estado mediante el vínculo que proporciona el contrato social. Así pues, el orden deductivo de la filosofía jurídica kantiana parte de la razón, para, a través de la voluntad expresada en el contrato, concluir necesariamente en el estado moderno. La finalidad última de este trabajo será examinar el desarrollo argumentativo desplegado por el filósofo de Königsberg e identificar sus posibles desajustes lógicos.The aim of the following article is to identify the idealistic foundation of Kant´s legal philosophy. For Kant, to deduce an absolutely rational statement of his legal theory implies to tie down that rationality directly to the idea of freedom. Furthermore this rational freedom can only be reached through the peace that the state provides with the net the social contract makes possible. Therefore the deductive way of Kant´s legal philosophy sets off from the idea of rationality and arrives necessarily to the modern state conducted by the will content in the social contract. The true purpose of this work is to study the development of Kant´s argument and to be able to identify, if there are any, his logical inconsistencies.

Hegel and Liberalism

In this article, the venerable but still not entirely resolved issue of Hegel's relationship to liberalism is discussed. In contradistinction to recent communitarian accounts, the Kantian and Enlightenment idea of rational freedom in Hegel's political philosophy is shown to be the basis for Hegel's critique of traditional liberalism. While the Hegelian state incorporates most of the rights and freedoms ordinarily associated with liberalism, Hegel's rationale for these rights and freedoms is never the traditional liberal one. In conclusion, the relevance of Hegel's ideal of the rational state to our understanding of contemporary liberalism and its discontents is assessed.