coll. - Habermas

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First published 2010

Lasse Thomassen, 2010

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For Beatriz

Thanks to Beatriz Martnez Fernndez, Ian OFlynn and Marina Prentoulis who read and commented on parts of the book. Thanks also to Tom Crick and Sarah Campbell at Continuum for their continuing support in the process of writing the book and for steering me carefully through the whole process. I dedicate this book to Beatriz who tolerated my mental and physical absences while writing it. Of course, I cannot promise that there will be no more such absences in the future.

Jrgen Habermas is difficult to read and often leaves students perplexed. There are three mutually related reasons for this. One reason is that Habermas was trained as a philosopher in the best German tradition, and so he writes as someone who knows the philosophical tradition and who expects his readers to do the same. Apart from philosophy, Habermas draws on sociology, political theory, psychology and other disciplines. The vocabularies and assumptions of these disciplines often make their way into Habermass own work, thus making it more difficult to read.

Habermas is also difficult to read because he writes in an abstract and conceptual we might say philosophical style. Among other things, this is due to the fact that Habermas is engaged in grand theorizing, for which he makes use of abstract and conceptual arguments. His theories are theories about society, language, law and democracy, rather than theories about this or that particular social phenomenon.

Finally, Habermas is difficult to read because of the language he writes in. He uses long sentences, packed with theoretical concepts, and so his style is difficult to comprehend for first-time readers. His style is systematic though, and usually his books are well translated from the German. This is especially the case with his later works.

To illustrate the difficulties in reading and understanding Habermas, take the following quote from Habermass (1996a, xlii) most important work in the area of political philosophy, Between Facts and Norms:

In the final analysis, private legal subjects cannot come to enjoy equal individual liberties if they do not themselves, in the common exercise of their political autonomy, achieve clarity about justified interests and standards. They themselves must agree on the relevant aspects under which equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally.

Although it is taken out of context, first-time and even second-time readers are excused for feeling perplexed at reading sentences like these. The quote is from the Preface to Between Facts and Norms, and Habermas is trying to explain the main point of the book (in the final analysis).

The book is about law and democracy, and specifically about what makes law legitimate. That is, the book concerns this question: when can we follow the law out of respect for the law rather than just following it because we fear the reprisals if we break the law? The book and the quote speaks to long-standing debates in philosophy and in legal and political theory about equality and freedom. When can we say about citizens that they are free and enjoy this freedom equally? What does it mean to be free? And so on. These are questions addressed by philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant and, today, in the debate between liberals and republicans. If we know this background, the quote makes much better sense.