Lasse Thomassen - Deconstructing Habermas

11. Classical Individualism

The Supreme Importance of Each Human Being

Tibor R. Machan

12. The Age of Reasons

Quixotism, Sentimentalism and Political Economy in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Wendy Motooka

13. Individualism in Modern Thought

From Adam Smith to Hayek

Lorenzo Infantino

14. Property and Power in Social Theory

A Study in Intellectual Rivalry

Dick Pels

15. Wittgenstein and the Idea of a Critical Social Theory

A Critique of Giddens, Habermas and Bhaskar

Nigel Pleasants

16. Marxism and Human Nature

Sean Sayers

17. Goffman and Social Organization

Studies in a Sociological Legacy

Edited by Greg Smith

18. Situating Hayek

Phenomenology and the Neo-liberal Project

Mark J. Smith

19. The Reading of Theoretical Texts

Peter Ekegren

20. The Nature of Capital

Marx after Foucault

Richard Marsden

21. The Age of Chance

Gambling in Western Culture

Gerda Reith

22. Reflexive Historical Sociology

Arpad Szakolczai

23. Durkheim and Representations

Edited by W. S. F. Pickering

24. The Social and Political Thought of Noam Chomsky

Alison Edgley

25. Hayek's Liberalism and Its Origins

His Idea of Spontaneous Order and the Scottish Enlightenment

Christina Petsoulas

26. Metaphor and the Dynamics of Knowledge

Sabine Maasen and Peter Weingart

27. Living with Markets

Jeremy Shearmur

28. Durkheim's Suicide

A Century of Research and Debate

Edited by W.S.F. Pickering and Geoffrey Walford

29. Post-Marxism

An Intellectual History

stuart sim

30. The Intellectual as Stranger

Studies in Spokespersonship

Dick Pels

31. Hermeneutic Dialogue and Social Science

A Critique of Gadamer and Habermas

Austin Harrington

32. Methodological Individualism

Background, History and Meaning

Lars Udehn

33. John Stuart Mill and Freedom of Expression

The Genesis of a Theory

K.C. ORourke

34. The Politics of Atrocity and Reconciliation

From Terror to Trauma

Michael Humphrey

35. Marx and Wittgenstein

Knowledge, Morality, Politics

Edited by Gavin Kitching and Nigel Pleasants

36. The Genesis of Modernity

Arpad Szakolczai

37. Ignorance and Liberty

Lorenzo Infantino

38. Deleuze, Marx and Politics

Nicholas Thoburn

39. The Structure of Social Theory

Anthony King

40. Adorno, Habermas and the Search for a Rational Society

Deborah Cook

41. Tocqueville's Moral and Political Thought

New Liberalism

M.R.R. Ossewaarde

42. Adam Smith's Political Philosophy

The Invisible Hand and Spontaneous Order

Craig Smith

43. Social and Political Ideas of Mahatma Gandi

Bidyut Chakrabarty

44. Counter-Enlightenments

From the Eighteenth Century to the Present

Graeme Garrard

45. The Social and Political Thought of George Orwell

A Reassessment

Stephen Ingle

46. Habermas

Rescuing the Public Sphere

Pauline Johnson

47. The Politics and Philosophy of Michael Oakeshott

Stuart Isaacs

48. Pareto and Political Theory

Joseph Femia

49. German Political Philosophy

The Metaphysics of Law

Chris Thornhill

50. The Sociology of Elites

Michael Hartmann

51. Deconstructing Habermas

Lasse Thomassen

Lasse Thomassen

2008 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

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International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-415-36054-8 (Hardcover)

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Thomassen, Lasse.

Deconstructing Habermas / Lasse Thomassen.

p. cm. -- (Routledge studies in social and political thought ; 51)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-415-36054-8 (hardback : alk. paper)

1. Political science--Philosophy. 2. Habermas, Jrgen. 3. Deconstruction. I. Title.

JA71.T527 2007

320.092--dc22 2006038303

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Although this book carries my signature on the cover, it would not have been possible without the help and support of a number of people. I would like to thank the following people for the comments on and criticisms of the argument of the book: Andreas Antoniades, David Bailey, Olaf Corry, Simon Critchley, Jonathan Dean, Mark Devenney, Peter Dews, Jason Glynos, John Horton, David Howarth, Ernesto Laclau, Chad Lavin, Lars Ethelberg Nielsen, Aletta J. Norval, Paulina Ochoa-Espejo, David ODonnell, Ian OFlynn and Lars Tnder and Albert Weale. The book would also not have been possible without the support of the institutions where I worked during the time that I was writing the book: first the Department of Government and especially the Ideology and Discourse Analysis Programme at the University of Essex, and later the Department of Politics and Public Administration at the University of Limerick. I would also like to mention those of my students at Essex and Limerick, and at the discourse theory summer schools in Essex and Wellington who had to sit through my seminars on Habermas and deconstruction and who responded to my readings of Habermas and Derrida. Finally, I would like to thank my editors at Routledge Terry Clague in London and Benjamin Holtzman in New York who responded to my endless queries.

appeared in an earlier version in Norwegian as Habermas og Derrida: filosofien i ei kritisk tid, trans. smund Forfang, Syn & Segn 4 (2005): 2234.

This book is a deconstructive reading of the political philosophy of Jrgen Habermas. In the book, I bring deconstruction to work on key issues in Habermas's work: rational discourse and rational consensus, constitutional democracy, tolerance and civil disobedience. The aim is to contribute to an understanding and critique of Habermas's theory of society and politics. My main argument is that Habermas's attempt to rationalize politics through his notion of communicative reason ultimately fails. However, the problem with Habermas does not lie in the way he tries to rationalize politics, but in the very attempt to rationalize politics. Thus, the response should not be to try to rationalize politics in other ways, but to look for different ways of thinking about political issues. My wager is that deconstruction and the work of Jacques Derrida can help in doing so, and that deconstruction is better suited to address the issues I examine in the chapters that follow.