Frankfurt School Marxism is unfortunately still alive and well. Indeed, Jürgen Habermas—the leading philosopher of the School, who is now in his nineties—has published an enormous three-volume history of philosophy. This book has now appeared in English translation under the title Also: A History of Philosophy. The appearance of the third volume in English translation prompted Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins—an ardent fan of Habermas—to conduct an interview of him that was published this month in The Nation. The interview offers a quick way to get the gist of Habermas’s project, and the reader in sparing the need to slog through 1,500 pages of Habermas’s difficult prose. In this week’s column, I’d like to show how Habermas totally subordinates philosophy to Marxist ideological propaganda.
Philosophy tries to answer certain questions that aren’t covered in the physical and social sciences, such as, What is truth? What is knowledge? What is the basis of value? and so on. These questions are very difficult to answer, and part of the fascination of philosophy is the intricate play of arguments involved in its pursuit.
Habermas acknowledges that there is a place for such questions, but for him it is a very subordinate place. The main aim of philosophy is to legitimize the regime. As we will see, he has quite definite ideas about what this regime should be. He says:
Yes, in this sense philosophy’s own field of research naturally includes the conditions of possibility for perception and knowledge in general as well as those for action and speech. However, its actual theme is more general—as I said, a methodically guided elucidation of that general understanding of the world and of ourselves, on which we and our contemporaries are always already relying for orientation in our life. But a history of philosophy must also address the changes that its role undergoes within its own society. Its most conspicuous role is to make critical contributions to the legitimization of the respective form of political rule.
Habermas presents in the first volume of his trilogy an elaborate account of various religious worldviews, heavily influenced by Karl Jaspers’s notion of an “Axial Age.” But the time for literal belief in these religions is long gone. Theological concepts have “migrated into the profane” and when they have done so, it is clear that they support democracy in its battle against “right-wing extremists.” As Habermas puts it,
[Theodor] Adorno was convinced that theological contents will not survive unless they get translated in secular terms. This idea has always moved me. In my book I have traced step by step how the above-mentioned development of Christian natural law into modern rational natural law leads to a discursive justification of basic rights and human rights. In this way, philosophy can provide a reasonable justification of the constitutional principles of the democratic rule of law against the presently growing potential of right-wing extremism. Thus philosophy can provide the constitutional state with a completely different kind of support than the legal positivist view, which ultimately bases the claim to validity of a constitution not on the power of good reasons, but solely on the expression of the will of the legislator.
Habermas is sensitive to accusations that he has betrayed the revolutionary aims of Marxism with the anodyne prescriptions of social democracy. This is not so, he avers. What has in fact happened is that the capitalist state has proved to be more deeply entrenched than the pioneers of Marxism imagined. His hope now is to extend the welfare state in a radical fashion that will end up in socialism. He explains his view in this way:
If you ask what has become of my connection to the tradition of Western Marxism, I would remind you that the research of Critical Theory was focused from its beginnings on explaining the unexpected stability of capitalism despite all its crises. And as far as my involvement in West German day-to-day politics was concerned, I must confess that, as a leftist, I was mainly preoccupied with the struggle to liberalize the political mentality of a population that initially remained deeply attached to the Nazi regime. As far as capitalist development was concerned, a revolutionary transformation of the liberal economic order established since the end of the Second World War was in any case no longer feasible under the conditions of systemic competition with the Soviet regime. And since the end of the Cold War even less so. From the postwar period onwards, my own interest was directed toward welfare state reforms that, if sufficiently radical, could change capitalist democracies beyond recognition.
One objection to Habermas’s brand of radical social democracy is that it merely expresses his own value judgments. What if we do not share these? Habermas is well aware of this objection, which he associates with Max Weber’s distinction between facts and values. He rejects Weber’s claim that values are mere posits. On the contrary, Habermas’s own opinions are rationally demonstrable:
Max Weber’s perspective is that of a sociologist and historian who sees history as a battlefield of rival belief systems. Today, history itself lends credence to this perspective, as shown by obvious examples such as the renewed conflict between the nuclear powers India and Pakistan. On the other hand, Weber did not yet have to deal with the counterexample of the establishment of an international order based on human rights. The fact that the United Nations emerged from the horrors of the Second World War may explain why this legal system is recognized by 193 nations. In our context, however, what is interesting is the general fact that norms can claim precedence over the particular values of their various addressees as long as the validity of these norms rests on their being generally recognized. Such consent can be based on compromises and thus on the contingent agreement of different interests. However, this is a shaky basis, since interests can change at any time. For this reason, the validity of legal norms must rest in principle on good reasons that are convincing to all of their addressees. Max Weber fails to recognize the rationality that recognized norms may claim over mere value orientations.
Suffice it to say that Habermas has never managed to come up with the “good reasons” of which he speaks.
