 versione
italiana
by
Francesco
Giacomantonio
Translation revised by
Jean-Paul De Lucca
The son of an
industrialist, Habermas was born in Düsseldorf in 1929
and
as a young man, he had to join the "Hitler Youth"
movement, like most young people at that time. In 1949 he
began his studies in philosophy, history, psychology,
German literature and economics. He first studied at the
University of Göttingen and then in Zürich (for one
semester) and in Bonn, graduating in 1954 with a thesis on
the idealist philosopher Schelling.
After a short stint as a journalist, where he followed the
intellectual and social trends of his time, in 1956 he
started working as an assistant to Theodor
Adorno
at the Institute for Social Research of Frankfurt. Here he
devoted himself to the sociological analysis of the
students’ movement. After this period of studies, he
published his Ph.D. thesis (1962), which had been at
first rejected by Adorno, and took up the post of
philosophy professor at Heidelberg University. In 1964 he
returned to Frankfurt as professor of Sociology and
Philosophy and, four years later, he published the essay Science
and technique as ideology, while the students’
movement was at its peak. Habermas criticised the activist
part of the movement by noting their "fascist"
tendencies. In 1968 he also published Erkenntnis und
Interesse (Knoweledge and Interest), his first attempt
towards a theoretical foundation of the critical theory. Zur
Logik der Sozialwissenshaften (Logic of social sciences)
- a study on the philosophical basis of social sciences -
first appeared in 1970. From the following year until 1981
he co-directed the Max Plank Institute, where several
studies on various aspects of the technical and scientific
world were carried out. During this period he published Legitimationsprobleme
in Spätkapitalismus (The crisis of rationality in late
capitalism) (1973) and Zur Rekonstruktion des
Historischen Materialismus (1976). From 1974 to 1980
he worked on issues of social evolution and development
psychology. The results of this research led to the
publication, in two volumes, of Theorie des
Kommunikativen Handelns (Theory of Communicative Action)
in 1981, which became one of his most celebrated works.
Since 1982 he has been teaching Philosophy in Frankfurt.
In 1985 he published Die philosophische Diskurs der
Moderne and a year later he took up a research project
about Philosophy of Law and the theory of democracy. In
1988 Nachmetaphysisches Denken (The post-metaphysic
thought) was published. Since 1994 he has been
Professor Emeritus in Frankfurt and at the Northwester
University of Chicago. Among his latest important works
are Die Einbeziehung des Andern (The Inclusion of Other)(1996)
and Die Postnationale Konstellation (The Postnational
Constellation) (1998).
Habermas'
thought is characterised by a variety of different
theoretical positions and by a continuous dialogue between
philosophy and sociology. Nevertheless, we can recognise
some basic points in his long career. First of all,
Habermas focuses on the relationship between natural and
social sciences in order to develop a theory aimed at
understanding social phenomena and overcoming positivism.
Positivism is Habermas' major target, as we can see in his
famous debate with Popper and Albert in the 1960’s.
Habermas rejects the naive realism of early positivism and
empiricism. He thinks technique is never neutral; on the
contrary, it is the result of a precise ideological choice,
which privileges instrumental manipulation over creativity
and expressiveness. This idea is clarified in
Erkenntnis und Interesse (Knowledge and Interest).
Here Habermas shows how every scientific argument starts
with strong theoretical assumptions. Such assumptions do
not reproduce facts in se, but depend on our "instrumental
acting", which is the main feature of the way our
experience is organised; the aims of our "instrumental
acting" are merely "technical" and
“social". Habermas supports "communicative
action" against such "instrumental action".
Habermas
also tries to show how social reality has to be understood
as a whole and he claims that the activity of social
scientists belongs to such a totality. Assuming the
primary importance of the relationship between knowledge
and interest, Habermas thinks that knowledge and science
cannot describe social phenomena objectively. Although
social scientists try to construct objective explanations
of phenomena, such explanations cannot be considered as
eternally valid laws. They can only be interpretations,
which are strongly connected to the context they belong to
and have to be continuously re-examined and discussed.
"Facts" are always the result of the
relationship between what we experience and our
interpretation of it (terms like "law", "interpretation",
"fact" always refer to the same theme, i. e.
scientific explanation).
Habermas
also develops a critique of late capitalistic society and
argues for the necessity of a dimension of "substantial
rationality" as opposed to technological "instrumental
rationality". He then criticises all structures
producing alienation, dominion and power as a source of
human and moral perversion, and denounces the ill-fated
effects of ideologies on the possibility of open and
genuine communication. These issues are at the centre of
his debate with Nikolas Luhmann (1927-94).
Habermas'
aim is to develop a global theory of action and social
systems. This explains the philosopher's tendency to
absorb elements of different approaches and to integrate
them within his own theoretical framework. By doing so, he
follows the German dialectical tradition, including Hegel
and Marx, but also some important members of the
first-generation of the Frankfurt School such as Adorno,
Horkheimer and Marcuse. The extent of the proximity of
Habermas' philosophy to that of the Frankfurt School,
however, is still the subject of much debate today.
Habermas has a fruitful dialogue with the Weberian theory
of action, with historical materialism, with functionalism
and neo-functionalism (Parsons, Luhmannn), with Schutz's
phenomenological sociology, with Mead's symbolic
interactionism, with Garfinkel and Cicourel's
ethno-methodology, with Wittgenstein, Chomsky, Winch,
Austin and Apel, with Gadamer's hermeneutics and with the
positions of cognitive psychology and Freud's
psychoanalysis.
In
Habermas' thought, the programme of an anti-authoritarian
communication also occupies an important place. Habermas
considers an ideal discursive situation as the solution to
the problems of society and politics in contemporary
world. According to him, the possibility that all social
groups, politicians, intellectuals, scientists and the
public opinion in general communicate in a free way and
equally take part in the debate concerning social problems
is the best defence against phenomena such as ideologies,
alienation, submission of the political sphere under the
technical and economic one, ontological uncertainty, and
the risks of globalisation. Such a concept is the basis of
Habermas’ masterpiece, Theorie des kommunikativen
Handelns (The Theory of Communicative Acting), in
which the philosopher describes an ideal linguistic
situation, that would be possible in a model of society
where consensus is produced in an argumentative way, with
the participation of everybody, without distortions or
external conditioning.
Parallel
to this consensual theory of truth, Habermas underlines
the permanent value of "modernity" and its
leading ideas (rationality, progress, etc.). In recent
years, Habermas has been interested in the problem of
deliberative democracy (this theme is developed in a book
he published in 1996 entitled Die Einbeziehung des
Andern [The Inclusion of Other] ).
Major
points of his latest interests are:
a)
the connection between the necessity of justifying norms
and the empirical analysis of social conditions needed for
the achievement of democratic institutions;
b)
the relationship between liberalism and democracy;
c)
the necessity that political and juridical institutions
favour the flourishing of religious and cultural
identities in pluralistic societies.
He
is interested in problems connected with the globalisation
process and in social and political evolution of nations (see
Die Postnationale Konstellation [The Postnational
Constellation]). In spite of the criticism that
his system can legitimately be subjected to (above all,
that of exaggerated optimism about the concrete
possibility of application of communicative action),
Habermas had and still has a great influence on
contemporary philosophy, sociology and social sciences.
Whether to adhere to them or reject them, contemporary
political and sociological thought cannot avoid taking his
contributions into consideration.
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