Jürgen Habermas: A Life of Engagement, From the Nazi Götterdämmerung to the Current Catastrophe

ABSTRACT

Jürgen Habermas's life of engagement spanned the Weimar Republic, Nazi fascism and its wars of aggression, the subsequent reckoning, and sojourn with the Frankfurt School of critical theory and thereafter. Sociologist, philosopher, and leading public intellectual, underscored here is Habermas's political engagement as a scholar‐activist and journalist, most especially something radically neglected in understanding his life, the question of nuclear weapons, which deeply informed his famous work The Structural Transformation and the Public Sphere , as he picked up the torch of critical theory, transforming it, leading social theory in original new directions. An assessment of Habermas's support for constitutional and deliberative democracy, the public sphere, the rule of law, and non‐violent civil disobedience is explored, as is his lifelong engagement with the left, scholarly interlocutors, and related questions of war and peace. Finally, an immanent critique of Habermas's aporia on the question of Gaza and Israel/Palestine is forwarded. Explored here are the emphasis of Habermas's final years on geopolitical and democratic regression; possibilities for engaging with his work as part of efforts for global solidarity; and remaking the world on new, enlarged, and more inclusive and solidaristic social foundations, in ways that might help make the world a better place.