Nox Latina

Even though Jürgen Habermas insisted that his life was not suited to becoming a saint’s legend, until his death he was regarded by many in Europe as the greatest living philosopher and the best-known representative of Critical Theory. While the young assistant, initially interested in Western Marxism, was still viewed by Max Horkheimer with suspicion as a “student propagandist,” concepts such as “communicative action,” “discourse free of domination,” “new complexity,” the “project of the Enlightenment,” or a sober “constitutional patriotism” shaped the intellectual debates of his time. In the “Historians’ Dispute,” he prevented an attempt by Ernst Nolte and others to relativize the Shoah.
At the same time, he is criticized by today’s proponents of the philosophies of Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, and Benjamin for his departure from their understanding of Nazi crimes as an expression of a “dialectic of enlightenment.”Following Habermas’s passing on Saturday, March 14, at the age of 96 in Starnberg, former students open to discussion and contemporary reviewers wish to offer him a critical tribute.
Participants: Stefan Gandler (Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, MX) and Frank Welz (Institute of Sociology); organized and moderated by Nina Rabuza & Daniel Burghardt (from the Institute of Education)