Jürgen Habermas’s 90th birthday
Raymond Guess saw fit to celebrate Jürgen Habermas’s 90th birthday with a poisoned polemic called “A Republic of Discussion. Habermas at Ninety.” Originally commissioned by the German journal Soziopolis, with essays by other contributors reflecting on Habermas’s work and significance, the article appeared in the website of “pointmagazine.”
Amor Mundi then featured Geuss’s essay on June 23, 2019, with no discussion or alternative commentary. A thinker of Habermas’s stature deserved a more measured exchange of opinions about his work on such an occasion. The introductory note in The Point magazine to Geuss’s essay also credited him with having brought Critical Theory into mainstream Anglophone philosophy with his 1981 The Idea of a Critical Theory. But Geuss’s early book is just as polemical and dismissive of Habermas’s work as his current article and it did not give rise to any significant exchange between the two traditions. Instead, the work of Thomas A. McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas (1978) and Richard J. Bernstein’s, Restructuring Social and Political Theory (1976), have initiated the serious conversation between Habermas’s work and Anglo-American philosophy.
This may not be important for Guess, who denies that “communication” is even possible and who asserts that discussions lead only to further discord and disagreement. Why, then, should…
