Jurgen Habermas
Jurgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermasis a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theories on communicative rationality and the public sphere. Global polls consistently find that Habermas is widely recognized as one of the world's leading intellectuals...
NationalityGerman
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth18 June 1929
CountryGermany
understanding tasks mutual
The task of universal pragmatics is to identify and reconstruct universal conditions of possible mutual understanding.
agreement understanding claims
Reaching and understanding is the process of bringing about an agreement on the presupposed basis of validity claims that are mutually recognized.
expression speakers
The speaker must choose a comprehensible [verstandlich] expression so that speaker and hearer can understand one another.
differences identity demand
Subjects who reciprocally recognize each other as such, must consider each other as identical, insofar as they both take up the position of subject; they must at all times subsume themselves and the other under the same category. At the same time, the relation of reciprocity of recognition demands the non-identity of one and the other, both must also maintain their absolute difference, for to be a subject implies the claim of individuation.
people together may
The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.
murder
Each murder is one too many.
goal cynical terrorism
Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.
views moral no-excuses
From a moral point of view, there is no excuse for terrorist acts, regardless of the motive or the situation under which they are carried out.