Challenging Habermas’s “moral coldness and indifference”
JVL Introduction
As noted by the editor of the journal from which this piece is taken, Juergen Habermas and Asef Bayat are towering global thinkers. Habermas is part of the pantheon of the legendary Frankfurt School of critical theory, a defender of liberal democracy and a household name in Germany. Bayat is a sociologist of the contemporary Middle East best known for his concept of “post-Islamism” and for his textured studies of street politics, everyday life and how ordinary people change the Middle East.
A recent statement signed by Habermas says “Jewish life and Israel’s right to exist are central elements worthy of special protection in light of the mass crimes of the Nazi era.”
Bayat’s reply attempts to fathom Habermas’s “moral coldness and indifference” in the face of the devastation Israel is wreaking in Gaza. How could he depart so radically from the number 16 aims of his theory of communicative action, in which all subjects interact equally within a rational framework to achieve mutual understanding, ensuring that the world view of the dominant actor is not imposed on the other?
Bayat writes: “It is as though you fear that speaking of the suffering of Palestinians would diminish your moral commitment to Jewish lives. If so, how tragic it is that the righting of a colossal wrong committed in the past should be tied to perpetuating another monstrous wrong in the present.”
Separately, related subjects are approached with enormous humanity and intelligence in a conversation between Frank Barat and author and academic Judith Butler. Available on YouTube.
NWI
This article was originally published by New Lines on Fri 8 Dec 2023. Read the original here.
Juergen Habermas Contradicts His Own Ideas When It Comes to Gaza
One of the world’s most influential philosophers has weighed in on the war in Gaza. A Middle East scholar tells him why he’s wrong
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Odd kind of “German exceptionalism” that doesn’t recognise the impact German behaviour has ultimately had on Palestinians.
It would require detailed study and analysis of all relevant historical context to get anywhere near understanding Habermas’s strange perspective. He was, of course, at least nominally, a Jungvolk Nazi (guilt?). He has some sort of attachment to Christian Protestant Restorationism and thereby a connection to the development of Zionism. Derrida called Habermas a ‘Philosopher of Consensus’, but it was/is a very Eurocentric consensus. From my shallow understanding, this is a milieu of ideas which is pretty much devoid of either empathy or pragmatism, rooted in late nineteenth century metaphysical mumbo jumbo. Most glaringly, such contributions avoid any notion of historical context for Hamas ‘atrocities’ in October 2023.
Israel doesn’t exist because of crimes linked to 1930s & 40s fascism but because of a 19th C white colonial ideology called Zionism, which predates fascism.
There is no such environment as an ‘ideal speech situation’ and a ‘critical [rational] public sphere’. Habermas’s is an idealist situation which has never existed. Adorno/Horkheimer illustrated that at Frankfurt. Too much concession from Marxism to liberal bourgeois ‘democracy’.
The article is right to note that particularly young people in Germany do not all share the cult of unconditional support for Israel, but many are nervous about saying this in public.
During one of the rare media discussion programmes in which even mild concern about Israel’s actions was voiced, one contributor spoke of a Syrian refugee who every morning instructed his daughters about what they could and could not say before they went to school. He had explained that he had had to do the same in Syria before they fled.
The programme’s presenter was shocked at this juxtaposition of supposedly free Germany and the Syrian dictatorship. However, at a time when in Berlin a teacher has come to blows with a child who carried a Palestinian flag and in another incident a girl was hospitalised after being severely beaten by fellow pupils for wearing a necklace with the word ‘Allah’, the father’s concern seems well-founded.
The original Habermas statement is also well worth reading, as an example of a bankrupt philosophy. Perhaps I could quote something I said in a discussion of the Bayat letter among members of the JVL council:
“The Habermas statement is a masterpiece of obfuscation, starting with the first sentence “The current situation created by Hamas’ extreme atrocity and Israel’s response”. One wonders why the word ‘extreme’ qualifies ‘atrocity’ rather than ‘response’, where it would seem more appropriate.
More fundamentally, the statement presupposes that what is really important is what is going on in the minds of Germans, not what is going on on the ground in Gaza. This is almost a parodic example of Germanic philosophy. The assumption is that mental perceptions are the true reality, of which the actual events to which they relate are only pale reflections, like the shadows in Plato’s cave.
If one tries to judge the situation in Gaza, and the actions of the participants, objectively it is hard to see how “The democratic ethos of the Federal Republic of Germany” could have any relevance at all. It is of course impossible to imagine Habermas and his colleagues understanding this.”
Habermas does seem to assume that in asking whether Germany should condemn Israel’s actions in Gaza the crucial question is what the effect would be on German self-esteem.