Last February, Habermas responded very accessibly to questions on “discourse theory and international law,”...
• followed by an analysis in March 2013 of the problem of “Bringing the Integration of Citizens into line with the Integration of States,”...
• which unwittingly provides a good background and complement to his April 2013 Leuven lecture, “Democracy, Solidarity and the European Crisis.”
Altogether, these provides good context for assessing what may (or may not) be exemplary about EU problems for general thinking—as one also dwells at length with Habermas’s Athens lecture later? This lecture, by the way, became the subject for a symposium, which I linked to, as part of a project on transnationalism.
This posting replaces its version at Facebook, posted here July 31, 2015, but back-dated here to correspond to its original date at Facebook, which now links to the posting here. That Facebook posting included a “Comment” by me which I’m reproducing here:
You might think that what I'm doing is not especially attending to Habermas as philosopher, but just Habermas Now. Well, yes and no. Going from understanding of the emerging present to philosophical issues: If you regard theory as an evolving “Thing” relative to emergent events (in an evolving reality), then finding/deriving theoretical issues from current events, as Habermas does, has possibly-exemplary importance for conceptualizing discursive inquiry progressively (which can be important for thinking about the place of theory in evolving humanities generally). Going from philosophical issues to selective relevants in the emerging present: If you take a stance that Habermas’ philosophical understanding is determining his activity as public intellectual, then Habermas Now is a mirror of how his philosophical stances work as a practice (in the sense of a practitioner doing his work). Is good law basically about enabling / furthering an evolving Present; or is it basically about integrating / regulating the Present—for the sake of what? Mere peace? As if our flourishing just naturally progresses, if given enough space? How does law enable human development in the broadest sense (from community-based individual development through development work at the UN level)?
This posting is associated with the “advancing community” area of gedavis.com.
