{"id":68,"date":"2011-03-10T09:59:32","date_gmt":"2011-03-10T09:59:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/?p=68"},"modified":"2016-03-30T11:37:17","modified_gmt":"2016-03-30T11:37:17","slug":"francesco-giacomantonio-introduzione-al-pensiero-politico-di-habermas-il-dialogo-della-ragione-dilagante-milano-udine-mimesis-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/06-1\/reviews61\/francesco-giacomantonio-introduzione-al-pensiero-politico-di-habermas-il-dialogo-della-ragione-dilagante-milano-udine-mimesis-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Francesco Giacomantonio, Introduzione al pensiero politico di Habermas. Il dialogo della ragione dilagante (Milano-Udine: Mimesis, 2010)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\t
\n\n\t\t<\/i><\/span> <\/a>\n\n\t<\/div>\n\n\n\n\n\n

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Our age of crisis has taken many more forms than just the widespread rejection of Enlightenment ideals. Possibly, its most visible contemporary manifestations are: (a) the devastation of the planet\u2019s \u201cecological equilibrium\u201d (25); (b) the consistent anthropological impoverishment and individualistic atomisation of human societies (e.g. \u201csocial conflicts\u201d read as individual \u201cpsychic problems\u201d [26]; \u201canomie\u201d [31]; \u201cconfusion between\u2026 [individual] success and\u2026 [collective] understanding\u201d [32]); and (c) the undiminished international instability (e.g. religion\u2019s \u201cself-destructive forms\u201d [63]; \u201cWestern military interventions in various areas of the planet\u201d [77] ).<\/p>\n

Patiently and laboriously, Habermas has addressed in his complex oeuvre\u00a0all of the aforementioned forms of crisis of our age. It is Giacomantonio’s task to survey Habermas’ accounts in this slender book (99 pages).<\/p>\n

Specifically, Giacomantonio praises the erudite, articulate and abstract \u201ctheoretical wealth\u201d of leading German sociologist and philosopher J\u00fcrgen Habermas (b. 1929) as a rare exception to current scholarly and scientific trends (78). Avoiding academic partisanships and specialist parochialisms, Habermas is said to have scrutinised and engaged with an \u201cample spectrum of stances\u201d in the attempt to provide a reasoned, synthetic as well as analytical understanding of the enduring age of crisis (77). Swimming against the current, Habermas believes the Enlightenment project\u2014modernity itself\u2014to have to be brought to completion, not discarded.<\/p>\n

Habermas\u2019 first major intellectual accomplishments are claimed to be his 1960s and 1970s studies in the economic and administrative structures of late-modern Western industrial societies. Then, Habermas focused primarily upon the legitimisation of such structures via political procedures of mass participation, as well as upon the growing class fluidity, which Giacomantonio describes as the \u201cdissolution\u201d and \u201cfragmentation\u201d of traditional class consciousness and discourses (25).<\/p>\n

According to Habermas, the post-war decades had seen capitalist societies benefiting from large-scale entrepreneurial pursuits, under the cooperative scrutiny and sophisticated direction of the State, which allowed these pursuits to serve vastly accepted inclusive social aims (e.g. \u201curban and regional planning\u201d, \u201cresearch and development\u201d, \u201cunemployment benefits\u201d, \u201cpublic welfare\u201d; 25). These aims facilitated the legitimisation of the pursuits themselves, as well as the State\u2019s own authority. Then, this virtuous circularity ended. For Habermas, the 1970s mark the beginning of the age of crisis.<\/p>\n

The 1970s \u201clate\u201d or \u201cmature\u201d capitalism (23) continued to display massive State intervention in the economy. Yet, an increasing outgrowth of private interests started to escape from State control, leading to \u201csystemic\u201d failures (24) and to a generalised loss of faith in the State. This reduction of legitimacy was indicated by declining political participation, which was due too to the opacity of class consciousness in now tertiary-dominated economies. A variety of rescue plans were implemented by national governments, often via ever-increasing State intervention and techno-scientific legitimisation thereof. Regularly, these plans proved of little success, at least as the previous inclusive social aims were concerned.<\/p>\n

Rather, the recurring reliance upon science and technology as grounds for political action induced considerable \u201cde-politicisation\u201d (28) of collective life and institutional decision-making. Within this novel frame of reference, whereby political issues were turned into \u201ctechnical problems\u201d(28), the public opinion was morphed into a passive spectator or sheer recipient of the diktats of a self-enclosed\u2014and often self-serving\u2014\u201cexpert\u201d bureaucracy. In any case, the vastly accepted inclusive social aims of the post-war decades started to wane, becoming a more and more remote memory of better, foregone times.<\/p>\n

It is Habermas\u2019 opinion that the highly educated “expert” bureaucrats of recent decades have failed consistently to perceive the unavoidable connection between factual scientific investigation and value-driven technical application. To counter this phenomenon, Habermas has recommended the establishment of a more open critical exchange amongst experts and between experts and the public at large. In this perspective, communication should serve as an antidote to the former\u2019s intellectual insularity and to the latter\u2019s political disaffection.<\/p>\n

Concerned with the de-politicisation of socio-political phenomena and populations of democratic countries, Habermas began to explore the socio-political relevance of \u201ccommunication and linguistic dimensions\u201d that were to become the hallmark of his later intellectual production (31).\u00a0Indeed, the 1980s witnessed a vast output of studies by Habermas on the deeper structures of anthropological impoverishment and atomisation in modern nations. In them, Habermas came to conceive of \u201csociety\u201d as comprising: (a) the \u201csystem\u201d of professional, formal networks of \u201cstrategic behaviour\u201d; and (b) the personal, informal \u201clife-world\u201d of existentially meaningful behaviour (\u201cLebenswelt<\/em>\u201d; 31). On the one hand, human activity was being described by Habermas as the \u201csuccess\u201d or \u201cinfluence\u201d of the competitive individual; whilst on the other stood the truly life-defining, cooperative linguistic (\u201ccommunicative\u201d) praxes seeking mutual \u201cunderstanding\u201d and engendering shared \u201cidentities\u201d (32).<\/p>\n

Initiating the age of crisis, the former dimension had been invading the latter by using communication instrumentally, i.e. the shared linguistic means for genuine self-expression and social cohesion were turned into sheer means of self-maximisation. To respond to this invasion, Habermas has recommended the overcoming of national barriers and the creation of a \u201ccosmopolitan\u2026 deliberative democracy\u201d centred upon ethical and normative issues and aims (35). Roughly speaking, more conversation about justice, the common good and the like–as already anticipated in his reflections on science and technology of the 1970s–would mean more democracy; more democracy would mean more legitimacy; more legitimacy more effective laws; and more effective laws more social and socially acceptable results. All of this, however, should be taking place on a global scale.<\/p>\n

Habermas\u2019 reflections on democracy became even more relevant in the 1990s. Then, in the face of an even faster-paced post-Cold-War economic and cultural globalisation, it was the very cradle of modern democracy that was to experience its deepest crisis, i.e. the nation State as such. Apart from intensifying the problems that Habermas had already tackled in the 1970s and 1980s, fin-de-si\u00e8cle globalisation further deprived States of the crucial means of control over the \u201ceconomic dimension\u201d (40). In particular, free capital trade robbed the State of those vital \u201cfiscal\u201d resources that were needed for its administrative functions (44). Weaker States became even less credible to the populations, whose interests they were still expected to serve. The legitimacy of their power and even their own raison d\u2019\u00eatre became shakier. In the process, the vastly accepted inclusive social aims of the post-war decadeswere even openly rejected by leading parties and statesmen, who engaged actively in the persistent reduction of the public sphere. Deprived of the State’s support, larger and larger sectors of the population found themselves poorer, marginalised, and more vulnerable.<\/p>\n

In the final decade of the 20th<\/sup> century, Habermas stressed further his commitment to a \u201ccosmopolitan\u201d solution of the ongoing crisis (43). In his view, a global economy needs a global deliberative democracy. This is not the same thing as to say that the world needs a world State. Rather, the world needs actual world politics and actual world policies. International organisations are already in place (e.g. the \u201cUnited Nations\u201d, the \u201cWorld Trade Organisation\u201d, the \u201cInternational Monetary Fund\u201d [46]). What is missing is the democratic appropriation of those institutions as positive means for global governance.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, the \u201cEuropean Union\u201d has been described by Habermas as an example of existing trans-national coordination and a possible force for progress, which he understands as the generation of a new political community reflecting truly democratic values and substantial ethico-political aims, such as solidarity and social inclusion (45). As an opposite model of global governance, Habermas has often highlighted the \u201chegemonic unilateralism\u201d of the United States of America, which has accompanied throughout an economic globalisation capable of producing a \u201cmore unjust\u2026 more insecure\u201d world and a threat to our \u201csurvival\u201d as a species (48).<\/p>\n

In particular, Habermas has stressed of late the centrality of the rule of law for the proper functioning of any complex social arrangement. As opposed to the brutal force exemplified by military intervention, a binding legal framework springing from democratic deliberation would constitute in his view a powerful means to a noble, desirable end: \u201cto include the other without assimilating him\u201d (50).<\/p>\n

As further explained and substantiated in Habermas\u2019 works of the 2000s, democracy should be thought of as much more than just a set of public institutions and formal procedures, for it is also an array of informal social praxes and individual forms of conduct. Within his deliberative and cosmopolitan model of democratic rule, Habermas has ended up combining the \u201cliberty of the ancients\u201d with the \u201cliberty of the moderns\u201d (51). In other words, both republican active participation and liberal individual-rights-protecting public guarantees are embraced as important components of actual democracy. Societies need both enduring compromises amongst rights-endowed self-interested individuals and the formation and expression of collective will via societal \u201cself-clarification\u201d (37).<\/p>\n

Habermas resolves in an analogous manner the tension between liberals and communitarians on the much-debated issues of multiculturalism (51-6) and religious tolerance (61-8). Both universal, trans-cultural principles and cultural rights are said to be important for the socially inclusive survival of democratic States in a more and more inter-connected international reality. Disagreements and problems are bound to arise; still, what matters most is to have enough institutional and conceptual resources as to be able to tackle such disagreements and problems without falling into either coercion or social disintegration, which destroy genuine social cohesion and solidarity (54-6).<\/p>\n

This, albeit sketchy, is the overview of Habermas\u2019 intellectual production that Francesco Giacomantonio offers in his new book. It is indeed a clear and effective account of Habermas\u2019 nearly unique oeuvre, as the author of the Introduction to the Political Thought of Habermas<\/em> cites Touraine and Castoriadis as the only other equally daring grand theorists of recent times (80). The book comprises six chapters, an introduction, some final considerations and an appendix by another author. The presentation waves between a thematic subdivision and a chronological organisation of the material. Either way, the book addresses all the essential aspects of Habermas\u2019 vast production. By this feat alone, it deserves much praise.<\/p>\n

If any criticism is to be passed on it, then it must be pointed out that the book could be even more slender: the appendix by Angelo Chielli is redundant and unnecessary (83-90); whilst the 6th<\/sup> chapter, which deals with Habermas\u2019 relevance to contemporary academic pursuits (69-75), could have been reduced to, and included with, the author\u2019s final considerations (77-81). Also, the book would benefit from an analytical index of cited topics and authors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We live in an age of crisis. The Enlightenment faith in reason, method, and comprehensive synthesis had filled modernity with pride, hopefulness, and \u201cgrand theories\u201d (16). In recent times, this faith seems to have vanished, analogously to what had already happened in Europe during the 1930s (17-8). One of the clearest indications of this state of crisis is the recurrent use of the prefix \u201cpost-\u201d in a variety of characterisations of the present: \u201cpost-ideological, post-philosophical, post-modern, post-metaphysical, post-human, post-Fordist, post-democratic, etc.\u201d (11). Indeed, during the last four decades, overarching philosophical and scientific worldviews have themselves been regarded as ill-fated. We live somehow in a post-rational world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":254,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[108,230,198,229,144,231,93,232,233],"coauthors":[990],"class_list":["post-68","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews61","tag-crisis","tag-deliberation","tag-democracy","tag-dialogue","tag-enlightenment","tag-habermas","tag-modernity","tag-multiculturalism","tag-tolerance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1145,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/1145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nome.unak.is\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}