I read a 500-page biography of Jürgen Habermas so you don't have to. Actually, it's quite a good read, better than I feared. There were times when I actually couldn't put it down, and I'm not a fan of biographies generally. I was read this tome to review for Local Government Studies. Given the book was so long, I asked the book reviews editor to give me the equivalent of two reviews, but he didn't think it was of sufficient interest to the readers of LGS to warrant the full version so it got brutally edited down to 800 words. I don't mind, this was what we agreed when I went in to write it. The shorter version will be published soon, and in the mean time, you can read the 1,600-word version.
Habermas: A Biography
Stefan Müller-Doohm (tr. Daniel Steuer)
Polity Press (Cambridge)
Hardback: 978-0-7456-8906-7
£9.99
As an undergraduate studying history, a Professor was attempting to explain
Habermas’ thesis in The Structural
Transformation of the Public Sphere in a lecture I was attending. They described how, like
all German intellectuals, Habermas “dived in deeper, and came out muddier”. For
many in the English-speaking academic world, this is one caricature they hold;
for others Habermas is seen as an irrelevance, with his utopian vision of
uncorrupted discourse being empirically disproved by a “post-truth” world of
discursive conflict. Yet, when we look at the emphasis put on deliberation in
governance reforms (the latest trend being co-production) or the campaigns for
rational discourse in society to counter “fake news”, arguably, we are seeing
the enduring impact of Habermas’ philosophical and political project, and his
ever greater relevance in the present day.
Stefan Müller-Doohm’s biography of Habermas, now translated
into English, gives an incredibly rich insight into Habermas’ intellectual
project, but more importantly the personal drive behind it. Born in 1929, and
growing up in the west German town of Gummersbach, Habermas’ cleft palate
marked him out as different all his life. From 1933 this difference became of
greater importance as it marked Habermas as a “degenerate” within the Nazi
regime. However, like many of his generation, he was a member of the Hitler
Youth, and trained as a first-aider and is photographed in marching to the
frontline in August 1944 in the book.
What is very apparent from this biography is the deep impact
these early experiences had on Habermas for his entire life. From the
mid-1950s, Habermas started down the road to becoming the public intellectual
he is widely known as within continental Europe. Writing with the milieu of the
new democracy of the Bundesrepublik, he
was committed to creating a critical, public discourse. This was within a
country that had a very fragile democracy, of the sort even now we can barely
imagine – where de-Nazification had been partial so as to leave some
functioning bureaucracy; any alignment with Marxist doctrines ran the risk of
individuals being accused of being sympathisers with the Demokratische Republik. This was a country where it was not until
1969 that Willy Brandt became the Social Democratic Chancellor, and the CDU/CSU
dominance seemingly teetered on the brink of become authoritarian.
With this background illuminated by Müller-Doohm, the drive
behind Habermas’ intellectual project become apparent. In sum, it is the
recognition that democracy is fragile, historically contingent, and it needs
explaining by social science. What is more, democracy also needs supporting,
pragmatically and theoretically. This drive to use critical theory to embed a
deep democracy that delivers equality, was in a context where Habermas had to
negotiate between conservative university authorities and the warring factions
that had emerged from the Frankfurt School. It is these moments, where the
ideals of critical theory, or of contemporary left thought, bang up against the
reality of navigating the contradictions of liberal capitalism, that are the
most interesting of the book, and produce some page-turning sections.
In this review, I want to mention two, both occurring around
the same time in that period of revolutionary fervour 1968. A thread running
through the book is Habermas’ close collaboration with the publisher Suhrkamp and close friendship with
Siegfried Unseld, owner and director, who turned it into an intellectual
powerhouse in post-war West Germany. This included Habermas’ role in editing
the Edition Suhrkamp book series. In
a closely described section, Müller-Doohm explains how Unseld’s editorial staff,
inspired by wider revolutionary fervour, presented an editorial charter to
Unseld asking for the publisher to be “socialized” (p.151). Alarmed and
supportive of Unseld, Habermas travelled to Frankfurt in October 1968 and, as
described by Unseld:
“using all his theoretical armour, presented the thesis that
it would be nonsensical if a publishing house that brought out the right kind
of progressive literature…was exposed to an experiment that would put the
publisher’s present impact at risk.” (p.152)
The irony of one of the greatest critical thinkers of modern
Europe negotiating against workers’ rights, in favour of a capitalism that
could afford to publish his works and make them widely read across Germany, and
the world, is somewhat pointed.
The second incident which highlights Habermas’ ambiguous
position, is his response to student rebellions at this time. In the mid-1960s
Habermas was at the heart of protests against the CDU-CSU-led Grand Coalition and
its authoritarian tendencies. Along with protests against the Vietnam War,
Habermas became embroiled in student demonstrations. It is clear Habermas’ was
deeply committed to reform of higher education in West Germany. One of his
earliest pieces of research had been on higher education students, considering
the potential of them to drive social change. Habermas’ regularly spoke at student
occupations (although it seems he was a little less keen when it was his own
university being occupied). In 1969 Habermas’ collected writings on university
reform were published as Protestbewegung
und Hochschulreform (Protest Movement and University Reform).
However, in June 1967 the students’ union of the Freie
Universität in Berlin protested against a state visit by the Shah of Persia. In
the resulting brutal police break-up of the protest, a 26-year-old student
Benno Ohnesorg was shot and killed. As student protests developed, Habermas
supported the protests “but at the same time he also warned against an activism
at any cost and against the danger of ‘provoking a transformation of the
indirect violence of institutions into manifest violence.’” (p.141). Habermas’
was heavily criticised by the leader of the students’ movement Rudi Durschke,
and in-turn, he denounced their ideology as “left-wing fascism”. This led to
the tide to turn against Habermas, with student groups now distancing
themselves from him.
These stories from formative years for Habermas, going onto
Habermas’ period as director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of the
Scientific-Technical World in Starnberg, are the most interesting. It was at
the Max Planck institute where Habermas wrote the Theory of Communicative Action and Müller-Doohm does a sterling job
summarising the main thesis across a few pages.
From the period of the late
1970s, the biography, unfortunately, becomes a little formulaic and something
of a hagiography. Endless visiting professorships, prizes and the spreading
importance of Habermas’ thought through the world are narrated. On reflection
this could just be the result of where Habermas’ career had got to – this is
the life of a global scholar. It could also be a result of a more careful
curation of his public profile by Habermas, as his fame grew.
Why should a reader of Local
Government Studies be interested in this (enormous) book? Participatory
initiatives have now become a norm in governing practices at a local level. In
manuals of good governance, countries are exalted to bring citizens into
decision-making processes to make them better. In our scholarship we can focus
on the policy initiatives that led to such participation institutions – for
example, the Skeffington Report into participation in the planning in the
United Kingdom. It is easy for us to get swept up in a critique of such
initiatives as utterly failing to meet the utopian goals they set themselves, for
example, using a Foucauldian critique to portray citizens as dupes doing what
government wants them to do.
Yet very few of us would now question that such initiatives
should exist, and that good quality discourse is essential to a lively
democracy. Our revulsion to the use of “fake news” and ambiguity in what we
count as the “truth” belies a deeper tradition from the enlightenment to seek
the truth. Underlying these concerns is Habermas’ concept of a rational
discourse among free and equal actors. In the English-speaking context, this
remains implicit – we don’t get to read Habermas’ numerous contributions to Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and De Welt that make him a very public
scholar in Germany.
As already touched upon, it is clear from this biography
that Habermas himself could not, necessarily, always live up to his own ideals.
Another theme, is that throughout his career Habermas has benefited from many
structural privileges that his critics, particularly Iris Marion Young, have
suggested mean that his ideal speech situation can never come to pass. Put
simply, the only woman who really has a role in this book is his wife Ute
Wesselhöft, and then as an academic spouse, rather than a person in her own
right. All the other key characters in Habermas’ life were men. His career was
developing during a period when structural inequalities were much more likely
to hold-back women and minority groups, so this is partly understandable as a
product of the time. However, in the positions of authority he has had, such as
founding the Max Planck institute, Habermas seems to have done little in terms
of practical action, as his theoretical position would suggest he should, to
address such structural issues. One would hope as a leading critical thinker
Habermas was aware of such issues, but this is never apparent from the book.
To conclude, this book is an astounding overview of the
life, and intellectual development, of one of Europe’s greatest thinkers, and
one who is neglected in English-speaking social science. Müller-Doohm’s
archival research is awe-inspiring. Reading the book from the perspective of
the UK, with dominance of the tabloid media; a referendum that was recently won
on a blatant untruth (the pledge Brexit would lead to £350 million for the NHS);
where we are “tired of experts”, it is easy to scoff at Habermas’ ideal speech
situation. What becomes clear from the book though, is that Germany does seem
to have this – through the scholarly debates on the pages of the leading
newspapers, major issues of the day are discussed. The continuing legacy for
all of us from Habermas’ work is that we must keep our fragile democracies, at
all levels, alive with discourse.