Jurgen Habermas Quotes

Quotes about:

• The only knowledge that can truly orient action is knowledge that frees itself from mere human interests and is based in Ideas - in other words knowledge that has taken a theoretical attitude.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Attitude, Taken, Ideas

  "Knowledge and Human Interests". Book by Jürgen Habermas, 1971.

  50 Copy quote

• One never really knows who one's enemy is.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Enemy, Knows

  41 Copy quote

• The task of universal pragmatics is to identify and reconstruct universal conditions of possible mutual understanding.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Understanding, Tasks, Mutual

  "On the Pragmatics of Communication". Book by Jürgen Habermas, 1998.

  48 Copy quote

• The speaker must choose a comprehensible expression so that speaker and hearer can understand one another.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Expression, Speakers

  "Critical Heuristics of Social Planning: A New Approach to Practical Philosophy". Book by Werner Ulrich, 1983.

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• 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.

  Jurgen Habermas

  People, Together, May

  "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought)". Book by Jurgen Habermas translated by Thomas Burger and Frederick Lawrence, 1989.

  54 Copy quote

• Reaching and understanding is the process of bringing about an agreement on the presupposed basis of validity claims that are mutually recognized.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Agreement, Understanding, Reaching

  "On the Pragmatics of Communication". Book by Jürgen Habermas, 1998.

  45 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Views, Rehabilitation, Moral

  "Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida". Book by Giovanni Borradori, June 15, 2003.

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• The state is in danger of falling into disrepute due to the evidence of its inadequate resources.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Fall, Danger, States

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• I shall develop the thesis that anyone acting communicatively must, in performing any speech act, raise universal validity claims and suppose that they can be vindicated.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Acting, Speech, Claims

  "n the Pragmatics of Communication". Book by Jürgen Habermas, 1998.

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• I would in fact tend to have more confidence in the outcome of a democratic decision if there was a minority that voted against it, than if it was unanimous... Social psychology has amply shown the strength of this bandwagon effect.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Decision, Psychology, Minorities

  "Habermas and the Public Sphere". Book by Craig Calhoun, 1993.

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• As medium for reaching understanding, speech acts serve: a) to establish and renew interpersonal relations, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of legitimate social orders; b) to represent states and events, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of existing states of affairs; c) to manifest experiences that is, to represent oneself- whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the subjective world to which he has privileged access.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Order, Understanding, Events

  "The Theory of Communicative Action". Book by Jürgen Habermas, 1987.

  26 Copy quote

• Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Goal, Cynical, Terrorism

  "Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida". Book by Giovanna Borradori, Jacques Derrida, and Jürgen Habermas, p. 34, 2003.

  49 Copy quote

• The difference between political terror and ordinary crime becomes clear during the change of regimes, in which former terrorists become well-regarded representatives of their country.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Country, Differences, Political

  21 Copy quote

• Each murder is one too many.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Murder

  "Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida". Book by Giovanna Borradori, September 1, 2004.

  44 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Differences, Identity, Demand

  "Sprachanalyse und Soziologie". Book by Rolf Wiggershaus, 1972.

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• The usage of the words "public" and "public sphere" betrays a multiplicity of concurrent meanings. Their origins go back to various historical phases and, when applied synchronically to the conditions of a bourgeois society that is industrially advanced and constituted as a social-welfare state, they fuse into a clouded amalgam. Yet the very conditions that make the inherited language seem inappropriate appear to require these words, however confused their employment.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Confused, Historical, Employment

  "Space, Place, and Environmental Ethics". Book by Andrew Light, 1997.

  27 Copy quote

• Today's Islamic fundamentalism is also a cover for political motifs. We should not overlook the political motifs we encounter in forms of religious fanaticism

  Jurgen Habermas

  Religious, Islamic, Political

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• The interpretation of a case is corroborated only by the successful continuation of a self-formative process, that is by the completion of self-reflection, and not in any unmistakable way by what the patient says or how he behaves.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Successful, Reflection, Self

  "Knowledge and Human Interests". Book by Jürgen Habermas, 1971.

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• I take as my fundamental starting point the fundamental distinction between work and interaction

  Jurgen Habermas

  Fundamentals, Starting, Distinction

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• The uncertainty of the danger belongs to the essence of terrorism.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Essence, Transcendentalism, Terrorism

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• Technically speaking, since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents,they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities. These disruptions can, with minimum expense, have considerably destructive consequences. Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Opportunity, Goal, Cynical

  "Philosophy in a Time of Terror". Book by Giovanna Borradori, Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, 2003.

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• Science can only be comprehended epistemologically, which means as one category of possible knowledge, as long as knowledge is not equated either effusively with the absolute knowledge of a great philosophy or blindly with scientistic self-understanding of the actual business of research.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Philosophy, Mean, Self

  "Knowledge and Human Interests". Book by Jürgen Habermas, 1971.

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• Philosophy's position with regard to science, which at one time could be designated with the name "theory of knowledge," has been undermined by the movement of philosophical thought itself. Philosophy was dislodged from this position by philosophy.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Philosophy, Philosophical, Names

  "Knowledge and Human Interests". Book by Jürgen Habermas, 1971.

  25 Copy quote

• Positivism stands or falls with the principle of scientism, that is that the meaning of knowledge is defined by what the sciences do and can thus be adequately explicated through the methodological analysis of scientific procedures.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Fall, Knowledge, Science

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• Although objectively greater demands are placed on this authority, it operates less as a public opinion giving a rational foundation to the exercise of political and social authority, the more it is generated for the purpose of an abstract vote that amounts to no more than an act of acclamation within a public sphere temporarily manufactured for show or manipulation.

  Jurgen Habermas

  Exercise, Giving, Political

  "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere". Book by Jürgen Habermas, 1962.

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