Jürgen Habermas
1929-2019 · Marxism · Prominent
Habermas was a German philosopher of the second Frankfurt School generation who recast reason as talk aimed at mutual understanding. Every time you argue in earnest you stake three things: that what you say is true, that you have standing to say it, and that you mean it. He built a politics on that. A rule counts as legitimate when everyone it touches could accept it in an argument nobody is rigging.
Signature
The position Habermas is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Truth
- Subjective – Objective
- Ethics Basis
- Discourse Ethics
Positions on the 5 axes the sources answer
- Order
- leans Horizontal (75 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Ground of Being
- leans Immanence (25 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Opposition
- leans Concurrence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Polity
- leans Liberalism (75 on a 0–100 scale from Illiberalism to Liberalism)
- Allegiance
- leans Global (75 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
15 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Habermas refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Agnosticism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy / One World Order
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Freedom / Justice
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Social Invention / Genealogical
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Conceptual Mediation
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Pragmatic Test / Coherence
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Discourse Ethics
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Compatibilism
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Time
- Linear Progressive
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Economy
- Welfare Capitalism
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Authority
- Consent of the Governed
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Speech Act
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Paradox
- Productive Tension
What is the status of paradox? - Law
- Social Contract / Cosmopolitan Rights
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Role of Emotion
- Social Signaling
What is the proper role of emotion? - Human Nature
- Existence Precedes Essence
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Humanity
What is your primary bond and loyalty?