Major, major rabbit hole warning. You think you're about to read something about a philosophy professor, and what you get is an Alice Munro/Larry McMurtry mashup. His son seems to be a pretty amazing writer in his own right.
Perhaps the missing component is that not only is rationality communicable, but so is irrationally.
The memetic material out there has had an incredible and tumultuous era of rapid evolution. Theres been such radical pressure to get better at consuming our attention, at trying to get ideas to spread. The means have perhaps outstripped the Humana ability to communicate & make sense of so much highly weaponized memetic systems.
Habermas was truly a giant. Regardless of your political outlook, some engagement with his texts is time well spent. For an accessible on-ramp to his work, I recommend:
I like Luhmann’s theory better. What i like about it is that Luhmann argues that the smallest denominator of a social system is a realation between two. Habermas says it can be brought down to an individual. Which in my mind defeats the “social” part.
Havin not read the underlying theory, is the society of one constructed with the belief that one has relations to one's self?
That is, I could see that the idea of a society of two could be derived from a society of one in that I could extend my desire to be kind to my past, present, and future selves, to a desire to be kind to selves that are not my own.
Kind of like a computing network being a generalisation of the network that exists inside anyone one machine in that networking is just i/o with more steps and more wire?
In a time in which Democracies are being threatened by authoritarians governments, such a loss is a reminder Democracy is not guarantee, you have to fight for it, every single day.
He regularly wrote essays for "Süddeutsche Zeitung", commenting on the world's political situation. The last one I read was published in November 2025. Sharp as a knive, as always. I'll miss them.
This is well known, but isn't this exactly what you ask of a great thinker, to be able to transcend the biases of the culture and provide clarity and guidance? (Though of course at that age is hard to expect much from anyone).
Berlin perspective: It really doesn't feel that way. Germany's official political stance is very much "pro-Israel" and somewhat intentionally deaf and blind towards what is happening in Palestine (though not completely). Public opinion and discourse is much more nuanced though.
No we are not. 80% of us are against what Israel does in Palestine. But the Goverment and media will tell you otherwise. It's got nothing to do with our history. Konrad Adenauer--first chancellor--once said:
"The power of the Jews even today, especially in America, should not be underestimated. And therefore I have very deliberately and very consciously — and that was always my opinion — put all my strength, the best I could, to bring about a reconciliation between the Jewish people and the German people."
It was never about guilt, still is not. Germany has learned nothing from its past.
Totally disappointing. But coming from Germany, no surprise. German intellectualls and media totally ignore the suffering in Palesine. And fully suppress any solidarity with Palestine. By defunding, by cancelling, by smear campaigns (look up how they--overnight--deligitimised Greta Thunberg), by basically not reporting about what's going on there. And if you are state employed, you can basically bet on it losing your job once you show soliarity with Palestine.
"and media totally ignore the suffering in Palesine"
That is a rather absolute state and easy to falsify. Just 2 days ago I heard a report in "Deutschlandfunk" about how israel settlers killed palestinians (basically: they let their cows go onto the fields the palestinians owned. Which come from their village to chase the cows away. And then a settler in a israel military uniform used his storm rifle to kill one, injure one heavily and one lightly).
We also seen the fields of rubble the israel armed forces produced in the Gaza strip.
What we however can see: the media coverage of the Hamas attack where they killed and abducted so many people was extensive (rightfully so, as it was an abhorrent act). However, the systematic destruction of lifing quarters into huge fields of rubble by the IDR was mostly only mentioned. It got coverage, but not really that extensive.
And yet, in "Tagesschau" and "Zeit" you could all the time hear about the issues the reporters had about actually reporting from there, since Israel controlled most information channels.
What also is a very german thing: any critic on the israel governments doing is sooner or later "conquered" with some "this is antisemitic" claim. However, few are actually antisemitic (yep, there are yew haters here, especially after we've got so many arab immigrants). But there are also many people that can separate between a religio, the very diverse people groups living in Israel and the current israel governement.
This is utter nonsense. I have seen and read many reports and articles about the suffering in Gaza and the West Bank in the mainstream media! And you won’t loose your job when expressing solidarity.
Why did muslims have to leave their countries? The "cultural clash" didn't appear out of thin air. Muslims are in Europe in large numbers because of wars that Europe and the West either started, fueled, or failed to prevent.
To name a few conflicts incited by the West: The Nakba in 1948 displaced 750,000 Palestinians and created a refugee population that still hasn't been resolved.
The Soviet-Afghan War displaced 6M+ people.
The US invaded Iraq in 2003, directly creating the vacuum that spawned ISIS.
NATO bombed Libya into a failed state.
The US and Israel spent years destabilizing Syria long before the civil war made it the worst refugee crisis since WWII.
Europe's closest allies armed all sides of Yemen's proxy war.
=> Every single wave of Muslim refugees into Europe traces back to a conflict the West had its hands in. Blaming Muslims for being here while ignoring why they had to leave is not a serious position.
And now Iran, a country with 90+m population. And noone stops US/israel. What do you think will cause the next flow of refugees?
"Muslims are in Europe in large numbers because of wars that Europe and the West either started"
That's an interesting claim. The biggest muslim community in Germany is from Turkey. They came all here because of economic reason.
I'd even go so far that it's their religion that holds muslim states in a terrible economic situation. If you look down at 50% of your population (females), treat them unequal because of some ancient sharia feelings, sometimes even keep them away from good education ... then surely your car doesn't go fast, because the hand brake is still set!
The islamic culture was once renowned for education (e.g. look at Ibn Sina or why we today use "Algorithm" as word, or our numbers). But that's long gone. Even before islamists took over in Iran they seized the oil industry before they had the educated people to run it. In essence the country destabilized itself in the Mossadeqh time. But todays islam ... is more often than not demagocial instead of scientific. They dislike knowledge. The more islamic a country is, the more this is visible. Nothing of this creates good living condition to people, I'd say. And nothing here is in influence from "the west". Or Russia or China.
Now, the civil war in Syria ... I'm quite unsure if that has been instigated mainly because of the west. If anything, I'd say that the east (Russia) bolstered the syrian dictator. That most syrian people hated the torturing regime has IMHO nothing to do with "US and Israel spent years destabilizing Syria".
On your point that the US and USSR inventions only created destabilization with their wars... on this I agree. I can see the liberation of Kuwait from Saddam as a worthy war. But not the others.
"And noone stops US/israel" because no one has love the the Iranian regime, which kills its own people, allows Hamas to rain rockets on Israel (even when I don't like the israel government, the israel people don't deserve these attacks either!). It supports Yemenitic pirates. So it's an awful government, not righteous at all -- not even in a spiritual sense. There's a german saying: how you shout into the forest it will come back.
That's only partially true and it conveniently skips the last 15 years.
Yes, Germany's Turkish community largely traces back to Gastarbeiter recruitment in the 1960s/70s.
But since 2010, Germany alone received 850,000 Muslim migrants, with 86% of refugees coming from war zones like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Between 2013 and 2019, nearly 70% of all refugees in Germany were Muslim. Across Europe, large Muslim communities in Sweden, the Netherlands, and elsewhere originate from Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and ex-Yugoslavia, not from guest worker programs.
The Gastarbeiter framing erases the millions who came because their countries were destroyed by wars the West participated in.
The series "Self Under Siege" is one of my favorite things on YouTube. Highly recommend watching all 8 in order.
https://youtu.be/aXkmmfaZhEg