“The Liberal Idea Has Become Obsolete”: Putin, Geuss, and Habermas Martin E. Jay Originally published in the digital edition of the Point, 5 July 2019. Used with permission.
From the Editors of the Point: This essay is a response to a widely discussed piece we published last month by Raymond Geuss. In “A Republic of Discussion,” Geuss offered a critical reassessment of Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action. I was first alerted to Raymond Geuss’s sour anticommemoration of Jürgen Habermas’s 90th birthday, “A Republic of Discussion,” coincidentally on the same day that Vladimir Putin declared the obsolescence of liberalism in a meeting with Donald Trump. Trump, with the exquisite cluelessness that has made him so easy to mock, took the remark to refer to American political liberals, such as those in the Democratic Party. But Putin’s target was something much larger: the tradition of liberal democratic norms and institutions he and his fellow authoritarian populists are determined to undermine. It is the tradition that Geuss finds so lamely defended by Habermas’s theory of communicative action, which believes in discursive deliberation as a fundamental principle of a liberal democratic polity. Since guilt by association may not be a fair tactic—although in this case, it is hard to resist—let’s look at Geuss’s argument on its own terms. The first point to make is that it is, in fact, an argument, made publicly, drawing on reasons and evidence, employing Geuss’s characteristic rhetorical flair and keen intellect, and not a mindless rant. It is hard not to see it as an attempt to communicate, intending to sway its audience, and thus betraying some residual faith in the power of persuasion through the better argument. As such, it immediately invites the reproach, which Habermas and his followers often level, of committing a performative contradiction. That is, if Geuss denies that communication and discussion are laudable endeavors, how can he still engage with such brio in precisely what he is so eager to trash? It is not as if there are no examples of performatively consistent denials of communication—see, for instance, the way Derrida dismissively thwarted Gadamer’s attempt at hermeneutic dialogue in the stillborn “encounter” between them in 1981—but Geuss is too deeply steeped in Oxbridge civility to act out his disdain. If such an option is not then possible, why not just withdraw into silence, retreating, as Orwell would have put it, inside the whale?
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