Jürgen Habermas, pictured above, died on March 14, 2026. He was ninety-six years old.
Wikipedia identifies Habermas as "a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism." For those who would like to understand what that description might actually mean, let me refer you to an excellent article in the June 22, 2026, edition of The New Yorker. The article, by Alex Ross, is titled, "The Dream of Reason."
Unfortunately, I can't give you a guarantee that the link I have just provided will let non-subscribers read the Ross article. Here, however, is the concluding paragraph of that article, which outlines why Habermas is said to have "offered a philosophy of hope in a darkening age."
Philosophy is a discipline of abstractions, yet it raises achingly elemental questions. The august Kant asks, “What can I know? What should I do? What can I hope for?” The answers are seldom simple or bright. The seduction of despair can be intense, whether on the personal or the political level. But the fact that most of our hopes remain unrealized should not revoke the reality of our fitful, painful progress. This was Habermas’s core conviction; he was an incrementalist, though a radical one. On the other hand, in his almost manic drive toward consensus, he blunted the edge of his critical inheritance. If we are to say no to the monstrosities that we have unleashed, we need the uncompromising fury that the Frankfurt School writers invested in their work. We need Adorno to tell us that the confusion of truth and lies “makes it a Sisyphean labor to hold on to the simplest piece of knowledge.” In the end, we need both voices: the critical and the reconstructive, the savage and the sage. The dialectic moves between crashing despair and hovering hope (emphasis added).
My brief commentary would be to remind anyone reading this blog posting that "possibility" is what I call "my category." As noted in that paragraph from the Ross article, the deadly enemy to "possibility," and thus to any hope for the future, is the "seduction of despair."
Despair is seductive. Oddly enough, despair comes to us as a tantalizingly attractive explanation and invitation. If (by any chance) any such invitation comes to you:
Just Say, "NO" To Despair
It's not that easy to do, you know! But that's what we have to do, and what we're supposed to do, and let's not forget it!
Image Credit:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Habermas
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