In light of Habermas' death a few days ago, I went to Wikipedia to ask myself, Why did I ever like this guy, considering his ridiculously tone-deaf reaction to the events in Israel on October 7, 2023 (see below)?
What I found at Wiki was that, in various political controversies in the past, particularly about the then-"new" German historians trying to whitewash German Nazism from German history as some evil aberration, Habermas was outstanding in denouncing that. I also tended to agree with him about the adolescent sophistry of Jacques Derrida's attack on the search for meaning. I further admired Habermas' gallant, though still insufficiently persuasive, attempt to find something of value among the wreckage of the philosophical writings of Martin Hiedegger in light of Hiedegger's going so relatively easy toward Nazism.
In fact, outside of the penetratingly outstanding 1944 Theodore Adorno/Max Horkheimer work, "Dialectic of Enlightenment," the school's only strength for me has been when its writers veer toward what EP Thompson identifies as British empiricism. Overall, for me, the entire Frankfurt School is inferior, in my not-humble view, to British empiricism. As Thompson wrote in his great 200 plus page essay, "The Poverty of Theory," British empiricism demands theory must yield to facts, evidence, and reason. British empiricism has long meant there is far less any coherent theory of justice than that justice is most often found in particular circumstances where facts and perspectives are analyzed. What is so wonderful about British empiricism is it is a way of thinking that allows one to criticize the British philosophers who expounded the theory, and expose their hypocrisies and sometimes crimes if they were involved in government (ahem, John Locke for starters).
The problem with the Frankfurt School writers is how they appear to work overtime to justify theories rather than center their analyses around facts and questioning different people's perspectives. Their flaws are also why I have no use really at all for most French philosophers, whether Louis Althusser or Jean-Paul Sarte (As an aside, give me Simone de Beauvoir any day as her experiences as an intelligent woman among men allowed her to escape the fatal flaws that make for French male dominated philosophers).
Even when I find myself affirmatively nodding to a Habermas essay or tried to read a book of his, I found my agreement stemmed from me saying, "Keep going, Jurgen! You are almost getting to Hume and EP Thompson!"
This is why I was not surprised when Habermas and two other persons signed their "Principles of Solidarity" in November 2023, a set of "principles" that may as well come from an ADL press release. What appalled me most in the document was the first sentence in the second paragraph, which reads: "The Hamas massacre with the declared intention of eliminating Jewish life in general has prompted Israel to strike back." That Habermas showed complete ignorance of the 2017 Hamas charter, paragraph 16, is outrageous. He also showed no awareness of the fact that Mashal and Haniyeh, the two main Hamas political leaders in this still unfolding century, were saying since 2006 what is in the 2017 Hamas charter, and that, despite continuing to say what they said, successive Israeli governments contemptuously ignored them. This is damning for a man claiming an intellectual's mantle. It is doubly ridiculous for Habermas to sign onto such a statement when we know how Israel has worked with ISIS-affiliated groups to undermine the Syrian government and has used ISIS-affiliated fighters to kill Gazans in Gaza under the guise of killing Hamas fighters. And not to mention how the Israelis continued a cynical game with Hamas and are properly said to have fostered the development of Hamas as a way to undermine the secular-oriented PLO back in the 1980s.
For a man claiming the mantle of intellectualism to not know what I think should be basic historical facts is precisely why I consider the Frankfurt school to be of no value for anyone wanting to become more engaged and enlightened. Chomsky's now exposed failure was a personal failure, which is separate from his compellingly detailed analyses from the 1960s forward to the aughts. Habermas' failure, however, is a failure to engage factually with a situation and his thinking he could coast on his theories based only on what he wishes to believe about something outside of his lived experience in Germany in the 20th Century. In other words, he obviously has not closely followed unfolding events over decades in Israel, the occupied territories, and the Middle East region.
EP Thompson, a Marxian thinker who understood ironies in history, was not a perfect being. However, Thompson understood that facts matter and had consistent and clear empathy for the oppressed included those oppressed by the nation in which he lived his life. Had Thompson lived till now (he died in 1993), he would be standing with the left in Britain and would understand the need to oppose Israel's genocidal, imperial, and apartheid-driven conduct.
The sooner we forget most of the Frankfurt school, the better. Throw them to the side the way one should throw Louis Althusser and Derrida to the side.
