Jürgen Habermas

with and against the crisis paradigm

René Görtzen

Frederik Gelder

pp. 153-205

in: Andrew Simon Gilbert, The crisis paradigm, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Abstract

Legitimation Crisis was Habermas's most influential statement on crisis tendencies. While this book was written during a transitional period in Habermas's intellectual development and contains theoretical architecture he would later abandon, the book still offers conceptual tool-box for crisis-thinking which remains informative today. As Habermas moved away from the neo-Marxist perspective of his early work, he largely abandoned the "hierarchical" theory of crisis tendencies. Crises are now pluralized and fully dependent on the thematization of social participants. Critical theory may therefore develop propositions about crises that can be raised in public dialogue, as matters up for discussion. The idea of a totalizing crisis operating "behind the backs' of participants and erupting periodically into symptoms has largely been abandoned.

Cited authors

Habermas Jürgen