{"id":2051,"date":"2026-04-04T01:12:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T01:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/2051\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T01:12:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T01:12:17","slug":"this-german-thinker-sounded-an-alarm-about-the-eu-and-the-us-are-we-ready-to-listen-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/2051\/","title":{"rendered":"This German thinker sounded an alarm about the EU and the US \u2013 are we ready to listen? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The German<\/a> philosopher J\u00fcrgen Habermas, who died last month<\/a>, was understandably despondent about much in the autumn of his career. Habermas\u2019s reach across different disciplines was exceptional.<\/p>\n

A native of D\u00fcsseldorf, he was shaped by the legacy of the second World War<\/a>, the western Germany that arose from its ashes, the cold war, the European<\/a> integration project and the disintegration of the Soviet<\/a> empire. His family conveniently adapted to the Nazi regime (he joined the Hitler Youth) without actively supporting it, but he later became the voice of the democratic left in Germany.<\/p>\n

His reputation was built on the concept of \u00d6ffentlichkeit, encapsulating the three main concepts central to his arrival on the intellectual and academic scene in the early 1960s: \u201cpublic space\u201d, \u201cdiscourse\u201d and \u201creason\u201d, in order to figure out how \u201ccitizens could still exercise collective influence over their social destiny through the democratic process\u201d. He also devoted much attention to the institutions of democracy needed to protect against extremism. <\/p>\n

Habermas was subjected to criticism as well as acclaim; his idealism was viewed sceptically by those who pointed to the continued pervasiveness of violence as a reminder of the limitations to enlightened progress and consensus. In Germany, he weighed in heavily on the moral dimension to memory and the legacy of nazism. The embrace of consumerism in western Germany seemed to him far too easy after the horrors of the Holocaust; what was needed instead was a quest for Verfassungspatriotism (constitutional patriotism). <\/p>\n

The novelist G\u00fcnter Grass, awarded the Nobel literature prize in 1999 for \u201csketching the forgotten face of history\u201d, was a contemporary of Habermas and a teenage member of the Waffen-SS. They seemed of similar mind, Grass arguing that \u201cassertions of ignorance could not conceal being part of a system that planned, organised and carried out the annihilation of millions of people\u201d. More recently, Habermas justified Israel\u2019s war on Gaza<\/a> from 2023 by maintaining \u201cJewish life and Israel\u2019s right to exist are central elements worthy of special protection in light of the mass crimes of the Nazi era\u201d.<\/p>\n

One of the consistent warnings of Habermas this century related to the implications of US foreign policy. In 2003, he authored an article with fellow famed philosopher Jacques Derrida, in the context of the US invasion of Iraq. Under the title Our Renewal. After the War: The Rebirth of Europe, they argued that the actions of the United States were sufficiently alarming for Europeans to urgently focus on their collective identity and carve a distinctive European path in international affairs.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0From the archive: Philosopher’s stand against creeping nationalismOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

One of Habermas\u2019s later books, published in German as Ach, Europa in 2008 and translated into English in 2009 under the title Europe: The Faltering Project, elaborated on his concern at \u201cthe danger of the EU regressing into the all too familiar power games of the national governments\u201d.<\/p>\n

What he envisaged as an alternative was a \u201cbipolar commonality\u201d of the West in which an increasingly unified Europe would work ever more closely with the US to guarantee a more stable and equitable international order. <\/p>\n

Habermas was in Dublin in 2010 to be decorated with UCD\u2019s highest accolade, the Ulysses medal, and, interviewed for this newspaper, suggested: \u201cThe symbolic power of a common European foreign policy would certainly tend to promote cross-border awareness of a shared destiny among the member states of the European Union … And as regards transatlantic relations, under such conditions the shared interests \u2013 in such matters as abandoning unilateralism, an effective global regulation of the financial markets, climate policy goals, and a peace agreement in the Middle East \u2013 would become more effective than ever.\u201d<\/p>\n

[\u00a0From the archive: J\u00fcrgen Habermas on how Merkel has depleted her ‘capital of trust’ within EUOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

If these sentiments seemed naive then, they seem preposterous now. Habermas\u2019s ideas were centred on the cementing of international law and human rights under the auspices of a reformed United Nations, and what he termed the \u201cconstitutionalisation of international law\u201d.<\/p>\n

But he did raise something which Trump\u2019s fascist regime has exposed: the EU\u2019s lack of international influence or a foreign and security policy that would enable it to respond coherently to economic and security challenges. <\/p>\n

Habermas returned to these ideas last year; the need, he suggested, was for the EU \u201cto find a redemptive response to the new situation\u201d. He also criticised the EU for turning the other way as Trump and his acolytes engineered \u201ca convulsion of the democratic system\u201d, while wondering if the EU could muster \u201can objective or orientation of their own\u201d. <\/p>\n

He lamented the absence of \u201cany sense of the deterrent violence of war and the fact that wars are easy to start but hard to end seemed to have evaporated\u201d. But his answer to this was to insist \u201crearmament is the existential self-assertion of a European Union that can no longer count on the protection of the United States\u201d.<\/p>\n

These are questions that will dominate Ireland\u2019s presidency of the Council of the EU this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The German philosopher J\u00fcrgen Habermas, who died last month, was understandably despondent about much in the autumn of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2151,479,5,57,2152,481],"class_list":{"0":"post-2051","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-diarmaid-ferriter","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-israel","12":"tag-second-world-war","13":"tag-united-states"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}