Jürgen Habermas

I was surprised to learn from your book that there was such a thing known as spectral studies and even journals focusing on spectral studies.

I probably shouldn't have been so surprised because the word has come up in other conversations, particularly in relationship to The philosopher Jacques Derrida and his book Specters of Marx, in which the specter is real, but it's also mostly metaphorical.

It's not so much a thing, but a process that's haunting all of Western culture.

Yeah, absolutely.

know because what science is is doing is explaining the physical world but it can't give us a greater sense of meaning or purpose or connection or depth it can't give us a sense of belonging to something greater than the self and so there's been like pew has done a lot of research on this as well and the statistics are quite interesting the the the rise and the growth of the spiritual but not religious movement, particularly in America, I mean, obviously in Europe as well, particularly in America, I find it particularly interesting in America, considering how Christian the country is, that so many people are moving away from both Orthodox religion and the scientific paradigm to look for something with greater meaning or purpose or depth.

And that's what has kind of led us into this sort of post-secular era where we're looking for not a return to religion, but a form of spirituality that is highly individualized and curated.

I learned from your book, Karen, that the term post-secularism was coined by the philosopher Jürgen Habermas.

Yeah.

So

that's Habermas's 1973 piece, The Legitimation Crisis.

There's a crisis of legitimacy.

It's in the media, it's in...

Now, Hoppe, and here begins his contribution.

Hoppe had as his PhD student, sorry, as his PhD professor, Jürgen Habermas.

Now, Jürgen Habermas, our audience might remember, we saw him when we talked about the Frankfurt School.

So he was one of the most prominent new leftist intellectuals.

And Habermas had his theory of communicative action.

It means that when we discuss, when you and me discuss, This discussion entails some presuppositions.

I recognize Yaron as an autonomous entity.

And again, this is not...

Now, I think there's, you know, there are definitely criticisms to be made of those liberal thinkers.

And, you know, I can quote thinkers who will tell you what's wrong with them, but don't want to go down the path of sort of the Foucault or even, you know, Habermas or Adorno or Horkheimer or Judith Butler.

But that's where we've ended up.

Our human rights now are not universal.

Let's do it, because they explain so much of our daily Internet experience.

The German philosopher Jürgen Habermas championed the idea of communicative action.

OK, communicative action.

This is the beautiful foundational idea that a society functions best when people engage in rational, good faith discourse to reach a mutual understanding.

Like that's just one principle.

Yeah, I think there was, you know, Habermas has a book that we covered called Theory and Praxis.

And he says, you know, it's wrong from the Marxist standpoint to look at America as an antithesis to Marxism.

It's just an earlier revolution.