Jurgen Habermas: All affected can accept the consequences and the side...

From a moral point of view, there is no excuse for terrorist acts, regardless of the motive or the situation under which they are carried out.

Jurgen Habermas

rehabilitation moral views

The only knowledge that can truly orient action is knowledge that frees itself from mere human interests and is based in Ideas - in other words knowledge that has taken a theoretical attitude.

Jurgen Habermas

taken attitude ideas

The speaker must choose a comprehensible expression so that speaker and hearer can understand one another.

Jurgen Habermas

speakers expression

The task of universal pragmatics is to identify and reconstruct universal conditions of possible mutual understanding.

Jurgen Habermas

mutual tasks understanding

The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.

Jurgen Habermas

together may people

Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

Jurgen Habermas

cynical terrorism goal

Subjects who reciprocally recognize each other as such, must consider each other as identical, insofar as they both take up the position of subject; they must at all times subsume themselves and the other under the same category. At the same time, the relation of reciprocity of recognition demands the non-identity of one and the other, both must also maintain their absolute difference, for to be a subject implies the claim of individuation.

Jurgen Habermas

demand differences identity

Reaching and understanding is the process of bringing about an agreement on the presupposed basis of validity claims that are mutually recognized.

Jurgen Habermas

reaching understanding agreement

Each murder is one too many.

Jurgen Habermas

murder

I shall develop the thesis that anyone acting communicatively must, in performing any speech act, raise universal validity claims and suppose that they can be vindicated.

Jurgen Habermas

speech acting claims

The usage of the words "public" and "public sphere" betrays a multiplicity of concurrent meanings. Their origins go back to various historical phases and, when applied synchronically to the conditions of a bourgeois society that is industrially advanced and constituted as a social-welfare state, they fuse into a clouded amalgam. Yet the very conditions that make the inherited language seem inappropriate appear to require these words, however confused their employment.

Jurgen Habermas

employment confused historical

I would in fact tend to have more confidence in the outcome of a democratic decision if there was a minority that voted against it, than if it was unanimous... Social psychology has amply shown the strength of this bandwagon effect.

Jurgen Habermas

psychology minorities decision

One never really knows who one's enemy is.

Jurgen Habermas

knows enemy

The state is in danger of falling into disrepute due to the evidence of its inadequate resources.

Jurgen Habermas

states danger fall

As medium for reaching understanding, speech acts serve: a) to establish and renew interpersonal relations, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of legitimate social orders; b) to represent states and events, whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the world of existing states of affairs; c) to manifest experiences that is, to represent oneself- whereby the speaker takes up a relation to something in the subjective world to which he has privileged access.

Jurgen Habermas

events understanding order

Technically speaking, since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents,they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities. These disruptions can, with minimum expense, have considerably destructive consequences. Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.

Jurgen Habermas

cynical goal opportunity

Philosophy's position with regard to science, which at one time could be designated with the name "theory of knowledge," has been undermined by the movement of philosophical thought itself. Philosophy was dislodged from this position by philosophy.

Jurgen Habermas

philosophical names philosophy

Today's Islamic fundamentalism is also a cover for political motifs. We should not overlook the political motifs we encounter in forms of religious fanaticism

Jurgen Habermas

islamic political religious

Disappointment over nationalistic authoritarian regimes may have contributed to the fact that today religion offers a new and subjectively more convincing language for old political orientations.

Jurgen Habermas

political disappointment may

The difference between political terror and ordinary crime becomes clear during the change of regimes, in which former terrorists become well-regarded representatives of their country.

Jurgen Habermas

differences political country

All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects that [the norm's] general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone's interests, and the consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities for regulation.