Jürgen Habermas’s Moral Failure

Jürgen Habermas’s passing in ۲۰۲۶ was an occasion for his numerous disciples and followers to remember his influential contribution to the theory of democracy. However, the chorus of appreciation was disturbed by criticisms of Habermas’s stance on the fate of Palestinians. Based on a review of the criticisms sparked by the publication of Principles of Solidarity, a declaration coauthored by Habermas following Hamas’s attack on Israel of October ۷, ۲۰۲۳, and the Israeli disproportionate response to the attack, I argue that Habermas failed to properly appreciate the moral problem of offloading the consequences of past German antisemitism onto the present fate of Palestinians, and exposed himself to the charge of moral failure. His moral failure has two dimensions: first is that the past German crimes against the Jews blinded him to the implications his unequivocal support of Israeli policies had for the Palestinians, while the second is that throughout his public activity, he never used his moral authority to defend the Palestinians’ right to existence and their own state.

کلیدواژه ها:

Habermas ، Solidarity ، German antisemitism ، Israel–Palestine ، moral failure ، public intellectual