Habermas and German Nationalism

A very useful collection of Habermas texts on line can be found at: http://www.helsinki.fi/~amkauppi/hablinks.html

It is no doubt rather harsh to link Jürgen Habermas with German nationalism, Habermas epitome of decent rationalist sort of Marxist sort of left-liberal German democrat.  His thought repudiates all Nationalism in favour of cosmopolitan democratic procedures based on the ethics of discourse undistorted by the interests of power.  He devotes himself to Constitutional Patriotism, which rests on loyalty to constitutional arrangements rather than loyalty to culture, ethnicity, race or religion.  

But this becomes another form of German Nationalism?  Who has supposedly provided an example of Constitutional Patriotism? The post-war Federal Republic of Germany of course.  

Which nation reacted most strong against proto-totalitarian Jacobin Terror during the French Revolution, supposedly?  Germany of course, though one might point out that Edmund Burke pointed out this aspect of the French Revolution before it had happened.  Statist elements in Fichte and Hegel are overlooked by Habermas.  What about the consequences of Marxist utopianism in politics: totalitarianism  What about Marx's anti-semitism in On the Jewish Question?  What about the nationalist element in the thought of liberal thinker and sociologist Max Weber?  Though quite rightly, Weber would certainly think something is missing from the idea of Constitutional Patriotism,which rests on an ideal of passionless depersonalised discourse.    If we look at a great German liberal of that time, Wilhelm Von Humboldt, we find a regret for the passing of constant war in human civilisation and a strong belief in the 'Nation' as the source of laws, unified by the interplay of constant dialogue.

Humboldt has some leanings towards militaristic nationalism, along with the limited state.  His emphasis on dialogue provides a source for Habermas' discourse ethics and democracy of deliberation.  No mention of how that works out in conjunction with Humboldt.  Where is Marx, who turns a Humboldtian emphasis on freedom through dialogue into a socialism/communism where individuals flourish in their freedom from the state? 

Habermas overlooks Naziism and its place in German history while defining Germany as the home land of constitutional patriotism.  Patriotism requires more than loyalty to a constitution.  I do not suppose that Habermas overlooks the complaints mentioned above, but he has no answer other than an idealised public sphere where individuals keep debating detached from anything which makes them individual.  

Of course there is much to admire in Habermas' thought and in German constitutionalism, but we need material interests and personal perspective in an adequate theory.  We certainly do not want a universalisation to German politics, mirroring the Jacobin universalism which Habernas criticises.  

Turkish Politics: Society Progresses not the Politics

I have not commented on this since Hrant Dınk was assassinated. I think for one thing, I was rather depressed by the total failure of the the political parties to seize the opportunity for reform. I'm still depressed about it, but I'm used to it. Certainly the economy and society is developing and growing. This process has come about through pragmatic accommodation of reforms which do not originate from within the Turkish political system. There is no real political force on behalf or real reform. The closest thing to that is a mixture of business lobbying, NGO lobbying partly funded by the EU and George Soros, and intellectual-journalistic opinion mongering.

Since Dınk's murder there has been a general election. I am afraid to say that political reform was not at the centre of the election. This reality has been obscured by a seemingly endless number of western commentators who are able to believe that the AKP, the governing party, is a party of modernising liberalising reform. These commentator also include Turks writing in western publications, but since it's difficult to meet Turks who believe such a thing and such a view has become less popular the longer the AKP has been in power, it really has to be concluded that they are fitting into a view that westerners need to believe.

The AKP government is certainly a lot better than might be expected given the Sahria law politics background of most of them. An organicist ideology of a pure Muslim-Turkish nation has involve into a developmentalism which implictly accepts change as defined by the European Union, World Bank, associations orientated to international business and the EU, and the more internationally oriented writers and academics. That is certainly not the platform the AKP compaigns on. It bases its appeal on nationalism, Muslim identity and patronage. Reforms are explain on the explicit level in those terms, not in the way westerners would like to understand them. Every political movement needs a bit of demagogy but the AKP's foundation is in demagogy against the elite and the non-Muslim/Turkic. Despite the western image their plains for political reform do not go beyond a minimalist adaptation to EU harmonisation requirements.

The trouble with the other parties is they are no better. The main opposition which is no better, is the 'social democratic' CHP. They are more a party of the secular state and the established middle and upper classes than a social democratic party. The social democratic element is in a statism and protectionism, expressed in opposition to some of the economic liberalisation of the reform process. This allowed them to be painted as more anti-EU than the AKP. I would say that claim has no underlying relation to reality whatsoever, but expect to hear more of it. I don't beleive the CHP deserve any sympathy. The other thing which has led d western commentators to paint them as less reformist than the AKP is the huge demonstrations for secularism which took place as the possibility approached that the new President of the Republic would be an AKP figure with a wife who wears a Muslim headscarf at all times in public. These demonstrations were seen as expressing an alliance between CHP and the armed forces, well maybe. There was no real chance of a coup, and if they were attmetping to pressure the democratic process they failed miserably. On one level it was all very self-defeating. Demonstrations were dominated by the Turkish flag as secularism was defended with reference to the nation state. The demonstrations looked like demonstrations on behalf of a strong state from a nationalist point of view. The idea that the AKP is any less nationalist or statist is absurd. They are less close to the army, but if they could co-opt the army they would, they are rooted in an Ottomanist ideology in which the state is defined by a father-sultan, sharia law, the Sultan's bureaucracy and the military which originally had a Jihadist function.

The consequence of this movement and subsequent manouvres at the top is that the President is an AKP man with a headscarved wife, but the President is the affable moderate former foreign minister Abdullah Gül, not the strong man of the AKP, Recep Tayyıp Erdoğan who is aggressive and demagogic in manner. This may be bad news for Erdoğan who everyone think longs to be President, but good news for the AKP which keeps its strongest figure at the centre of government and party politics. Whatever the personality of the President, the office inevitably leads to diastance from party politics and most government functions. If AKP lsoes its strongest figure to the Presidency it could well experience political decline, accelerating the disconnection between President and party. As Erdoğan will know have to wait to be President, it is even more likely that his Presidency will coincide with a down turn in the unity and popularity of the AKP. During the manouvres, the AKP managed to look like it had the democratic high ground by declaring it was in favour of the direct election of the President, that idea has disappeared since, maybe it will come back, I'm not expecting it

There is a new constitution being prepared, so that will put the AKP to the test and the CHP. Expect a minimalist adaptation to EU standards, not a big step forward. Things both AKP and CHP have been very quiet about: gay rights, sub-national identity, free speech, limiting executive privilege, university autonomy.

The third party is the ultra-nationalist MHP, who are more of a negative force in Turkish politics. No one expects them to have realistic proposals, they will just create the problem of how to get them to accept changes. The third party in the election was the Democratic Party, whichwas a failed attempt to relaunch the classical Turkish centre-right. Goodbye to them. The fourth party in the election, but the third in the National Assembly is the Kudish autonomy leftist DTP, the most important party in Turkey for many western left-wingers. Contacts with the DTP may, however, not be a successful substitute for interacting with the other 96% of Turkish voters, even including those tiresome ultra-nationalists in the MHP.

Gadamer, Nationalism and a Reductive view of Enlightenment and Romanticism

These thoughts come from an MA class from the Methodology course I give for the MA in Political Science in the Department of Humanities and Social Science where I am employed.

Truth and Method famously rehabilitates the concept of 'prejudice' as a term of legal process rather than as a negative term referring to a bad opinion based on poor reasoning. The use of 'prejudice' as a necessary first stage of a legal process is combined to Germany. Gadamer contrasts German usage with other usages going back to the Latin. What he does not do is consider various contextual issues in history and theory of law: Roman Law and Customary Law (which still existed in Germany in the era of Enlightenment and Romanticism), Roman Law and Common Law (English style law which gives a strong role to judicial precedent and innovation); and all consideration of law not based on a convenient German example. The section on legal hermeneutics has rather more to do with hermeneutics than law, leaving us with Gadamer's privileged example.

The German orientation is also present in his account of Enlightenment. French and 'English' Enlightenment are presented as sceptical in contrast with the historically grounded German Enlightenment. The fşrst point to make her is that the 'English' Enlightenment is better described as 'Anglo-Scottish' since the greatest figures were David Hume and Adam Smith. Other notable Scottish contributors include Adam Ferguson and Thomas Reid. Looking at the great philosopher in this context, David Hume, scepticism is a strong theme in Hume but it has an end. The end is in the habit, or custom, of the mind which provides a reliable basis for knowledge and ethics, though they cannot be based on determinate knowledge. Custom and habit also exist in history, in the accumulation of science, culture and morality. Something Gadamer could have taken into account.

The Italian Enlightenment is also pushed out of account. Vico is put in his place, by suggesting that he has failed to adopt the Hermeneutic method of moving between part and whole. Vico apparently leaves an unbridgeable confrontation between the individual and history as a whole. Another way of looking at Vico is that he shows the individual becoming more universal through history. Somehow Gadamer overlooks Vico's work on language, literature and law, which would disturb his extremely schematic contrast between Enlightenment and Romanticism. His presumed sharp separation ignores the way that Enlightenment includes the centrality of sensibility and imagination. These may have been initially conceived in mechanistic terms but that is something that is always breaking down, particularly if we consider the simultaneous development of the novel of sensibility. Gadamer claims that Romanticism is nostalgic, but the Jena Romantic Ironists in some sense invented Modernity as a value. They opposed the sentimental, romantic, modern novel to the naive, classical, antique novel in non-nostalgic terms.

Derrida French Nationalist and Conservative Europeanist

Loyal Derrideans will now doubt be perturbed to see Derrida accused of positions he rejected at the most explicit level. However, we cannot spare Derrida from the kind of reading that he brings to other people.

Derrida, Hegel and Algeria
The issue of Derrida the French nationalist first occurred to me after a class in which I was teaching 'Onto-Theology of National-Humanism' (available in Oxford Literary Review 14 1992, pages 3 to 23; or in Jacques Derrida: Basic Writings, Routledge, London, 2007). The text is devoted to the discussion of the Germanic tradition of identifying German Nationalism with Philosophical Humanism. Fichte, Heidegger and Adorno feature as might be expected. The less well known figure of Karl Grün features strongly. Grün must be best know for being criticised by Marx in the German Ideology, and that is what Derrida discusses. Bringing in Marx might appear to some people, possibly including Derrida himself, to neutralise anything nationalist looking in his work. However, Marx is full of German-European nationalist universalism. For Marx, Germany is the country furthest from revolution and therefore the closest philosophically. For Marx, European colonialism brings the colonised countries into a world community formed by Europeans.

Grün strongly criticises the French on philosophical and national grounds. He condemns the French interpretation of Hegel, a topic that is of great importance to Derrida when writing about the institution of philosophy in France, and which obviously forms a large part of the background to Derrida's own philosophical formation. He takes a critical view of French colonialism in Algeria, referring to the desirability of Algeria becoming a part of Morocco. The consequence of French colonial policies in North Africa was that the Moroccan monarchy continued to exist but was effectively reduced to a French satrapy.

In my class ( part of a course on Derrida based on the texts I selected for Jacques Derrida: Basic Writings), an International Relations students, in a group that was predominantly philosophy students) was very determined to takes this in the terms of IR Realism. Realism in IR refers to the view that states pursue their own interests and state interests conflict. He picked up on thew territorial issue and the issue of reading Hegel, and argued that Derrida's text was a reaction against both. Derrida was a pied-noir, a colon, in Algeria. That is be was born into a colonial family. As it was a Jewish family, no doubt their position in the pied-noir community was no doubt in some respects marginal, nevertheless they were part of that community, a community of a million white Europeans with roots going back to the 1830 annexation.

Derrida of course never identified with French colonialism but he did identify with his Algerian origin. There is a difference between justifying colonialism and valuing origins in a colonial community, but this can be a tangled issue particularly when we consider the pied noirs, who wished to stay in Algeria and wished for Algeria to be treated as part of France. They were not just a colonial addition on the top of a native community, that was what made their resistance to decolonisation and then de Gaulle (their saviour turned traitor) so bitter, and what made decolonisaiton of Algeria so trauamtic in France and so protracted and bloody in France.

Derrida and Tocqueville
Behind the pious image of progressive Derrida, let us admit there is someone with some French nationalist impulses with regard both to philosophical institutions and to colonial history. Rather tantaslisingly Derrida refers to a coming lecture on Tocqueville. 'Onto-Theology of National Humanism' is a lecture Derrida gave at the Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales. All of these lectures will be published but it will necessarily be a protracted process. The last I heard Geoffrey Bennington and Peggy Kamuf will edited the collected Derrida, but the publisher was unclear. Tocqueville was a enthusiast for French colonialism in Algeria and regarded Islam as clearly inferior to Christianity, on the basis that Mahgreb Muslims were less developed than European Christians (on religious-cultural grounds not racial-ethnic grounds). This is invariably the issue with which Marxist, or Marxisant, critics of Tocqueville like to attack with him, and to attack liberalism. Of course in this context they like to forget that Marx supported European colonialism, the rights of great nations and thought that Jews (like himself) should all give up all elements of Jewish identity. What did Derrida have to say about Tocqueville? Would it bring us any close to an understanding of the relationship between Derrida's own French philosophical universalism and the particularistic world view of the pied-noirs.


Europeanism: Plato and Christianity
On the issue of Europeanism, Derrida criticises Husserl's idealistion of Europe as the place of philosophy, and therefore of human goals in Introduction to the Origin of Geometry. What do we see in The Gift of Death in the discussions of Jan Patocka? Patocka was a Phenomenologist oriented to Plato and Christianity, influential on Czechoslovak anti-totalitarians, lie Vacllav Havel, and Catholic theologians including Karol Wojtyla (Pope John-Paul II). Derrida emphasises the Europe of Plato and Christianity in Patocka, a Europe that is identified with Christian spirituality and philosophical truth. Derrida emphasises heresy in Patocka and European responsibility, but the end result is still a taking up of an idea of Europe as a unified entity with a specific philosophical role.

It all looks very much Derrida thinks that Europe is the land which contains the spiritual and philosophical goals of humanity. Derrida would have denied such an ambition. Occasionally he makes gestures to the non-European origins of European culture, as when he refers to 'hetera' (other) as a word of Sanskrit origin in 'Signature Event Context' (though as far as I know it is a word which appears both in India and Europe and could with no clear indication of where it appeared first). Despite himself, no doubt, did not Derrida give way to a Eurocentric form of universalism, a universalism defined by the European philosophy (including Marx) and high literary tradition which forms the basis of his texts.