Habermas on philosophy's roles in contemporary society
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 มิ.ย. 2024
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Professor Ellie Anderson, co-host of Overthink philosophy podcast, unpacks key ideas from philosopher Jürgen Habermas's 1983 piece "Philosophy as Stand-In and Interpreter," including his views of the roles that Immanuel Kant and Richard Rorty give to the discipline. What makes philosophy continually relevant in a world in which scientific advances have sometimes been touted as replacements for the ancient discipline of the love of wisdom? For the entire text, please see Habermas's book Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action.
This video was created just for our TH-cam subscribers (thank you for your support!) based on Professor Anderson's Phenomenology course.
For more from Dr. Anderson, check out Overthink podcast! Available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen (including previous episodes here on TH-cam!)
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I haven't considered the writings of Jurgen Habermas since Graduate School almost thirty years ago. So, it's like a bolt from the blue to suddenly see you bring such clarity and insight to his philosophical aims. When I studied the career of Habermas, we were trying to see how he came to be the inheritor of the Marxian/Freudian Frankfurt School For Social Change Thinkers like Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin and Fromm. You've provided new light. Thank you, Ellie
I am a history teacher in China, your can always explain philosophy in a simple and clear way, help me understand history of philosophy alot. thx
Habermas' views on the role of philosophy have been influential in cognitive science where different disciplines such as neuroscience, psychology, linguistics, artificial intelligence, and so on come together to understand the mind. It's important conceptually to propose appropriate constructs so that such disciplines can communicate to, and understand, each other.
According to Kant, it was once philosophy’s primary role to provide the foundation for all of the modern sciences; defining once and for all what can be experienced and what cannot be experienced. Secondarily, a role to sort out (as a “judge”) the differences between auxiliary disciplines within both the humanities and sciences. :)
Thank you for distilling Habermas's synthesis of Kant and Rorty with such clarity! It seems Habermas was searching for a distinctive role of philosophy in the new sciences, one of holding hypotheses (Platzhalter) and another for interpretation. I would not undermine the role of philosophy as usher or Platzanweiser since the very fact of formulating hypotheses is a creative act of philosophy. After its contribution to the inception of the sciences, philosophy migrated there and is very much embedded therein. It remains the light of rationality infusing a healthy dose of skepticism that guides and reflects on all human endeavors and views.
indeed through out the history of academia , one finds a thinker who steps up to the plate to save their profession . Socrates from the materialists ,Kant metaphysics from science ,Jung in psychology selvaging religion from the remnants of Nietzsche hammer . I enjoyed the presentation , I have since listened to other lectures on Habermas ,finding Professors Anderson presentation better understand the other presentations . Thank You!
I really love the clips of this channel. They are so informative. Thank you for creating and sharing. Sharing is caring!
I like Habermas's perspective. It's very Aristotelian in the sense that it sees philosophy as some sort of vantage point to connect all scientific disciplines. Kind of satisfying to think that Aristotle didn't just establish the core disciplines of science but also was right about the role of philosophy (as first of all sciences) after all.
After I took a deep dive into the linguistic turn in the last semester I think that philosophy still plays an extremely important role in epistemology.
Theology was the queen of the sciences.
The world is so much greater with Dr Ellie in it.
Hello Dr. Ellie, I'm new here on your channel (I'm a Brazilian physics teacher).
In the fact, the algorithm brought me to this video (sometimes I saw some videos of phylosofia - in portuguese, off course).
Anyway, I would like to make a comment about your book: Clarice Lispector - complete stories. I'm glad to know that you appreciate Brazilian literature.
Hey, insightful video! This is a relatively small channel so I'm glad the algorithm found you for me, and I find your explanation very valuable.
Habermas is such a prolific and wide-spanning writer that I've found it hard to get an idea of what he stands for or is best known for.
He seems like the philosopher who you discover while researching views on topics rather than by following his works, independently and that really shows the niche he chose to adopt for his own philosophy and in other areas of his life he seems true to his ideals.
Certain pop-philosophers stick around and seem to occupy a niche in modern society that's significant. Growing up, I saw philosophy as the glue that holds academic subjects together. An amorphous and evolving refuge of ideas away from the great houses.
To write, as Slavoj Zizek (a pop philosopher) does about how politics is linked to mass media, you need to occupy a space outside film review, outside general social commentary, and outside of politics.
Other philosophers, including WiseCrack, pay homage to the pantheon of philosophy while reviewing media but in a valuable way. We, as philosophers, may see out history and pantheons as old news, but even simple philosophical ideas can be revolutionary to the average person (see stoicism within the manosphere and modern conceptions of masculinity).
Philosophy can act as such an usher that Kant describes but lacks the administrative strength in academic institutions for such a role. Of course, those with PhD's are supposed to have a philosophical perspective behind their field and that could have an overarching effect on academia but I do wonder how many of them care or want to be aligned with "philosophy".
Habermas' ideas are very reasonable and up-to-date but I feel it looks highly, it looks at where philosophy can fit amidst a swelling academia, but it fits where it always has, outside and in between.
When the mathematician writes the justification for their work, they're philosophising. Will they say "For the sake of pure mathematics"... Not often, but even then it's defiant and philosophically edgy.
Philosophy as an interpreter is a very beautiful conception and I can see no fault in it but it does more. It still connects and builds on itself at times, without bridging academic institutions.
The feelers are still out and it can still break new ground, I think that in that way, it goes well beyond a stand-in... it's pioneering.
Just discovered this podcast and its very substantial as a philo major
Fantastic video on a VERY important essay. Thank you!
This video was enough for me to subscribe to upcoming class content!!! great essay break down
Thank you.
Great talk, following!
This was a great summary, very helpful
Thank you! This is a great lecture
More videos on Habermas, please!
This channel is my new favorite thing!
Another great video Ellie. Well done 👏
To me, philosophy is very useful to understand ourselves and our environment.
Enjoyed the video!
I’ve been confounded by individuals questioning the need for philosophy, given my experience when acting as a psychiatry consultant and liaison (CL) with internal medicine (IM) inpatient services, when evaluating questions relating to capacity and conflict between the primary team and patient, encountering ethicists who approach the same question from the interaction between autonomy (self determination), capacity (limits of understanding), and society (the framework of norms), and help move the conversation forward and challenge unspoken assumptions that can lead to conflict and erroneous conclusions by CL and/or IM.
I recently discovered your work. You do a wonderful job. Very compelling. Keep it up. Kind regards. RJ Roger.
Great video. I'm a fan of Habermas and consider him a serious thinker.
I liked the ending, where you articulated philosophy's role as an interpreter between disciplines. I agree.
Science can't decide on ethics and morality. This is where philosophy can help.
I think the area where philosophy can be most helpful today is in epistemology, the study of knowledge, what do we know and how we can know things. Critical thinking skills, evaluating evidence, and how we reach conclusions are hugely important in personal, political and professional life in the USA and elsewhere. This is a major sub discipline of philosophy, my favorite area of philosophy and an area where philosophy can make material contributions to the greater good.
Every high school and college student should be required to take a critical thinking class and be exposed to logical reasoning and critical thinking skills.
Thanks for the video.
Congrats, Ellie, for your excellent presentation on Habermas. Piaget's book "Insights and illusions of Philosophy" is also worth checking out. It's a much deeper book than it seems at first sight, and it's unfairly neglected. I guess that as long as people want to label that what they're doing as philosophy it'll continue to exist.
Finally a philosophy podcast!!
Philosophy is a way of thinking, a tool. It is very useful when looking at something new and unknown for example when Einstein was developing relativity, it was philosophy that he used.
I'm going to have to watch this more than once.
Let's read Bergson.
Can I audit that class pleez? I think that guy said what I think. Not sure yet. Let's find out.
Nothing can replace the best parts of Spinoza's philosophy. Also, no discipline other than philosophy has even a trace of a fighting chance of grasping the central human problem -- the angst of existence.
Tell that to someone that's hungry.
Good joke tho.
@@manlikeJoe1010 oh of course I mean philosophy. Theology is subjective, philosophy for the most part at least tries to be objective -- Descartes is so objective that in the end, what he deduced as the only unfailable truth is "I think, therefore I am."
@@chggg567 how did he know he was doing the thinking
Cool vids! Cheerz 😁
Very nice series. Thank you very much.
Do you read French or German or speak any other languages?
Honestly, my eyes glaze over sometimes, complicated stuff, but thanks!
Does Usher means determining the basic premises and the ontology of sciences?
what do you think and know about J Krishnamurti
Please do all the Frankfurt School!
Alright let me know if this is at all reductive, but it seems to me that Ellie is talk-y Maggie Rogers and Maggie is sing-y Ellie Anderson.
haha, jk. Just found your channel and I'm loving it so far! Thanks for the videos!
if philosophy at one time or another can't lead humanity to a better world by solving important moral / ethical dilemmas, then all it may turn out to be is a hobby and a source of topics for artists.
Any recommended translation?
Unfortunately, what is considered "philosophy" in the Universities is the study of certain specific famous philosophers. If science was taught in the same way, the entire curriculum would be focused on studying the biography of famous scientists, rather than on the understanding and advancing the actual science.
It's a kind of appeal to authority, talking up the person behind the ideas to loom above the student, so as to forestall any the-emperor-has-no-clothes situations where the students might point out that the ideas seem weak, half-baked or incomprehensible.
@@hieronymuslarsson1388 I think it is even worse than that. I think it discourages students from thinking about these issues for themselves, as it implies that you need to first study the opinions of a certain specific philosophers before you are capable of formulating your own views.
@@EugeneKhutoryansky
I agree.
What's philosophy without independent thinking? I certainly don't believe in it as a competition in who is best at arduous study of ill-written tomes, by intellectually and morally fallible but famed individuals, composed virtually without feedback from reality and peers.
Hats off to your excellent channel, by the way. What a great way to teach _natural_ philosophy !
You sound like someone who only took lower division humanities courses and then base your entire understanding of “how philosophy is taught” on your limited experiences. I won’t criticize you for not delving deeper into philosophy. But I think you are making a fundamental mistake that you would never make in your own field-making a claim based on insufficient data.
@@MarcosElMalo2 You shouldn't make assumptions about how much philosophy I have studied. In any case, this is an Ad Hominem argument.
Can you tell me what you personally believe about beyond good and evil by Friedrich Nietzsche?
would you agree with the notion, that occurred to me after viewing your video, that the history of philosophy is filled with ideas that are simple, though they may not be easy, and that this perhaps supports the role of philosophy as interpreter?
for example the following ideas, which are just my articulation of several philosophical themes I’ve been aware of over the years, not necessarily ideas I’d personally endorse...
-a common vocabulary is the result of a common bias
-truth sets humans apart from other animals
-truth is an artefact of power
-relative truth is logically absurd
-that which is constructed may be de-constructed
-self awareness is always already given in experience
-self awareness is never given in experience
-just because something is difficult to talk about does not mean it is irrelevant
-we live in one world
-we live in two worlds
taking the first idea to illustrate how it is simple but not easy, if we believe that words are simply the means to signal to others how we have already learned to divide up the world, then the question arises how can we have persuasive discussions? how can we express new ideas to others? what constitutes anomalous behavior and how may it function to influence those who don’t already agree with you?
Dear Guardian of Rationality: where applied sciences (e.g. engineering) boundaries can be defined by disciplines from other sciences, but has a morality requirement and expectation in service to society and nature, but by definition is not the study of morality, does the philosophy of engineering be best served by being compartmentalization within to consider such complexity, or does the boundaries expand and overlap other philosophies, or just mirror or reflect such overlaps? Thought or suggested reading invited.
I love this channel!!!
In some ways this is a really excellent video and I commend it, it caters to an essential middle ground between highly theoretical lectures for grad students video taped from the back row at a university and really cheapened, simplified kind of “philosophy explained” stuff.
But two things I imagine can improve it -
1. Even subtly seeming like you’re just reading off some lecture notes detracts, it loses the dynamism which grips the audience, given the close up and the good image quality and the generally comprehensible language
2. Instead of just paraphrasing what famous philosophers have said I think you should/could try harder to refine their ideas until they feel irrevocably justified and clear. You can keep distilling what they’ve said until you’ve made it your own so you can tell the audience in a way that’s unmistakably clear and convincing
i disagree . I find a good prof , presents the work through the eyes of the author as from the inside out not projecting ones perspective onto the student . I have heard series of lectures from top professors from top Universities ,and at the end of it ,you have no idea the professors personal perspective ,you do though understand the authors work . I find Professor Anderson to be good , energetic and knowledgeable without being a know it all. After all she is presenting a short talk on a complex argument, not a PHD paper!
Hi, Dr. Anderson here. I agree that your suggestion (2) would improve the videos, though I think this advice would be great for a full-time content creator with the bandwidth for this additional time commitment and effort. Unfortunately, it's pretty impossible for me to carve out more time to prepare these videos, which are meant to be just short and simple introductions.
As a professor at a liberal arts college, my full-time job is teaching multiple courses each semester, keeping up my research/publications, and doing university service--plus, I host a podcast (please check it out if you haven't already--we go more in-depth/offer more distillations there than I have space to do here! Link at end of comment).
I feel like this speaks to a bigger crisis in public philosophy, since it's very hard for college professors today to find the space and time for public-facing work. In any case, your comment struck a chord because I agree with you, but hope these videos as is work well enough to interest folks in pursuing philosophical inquiry further! I'd be delighted to see more folks who have more time for deepening this kind of work to enter into it. :)
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/overthink/id1538249280
@@OverthinkPodcastPhilosophy With regard to Rupert’s first point, consider using an iPad with a teleprompter app. Older iPad models are sufficient, so it doesn’t represent a huge cost. You don’t need an elaborate rig. Positioning it just above the camera should be sufficient for your purposes.
I only noticed one quick glance, so perhaps it’s not really a problem.
🌷😇🌷
Thinks
Fit check
What about the role of philosophy in bioethics?
Is the role of interpreter what we call epistemology?
@@pezeron24 epistemology is a theory of knowledge
What do you personally think is the role of philosophy in our current contemporary and modern society?
Anyone here ever translate Habermas into Spanish? I don’t mean his works, I mean his name. 😄 Haber más.
Wisdom is pragmatic stratagem at the pinnacle of present perception aimed at the highest conceived value.
Philosophy: Philo (Love) Sophi (Wisdom)
Would be the love and seeking of this “Wisdom” in my supposition,
Science,(scientia),meaning “knowledge” etymologically would be the data, info, knowledge, “Philosophers” use like chess pieces in the pursuit of Wisdom’s aim.
But what is Wisdom Aim …?
I believe it starts with an L
...not bad! but what does that really say...
Humans used to do philosophy.
Nowadays, humans do science and religion.
Actually it's a decline in the quality of what humans usually do.
But isn't Habermas therapeutic in his conception of "lifeworlds", or even as a post-fascist, picking up the pieces of a collapsed society
Thanks for your comment! Habermas means by "therapeutic" philosophies those philosophies that believe philosophy is sick to its core, which isn't quite what he has in mind. Here is the section from the text (which we'd definitely recommend reading in its entirety, of course!):
"Wittgenstein championed the notion of a therapeutic philosophy, therapeutic in the specific sense of self-healing, for philosophy was sick to the core. Wittgenstein's diagnosis was that philosophy had disarrayed language games that function perfectly well in everyday life. The weakness of this particular farewell to philosophy is that it leaves the world as it is. For the standards by which philosophy is being criticized are taken straight from the self-sufficient, routinized forms of life in which philosophy happens to survive for now. And what about possible successors? Field research in cultural anthropology seems to be the strongest candidate to succeed philosophy after its demise. Surely the history of philosophy will henceforth be interpreted as the unintelligible doings of some outlandish tribe that today is fortunately extinct. (Perhaps Rorty will one day be celebrated as the path-breaking Thucydides of this new approach, which incidentally could only get under way after Wittgenstein's medicine had proved effective.)"
Immanuel Kant is the most outdated one, his thinking is more religious than rational.
I think you’re missing the point. The point is that however you characterize Kent’s thinking, Habermas found it necessary to address it and engage with it. Thus if you want to approach Habermas, it would behoove you to understand the thinking to which he was responding.
Philosophy is like a fabric. If you want to understand a philosopher’s weave and the patterns which he has embroidered, you need to have some understanding of those weaves he touches upon. You have to see where he gets his thread.
I’m not saying your opinion is wrong. I’m saying you didn’t ask an interesting question to arrive at your opinion.
This comment is more religious than rational
It's a deeply for lack of a better word Anglophone way of thinking to simply dismiss an entire disciple like philosophy because it doesn't pay the bills or fix such-and-such problem. Philosophy is THE discipline that asks why we should concern ourselves with bill paying and this deterministically Darwinian anf capitalist framework to begin with. The natural sciences already co-opted the word "science" and now arrogantly assume they can out-philosophy philosophy. Ridiculous.