Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:08in the basement, if these cracks were 45-degree
00:00:11diagonal cracks or horizontal cracks, you must refer
00:00:15to an engineer. The next elements are the floor and finally
00:00:19the doors and frames. And I constantly, when I say "evaluated," I really want
00:00:22to emphasize that I'm not referring to a regular civil or architectural engineer;
00:00:26I mean an engineer specializing in damaged structures.
00:00:30He has experience, meaning an engineer who has previously worked with damaged structures.
00:00:33I ask my compatriots that if they have taken steps to hire an engineer to come and
00:00:37evaluate the building, they must ask if he has experience with damaged structures
00:00:41or if he is a regular civil or architectural engineer who designs
00:00:45and constructs new structures
00:00:46in fact.
00:00:52And now, on BBC Persian Television, current
00:00:56issues.
00:00:59Habermas was one of those philosophers who were met
00:01:03with great reception in Iran. Why?
00:01:07What ideas in his political philosophy received
00:01:10attention in Iran?
00:01:36Hello, Jürgen Habermas, the German philosopher who passed away
00:01:40this year, had a long
00:01:43and detailed career. He wrote about trends
00:01:47that were observable in both Western industrial societies and
00:01:51in countries that grapple with the contradictory
00:01:54aspects of modernity. It's no wonder that
00:01:58concepts like communicative action and discourse ethics in the public
00:02:02sphere have been attractive to scholars and
00:02:05political activists in Iran as well. However,
00:02:08Habermas also had many critics, and in the last
00:02:11years of his life, when he defended Israel's actions
00:02:15in Gaza, he was added to the ranks of these critics.
00:02:18Habermas's defenders attributed his support for Israel
00:02:22more to the German public sphere than
00:02:26to the core of his theories in political philosophy. His
00:02:30opponents, referring to his position in the
00:02:33German intellectual sphere, evaluated this support for Israel
00:02:36as a failure of Germany's moral
00:02:39conscience. In this week's discussion, we ask:
00:02:42What are the main ideas in Habermas's
00:02:46political philosophy? From what angles
00:02:50have criticisms been raised against him? Mehdi
00:02:53Parsa, a researcher of philosophy in Germany, says:
00:02:57Habermas, despite trying to keep the
00:03:00legacy of the Enlightenment alive, ultimately failed
00:03:04to make his abstract concepts useful and
00:03:07effective for contemporary turbulent societies.
00:03:09However, Iqan Shahidi,
00:03:12a researcher of political science at Cambridge University,
00:03:16says: The main concepts of Habermas's political philosophy
00:03:20actually address many of the challenges that
00:03:23modern societies or societies in transition face.
00:03:26Welcome, Mehdi.
00:03:30Wouldn't it be better if I called you
00:03:34by your first name? Let's start from here, as I know you
00:03:37are a critic of Habermas. Let's start by discussing what you think are
00:03:41Habermas's main ideas, so we can then move on to criticizing
00:03:44them. Yes.
00:03:47Well, Habermas, throughout his four or five
00:03:50decades of work, has created
00:03:53various concepts. I've been thinking about which
00:03:57of Habermas's concepts, if we take it as an entry point,
00:04:00would connect the different parts of his thought.
00:04:02I came to the conclusion that
00:04:05the distinction between
00:04:08Lebenswelt, the lifeworld, and System,
00:04:12the distinction between the lifeworld and the system.
00:04:15Yes. Now, I translate
00:04:18"lifeworld" as social life and "system" as
00:04:22social system. Well, social life
00:04:25and the social system, which were introduced in the second volume
00:04:29of the book "The Theory of Communicative Action,"
00:04:33were actually the main theme of the second volume of this
00:04:36theory of communicative action, this distinction. I think starting
00:04:40from here is a good entry point into Habermas's thought.
00:04:44You see, well, actually,
00:04:47at the end of this book, Habermas proposes this idea.
00:04:50He calls it "colonization,"
00:04:54meaning how the social system colonizes
00:04:57social life. It controls
00:05:01it or expropriates it. Expropriates it. Yes, the social
00:05:04system expropriates social life. Well, this social
00:05:08system and social life have always existed.
00:05:11In
00:05:44every remote village, every remote city,
00:05:47a governorate is established, a part
00:05:50of it is established, a bureaucratic apparatus is established
00:05:53that expands into
00:05:57various aspects of social life, and Habermas sees this as a threat.
00:06:00Well, the threat that social
00:06:04life, as that which is actually
00:06:07derived from historical traditions, from culture,
00:06:11people living in a society have this cultural
00:06:14and traditional basis that connects people to each other.
00:06:18Well, but the social system, from top to
00:06:21bottom, creates a different
00:06:24form of social interaction
00:06:28that actually poses a threat to this
00:06:32social life. Now, actually, from modernity
00:06:35onwards, from the late 18th century onwards,
00:06:38with the strengthening of
00:07:12it, and this is actually
00:07:16simultaneously the beginning of a process that he calls
00:07:20the formation of a public sphere. Am I right?
00:07:23Through institutions like coffee houses,
00:07:26local associations, first I wanted to explain the
00:07:29strengthening of the system first and then
00:07:33how the transformation of the public sphere took shape.
00:07:37Let me say that, yes, in fact,
00:07:40this pervasiveness of the system is in the form
00:07:43of a strengthening of the state, the ideological
00:07:46state or the welfare state. Similarly, with the formation
00:07:50and strengthening of capitalism, the capitalist system,
00:07:53the economy and economic relations also developed
00:07:57this power in economic relations to completely control, yes,
00:08:01to completely dominate social life. But at the same time, this point that
00:08:05you made, that in fact,
00:08:07simultaneously with the formation
00:08:11of a powerful social
00:08:14system, something else also happened, the point you
00:08:17mentioned, and that is that social
00:08:19life
00:08:21became democratic. And Habermas in his first book, "Structural
00:08:25Transformation of the Public Sphere," actually,
00:08:29whose title is
00:08:33the structural transformation of the public sphere
00:08:37or the public arena, shows this in such a way
00:08:40that something emerged from the late 17th century
00:08:44onwards, gradually something emerged as
00:08:48an independent public sphere, yes,
00:08:51an independent public sphere. This
00:08:54is actually a space in social life where
00:08:57social relations exist that are independent
00:09:01of that system, of the social system.
00:09:04Well, now, Habermas's theory is that how
00:09:08this social life
00:09:13took shape, yes, it became more powerful,
00:09:16and then how it gradually declined
00:09:20in the late 19th century and then the 20th century, and there is actually a tension
00:09:24in society
00:09:26between the system that tries to impose itself and
00:09:30then this public sphere that tries to actually
00:09:33establish itself as having political
00:09:37agency. Yes, and in this public sphere, something
00:09:40called action takes shape.
00:09:50describes the public sphere and social life based on
00:09:54dialogue and language, meaning that
00:09:57he believes that what defines
00:10:01the public sphere and social life as
00:10:05an independent framework, an independent matter,
00:10:08and describes it is
00:10:12language-based interactions between individuals. People in
00:10:16society communicate with each other, and Habermas
00:10:19describes the logic of this dialogue, the conditions of this dialogue. He calls it
00:10:23communicative action, meaning that actually, individuals
00:10:27in society perform various actions. We, in
00:10:30our lives, perform various actions.
00:10:33Some of these actions are object-oriented, which he calls strategic,
00:10:37and these are not communicative actions. Yes, yes, some of our
00:10:40actions are subject-oriented, meaning when I encounter another subject,
00:10:44another human being, it is oriented towards understanding, towards mutual
00:10:47understanding, towards understanding the subject.
00:10:49Well,
00:10:52from Habermas's perspective, this mutual understanding,
00:10:55communicative action, and not strategic action, as you said, not object-oriented
00:10:59action, but communicative action, is
00:11:02actually the essence and core of the public
00:11:06sphere and social life, as you also mentioned
00:11:09in your speech. That in
00:11:12the 18th century, in the late 17th century in Europe, for example, in
00:11:15London or in Paris,
00:11:19what happened was that in coffee houses, in
00:11:21salons,
00:11:25people would gather and converse with each other, and these
00:11:29conversations were not strategic or instrumental,
00:11:32like in the past, where it was only
00:11:35about profit and loss or about economic issues,
00:11:39but rather they would discuss political issues, social life,
00:11:43social life. Well, and Habermas says that here
00:11:46is actually the flourishing
00:11:50and birth of democratic life.
00:11:53Yes, a
00:12:25context for this
00:12:28dialogue he calls
00:12:31discourse, meaning that
00:12:34it must be free from external control and domination,
00:12:38dialogue, meaning that the dialogue that takes place
00:12:41should not be under external
00:12:44threat or external pressure that influences
00:12:48its progression. Rather, only dialogical
00:12:51rationality should govern it. Habermas says that the only force
00:12:55that should exist is the force of the better
00:12:59argument. Only the better argument should prevail to determine
00:13:02the outcome of this dialogue. So, in the public discussion space, there should be no intimidation.
00:13:05If there is intimidation,
00:13:08it indicates that the public sphere, which is a condition of democracy,
00:13:12does not exist in that society. Very well, it was decided that you would explain these concepts and then
00:13:16criticize them. Yes, but let's leave the criticism for
00:13:19later. If you allow me, do
00:13:23you think that the
00:13:26main concepts of Habermas's
00:13:30political philosophy have been explained, or
00:13:33are there other things that need to be added? Yes, no,
00:13:37it was a great introduction, thank you. And
00:13:41I think that, following Mr. Parsa's
00:13:44comments, this argument that Habermas
00:13:48makes, that the public sphere is genealogically
00:13:52traceable to places like cafes, salons of
00:13:55conversation, newspapers, and so on, and
00:13:57his argument
00:13:59is that these are places where citizens can argue
00:14:03about public affairs. But after 20 years, in his
00:14:07next book, "The Theory of Communicative Action,"
00:14:10he is essentially answering the question of why argument
00:14:14is better than force. And it is there that this communicative
00:14:17rationality, its concept, emerges. That humans
00:14:20have the ability to argue,
00:14:24they have the ability to persuade, they have the ability
00:14:28to admit their mistakes. This leads
00:14:31to a different rationality than mechanical
00:14:35rationality
00:14:37or instrumental rationality that Weber referred to. Habermas says
00:14:40it's strategic, yes, but why is this important,
00:14:44not only in the theoretical distinction that separates
00:14:48Habermas from Weber, that separates Habermas from the
00:14:51first generation of intellectuals. Because the Frankfurt School was a critical
00:14:58school that existed in Germany, as its name suggests,
00:15:02and people like Adorno and Horkheimer
00:15:06were from its first generation,
00:15:08and
00:15:11they examined the causes of the crisis of modernity
00:15:15and saw rationality,
00:15:18modern science, as part of
00:15:22this problem. And it seems Habermas tries
00:15:25to put forward an argument that, well,
00:15:28if we want to consider this entire modern system,
00:15:32this crisis of modernity, as corrupt,
00:15:35meaning rationality, science, then on what basis
00:15:39can we argue? Our argument is based on
00:15:42reason. And therefore, he tries to separate a sphere
00:15:46under the title of communicative rationality,
00:15:49which distinguishes it from the general rationality
00:15:53that Adorno and Horkheimer, for example, talked about.
00:15:56He snatches rationality from the jaws of the wolf, so to speak, and says
00:16:00that this legacy of the Enlightenment must be preserved.
00:16:03Am I right? And for this reason, they say
00:16:06Habermas belongs to the Enlightenment era, but
00:16:09what does he mean by rationality? With a bit
00:16:12of academic background
00:16:15in the field of language and linguistics,
00:16:19I see his argument is somewhat similar
00:16:22to Chomsky's. Chomsky said that humans have
00:16:25a capacity that, in his words, is "wired"
00:16:29into our brains, which causes
00:16:32us to learn language quickly from childhood. So it's
00:16:36as if this is an inner force, an inner ability.
00:16:39It seems Habermas also says that this rationality
00:16:43is something that humans have, and in the modern era,
00:16:46it has particularly flourished. Is such a thing correct? But this
00:16:50rationality, in continuation of your remarks, is not
00:16:53an independent and isolated rationality. You see, Kant
00:16:57also, for example, regarding how humans
00:17:01can reach a consensus that something is ethical
00:17:04or not, believed in a type of rationality
00:17:10that means every individual can independently think whether
00:17:14what they do has the ability to become
00:17:17a universal law or not. And this is exactly where
00:17:20Habermas's important point of difference lies,
00:17:24that our rationality is not just
00:17:27the result of our thinking. It
00:17:31is the result of an intersubjective
00:17:34interaction. We live in society, in a family.
00:18:10deliberative or consultative, he talks
00:18:14about this. He has such a pattern of communication
00:18:17in mind, where the citizens of a
00:18:20society, in an ideal state of dialogue, as he
00:18:24mentioned, without pressure, without external force,
00:18:27without suppression, without fear of
00:18:30the consequences of expressing their views, come and present
00:18:34their ideas and persuade each other. Citizens, each
00:18:37of whom has their own logic, and have been
00:18:41born and raised in a religious or non-religious tradition,
00:18:44and now interact with each other based on a common
00:18:48language, a common language. This interaction,
00:18:52in social life or in the lifeworld, can actually
00:18:56transform the relationship between the system and social
00:18:59life. For example, laws from
00:19:02above should not dominate
00:19:06social life. Rather, from below, as a result of deliberation
00:19:10or consultation, they should be transferred upwards. This system
00:19:13that Habermas talks about, perhaps I should ask you, but
00:19:17you have used less time, Iqan. Is this
00:19:21system not a bit idealistic for the existing world?
00:19:24This is actually one of the criticisms leveled against Habermas,
00:19:28that he seems to be using
00:19:31these concepts with too much compromise
00:19:34or too much tolerance.
00:19:37But it seems that Habermas himself answers
00:19:41this and says that I need this distinction between the
00:19:44system and the lifeworld
00:19:47or the social world for my analytical distinction.
00:19:51And he puts it forward, and even many of Habermas's commentators,
00:19:54when they talk about this idea, believe
00:19:58that Habermas completely regards
00:20:01the system as a thing, a
00:20:04hand that is completely oppressive. They believe it because
00:20:26what social environments and community spaces
00:20:29are also not environments that are free from domination,
00:20:33meaning he also gives a feminist answer.
00:20:36He doesn't see them as completely separate, but we can't completely separate them, but
00:20:40Habermas says he needs this conceptual or analytical
00:20:44distinction to be able to advance his theory.
00:20:47Interestingly, we conclude his remarks at the
00:20:51beginning of your speech, the distinction
00:20:53between system and social life or the lifeworld.
00:20:57Do you also
00:20:59believe that these concepts and
00:21:03generally this system that Habermas
00:21:07proposes is interesting that Nancy Fraser,
00:21:11one of Habermas's feminist critics, says that
00:21:15Habermas was the last philosopher to build
00:21:18a system. A philosophical system. Do you
00:21:21think this philosophical system is idealistic,
00:21:25actually too optimistic,
00:21:28or is this answer Habermas gives,
00:21:32which Iqan quoted, enough for you? You see,
00:21:36first of all, generally, the criticism
00:21:39or analysis that
00:21:40Habermas
00:21:43offers of modernity and modern social life
00:21:46is, in my opinion, very important. It must be taken
00:21:50seriously. It is truly appropriate. I want to see
00:21:54what your main criticism of Habermas is. You see,
00:21:57my criticism of Habermas is that
00:22:00I can
00:22:02categorize it into several parts, but generally,
00:22:06if I want to explain the feeling of my criticism, it is that
00:22:10Habermas seems to propose
00:22:12a homogeneous
00:22:16and idealistic structure
00:22:22of social life and the public sphere, if we want to say
00:22:25so, based on dialogue and language.
00:22:29Well, it seems that in this
00:22:31ideal world, people have this ability, this
00:22:35capacity to engage in this understanding. Well,
00:22:39they understand each other through language. Well,
00:22:42Habermas seems to reduce society to those
00:22:46who can enter this rational dialogue. Many material
00:23:05factors are needed that
00:23:08relate to, for example, the distribution of wealth in society, the distribution
00:23:12of power in society, and therefore it's not
00:23:15that actually a class, now,
00:23:18as Habermas says,
00:23:23there should be a class that is
00:23:27beyond economic needs and
00:23:30connections to power, in a safe
00:23:33space, to converse with each other about political and social issues
00:23:37and influence politics. Your criticism is like
00:23:40the criticism that Michel Foucault makes of Habermas. There was also
00:23:44an extensive dialogue between them, but if
00:23:47Habermas says that he is looking at the potentials
00:23:51of modernity, just as he himself said that
00:23:55modernity remains incomplete, yes, here
00:23:58I feel there is a
00:24:01paradox, a contradiction, in Habermas's work
00:24:04between historical analysis
00:24:07and universal,
00:24:11general prescription. Well, first of all,
00:24:14in his first book, "The Structural Transformation of
00:24:18the Public Sphere," Habermas provides a historical analysis
00:24:22based on European modernity, meaning how
00:24:25in Europe, yes, in England,
00:24:29in France, in Germany,
00:24:32this new form of social life was born,
00:24:35and how important this new form
00:24:38is for democratic
00:24:41life. Well, but he prescribes.
00:24:45But from this historical analysis,
00:24:48he derives principles...
00:25:02that has the capacity for understanding and is
00:25:04therefore political and social. Well, it's political because it's a speaking
00:25:08animal. Because it's a speaking animal, it's actually a Kantian
00:25:11definition of human beings in general, not just European humans,
00:25:15not just Iranian Well, and therefore, I see a
00:25:19contradiction here where Habermas starts with European modernity
00:25:23and then draws a conclusion for all human beings.
00:25:26My question is, is Habermas's project a
00:25:30Eurocentric project and
00:25:33limited to a specific historical period
00:25:37and geographical location, or is it an analysis? Yes, this is another
00:25:41criticism that Habermas has received from postcolonialists,
00:25:44those who are called post-colonial.
00:25:47People like
00:25:59from the analysis of trends in European
00:26:02societies, you come and give
00:26:05an abstract prescription about human
00:26:08beings, and then you actually
00:26:12prescribe something that many other
00:26:16societies might consider more idealistic
00:26:19and unreachable. Look at Iran. Someone
00:26:23made a good description after reading texts by
00:26:27Habermas, saying that when I am in Iran
00:26:30with my opponent
00:26:32from another political pole and I want to
00:26:36converse, it's like playing chess with
00:26:40an elephant. How is this related?
00:26:44How is it similar to communicative action that revolves
00:26:47around consensus, around agreement,
00:26:50or whose goal is agreement? Does agreement even happen, or will this elephant crush
00:26:54me? Well, I have several
00:26:58topics to answer. One
00:27:01is a criticism.
00:27:33answers this by saying that these conditions
00:27:36that I am outlining for dialogue are
00:27:40an ideal condition
00:27:43and an ideal condition that we are supposed to move towards. This doesn't
00:27:47mean that it was even there at the time. Habermas himself does not claim
00:27:50that women in the 18th century, which he is analyzing,
00:27:54were present. No, he knows they were not, and he considers
00:27:57this among his criticisms, which are feminist criticisms
00:28:01of this public sphere issue.
00:28:23speaks of rational dialogue and emphasizes
00:28:27that all citizens, regardless of their gender,
00:28:30regardless of their religion, regardless of their beliefs,
00:28:34must have the ability to express themselves without fear
00:28:37and must be present on an equal footing. This is the first point.
00:28:41Regarding the criticism that post-colonialists,
00:28:43as you said and mentioned, there are several answers
00:28:47that can be given. Interestingly, Habermas himself refers
00:28:51to three of these four answers that I will quickly mention. The first
00:28:54is that Habermas has written one of his last
00:28:58books, whose title in Persian is "A History of Philosophy."
00:29:02In that book, he talks about the Axial Age
00:29:06and refers to other intellectual frameworks
00:29:09such as Confucianism, Taoism,
00:29:13Greek philosophy, and even Judaism, which he talks
00:29:16about, is not very Western. And therefore, he
00:29:20presents a more universal narrative. You actually mean
00:29:23that Habermas himself was aware that what
00:29:27he calls rationality is not simply
00:29:30and necessarily only European rationality, but rather
00:29:33he also paid attention to other traditions. Correct. This was part
00:29:37of his later work. Before that, where he formulates,
00:29:40there is a book titled "The Western Formulation
00:29:44of Faith and Knowledge." He himself says that this is a Western
00:29:48formulation, and it emerged from Christian culture and
00:29:51Judaism. But at the same time, he also says this point:
00:29:55there are a couple of terms in philosophy that I will quickly mention:
00:29:58"context of discovery" and "context of justification,"
00:30:02or the domain of discovery, the domain of justification.
00:30:06Well, Habermas says it doesn't matter where we derive a subject from,
00:30:10how we extract it, where it came from. For example, in philosophy, they say
00:30:13it doesn't matter if you dream and write a formula, what matters is that the
00:30:16formula works or gives an answer.
00:30:20And how you justify it and make it extendable.
00:30:23If these principles work and are correct, then
00:30:27they can be universal. What's the difference? It's like human rights.
00:30:31If human rights are good.
00:30:54speaks universally and says that the
00:30:57solution to some political problems that exist
00:31:01is that