Behind Western liberals' veneer are a irrational heart and bestiality.

The German philosopher was one of the 20th century’s most influential public intellectuals. But 21st-century politics has cut him adrift. https://t.co/UoZiQhQy8M

— mozu (@mozumozumozu) May 7, 2021

 Habermas already positioned himself as Kant’s heir. As he saw it, Kant had articulated a system of morality in which all human beings should be treated as free and equal.

In the modern era, this means that they need the support of a welfare state.

Only with economic security and political participation can individuals see themselves and others as free and equal.

Since the 1970s, Habermas has been concerned by two obstacles to this agenda.

The welfare state must be recreated at a continental scale.

Just as social democracy had to be extended from particular countries to a united continent, Europeans had to reimagine themselves as members of a common humanity.

Habermas developed the concept of “constitutional patriotism” during the Historikerstreit (“historians’ dispute”) of the late 1980s. During this period, West German conservative politicians and historians argued that their fellow citizens nursed a morbid sense of shared guilt over the crimes of the Nazi regime.

Habermas found signs of hope, however, in the “power of feelings” that had inspired millions of Europeans to protest against the U.S. invasion of Iraq. But this indignation could not give force to European foreign policy. Without the orientation provided by shared values and a common identity, popular feelings lack the sustained motivating power to shape elites’ behavior.

The legacy of the French Revolution, mass emotion, and virtuous elites are only some of the incoherent and ineffective cultural resources that Habermas has drawn on in support of his Kantian political ideal. Such resources are supposed to motivate European citizens to forge a common will, while enabling them to break with historical forms of collective identity. None of them, however, seem to function in the absence of the traditions that Habermas intends them to replace. In an implicit admission of this failure, Habermas has turned in recent years to Christianity as another such resource.

Much of Auch eine Geschichte can be seen as a quarrel with Schmitt, but also with the French sociologist of religion Émile Durkheim (1858-1917). The latter argued that politics is always underwritten by a sense of group identity generated in collective rituals through which individuals unite in a group defined by its allegiance to something “sacred.”

Habermas’s most widely read article in favor of airstrikes against Serbia, “Bestiality and Humanity,” was structured by claims that Slobodan Milosevic’s regime was committing crimes against humanity—and by an attack on Schmitt, who had dismissed the idea of crimes against humanity with the phrase, “humanity, bestiality.” Outraged Chinese intellectuals such as Zhang Rulun countered that by supporting the violation of Serbian sovereignty, Habermas was more like Schmitt than he realized. Zhang argued that Habermas had revealed Western liberals, for all their talk of “democratic procedure” and “dialogue,” had no more respect for international law than the “rogue” states they wanted to bomb.

Zhang has revealed a fact about Habermas he has often been at pains to conceal, if not escape: That behind his liberal veneer is an emotional and ultimately irrational heart.

　人間はみんな自由で平等であるべきだが、貧乏だったり、政治的参加できる機会がないと、それも虚しい。 また、自由と平等を世界的に実現するには、グローバル化する時代のなかで、福祉は自分の国だけでなく海外にも拡張していかなくてはならず、また、自分たちを欧州人だへったくれだ、と他者を排除するようなしかたで制限してはならない、ことを意味する。

　こうして、共通の人間性を基盤として世界的に自由と平等を実現するのだ、思ったのもつかの間、ナショナリズムの波が再興し、欧州が空中分解しそうにもなる。

　欧州人はフランス革命やキリスト教という共通の基盤、共通の価値として、まとまっていけるのではないか、という淡い期待もあるが、欧州には中東やアフリカからの移民があふれ、そうした移民にフランス革命やキリスト教との共通の伝統、共通の神話を求めることはできまい。

　世界的な自由と平等をうたうリベラルハバマス自身、常日頃は、民主的手続きだ！対話だ！と言っておきながら、国際法を無視してセルビア空爆を支持してしまう。西洋人リベラルの看板の裏には、不合理な心情（と野獣性）がうごめいているのだーー多少盛ったがーーーみたいなかんじかな。

ーーー民主主義、民族主義と国際主義との緊張関係というのはこれからも問題になっていくでしょうね。

　西洋人リベラルの綺麗事のタテマエと本音、現実にやっていることについては常に注視しておく必要がある。