73 Quotes by Jurgen Habermas

Only by externalization, by entering into social relationships, can we develop the interiority of our own person.

Today, the language of the market penetrates every pore and forces every interpersonal relation into the schema of individual preference.

Only one who takes over his own life history can see in it the realization of his self. Responsibility to take over one's own biography means to get clear about who one wants to be.

From the structure of language comes the explanation of why the human spirit is condemned to an odyssey - why it first finds its way to itself only on a detour via a complete externalization in other things and in other humans. Only at the greatest distance from itself does it become conscious of itself in its irreplaceable singularity as an individuated being.

The scientistic faith in a science that will one day not only fulfill, but eliminate, personal self-conception through objectifying self-description is not science, but bad philosophy.

Freedom may never be conceived merely negatively, as the absence of compulsion. Freedom conceived intersubjectively distinguishes itself from the arbitrary freedom of the isolated individual. No one is free until we are all free.

Contextualism is only the flipside of logocentrism.

A 'post-truth democracy' [...] would no longer be a democracy.

Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.