Karalynn Schneck: Mitchell & Kellner on Habermas

I very much enjoy Habermas' positive outlook on the world. Many postmodern critics censure him for being unrealistic, but for goodness' sake, they never offer any real solutions to modern problems, so where do they have room to complain? When working collaboratively on group projects and the like, I have found that those who are quick to complain are also usually slow to make new discoveries. They are so busy being pessimistic that they fail to make any useful impact on the world.

Fish is right when he says that Habermas “‘seems to offer a way out of corrosive relativism’” (Mitchell), but he fails to realize that any attempt to actively solve the troubles of pluralism should not be discarded simply because it is naive or incomplete. As the saying goes, “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” Therefore, instead of trying to drag down Habermas and like philosophers with their depressive and pessimistic rants, postmodernists should seek to work together with modernists in seeking to solve the chaos of today’s world. These philosophers get paid plenty of money to sit around debating through all sorts of media, so they might as well put their time into a purpose that it useful, like Habermas. Relativism is corrosive in that it perpetually divides humans from each other and makes us all the more selfish daily. The “my Truth is not your Truth” doctrine is dangerous and destructive, and what the world needs is a constructive approach to pluralism.

“The postmodernists might begin questioning, for example, whether ‘reason’ isn't just the name the powerful give to their rationales for holding power or whether ‘justice’ isn't just an excuse for the majority to impose its morality on the minority” (Mitchell). The problem with these postmodernist views is that they do not end up helping anyone. Habermas knows and agrees that there are big corporations and controlling media giants who take away individual power and insidiously oppress democracy, but he sees light at the end of a dark tunnel, believing “that just institutions can lead to a fairer society” (Mitchell). The modern age does not have to be the end of democracy, human rights or justice. There are ways to battle the evils of society, and whining and nitpicking are not among them.