Feature: Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas passed away on March 14, 2026, at the age of 96. A giant of philosophy and arguably the greatest thinker of post-Shoah Europe, he never wavered in his belief in the centrality of the Jewish question, neither in his work nor in his public statements. K. had the honor of publishing, in both French and English, his final analysis of current events. On the occasion of his passing, we are republishing it here, accompanied by a text by Julia Christ devoted to the philosopher’s career, as well as another by Bruno Karsenti: “Habermas: Jews, Europe, Philosophy.”
From Here On, We Must Go It Alone
By Jürgen Habermas
It is not possible to separate the crisis experienced by the Jews from that experienced by Europe—and the latter has just taken a decisive turn. In this text, delivered on November 19 in Munich, Jürgen Habermas makes an unequivocal observation: the America that embodied a certain idea of the West no longer exists. What is happening there—the purge of the executive branch, the neutralization of the law, the silence of a civil society that reserves its indignation for other causes—is a regime change legitimized by the ballot box. For Europe, caught in an alliance that has lost its normative coherence, it is time to take stock, however bitter it may be, without losing hope.
Jürgen Habermas: The Prosaic Bedrock
By Julia Christ
Jürgen Habermas died on March 14, 2026. The entire work of this giant of philosophy rested on a single conviction: after the Holocaust, philosophy had forfeited the right to think of itself as grandiose. What he built from there — a thought without pathos, concentrated on what is possible devoid of the banality of ordinary life — was also a form of uprightness. Julia Christ returns to this founding gesture, and to the question his departure addresses to us: what remains of that uprightness?
Habermas : Jews, Europe, and philosophy
By Bruno Karsenti
A major figure in global intellectual debate, Jürgen Habermas is the author of a monumental body of philosophical work that can be read as the theoretical basis of the European political ideal since the Second World War. The consciousness of German crime and the Jewish contribution to European philosophy over its long history occupy a fundamental place in his thinking. This is what recalls this essay by philosopher Bruno Karsenti, conceived as a tribute. It is also a tribute to what the European spirit, as extended by Habermas, can still bring to today’s Jews.
Principles of solidarity. A statement
By Nicole Deitelhoff, Klaus Günther, Rainer Forst, & Jürgen Habermas
Faced with the verbal inflation that has been mounting in civil society, politics and the social sciences since October 7, Jürgen Habermas and three eminent colleagues from Frankfurt University – Nicole Deitelhoff, Rainer Forst and Klaus Günther – set out to clarify what solidarity with Israel, but also with the Palestinian people, really means. This is a short, hard-hitting text, written in the best tradition of critical theory which, to paraphrase one of its founders, Th. W. Adorno, assumes that when you find yourself in a world that plays with words, you have to put your cards on the table.
