The philosopher Jürgen Habermas died on March 14. In the assessment of David Gordon, Habermas “totally subordinate[d] philosophy to Marxist ideological propaganda” and was a social theorist who pushed a “brand of radical social democracy.” His goal was to “extend the welfare state in a radical fashion that will end up in socialism.”
In a July 2025, Gordon provides a summary of Habermas’s views:
Frankfurt School Marxism is unfortunately still alive and well. Indeed, Jürgen Habermas—the leading philosopher of the School, who is now in his nineties—has published an enormous three-volume history of philosophy. This book has now appeared in English translation under the title Also: A History of Philosophy. The appearance of the third volume in English translation prompted Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins—an ardent fan of Habermas—to conduct an interview of him that was published this month in The Nation. The interview offers a quick way to get the gist of Habermas’s project, and the reader in sparing the need to slog through 1,500 pages of Habermas’s difficult prose. In this week’s column, I’d like to show how Habermas totally subordinates philosophy to Marxist ideological propaganda.
Philosophy tries to answer certain questions that aren’t covered in the physical and social sciences, such as, What is truth? What is knowledge? What is the basis of value? and so on. These questions are very difficult to answer, and part of the fascination of philosophy is the intricate play of arguments involved in its pursuit.
Habermas acknowledges that there is a place for such questions, but for him it is a very subordinate place. The main aim of philosophy is to legitimize the regime. As we will see, he has quite definite ideas about what this regime should be. He says:
Yes, in this sense philosophy’s own field of research naturally includes the conditions of possibility for perception and knowledge in general as well as those for action and speech. However, its actual theme is more general—as I said, a methodically guided elucidation of that general understanding of the world and of ourselves, on which we and our contemporaries are always already relying for orientation in our life. But a history of philosophy must also address the changes that its role undergoes within its own society. Its most conspicuous role is to make critical contributions to the legitimization of the respective form of political rule.
Read the full article at Gordon’s Friday Philosophy.
[Image credit: Photo of Habermas, Wolfram Huke at en.wikipedia , http://wolframhuke.de, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia.]
