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I cannot imagine a context that would some day, in some manner, make the monstrous crime of September 11 an understandable or comprehensible political act

Jurgen Habermas

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Jurgen Habermas
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: June 18
Philosopher
Sociologist
University Teacher
Dusseldorf
Jurgen Habermas
Habermas
Context
Manner
Crime
Imagine
Political
Comprehensible
Cannot
Understandable
Make
Monstrous
Would
September

More quotes by Jurgen Habermas

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All affected can accept the consequences and the side effects that [the norm's] general observance can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyone's interests, and the consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities for regulation.
Jurgen Habermas
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Historically, terrorism falls in a category different from crimes that concern a criminal court judge.
Jurgen Habermas
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Since our complex societies are highly susceptible to interferences and accidents, they certainly offer ideal opportunities for a prompt disruption of normal activities.
Jurgen Habermas
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Positivism stands or falls with the principle of scientism, that is that the meaning of knowledge is defined by what the sciences do and can thus be adequately explicated through the methodological analysis of scientific procedures.
Jurgen Habermas
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Perhaps at a later point important developments will be traced back to September 11. But for now we do not know which of the many scenarios will actually hold in the future.
Jurgen Habermas
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From a moral point of view, there is no excuse for terrorist acts, regardless of the motive or the situation under which they are carried out.
Jurgen Habermas
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The scenarios of biological or chemical warfare painted in detail by the American media during the months after September 11...only betray the inability of the government to determine the magnitude of the danger.
Jurgen Habermas
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The difference between political terror and ordinary crime becomes clear during the change of regimes, in which former terrorists become well-regarded representatives of their country.
Jurgen Habermas
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The state is in danger of falling into disrepute due to the evidence of its inadequate resources.
Jurgen Habermas
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[Critical social science attempts] to determine when theoretical statements grasp invariant regularities of social action as such and when they express ideologically frozen relations of dependence that can in principle be transformed.
Jurgen Habermas
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I shall develop the thesis that anyone acting communicatively must, in performing any speech act, raise universal validity claims and suppose that they can be vindicated.
Jurgen Habermas
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Disappointment over nationalistic authoritarian regimes may have contributed to the fact that today religion offers a new and subjectively more convincing language for old political orientations.
Jurgen Habermas
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Instead of the international police action we had hoped for during the war in Kosovo, there are wars again - conducted with state-of-the-art technology, but still in the old style
Jurgen Habermas
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Science can only be comprehended epistemologically, which means as one category of possible knowledge, as long as knowledge is not equated either effusively with the absolute knowledge of a great philosophy or blindly with scientistic self-understanding of the actual business of research.
Jurgen Habermas
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Today's Islamic fundamentalism is also a cover for political motifs. We should not overlook the political motifs we encounter in forms of religious fanaticism
Jurgen Habermas
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Osama bin Laden, the person, more likely serves the function of a stand-in. Compare the new terrorists with partisans or conventional terrorists in Israel. These people often fight in a decentralized manner in small, autonomous units, too.
Jurgen Habermas
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After September 11, the European governments have completely failed. They are incapable of seeing beyond their own national scope of interests.
Jurgen Habermas
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I take as my fundamental starting point the fundamental distinction between work and interaction
Jurgen Habermas
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The interpretation of a case is corroborated only by the successful continuation of a self-formative process, that is by the completion of self-reflection, and not in any unmistakable way by what the patient says or how he behaves.
Jurgen Habermas
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If the September 11 terror attack is supposed to constitute a caesura in world history, it must be able to stand comparison to other events of world historical impact.
Jurgen Habermas