Page 143 - Democracy and the Public Sphere

138 Jürgen Habermas

34
become the condition of each other’s democratisation’. In all its
circularity, that democratic ethic can only avoid pulling the rug from
under its own feet if it starts from the ultimately pragmatic assertion
that some things – such as the rights and means to assert difference,
to define problems and to articulate perceptions of inequality – must

be more equal than others. To that extent, universalism, one of the
theoretical pillars of the ‘old politics’, cannot simply disappear from
view in a globalising world, even if it has to be conceived in radically

proceduralist and continuously reflexive terms. To assert this, of
course, is to assume that progressive politics involves looking for
ways of living with difference as opposed to eroding it or engaging
the increasingly futile task of hiding from it.
But, of course, that may count as utopianism, one of the other
theoretical pillars of the ‘old’ and perhaps defunct politics. It may
be that the demise of providential reason, the rise of complex and
manufactured risk, the realities of cultural difference and confl ict,
all militate against the re-emergence of utopian impulses behind
political struggle. At the same time, as Beck and Giddens show in
their discussions of the risk society, radical uncertainty renders all
future-oriented thought counterfactual in any case, from apocalyptic

sci-fi scenarios, through piecemeal risk assessment, right through to
the utopian.
Interestingly, Habermas has made a recent intervention into the
35
debates surrounding genetics that unwittingly brings him into
proximity with Beck and Giddens’ concern for counterfactual thought
and symbolic futures. It also brings his thinking into a connection
with Thompson’s emphasis on communication with the absent as the
central problematic for democratic theory (Chapter 4), and even with
recent post-structuralist discourses that frame human communication
36
in terms of ghostly encounters. Habermas engages in a philosophical
speculation on the possible future scenario of ‘liberal eugenics’. This
is a scenario in which the genetic traits of the unborn child are
subject not only to therapeutic interventions designed to avert serious
disease or disability, but also to ‘consumer’ choice, such that parents
may opt for particular talents or physical characteristics for their
offspring. For Habermas, the real dangers of liberal eugenics are those
of creating an irredeemably asymmetrical relationship between the
generations. Except where the socialisation of a child has been so

oppressive as to be classified as abusive, there is always scope for the

adolescent to begin to reflect critically on its upbringing and to take
ownership of the self and its biography. The idea that one can become

23/8/05 09:36:14
Goode 02 chap04 138 23/8/05 09:36:14
Goode 02 chap04 138