Jürgen Habermas: Health and Healing Across the Lifeworld-System Divide

Abstract

The German critical theorist Jurgen Habermas inherited the mantle of spokesperson for the ‘Frankfurt School’ from its founders Horkheimer and Adorno via an impressive tranche of scholars and activists, including the likes of Herbert Marcuse. He has played the classic role of the engaged intellectual. He has developed a distinctive philosophical sociology and ‘theory of communicative action’ encompassing structural, cultural and personal change through the transition to modernity; he has regularly entered the public arena to exchange views and to debate; and he has endeavoured to intervene in politics and policy-making, recently on the future of Europe. This chapter begins by putting his life’s work into the context of time and place. The middle sections are committed to (1) a discussion of his early work, notably on the structural transformation of the public sphere and crises of legitimation; (2) a critical exegesis of his later philosophy and sociology of modernity, culminating in the ‘de-coupling’ of lifeworld and system that underpins his theory of communicative action; and (3) an examination of the extension of his theory of communicative action to accommodate a ‘discourse ethics’ and deliberative democracy. The remainder of the chapter spells out the relevance of this extensive body of work to issues of health and healing. Examples are given of how Habermas’ studies have already made a significant impact on the sociology of health and healthcare, and the chapter concludes with a consideration of potentials yet to be realised.