COLUMBIA MEMORIAL WORKSHOP: THE LEGACY OF JÜRGEN HABERMAS
Organized by Seyla Benhabib, Jean L. Cohen and Axel Honneth (with the cooperation of Departments of German, Philosophy, Political Science, Columbia Law School and Columbia Center for Contemporary Critical Theory)
November 13, 2026
Deutsches Haus
9:00-10:00am: Coffee and light pastries
I. CRITIQUE AND COMMUNICATIVE REASON
10:00 – 11:15 am
Chair: Andreas Huyssen
● Axel Honneth: “The Price of the Linguistic Turn:
Revisiting Habermas' Concept of Communication”
● Seyla Benhabib: “The Unity of Reason and the Diversity
of its Voices”
● Nancy Fraser: “Legitimation Crisis or Crisis of
Hegemony?”
II. DEMOCRATIC THEORIES OF THE STATE AND THE
PUBLIC SPHERE
11:15 am – 12:45 pm
Chair: Lydia Goehr
● Andrew Arato: “The Double Movements of Modern
Societies and the Colonization Thesis”
● Jean Cohen: “The Scientization of Politics? Revisiting
Habermas’ Critique of Technocracy, and the
Colonization Thesis”
● Turkuler Isiksel: “European Integration Between System
and Lifeworld”
● Stefan Eich: “Legitimation Crises of Money: The Politics
of the Economy between Technocracy and Democracy”
12:45 – 2:00 pm – BREAK
III. MODERNITY, POLITICAL SECULARISM AND POST-
SECULARISM
2:00 pm- 3:30 pm
Chair: Bernard Harcourt
● Michel Rosenfeld: “Discourse, Rights, and Justification
in a Post-Secular Age”
● Jay Bernstein: “Habermas's Theory of Human Rights”
● Christopher Zurn: “Hopes for Law: Wrecked on the
Shoals of Authoritarianism?”
● Joel Whitebook: “Habermas' Quasi-Religious Turn”
IV. UNIVERSALISM AND POST-METAPHYSICAL
THOUGHT
3:30-5:00 pm
Chair: Michele Moody-Adams
● Susan Buck-Morss: “A Planetary Public Sphere?”
● Linda Martín Alcoff: “Habermas's Engagement with
Decolonial Theory”
● Jeff Flynn: “Habermas’s Genealogies”
● Ken Baynes: “Post-metaphysical Philosophy and the
Social Sciences”
RECEPTION
5:15-6:30 pm
Deutsches Haus
