Recasting Democratic Theory, 1984–1996 179
human rights, is Habermas’s ultimate priority, and this choice of
priorities contradicts the notion of a “liberal turn” in his thought.
REENCHANTING THE RECHTSSTAAT: HABERMAS
ON THE OFFENSIVE, 1984–8
The years 1984 to 1988 form a distinct chapter in Habermas’s
thought. The fact that Habermas had by 1988 completed a draft
of BFN^33 alerts us that the key contexts informing the work pre-
date the revolution of 1989. Emphasizing this pre-1989 context for
BFN highlights the anachronism of reading the 1992 work as an
exemplary document of political resignation, a farewell to alterna-
tives. On the contrary, it was a sense of confidence that the West
German Rechtsstaat was secure and reliable that seems to have per-
mitted Habermas to go on the intellectual “offensive.” The term
comes from Habermas’s own writings and captures his optimism
in this period. His goal: to ambitiously synthesize the two elements
of political theory most precious to him – the dynamic future ori-
entation of Western Marxist tradition with the achievements of
Rechtsstaatlichkeit (the rule of law).
In a December 1984 lecture delivered to the newly elected
Spanish Socialist Parliament, he surveyed the political landscape
in Western Europe.^34 With the development of the welfare state
(Sozialstaat) at a “dead end,” European social democracy had become
conservative, Habermas argued: Its vision was excessively “defen-
sive,” and it expressed a historical consciousness denuded of its
“utopian dimension.” The left could seize “the offensive” only if the
welfare state project were reimagined.^35 From Habermas’s diagno-
sis of the exhaustion of utopian energies came his plan for reviving
them: to shift the “utopian accent” of social theory from the idea of
work to the idea of communication.
The outlines of the more extensive critique of the German
welfare state he elaborated in BFN are clearly present in the lecture
(^33) Conversation with Klaus Günther, J. W. Goethe University, Frankfurt am
Main, June 10, 2005.
(^34) Habermas,“Die Krise des Wohlfahrtstaates und die Erschöpfung utopischer
Energien,” in idem, Die Neue Unübersichtlichkeit. Kleine Politische Schriften
VII (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1985 ).
(^35) Ibid., 157, 160.