Maarten Hermans

@mhermans.net

2824 Followers 4457 Following

Sociologist, researcher, member @denktankminerva.be & @brispo-vub.bsky.social: labour relations, quality of work & open source data analysis.

Habermas first lit my path as a critical theorist. I remain deeply grateful for that. But over the years the light he cast flickered and waned – until, with his stance on Gaza, it seemed to go out. Historians will eventually decide whether that stance was an anomaly or the culmination of a long process in which Frankfurt School critical theory turned into a form of liberalism that was too often complicit with US imperialism. I’m inclined to side with those who hold that Habermas at first revivified critical theory but ultimately ended it. If so, he nevertheless inspired, by his extraordinary presence and intensity of thought, many who remain committed to ‘critical theorising with emancipatory intent’ and to the democratic-socialist ideals associated with it. Some of us may no longer be Habermassians, but we learned from, with and against him what it means to keep faith with critique.