Editing Jürgen Habermas (section)

===Habermas and Derrida===
Habermas and [[Jacques Derrida]] engaged in a series of disputes beginning in the 1980s and culminating in a mutual understanding and friendship in the late 1990s that lasted until Derrida's death in 2004.<ref name="Derrida, J. Pp. 300-306">{{Citation |last=Derrida |first=J |author-link=Jacques Derrida |title=Honesty of Thought |work=The Derrida-Habermas Reader |editor=Lasse Thomassen |place=Chicago Ill |publisher=[[The University of Chicago Press]] |year=2006 |page=302 |isbn=978-0-226-79683-3}}</ref> They originally came in contact when Habermas invited Derrida to speak at the [[University of Frankfurt am Main]] in 1984. The next year Habermas published "Beyond a Temporalized Philosophy of Origins: Derrida" in ''[[The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity]]'' in which he described Derrida's method as being unable to provide a foundation for social critique.<ref>Thomassen, L. "Introduction: Between Deconstruction and Rational Reconstruction" in ''The Derrida-Habermas Reader'', ed. Thomassen (2006), pp. 1–7. P.2.</ref> Derrida, citing Habermas as an example, remarked that, "those who have accused me of reducing philosophy to literature or logic to rhetoric ... have visibly and carefully avoided reading me".<ref>Derrida, J., "Is There a Philosophical Language?" in ''The Derrida-Habermas Reader'', ed. Thomassen (2006), pp. 35–45. P.37.</ref> After Derrida's final rebuttal in 1989 the two philosophers did not continue, but, as Derrida described it, groups in the academy "conducted a kind of 'war', in which we ourselves never took part, either personally or directly".<ref name="Derrida, J. Pp. 300-306"/>

At the end of the 1990s, Habermas approached Derrida at a party held at an American university where both were lecturing. They then met at Paris over dinner, and participated afterwards in many joint projects. In 2000 they held a joint seminar on problems of philosophy, right, ethics, and politics at the University of Frankfurt.<ref name="Derrida, J. Pp. 300-306"/> In December 2000, in Paris, Habermas gave a lecture entitled "How to answer the ethical question?" at the ''Judeities. Questions for Jacques Derrida'' conference organized by Joseph Cohen and Raphael Zagury-Orly. Following the lecture by Habermas, both thinkers engaged in a very heated debate on Heidegger and the possibility of Ethics. The conference volume was published at the Editions Galilée (Paris) in 2002, and subsequently in English at Fordham University Press (2007).

In the aftermath of [[September 11, 2001 attacks|the 11 September attacks]], Derrida and Habermas laid out their individual opinions on 9/11 and the [[War on Terror]] in [[Giovanna Borradori]]'s ''Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida''. In early 2003, both Habermas and Derrida were very active in [[Opposition to the Iraq War|opposing]] the coming [[Iraq War]]; in a manifesto that later became the book ''[[Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe]]'', the two called for a tighter unification of the states of the [[European Union]] in order to create a power capable of opposing [[American foreign policy]]. Derrida wrote a foreword expressing his unqualified subscription to Habermas's declaration of February 2003 ("February 15, or, What Binds Europeans Together: Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in Core Europe") in the book, which was a reaction to the [[George W. Bush administration|Bush administration]]'s demands upon European nations for support in the coming Iraq War.<ref>Habermas, J. and Derrida, J. "February 15, Or What Binds Europeans Together: A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, beginning in the Core of Europe" in ''The Derrida-Habermas Reader'', ed. Thomassen (2006), pp. 270–277. P. 302.</ref>