Habermas Revival Defends Public Reason

Remembering Habermas highlights a renewed argument for defending public, communicative rationality as a civic resource—not merely an academic virtue—necessary to resist mass persuasion, tribal politics, and authoritarian temptations. The piece links personal memory (post‑Nazism) to a public theory: institutions and everyday discourse must secure the intellectual resources citizens need to judge claims and avoid collective delusion. — If public reason becomes a visible civic priority, debates over education, media norms, and institutional design will shift toward protecting deliberative capacities rather than only enforcing partisan outcomes.