A U.S. Imperialist Remembers Philosopher Jürgen Habermas

By Charles Andrews

Jürgen Habermas, the celebrated philosopher and “defender of humane Enlightenment values,” as the Guardian newspaper called him, died this month.

Among the flood of eulogies, one Alex Karp published a reminiscence of Habermas, under whom Karp studied in his late twenties. Karp praises Habermas because he “unsparingly derided ‘idiots’ and ‘half-idiots’ on either the right or the left” for their “inconsistent thought and a lack of intellectual rigor.” Karp’s look back consists mostly of anecdotes like this one:

When I arrived at Habermas’s office, there were at least two dozen students and aspiring students milling about and standing in the hallway, all of whom were waiting for an audience with the professor. Every so often, the wait was punctuated by someone emerging from his office, often in a state of not-so-thinly veiled distress. A few had tears in their eyes.

Habermas dropped Karp as a doctoral student after several years, telling him bluntly that he “cannot compete with literary critics and theorists” writing on the same topic. Karp is not bitter. He admires Habermas because he was “skeptical of the worst and most pernicious elements of the left, which in its modern form has become wholly untethered from outcomes and indeed unconcerned with the practical effects of its ideology.”

Karp obviously disagrees with the Marxist-Leninist critique published on this website that Habermas “translated the realities of domination into the moral grammar of legitimacy.”

Alex Karp went on to become a co-founder with Peter Thiel of Palantir, a software corporation that pulled in $4½ billion last year. Karp is CEO of the corporation. Palantir develops programs with which governments and corporations track down their targets. The Israeli government has used Palantir software since 2014; it applies Palantir technology to its genocide on Gaza and its attacks on Lebanon. Karp has said, “I am proud that we are supporting Israel in every way we can.” Palantir provides its software to the U.S. military, too. Again, Karp: “Our weapons software is in every combat situation I’m aware of.” And ICE uses Palantir programs to find immigrants to be deported or murdered.

Jürgen Habermas had no skills of interest to the U.S. or Israeli military, but on Nov. 13, 2023, he signed a statement called Principles of Solidarity, which asserted that Israel’s genocide in Gaza was “justified,” that “Jewish life and Israel’s right to exist are central elements worthy of special protection,” and that “despite all the concern for the fate of the Palestinian population … the standards of judgment slip completely when genocidal intentions are attributed to Israel’s actions.”

High Nazis were fond of the aphorism, “Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my pistol.” (The line is sometimes attributed to Goering, Goebbels, or Himmler, but it comes from a theatre play they admired.) For his part, CEO chief Alex Karp does not repeat the Nazi saying at Palantir. He lives it.

* Charles Andrews is the author of The Hollow Colossus and other books.