Thanks to Gaza, European philosophy has been exposed as ethically bankrupt
From Heidegger's Nazism to Habermas's Zionism, the suffering of the 'Other' is of little consequence
German philosopher Jurgen Habermas speaks in the Greek capital, Athens, in August 2013 (Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP)
Imagine if
Iran,
Syria,
Lebanon, or
Turkey - fully backed, armed and diplomatically protected by
Russia and
China
- had the will and the wherewithal to bomb Tel Aviv for three months,
day and night, murder tens of thousands of Israelis, maim countless more
and make millions homeless, and turn the city into a heap of
uninhabitable rubble, like Gaza today.
Just imagine it for a few seconds: Iran and its allies deliberately
targeting populated parts of Tel Aviv, hospitals, synagogues, schools,
universities, libraries - or indeed any populated place - to ensure
maximum civilian casualties. They would tell the world they were just
looking for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his war cabinet.
Ask yourself what the US, UK, EU, Canada, Australia and Germany in particular would do within 24 hours of the onslaught of this fictional scenario.
Now come back to reality, and consider the fact that since 7 October
(and for decades before that date), Tel Aviv’s western allies have not
only witnessed what Israel has done to the Palestinian
people, but have also provided it with military equipment, bombs,
munitions and diplomatic coverage, while American media outlets have
offered ideological justifications for the slaughter and genocide of
Palestinians.
The aforementioned fictional scenario would not be tolerated for a
day by the existing world order. With the military thuggery of the US,
Europe, Australia and Canada fully behind Israel, we helpless people of
the world, just like Palestinians, do not count. This is not just a
political reality; it is also pertinent to the moral imaginary and
philosophical universe of the thing that calls itself “the West”.
Those of us outside the European sphere of moral imagination do not
exist in their philosophical universe. Arabs, Iranians and Muslims; or
people in Asia, Africa and Latin America - we do not have any
ontological reality for European philosophers, except as a metaphysical
menace that must be conquered and quieted.
Beginning with Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and
continuing with Emmanuel Levinas and Slavoj Zizek, we are oddities,
things, knowable objects that Orientalists were tasked with deciphering.
As such, the murder of tens of thousands of us by Israel, or the US and
its European allies, does not cause the slightest pause in the minds of
European philosophers.
Tribal European audiences
If you doubt that, just take a look at leading European philosopher
Jurgen Habermas and a few of his colleagues, who in an astoundingly
barefaced act of cruel vulgarity, have come out in support of Israel’s
slaughter of Palestinians. The question is no longer what we might think
of Habermas, now 94, as a human being. The question is what we might
think of him as a social scientist, philosopher and critical thinker.
Does what he thinks matter to the world anymore, if it ever did?
The world has been asking similar questions
about another major German philosopher, Martin Heidegger, in light of
his pernicious affiliations with Nazism. In my opinion, we must now ask
such questions about Habermas’s violent Zionism and the significant
consequences for what we might think of his entire philosophical
project?
If Habermas has not an iota of space in his moral imagination for
people such as Palestinians, do we have any reason to consider his
entire philosophical project as being in any way related to the rest of
humanity - beyond his immediate tribal European audiences?
In an open letter to Habermas,
distinguished Iranian sociologist Asef Bayat said he “contradicts his
own ideas” when it comes to the situation in Gaza. With all due respect,
I beg to differ. I believe Habermas’s disregard for Palestinian lives
is entirely consistent with his Zionism. It is perfectly consistent with
the worldview in which non-Europeans are not completely human, or are
“human animals”, as Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant has openly declared.
In its disregard for Palestinian lives, Habermas’s Zionism has thus joined Heidegger’s Nazism
This utter disregard for Palestinians is deeply rooted in the German
and European philosophical imagination. The common wisdom is that out of the guilt of the Holocaust, Germans have developed a solid commitment to Israel.
But to the rest of the world, as now evidenced by the magnificent document that
South Africa has presented to the International Court of Justice, there
is a perfect consistency between what Germany did during its Nazi era
and what it is now doing during its Zionist era.
I believe that Habermas’s position is in line with the German state policy of partaking in the Zionist slaughter of Palestinians. It is also in line with what passes for the “German left”, with their equally racist, Islamophobic
and xenophobic hatred of Arabs and Muslims, and their wholesale support
for the genocidal actions of the Israeli settler colony.
We must be forgiven if we thought what Germany had today was not
Holocaust guilt, but genocide nostalgia, as it has vicariously indulged
in Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians over the past century (not just
the past 100 days).
Moral depravity
The charge of Eurocentrism that is consistently levelled against
European philosophers’ conception of the world is not based merely on an
epistemic flaw in their thinking. It is a consistent sign of moral
depravity. On multiple past occasions,
I have pointed out the incurable racism at the heart of European
philosophical thinking and its most celebrated representatives today.
This moral depravity is not just a political faux pas or an
ideological blind spot. It is written deeply into their philosophical
imaginations, which have remained incurably tribal.
The world has been awoken from the false slumber of European
ethno-philosophy. Today, we owe this liberation to the suffering of
peoples such as the Palestinians
Here, we must recap the glorious Martinican poet Aime Cesaire’s famous statement: “Yes,
it would be worthwhile to study clinically, in detail, the steps taken
by Hitler and Hitlerism and to reveal to the very distinguished, very
humanistic, very Christian bourgeois of the 20th century that without
his being aware of it, he has a Hitler inside him, that Hitler inhabits
him, that Hitler is his demon, that if he rails against him, he is being
inconsistent and that, at bottom, what he cannot forgive Hitler for is
not crime in itself, the crime against man, it is not the humiliation of
man as such, it is the crime against the white man, the humiliation of
the white man, and the fact that he applied to Europe colonialist
procedures which until then had been reserved exclusively for [Arab,
Indian and African peoples].”
Palestine is today an extension of the colonial atrocities Cesaire
cites in this passage. Habermas appears ignorant that his endorsement of
the slaughter of Palestinians is completely consistent with what his
ancestors did in Namibia during the Herero and Namaqua genocide. Like
the proverbial ostrich, German philosophers have stuck their heads
inside their European delusions, thinking the world does not see them
for what they are.
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Israel's war on Gaza encapsulates the entire history of European colonialism
Ultimately, in my view, Habermas has not said or done anything
surprising or contradictory; quite the contrary. He has been entirely
consistent with the incurable tribalism of his philosophical pedigree,
which had falsely assumed a universal posture.
The world is now disabused of that false sense of universality. Philosophers such as VY Mudimbe in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Walter Mignolo or Enrique Dussel in Argentina, or Kojin Karatani in Japan have far more legitimate claims to universality than Habermas and his ilk ever did.
In my opinion, the moral bankruptcy of Habermas’s statement on
Palestine marks a turning point in the colonial relationship between
European philosophy and the rest of the world. The world has been awoken
from the false slumber of European ethno-philosophy. Today, we owe this
liberation to the global suffering of peoples such as the Palestinians,
whose prolonged, historic heroism and sacrifices have finally
dismantled the barefaced barbarity at the foundation of “western
civilisation”.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.