The Defence of Constitutionalism (Ukázka, strana 99)

he castigated Chancellor Merkel and other European politicians for their national short-sightedness and inability to resolve the indebtedness of individual European states by upholding the principle of European solidarity in such a way that would consolidate the powers of European institutions and their democratic legitimacy at the same time. Since then, Habermas has espoused the idea of European control of national budgets, though arguing that coordination and overall approval should be in the hands of the European Parliament rather than the European Commission. The eurozone, he says, requires further political integration and caps on national powers in economic policy. Thus the deficit of democratic legitimacy at a national level should be counterbalanced not only by the overall economic stability of the eurozone, but also by stronger parliamentarism in the form of cooperation between national parliaments and the European Parliament. Habermas’s criticism of German and European policy, which favours investors and capital over citizens and democracy, should therefore result in the further weakening of the nation state and the transfer of decision-making powers to European institutions, whose democratic legitimacy is much weaker and largely mediated through the democratic procedures of the Union’s member states. Anyone familiar with Habermas’s intellectual development can see a change in his philosophical and political arguments that is nothing short of shocking. In 1962, the then 33-year-old Habermas published his doctorate work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, which already contained one of the central pillars of his political philosophy, according to which late-capitalist society and its form of representative democracy are experiencing a systemic legitimation crisis. Habermas claims that this can be overcome only by the radical democratisation of the public sphere, based on free debate and the rational recognition of common arguments, which can restore humankind’s lost link to an authentic lifeworld 98 Ukázka elektronické knihy, UID: KOS276740