JÜRGEN HABERMAS: A Voice of Reason that will be missed!

By Mark Young

President, Rational Games Foundation

1 April 2026

Many obituaries were written this week to mark the passing of Jürgen Habermas, truly a giant among European philosophers.

He will be missed!

I had the great honor of meeting with Dr. Habermas in Chicago for an unforgettable one-hour conversation in connection with my doctoral work at Humboldt University in Berlin.

I came away from that encounter marveling at the amount of common ground between

our two approaches.

Specifically, I see three areas where we are very much aligned and one where there are significant differences – just like in any negotiation.

1. Dr Habermas’ notion of strategic vs. communicative rationality dovetails nicely with our emphasis on collaborative win-win negotiation. Moving beyond Trumpian winner-takes-all tactics to open the conversation to capture additional value for both parties is most likely to happen in what he calls an ideal speech situation. The goal is mutual understanding, not just success. We aim not only to reach our goals but also focus on the rightness of those goals.

2. Such a dialogue is not just a transaction, but rather a discursive process. Within a normative framework (we talk about ground rules) negotiation becomes deliberation. The parties reason together to find a good solution, one that meets the interests of both parties. Again, just like under our win-win approach.

3. All of this is embedded in Habermasian discourse ethics, one that precludes any kind of coercion or exploiting power differentials. In our language, no dirty tricks to gain unfair advantage. Again, we enthusiastically concur.

Where Habermas’ theory diverges with what we teach at Rational Games is to go

beyond rationality of any kind, even the communicative approach. We believe in the

power of play and letting go of rational thinking. A game, if you will, or a dance. There is no talk of this in Habermasian writings.

Such an appeal to the power of play can indeed apply on a larger stage, what

Habermas would call the public sphere or the life world. It has the potential not

only to yield better negotiation results but also contribute to significantly changing the world. And that is a worthy undertaking that Dr Habermas would certainly agree

with.

Full text at www.rationalgames.com. Comments welcome!