This morning, I read the here-linked Guardian story reporting that Jurgen Habermas has died.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/15/jurgen-habermas-obituary
I know no credible scholars in our field who would accuse Habermas of being easy to read. And I am not the right person to write a thorough, or maybe even thoughtful, examination of the ADR-specific impacts of Habermas’s notions of deliberative democracy, ideal speech situations, and dialogue. (Perhaps we can collectively ask Carrie Menkel-Meadow to step in here? Or others?) I can, however, offer two things this morning:
- Most philosophical conversations in our field seem eventually to wind back to either Lon Fuller or Jurgen Habermas for their philosophical foundations.
And
- The Guardian’s profile was an interesting, even if it was sometimes not-easy-to-read. With this last aspect of it perhaps being fitting.
I recommend it.
I came across the work of Jürgen Habermas when reading about his system theory – which I broadly understand as being that we live our lives in two distinct spheres: the everyday Lifeworld world in which we interact socially with family and friends and the professional/administrative sphere (the System) in which we interact with institutional authority. And found this such a useful concept in relation to complaint handling and appreciating that a complaint handler needs to have an understanding of both the ‘Lifeworld’ of the complainant and the ‘System’ world of an organisation. I think this concept is also helpful for mediators.
To understand more, I’d recommend reading the Martin et al (2021) article* ‘Why do systems for responding to concerns and complaints so often fail patients, families and healthcare staff?’ – which I had a go at summarising here https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-do-systems-responding-concerns-complaints-so-often-carolyn-hirst/?trackingId=Hc4kADJtQQesvuaSeHhdbQ%3D%3D
* Martin, G.P., Chew, S. and Dixon-Woods, M., 2021. Why do systems for responding to concerns and complaints so often fail patients, families and healthcare staff? A qualitative study. Social Science & Medicine, Vol. 287, p.114375.