Books by Brian Milstein
Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a wealth of discussion and controversy about the id... more Since the end of the Cold War, there has been a wealth of discussion and controversy about the idea of a ‘postnational’ or ‘cosmopolitan’ politics. But while there are many normative theories of cosmopolitanism, as well as some cosmopolitan theories of globalization, there has been little attempt to grapple systematically with fundamental questions of structure and action from a ‘cosmopolitan point of view.’ Drawing on Kant‘s cosmopolitan writings and Habermas‘s critical theory of society, Brian Milstein argues that, before we are members of nations or states, we are participants in a ‘commercium’ of global interaction who are able to negotiate for ourselves the terms on which we share the earth in common with one another. He marshals a broad range of literature from philosophy, sociology, and political science to show how the modern system of sovereign nation-states destructively constrains and distorts these relations of global interaction, leading to pathologies and crises in present-day world society. The result is a novel approach to thinking about the constitution of the modern world order, the challenges it poses us, and our potential to meet those challenges.
Papers by Brian Milstein
Albena Azmanova and James Chamberlain, eds., Capitalism, Democracy, Socialism: Critical Debates (Cham: Springer), 2022
In this chapter I review four ways of theorizing the relationship between 6 capitalism and democr... more In this chapter I review four ways of theorizing the relationship between 6 capitalism and democracy. Classical liberalism has long maintained that capitalism and democracy are complementary—that both mutually reinforce the same demand for freedom or, at the very least, that the freedom democracy requires fits best with a competitive market system. Orthodox Marxists, meanwhile, often held that liberal democracy as a political system is complicit in the maintenance of capitalist domination. Still others have characterized the relationship between capitalism and democracy as one of fundamental conflict, with capitalists fearing takeover by democracy and democrats fearing takeover by capitalism. Finally, there are those who strive to make capitalism and democracy compatible, for example by de-commodifying democratic citizenship or re-politicizing capitalist institutions. In the course of reviewing these perspectives, I will argue that how one conceptualizes the relationship between capitalism and democracy varies greatly with how one defines these two terms, the normative value one places on each, the level of precision one brings to the analysis, and the social ontology one adopts.
Political Theory, 2021
This essay explores the problem of legitimation crises in deliberative systems. For some time now... more This essay explores the problem of legitimation crises in deliberative systems. For some time now, theorists of deliberative democracy have started to embrace a “systemic approach.” But if deliberative democracy is to be understood in the context of a system of multiple moving parts, then we must confront the possibility that that system’s dynamics may admit of breakdowns, contradictions, and tendencies toward crisis. Yet such crisis potentials remain largely unexplored in deliberative theory. The present article works toward rectifying this lacuna, using the 2016 Brexit and Trump votes as examples of a particular kind of “legitimation crisis” that results in a sequence of failures in the deliberative system. Drawing on recent work of Rainer Forst, I identify this particular kind of legitimation crisis as a “justification crisis.”
Contemporary Political Theory, 2021
After a recent spate of terrorist attacks in European and American cities, liberal democracies ar... more After a recent spate of terrorist attacks in European and American cities, liberal democracies are reintroducing emergency securitarian measures (ESMs) that curtail rights and/or expand police powers. Political theorists who study ESMs are familiar with how such measures become instruments of discrimination and abuse, but the fundamental conflict ESMs pose for not just civil liberty but also democratic equality still remains insufficiently explored. Such phenomena are usually explained as a function of public panic or fearmongering in times of crisis, but I show that the tension between security and equality is in fact much deeper and more general. It follows a different logic than the more familiar tension between security and liberty, and it concerns not just the rule of law in protecting liberty but also the role of law in integrating new or previously subjected groups into a democratic community. As liberal democratic societies become increasingly diverse and multicultural in the present era of mass immigration and global interconnectedness, this tension between security and equality is likely to become more pronounced.
Boris Vormann and Michael D. Weinman (eds.), The Emergence of Illiberalism: Understanding a Global Phenomenon (New York: Routledge), 2021
The concept of a “legitimation crisis” is most closely associated with Jürgen Habermas, and recen... more The concept of a “legitimation crisis” is most closely associated with Jürgen Habermas, and recently, his 1970s book on crisis tendencies in postwar capitalism has provided a common reference point for discussion of various forms of political turmoil that have ensued in Europe and the U.S. since the 2008 financial crisis. This chapter explores the meaning of crisis and crisis consciousness under the financialized capitalism of the 21st century, showing how it might differ from the account given by Habermas. This chapter argues that what sets the current legitimation crisis apart—and what paves the way for a possible descent into illiberalism—stems from the way financialized capitalism is bound to secure legitimacy by hollowing out the political realm. In the process, it deprives citizens of the capacity to discursively come to terms with the consequences of major crisis, leaving them disempowered, alienated, and vulnerable to exploitation by charismatic leaders with illiberal agendas.
Hanna Ketterer und Karina Becker (Hg.), Was stimmt nicht mit der Demokratie? Eine Debatte zwischen Klaus Dörre, Nancy Fraser, Stephan Lessenich und Hartmut Rosa (Suhrkamp), 2019
Zeitschrift für Politische Theorie, 2018
Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2017
Danish Yearbook of Philosophy, 2017
This article explores the bases of Kant’s cosmopolitanism in his more systematic writings on free... more This article explores the bases of Kant’s cosmopolitanism in his more systematic writings on freedom, judgment, and community. My argument is that, if we peer beneath his more explicitly normative prescriptions for achieving “perpetual peace,” we find the tools not just of a cosmopolitan vision but what we might call a “cosmopolitical method.” While many assume Kant’s political thought descends directly from his moral philosophy, a look back at relevant passages in the first Critique reveals an alternative reading that points toward his theory of reflective judgment, which combines practical freedom with judgments based on theoretical concepts. Of particular importance is Kant’s conception of community as commercium, through which Kant discerns all matters of right to concern the way free actors are constrained to share the earth in common. These considerations allow for a broader way of thinking about Kantian cosmopolitanism, one that is responsive to the reflective judgment of world citizens as they encounter new challenges.
Recent years have witnessed an explosion of debate about what democratic theory has to say about ... more Recent years have witnessed an explosion of debate about what democratic theory has to say about the boundaries of democratic peoples. Yet the debate over the “democratic boundary problem” has been hindered by the way contributors work with different understandings of democracy, of democratic legitimacy, and what it means to participate in a demos. My argument is that these conceptual issues can be clarified if we recognize that the ‘demos’ constitutive of democracy is essentially “dual” in character: it must be defined from a “third-person,” observer’s perspective from which it can be represented as a whole entity; but it must also be seen as arising out of an association of numerous and ongoing “second-person” relationships that participants negotiate among each other. Both perspectives are essential to conceptualizing the demos, but their relation to each other has been obscured by democratic theory’s historical reliance on the imaginary of the sovereign state. Drawing on literature from deliberative democratic theory, this article reconstructs the concept of the demos in a way that better distinguishes the logic of democracy from the logic of the state, allowing us to think more clearly about how demotic boundaries may be subjected to standards of democratic legitimation.
“Crisis” is a key concept in our political lexicon. Since the beginning of the modern age, it has... more “Crisis” is a key concept in our political lexicon. Since the beginning of the modern age, it has arguably been, as much as anything, the experience of crisis that has calibrated the aims of both politics and political theory. But as central as crisis experiences have been for the shaping of our political imaginary, the concept itself has proven difficult to incorporate into the political theory enterprise. In this article, I argue that we can think politically about crisis by taking up a “pragmatist” perspective that focuses on how we deploy crisis as a conceptual tool for guiding judgments and coordinating actions. I argue that crisis is a fundamentally reflexive concept that bridges our traditional distinctions between objective phenomena and normative experience, and whose very usage implies the active participation of those involved in it. Only by examining these crucial aspects of the crisis concept can we begin to grasp its normative political content, as well as how it may be deployed in the service of political action and social change.
Most contemporary attempts to draw inspiration from Kant's cosmopolitan project focus exclusively... more Most contemporary attempts to draw inspiration from Kant's cosmopolitan project focus exclusively on the prescriptive recommendations he makes in his article, ‘On Perpetual Peace’. In this essay, I argue that there is more to his cosmopolitan point of view than his normative agenda. Kant has a unique and interesting way of problematizing the way individuals and peoples relate to one another on the stage of world history, based on a notion that human beings who share the earth in common ‘originally’ constitute a ‘commercium’ of thoroughgoing interaction. By unpacking this concept of ‘commercium’, we can uncover in Kant a more critical perspective on world history that sets up the cosmopolitan as a specific kind of historical-political challenge. I will show that we can distinguish this level of problematization from the prescriptive level at which Kant formulates his familiar recommendations in ‘Perpetual Peace’. I will further show how his particular way of framing the cosmopolitan problematic can be expanded and expatiated upon to develop a more critical, reflexive, and open-ended conception of cosmopolitan thinking.
Talks by Brian Milstein
In this paper, I examine three major paradigms through which thinkers have engaged the concept an... more In this paper, I examine three major paradigms through which thinkers have engaged the concept and experience of crisis in modern society. The first defines crisis in relation to the problem of stability and preservation, classically exemplified in the work of Thomas Hobbes. This point of view tasks political reason with the discovery of the “rules” necessary to preserve, maintain, and strengthen the social system. The second approach defines crisis in epochal terms and is oriented to the ideal of emancipatory progress. Arising out of Enlightenment philosophy of history, it achieves its fullest expression in Karl Marx’s revolutionary ideology. The third, meanwhile, arises out of the “sociological turn” of the twentieth century and focuses on defending against deep-seated social pathologies. Habermas’s crisis theories can be located squarely in this strand, and Koselleck’s own analyses of critique and crisis can also be placed here. Each of these three paradigms is important, and each highlights a crucial aspect of the mission of modern political thought; but each also suffers from serious shortcomings. In the latter part of the paper, I will offer a fourth way of thinking about crisis, which focuses on the litigation of the structure of political society. The chief advantage I claim for this fourth, “political” perspective is that it begins with the way crises are experienced and acted upon by those who find themselves subject to crisis.
Syllabi by Brian Milstein
Teaching Documents by Brian Milstein
Summary tables of my student evaluations from the New School, the Freie Universität Berlin, and G... more Summary tables of my student evaluations from the New School, the Freie Universität Berlin, and Goethe Universität Frankfurt.
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Books by Brian Milstein
Papers by Brian Milstein
Talks by Brian Milstein
Syllabi by Brian Milstein
Teaching Documents by Brian Milstein