Introduction, Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves - "Modernity Versus Postmodernity", J. H... more Introduction, Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves - "Modernity Versus Postmodernity", J. Habermas. Part 1 Critical rejoinders: the discourse of modernity - Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Habermas, F. Dallmayr deconstruction, postmodernism and philosophy - Habermas on Derrida, C. Norris splitting the difference - Habermas's critique of Derrida, D. Hoy Habermas and Foucault, J. Schmidt intersubjectivity and the monadic core of the psyche - Habermas and Castoriadis on the unconscious, J. Whitebook. Part 2 Thematic reformulations: two versions of the linguistic turn - Habermas and poststructuralism, J. Bohman Habermas and the question of alterity, D. Coole the casuality of fate - modernity and modernism in Habermas, J.M. Bernstein the subject of justice in postmodern discourse - aesthetic judgment and political rationality, D. Ingram.
Passerin d'Entr?ves, Maurizio, and Benhabib, Seyla, eds. Habermas ... Massachusetts: Polity ... more Passerin d'Entr?ves, Maurizio, and Benhabib, Seyla, eds. Habermas ... Massachusetts: Polity Press, 1987). Five of the essays have been previ ously published, and Habermas's essay, "Modernity: An Unfinished Project," is also reprinted here. The book also contains a very ...
Rainer Forst is one of Germany’s outstanding contemporary scholars of moral, political and social... more Rainer Forst is one of Germany’s outstanding contemporary scholars of moral, political and social thought and a prominent member of the most recent generation of the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. We share deep commitments to the Habermasian program of a discourse theory of ethics and are indebted to the intense, but short-lived, exchange between the Rawlsian and Habermasian paradigms of justice, democracy and human rights. The following comments on Forst’s The Right to Justification are offered in the spirit of a critical conversation against the background of deeply shared premises.1 If what follows may sound too much like a querelle de famille (a family quarrel), I plead guilty. But as we all know from experience, such quarrels can also be the most intense ones! This article will focus on three points: (1) First, I will outline Forst’s construction of “the right to justification” in the light of the principles of reciprocity and generality and will offer a critique of his understanding of these criteria; (2) second, I will examine Forst’s construction of the relationship between the moral and the ethical; and (3) finally, I will turn to Forst’s program of “political constructivism” and assess his interpretation of the relationship between human rights, justice and democracy.
In A Cosmopolitan Legal Order: Kant, Constitutional Justice and the European Convention on Human ... more In A Cosmopolitan Legal Order: Kant, Constitutional Justice and the European Convention on Human Rights, Alec Stone Sweet and Clare Ryan reconstruct Kant’s legal philosophy as a program of cosmopolitan legal order (CLO). A CLO is defined as a multi-level, judicialized, transnational system of rights protection that confers on all persons, by virtue of their humanity, the entitlement to challenge the rights-regarding decisions of public officials, who are under an obligation to assure the equal juridical status of all. The authors illustrate this claim with respect to the development of the ECtHR and the Court of Justice of the European Union. While generally agreeing with their argument, I claim that they minimize the republican aspects of Kant’s political philosophy in favour of strong judicial review. After outlining republican and democratic objections, I claim that their book illustrates a model that I call ‘dialogic constitutionalism’. Dialogic constitutionalism does not neglec...
Modern liberal democracies owe their stability and relative success to the coming together of two... more Modern liberal democracies owe their stability and relative success to the coming together of two ideals which originate in distinct historical periods: the ideals of self-governance and territorially circumscribed nation-state. Self-governance defines freedom as the rule of law among a community of equals who are citizens of the polis and who have the right to rule and to be ruled. This ideal emerges in 5th-century Athens and is revived throughout history in episodes such as the experience of self-governing city-states in the Renaissance, the Paris commune of 1871, the anarchist and socialist communes of the Russian Revolution, and the Spanish Civil War.
The period since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 has witnessed the rise of an i... more The period since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 has witnessed the rise of an international human rights regime. There has been a shift in international law from state-based treaty obligations to cosmopolitan norms whose subject is individuals and their rights and entitlements under international law. Along with the rise of cosmopolitan norms, conflicts between enactments by states, often through democratic legislatures, of laws and practices that may contradict these norms, has also intensified.The article focuses on one such set of cosmopolitan norms concerning the crossborder rights of immigrants within the context of the European Union. By examining a German Constitutional Court Case which denied long-term resident aliens voting privileges in local and district-wide elections, it illuminates the “paradox of democratic legitimacy.” The rights of foreigners and aliens are an intrinsic aspect of the self-understanding of a democratic people. The demos can alter th...
Introduction, Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves - "Modernity Versus Postmodernity", J. H... more Introduction, Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves - "Modernity Versus Postmodernity", J. Habermas. Part 1 Critical rejoinders: the discourse of modernity - Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Habermas, F. Dallmayr deconstruction, postmodernism and philosophy - Habermas on Derrida, C. Norris splitting the difference - Habermas's critique of Derrida, D. Hoy Habermas and Foucault, J. Schmidt intersubjectivity and the monadic core of the psyche - Habermas and Castoriadis on the unconscious, J. Whitebook. Part 2 Thematic reformulations: two versions of the linguistic turn - Habermas and poststructuralism, J. Bohman Habermas and the question of alterity, D. Coole the casuality of fate - modernity and modernism in Habermas, J.M. Bernstein the subject of justice in postmodern discourse - aesthetic judgment and political rationality, D. Ingram.
Passerin d'Entr?ves, Maurizio, and Benhabib, Seyla, eds. Habermas ... Massachusetts: Polity ... more Passerin d'Entr?ves, Maurizio, and Benhabib, Seyla, eds. Habermas ... Massachusetts: Polity Press, 1987). Five of the essays have been previ ously published, and Habermas's essay, "Modernity: An Unfinished Project," is also reprinted here. The book also contains a very ...
Rainer Forst is one of Germany’s outstanding contemporary scholars of moral, political and social... more Rainer Forst is one of Germany’s outstanding contemporary scholars of moral, political and social thought and a prominent member of the most recent generation of the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. We share deep commitments to the Habermasian program of a discourse theory of ethics and are indebted to the intense, but short-lived, exchange between the Rawlsian and Habermasian paradigms of justice, democracy and human rights. The following comments on Forst’s The Right to Justification are offered in the spirit of a critical conversation against the background of deeply shared premises.1 If what follows may sound too much like a querelle de famille (a family quarrel), I plead guilty. But as we all know from experience, such quarrels can also be the most intense ones! This article will focus on three points: (1) First, I will outline Forst’s construction of “the right to justification” in the light of the principles of reciprocity and generality and will offer a critique of his understanding of these criteria; (2) second, I will examine Forst’s construction of the relationship between the moral and the ethical; and (3) finally, I will turn to Forst’s program of “political constructivism” and assess his interpretation of the relationship between human rights, justice and democracy.
In A Cosmopolitan Legal Order: Kant, Constitutional Justice and the European Convention on Human ... more In A Cosmopolitan Legal Order: Kant, Constitutional Justice and the European Convention on Human Rights, Alec Stone Sweet and Clare Ryan reconstruct Kant’s legal philosophy as a program of cosmopolitan legal order (CLO). A CLO is defined as a multi-level, judicialized, transnational system of rights protection that confers on all persons, by virtue of their humanity, the entitlement to challenge the rights-regarding decisions of public officials, who are under an obligation to assure the equal juridical status of all. The authors illustrate this claim with respect to the development of the ECtHR and the Court of Justice of the European Union. While generally agreeing with their argument, I claim that they minimize the republican aspects of Kant’s political philosophy in favour of strong judicial review. After outlining republican and democratic objections, I claim that their book illustrates a model that I call ‘dialogic constitutionalism’. Dialogic constitutionalism does not neglec...
Modern liberal democracies owe their stability and relative success to the coming together of two... more Modern liberal democracies owe their stability and relative success to the coming together of two ideals which originate in distinct historical periods: the ideals of self-governance and territorially circumscribed nation-state. Self-governance defines freedom as the rule of law among a community of equals who are citizens of the polis and who have the right to rule and to be ruled. This ideal emerges in 5th-century Athens and is revived throughout history in episodes such as the experience of self-governing city-states in the Renaissance, the Paris commune of 1871, the anarchist and socialist communes of the Russian Revolution, and the Spanish Civil War.
The period since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 has witnessed the rise of an i... more The period since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 has witnessed the rise of an international human rights regime. There has been a shift in international law from state-based treaty obligations to cosmopolitan norms whose subject is individuals and their rights and entitlements under international law. Along with the rise of cosmopolitan norms, conflicts between enactments by states, often through democratic legislatures, of laws and practices that may contradict these norms, has also intensified.The article focuses on one such set of cosmopolitan norms concerning the crossborder rights of immigrants within the context of the European Union. By examining a German Constitutional Court Case which denied long-term resident aliens voting privileges in local and district-wide elections, it illuminates the “paradox of democratic legitimacy.” The rights of foreigners and aliens are an intrinsic aspect of the self-understanding of a democratic people. The demos can alter th...
The collapse of the Soviet Bloc dramatically recast the European project and reopened the questio... more The collapse of the Soviet Bloc dramatically recast the European project and reopened the question of what Europe is. Radical nationalism returned in the Balkans to challenge western Europe’s belief that it had overcome such old demons, while Eastern enlargement and Turkey’s quest for membership in the European Union (EU) revived old debates about where Europe ends. Debates about Europe’s exterior boundaries have intersected with discussions about the nature of European identity, European constitutionalism, and the formation of a European single market and currency union. Embattled debates over European identity dovetailed with a return of age-old discussions of Christian Europe and its Islamic other. Today, echoes of the EU’s self-image as a bastion of humanitarian reason and a beacon of democracy find their test in the refugee crisis. Stuck between seemingly perennial austerity and managed inhospitability, the EU’s “thin cosmopolitanism” appears all too content with integrating markets and merely fulfilling minimalist human rights norms. In a painful twist of irony, the only ones who still appear to take seriously the preamble of the failed European Constitution that described Europe as “a special area of human hope” are the refugees landing on Europe’s shores or, more often, drowning in the Mediterranean. While Europe’s politicians are working hard to discourage potential asylum seekers and appear determined to prove that Europe is not a special area of human hope, refugees are voting with their feet for a life in Europe.
The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School, 2018
Despite any personal tensions, the relationship between Arendt's and Adorno's work has become the... more Despite any personal tensions, the relationship between Arendt's and Adorno's work has become the object of increased scholarly interest (see Rensmann and Gandesha 2012). Indeed, the absence of intellectual recognition and collaboration between Arendt and members of the Frankfurt School seems quite puzzling in light of the similarities of their biographies, intellectual origins, theoretical interests, and political diagnoses: Arendt, as well as Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, on whom we will focus in this chapter, were shaped by the intellectual milieu of the Weimar Republic; they were of German-Jewish descent (Adorno on his father’s side) and were compelled to emigrate to the United States in order to escape the deadly grip of National Socialism. Moreover, they shared a profound intellectual admiration and personal affection for Walter Benjamin and sought to keep alive Benjamin’s intellectual legacy. Finally, and perhaps most importantly in the present context, common to them is a deep theoretical preoccupation with what we might tentatively call the “diagnosis of modernity as crisis”: the idea that modernity portends a novel historical dynamic that is intimately tied to the catastrophes of the twentieth century – the rise of fascism, the Holocaust and Stalinism. Investigating this historical dynamic and its implications thus became a central philosophical and political task in the lives of these German-Jewish émigrés. Among themes that occupied Arendt and the members of the Frankfurt School are the persistence of human misery in the face of mighty technological progress and the overcoming of old forms of bondage at the expense of new kinds of unfreedom.
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