This essay analyses optimal voting rules for one form of deliberative democracy. Drawing on public choice analysis, it is argued that the voting rule that best institutionalises deliberative democracy is a type of a supermajority rule. Deliberative democracy is also committed to the standard neutrality condition according to which if x votes are enough to select alternative A, x votes must be enough to select not-A. Taken together, these imply that deliberative democracy will often be indeterminate. This result shows that (...) deliberative democracy is ill-equipped to provide guidance as to how actual political disputes are to be legitimately resolved. (shrink)

This article addresses the theoretical difficulty of justifying the use of penal coercion in circumstances of marked, unjustified social inequality. The intuitive belief behind the text is that in such a context—that of an indecent State—justifying penal coercion becomes very problematic, particularly when directed against the most disfavored members of society.

Deliberative democracy has been castigated by those who regard it as exclusive and elitist because of its failure to take into account a range of structural inequalities existing within contemporar...

Two distinct approaches to the incorporation of animal interests within democratic theory are identified. The first, anthropocentric, account suggests that animal interests ought to be considered within a democratic polity if and when enough humans desire this to be the case. Within this anthropocentric account, the relationship between democracy and the protection of animal interests remains contingent. An alternative account holds that the interests of animals ought to be taken into account because they have a democratic right that their interests (...) are considered. This alternative account is defended in this article by utilising democratic theory and, in particular, the all-affected principle. The interests of animals are affected by collective decisions and, therefore, they, or – more specifically – their representatives, have a democratic right to have some say in the making of those decisions. This approach is favourably contrasted with an alternative, citizenship, account which relies on contested, capacity-oriented, claims current within the field of animal ethics. (shrink)

This article argues that corporate law has become the legal platform upon which is erected a social process impeding society’s capacity to lucidly reflect on its primary ends; in this sense, corporate law is in conflict with social autonomy. This process is described here as a social feedback loop, in the structural centre of which lies the corporation which imposes its own purpose as an irrational social end, i.e. irrespective of its potentially catastrophic social consequences. The article argues that resolving (...) the conflict between corporate law and social autonomy is impossible, because it presupposes a change of social paradigm towards one where corporate law as business organisation law has no obvious fit. This questions the social legitimacy of corporate law, signifies its non-permanence and thus opens up the field for seeking radical alternatives in the future. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a distinctive epistemic rationale for the liberal practice of constant and ostentatious reason-giving in the political context. Epistemic trust is essential to democratic governance because as citizens we can only make informed decisions by relying on the claims of moral, scientific, and practical authorities around us. Yet rational epistemic trust is also uniquely fragile in the political context in light of both the radical inclusiveness of the relevant epistemic community (i.e., everyone who participates in the (...) political process) and the conflicting interests bound up in policy debate. I argue that liberal justification is a necessary condition for warranted epistemic trust in this context, and therefore a necessary condition for healthy public inquiry about politically significant questions. (shrink)

Moral foundations theory (MFT) proposes the existence of innate psychological systems, which would have been subjected to selective forces over the course of evolution. One approach for evaluating MFT, therefore, is to consider the proposed psychological foundations in relation to the reconstructed Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness. This study draws upon ethnographic data on nomadic forager societies to evaluate MFT. Moral foundations theory receives support only regarding the Caring/harm and Fairness/cheating foundations but not regarding the proposed Loyalty/betrayal and Authority/subversion foundations. These (...) latter two proposed foundations would seem to reflect the historical classic assumptions of modernity, involving self-interest, competition, individualism, hierarchy, authority and so forth. Studying the ethical dimensions of nomadic forager societies can highlight our biases about the foundations of morality, some of which may be steeped in particularist Western political and social traditions. Some recent developments from cosmopolitanism are discussed as an alternative evolving worldview that parallels nomadic forager ethos. (shrink)

To integrate social robots in real-life contexts, it is crucial that they are accepted by the users. Acceptance is not only related to the functionality of the robot but also strongly depends on how the user experiences the interaction. Established design principles from usability and user experience research can be applied to the realm of human–robot interaction, to design robot behavior for the comfort and well-being of the user. Focusing the design on these aspects alone, however, comes with certain ethical (...) challenges, especially regarding the user’s privacy and autonomy. Based on an example scenario of human–robot interaction in elder care, this paper discusses how established design principles can be used in social robotic design. It then juxtaposes these with ethical considerations such as privacy and user autonomy. Combining user experience and ethical perspectives, we propose adjustments to the original design principles and canvass our own design recommendations for a positive and ethically acceptable social human–robot interaction design. In doing so, we show that positive user experience and ethical design may be sometimes at odds, but can be reconciled in many cases, if designers are willing to adjust and amend time-tested design principles. (shrink)

Deliberation has faced criticism with regard to its application to business, on the basis that it can be misused to disseminate an ideology, divert attention from genuine debates, or strengthen the power of certain people. We suggest that Aristotle’s notion of deliberation can mitigate these ethical risks and help companies strengthen their deliberative practices. A comprehensive perspective based on Aristotelian deliberation reveals the relevance of (a) individual and collective deliberation, promoting a virtuous and meaningful reflection, free from ideological conditioning; (b) (...) deliberation on ends and means that facilitates a transcendental and rooted reflection, thereby avoiding artificial debates; and (c) deliberation that is decisive and cooperative and thus prevents instrumentalization of deliberation by the strongest. We contribute to the discussion of the relationship between business and society by identifying the different steps in the deliberative process and promoting a dynamic perspective on deliberation. (shrink)

The article considers the relationships among three arguments that purport to establish the intrinsically contradictory or paradoxical nature of the modern project aiming at the equal consideration of all. The claim that the inevitable historical insertion of universal-egalitarian norms leads to always particular and untransparent interpretations of grammatically universal norms may be combined with the claim that the logic of determination of political communities tends to generate exclusions. The combination of these two claims lends specific force to the third argument (...) according to which equal consideration perpetually requires the non-egalitarian project of understanding individuals on their own terms. Hence, taking off from a recent debate between Christoph Menke and Jürgen Habermas, I argue that the former is right to diagnose an aporetic self-reflection in egalitarian universalism, while agreeing with the latter about the indispensability of deliberative democratic frameworks for the defence of both egalitarian and non-egalitarian norms. Key Words: Theodor Adorno • deliberative democracy • Jacques Derrida • egalitarianism • equality • Jürgen Habermas • Christoph Menke • singularity • universalism. (shrink)

Joseph Heath's Communicative Action and Rational Choice may be read as a critical commentary upon Habermas's critical social theory, but it may also be read as merely using the latter as “scaffolding” for the presentation of Heath's own version of critical theory. In what follows, I will focus on the second option and thus largely ignore the exegetical question to what extent Heath provides a fair reading of Habermas. This does not mean, however, that I will not make comparative judgements. (...) On the contrary, my overall claim will be that Heath's new critical theory is more functionalist, and. partly as a result, less critical than Habermas's. Since lack of space does not permit me to argue this in accordance with the standards of detail that Heath's own book generally observes, my procedure may be justified by the attempt to provoke a clarificatory response from Heath. (shrink)

This article compares the theories of democracy of John Dewey and Claude Lefort, identifying some common themes in their otherwise radically different philosophical outlooks. In so doing, it attempts to analyze the philosophical implications of a ‘democracy first’ approach to politics. It then explains in what sense Dewey’s idea of ‘democracy as a way of life’ and Claude Lefort’s conception of ‘democracy as a form of society’ provide the cornerstone of an original and so far insufficiently explored approach to political (...) philosophy. Such an approach offers an alternative both to the classical-liberal and to the critical-radical projects which still dominate contemporary political philosophy. It then indicates some of the potential advantages of such a ‘wide view’ for contemporary debates in democratic theory. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against Jürgen Habermas’s theoretical dualism between ethics and morality. I do this by showing how his account of normativity is vitiated by an unnecessary superposition of a social-evolutionary and a theoretical-linguistic account of normativity, and that this brings about theoretical problems that in the end cannot be overcome. I also show that Rainer Forst’s attempt at salvaging Habermas’s distinction is equally doomed to failure, but that his attempt nevertheless invites new and more fruitful avenues for (...) normative theory that are worth exploring. The conclusion of this paper is that traditional notions of ethics and morality can be preserved provided we heavily redefine their meanings and release them from some of the theoretical work they have been expected to accomplish, but that to complete this transition we also need to supersede Forst’s pluralization of normative contexts toward a theory of normative practices that in the end makes the distinction between ethics and morality workable but useless. I begin by first locating the debate about ethics and morality within the context of recent normative theory, and proceed to examine the two main strategies through which Habermas has elaborated his idea of a sharp dualism between ethics and morality. I then introduce a theoretical distinction between what I call a horizontal and a vertical integration of ethics and morality and contend that whilst only the horizontal is viable, Habermas decidedly prefers the idea of a vertical integration. With this work done, I proceed to complete my critique of Habermas’s argument and show how, by recovering the pragmatist roots of his thought, an alternative solution based on a functionalist understanding of morality could be envisaged. I then conclude by examining Rainer Forst’s attempt at salvaging Habermas’s account, and show that the failure of Forst’s attempts opens the way for new and more fruitful approaches to normative theory which are more likely to recover the pragmatist roots of Habermas’s thought. (shrink)

Democratic deliberation is credited with a variety of virtues, including its possible usefulness in resolving, or at least ameliorating, inter‐cultural conflicts. This paper questions this claim. First, it overlooks that the facts and principles involved in these conflicts generally prove contestable and that such contestation is likely to be greater the less homogenous societies are. Second, it neglects that many, if not most, citizens have neither the time nor the inclination to acquire the conceptual and factual knowledge needed to try (...) and overcome these differences. As a result, the more inclusive and popular deliberation becomes, the less suitable it may be for overcoming cross cultural disagreements. Indeed, it has the potential to exacerbate rather than narrow the differences between majorities and minorities. These conclusions are drawn from an empirical review of a Canadian debate about aboriginal rights that followed a controversial Supreme Court of Canada decision and comparing the character of deliberation in three contexts: the legal community, the print media and legislative bodies. (shrink)

Several authors, such as William J. Morgan, John S. Russell and R. Scott Kretchmar, have claimed that the limits between the diverse normative theories of sport need to be revisited. Most of these works are philosophically grounded in Anglo-American philosophical approaches. For instance, William J. Morgan’s proposal is mainly based on Richard Rorty’s philosophy. But he also discusses with some European philosophers like Jürgen Habermas. However, Habermas’ central ideas are rejected by Morgan. The purpose of this paper is to analyse (...) Morgan’s rejection of Habermas’ thought and show that a more appropriate normative of sport that explains better our current sporting world can be achieved by drawing on the German philosopher’s ideas. The plan of this paper is the following. It shall analyse the limits of the distinction between broad internalism and externalism by taking Morgan’s work as its starting point. To do so, firstly, the conventionalist way in which Morgan criticises the limits of interpretivism sha.. (shrink)

This paper considers the implications of Hannah Arendt's criticisms of Frantz Fanon and the theories of violence and politics associated with his influence for our understanding of the relationship between those two phenomena. Fanon argues that violence is a means necessary to political action, and also is an organic force or energy. Arendt argues that violence is inherently unpredictable, which means that end reasoning is in any case anti-political, and that it is a profound error to naturalize violence. We evaluate (...) their respective arguments concluding that in her well-founded rejection of the naturalization of violence, Arendt's understanding of the embodied nature of violence is less insightful than Fanon's. (shrink)

How should we understand the familiar demand that journalists ‘be objective’? One possibility is that journalists are under an obligation to report only the facts of the matter. However, facts need to be interpreted, selected, and communicated. How can this be done objectively? This paper aims to explain the concept of journalistic objectivity in methodological terms. Specifically, I will argue that the ideal of journalistic objectivity should be recast as a commitment to John Rawls’s conception of public reason. Journalism plays (...) a vital role in the operation of all modern liberal democracies, functioning as the public watchdog, the fourth estate, or the conduit through which vital information flows to the citizenry. Journalism is, therefore, an institution that is best understood as part of the basic structure of society. In Political Liberalism, Rawls explicitly excludes media of any kind from the demands of public reason because he doesn’t think that they play a political role that is important enough to bring them under the official auspices of public reason. I will argue that overlooking the political significance of journalism is a mistake, but one that can be corrected while keeping within the spirit and most important elements of his theory. This revision will widen the scope for what counts as journalism beyond traditional outlets and forms of media but will impose the demands of public reason on anyone who intends to participate in the institution. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to discuss the type of attachment and allegiance propounded in the recently proclaimed Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Charters such as Bills of Rights are generally held to be reflective of and evocative of a rights-based constitutional patriotism. The EU is not a state; there are widely different conceptions of what it is and should be, one of which is the vision of a Europe of nation states. Is the spirit of (...) the Charter thus instead that of deep diversity, i.e. reflective of a wide diversity of views, visions and values as to what the EU is and ought to be? The article contrasts constitutional patriotism and deep diversity as alternative underlying philosophies of the Charter and also briefly examines the Charter's presumed ability to produce either type of sentiment of allegiance. (shrink)

Recent debates in political theory display a renewed interest in the problem of judgment. This article critically examines the different senses of judgment that are at play in Jürgen Habermas’ theory of law. The article offers a new critical reading of Habermas’ account of the legitimacy of law, and a revisionary interpretation of the reconstructive approach to political theory that underpins it. Both of these are instrumental to an understanding of what is involved in judging the legitimacy of law that (...) is richer than has been recognized thus far by both critics and defenders of Habermas. (shrink)

Agonism is a political theory that places contestation at the heart of politics. Agonistic theorists charge liberal theory with a depoliticization of pluralism through an excessive focus on consensus. This paper examines the agonistic critiques of liberalism from a normative perspective. I argue that by itself the argument from pluralism is not sufficient to support an agonistic account of politics, but points to further normative commitments. Analyzing the work of Mouffe, Honig, Connolly, and Owen, I identify two normative currents of (...) agonistic theory: emancipatory agonism, aimed at challenging violence and exclusion, and perfectionist agonism, aimed at the cultivation of nobility. From a normative perspective the former presents an internal challenge to liberalism, while the latter constitutes an external challenge to liberalism by providing a competing account of the ends of politics. Recognition of the distinction between emancipatory and perfectionist agonism is crucial in assessing the purchase of agonistic critiques of liberalism. Furthermore, this analysis draws us beyond the simple opposition between contestation and consensus. It is not simply a question of valuing genuine pluralism and therefore criticizing consensus; rather the question comes to be: what are the ends of politics? (shrink)

Kant identifies the “highest moral-physical good” as that combination of “good living” and “true humanity” which best harmonises in a “good meal in good company”. Why does Kant privilege the dinner party in this way? By examining Kant’s accounts of enlightenment, cosmopolitanism, love and respect, and gratitude and friendship, the answer to this question becomes clear. Kant’s moral ideal is that of an enlightened and just cosmopolitan human being who feels and acts with respect and love for all persons and (...) such an ideal is temporarily manifested in the sort of social interaction achievable at a good dinner party. (shrink)

Critical discourse analysis stands on the shoulder of giants – different giants – in order to answer how its critique, its ethico-moral stance, is theoretically grounded and justified. Concerning this question, this article explores the role of the Frankfurt School in the discourse–historical approach. Although references to the Frankfurt School can regularly be found in the DHA's canon, I argue that an even more comprehensive discussion would help in combating accusations of the DHA being unprincipled and politically biased, and further (...) enrich the DHA's toolkit for empirical analysis. After reviewing existing references to the Frankfurt School, I discuss this intellectual tradition – from Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno's The dialectic of enlightenment to Jürgen Habermas's language-philosophy – showing to what extent it can ground the DHA's emancipatory and socially transformative aims. Thereby, I illustrate how the DHA's critical standard is not simply based on a coincidental, though progressive, consensus but theoretically justified. (shrink)

This paper draws attention to Foucault’s genealogy of critique. In a series of inquiries, Foucault traced the origins and trajectories of critical practices from the ancient tradition of parrhesia to the enlightenment and the (neo)liberal critique of the state. The paper will elucidate the insights of this history and argue that Foucault’s turn to the genealogy of critique also changed the valence of his theoretical assumptions. Foucault developed a more affirmative practice of genealogy that not only discredits truth claims by (...) tracing them back to their inglorious origins. Rather, he presents a politics of truth as a complex interaction of (governmental) power-knowledge and critique that questions the power effects of truth and rationality. This genealogy of critique contributes to current problematizations of critique by thinkers like Boltanski, Latour and Rancière in highlighting the role of epistemological and technical critique of social rationalization and political reason. (shrink)

The legacy of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research has been a powerful force for critically understanding social reality. Erich Fromm was one of the early and best known members of the Institute. Fromm emphasised the centrality of culture and interpersonal relations in the contruction of the psyche. The unconscious was not only the location for buried repressed matter but also for the imaginative potential of the human person. He is a forgotten and neglected contributor to the story of the (...) Institute having been written out of this history. This retrospective of his ideas explores his work in the light of the recent work of Jürgen Habermas who is also an active but less controversial engager with the psychoanalytic tradition. The implications for adult education will be addressed. The paper outlines Fromm’s radical reinterpretation of psychoanalysis emphasising the importance of social existence as distinct from the impact of instincts; key concepts of the market, commodity fetishism and automaton conformity; The implications for adult education in the tradition of radical (Freire) and transformative learning theory (Mezirow) and addressed and make connections between Habermas and Fromm that further the project of critical theory. Both attempted in different times to identify and realise the potential of (though neither used the term) of lifelong learning as part of the process of bringing about a more just and caring society and a shared attention to the importance of having free conversations about how the emancipated life might be created and sustained. (shrink)

This article brings interconnects three debates to show what this might imply for the ‘redemocratisation’ of UK society and for pedagogical reform. One debate concerns deliberative types of democratic reform, arguing in favour of a ‘creative agnosticism’ towards the two philosophical frameworks which dominate this literature. This leads into a discussion of education and critical rationality, arguing for an aptitude-based account of moral agency, one which relates to the sociocultural resources we inherit from the past. The final debate therefore concerns (...) social memory. I do not offer a theory of social memory but critique various commentators in arguing for what I call a ‘multipolar analysis’. This both describes the analytical method adopted in this article and the skills and capacities which a system based upon ‘education for discourse’ would need to facilitate. The article therefore proposes that democracy, education and memory—deliberativeness, critical rationality and social remembering—be brought closer together for the mutual benefit of each debate. (shrink)

Besides their skepticism about universal reason and universal morality, the Frankfurt Schools of Critical Systems Theory and Critical Theory share basic assumptions: (1) the thinking in societal-systemic, institutional concepts, which transcend simple reciprocal relations by dint of their complexity; (2) the assumption that society is based on fundamental paradoxes, antagonisms, antinomies; (3) the strategy to conceptualize justice as a contingent and transcendental formula; (4) the form of immanent (and not morality-based, external) critique as an attitude of transcendence; (5) the aim (...) of societal (and not only political) emancipation in an ‘association of free individuals’ (Marx). The article focuses on those parallels and aims to conceptualize a critical turn-around of autopoietic systems theory. (shrink)

Many commentators have failed to identify the important issues at the heart of the debate between Habermas and Rawls. This is partly because they give undue attention to differences between Rawls’s original position and Habermas’s principle, neither of which is germane to the actual dispute. The dispute is at bottom about how best to conceive of democratic legitimacy. Rawls indicates where the dividing issues lie when he objects that Habermas’s account of democratic legitimacy is comprehensive and his is confined to (...) the political. But his argument is vitiated by a threefold ambiguity in what he means by ‘comprehensive doctrine’. Tidying up this ambiguity helps reveal that the dispute turns on the way in which morality relates to political legitimacy. Although Habermas calls his conception of legitimate law ‘morally freestanding’, and as such distinguishes it from Kantian and natural law accounts of legitimacy, it is not as freestanding from morality as he likes to present it. Habermas’s mature theory contains conflicting claims about the relation between morality and democratic legitimacy. So there is at least one important sense in which Rawls’s charge of comprehensiveness is made to stick against Habermas’s conception of democratic legitimacy, and remains unanswered. View HTML Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.Where the Right Gets in: On Rawls’s Criticism of Habermas’s Conception of LegitimacyVolume 21, Issue 2James Gordon Finlayson DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415416000017Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. Where the Right Gets in: On Rawls’s Criticism of Habermas’s Conception of LegitimacyVolume 21, Issue 2James Gordon Finlayson DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415416000017Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. Where the Right Gets in: On Rawls’s Criticism of Habermas’s Conception of LegitimacyVolume 21, Issue 2James Gordon Finlayson DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415416000017Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation. (shrink)

In this article I lay out Kenneth Baynes's interpretation of Habermas's social and political philosophy, and develop three lines of criticism. The first concerns the question of whether, and if so in what respect, Habermas's political theory counts as a critical social theory. I argue that it is not clear in what sense Habermas's political theory is a ‘critical’ social theory, and that Baynes's interpretation throws little light on this issue. The second related issue is to what extent it can (...) be fairly claimed that on Habermas's account of democracy, political legitimacy rests on a “core morality”. While there is a possible reconstruction of Habermas along these lines, I argue that it conflicts with the central tenets of Habemras's political theory. Finally, I question whether Baynes is right to align Habermas's ideal of public reason so closely with Rawls's. (shrink)

This paper argues that Habermas's conception of the rationality of moral and legal discussions has import for argumentation theorists interested in the rationality of public deliberations in politics and law. I begin with a survey of Haber mas's discourse theory and his criteria of rationality for moral and legal discourse. I then explain why, in his view, the forms of rational discourse in morality and law complement each other. My aim is to show how Habermas's account of this complementary relationship (...) opens up fruitful perspectives for argumentation theory. Specifically, his thought can stimulate research regarding, on the one hand, the ways in which legal procedures provide for presumptively rational resolutions of moral disputes and, on the other hand, the applicability of ideal argumentation-theoretic models to the legal field. I conclude with a proposal for integrating Habermas's ideas in a research program for legal argumentation. (shrink)

On the face of it, self-censorship is profoundly subversive of democracy, particularly in its talk-centric forms, and undermines the culture of openness and publicity on which it relies. This paper has two purposes. The first is to develop a conception of self-censorship that allows us to capture what is distinctive about the concept from a political perspective and which allows us to understand the democratic anxiety about self-censorship: if it is not obvious that biting our tongues is always wrong, we (...) need a fuller account of the moral sensibility that finds it so troubling and this is elaborated here. The second is to develop an argument to the effect that this sensibility should not have the last, or only, word, but instead that self-censorship should be viewed as an ‘ordinary vice’ of democratic societies. The grounds for tolerating it rest on the democratic values that critics believe it threatens. (shrink)

In _Vulnerability and Critical Theory_, Estelle Ferrarese identifies contemporary developments on the theme of vulnerability within critical theory while also seeking to reconstruct an idea of vulnerability that enables an articulation of the political and demonstrates how it is socially produced.

Legal and political philosophers of a normative bent face an uphill struggle in keeping themes of global justice and cosmopolitan governance, at the forefront of their disciplinary debate, given the perceived urgency of confronting, at the domestic level, the populist upsurge in mature democracies and “democratizing societies” alike. In this paper, these two levels of analysis—national and transnational—mutually enrich one another through a reflection on the ground of legitimacy. In the first section, neo-perfectionist approaches to the legitimation of transnational authority (...) and public reason approaches rooted in the paradigm of “political liberalism” will be contrasted. In the second section, a non-perfectionist and normative conception of the legitimacy of transnational authorities will be derived from Rawls’s “liberal principle of legitimacy” and the difference with the application of the same principle at the domestic level will be elucidated. In the third section, on the basis of such conception, one of the most complete and influential approaches to the legitimacy of transnational authorities—i.e., the “Complex Standard of Legitimacy” expounded by A. Buchanan and R. Keohane in “The Legitimacy of Global Governance Institutions”—will be critically assessed. (shrink)

One of the most pressing dilemmas of the moment concerns pluralism and the issue of justification: how does one defend a commitment to any particular position? The fear is that pluralism undercuts our ability to justify our moral and political views, and thereby leads to relativism. As I argue here, Isaiah Berlin provides an exemplary argument concerning the ties between pluralism and liberalism. Although Berlin admits there is no logical link between pluralism and liberalism, he nevertheless highlights plausible ties between (...) pluralism and the fields of philosophy, history and politics, all of which provide good reasons for him to endorse liberalism. Moreover, these arguments indicate how pluralism differs from relativism, so that pluralists such as Berlin are not guilty of the charge of moral subjectivism. A reconsideration of Berlin's position thus provides insight into the problem of justification in a pluralist condition, one that illuminates certain features of pluralism, as well as exemplifies its compatibility with liberalism. (shrink)

I show how a notion of the political as emerging reality which does not derive from any other logic — as a phenomenon devoid of foundations, of predetermined elements — features in Habermas’s theory of society. There is certainly nothing obvious about such a claim, insofar as the political is conceived, across his entire oeuvre, in relation to the public sphere, which is presented as a social space in which the functions and properties he attributes to language in general are (...) made explicit and catalysed. It appears the public sphere coincides with the constitutive rules of universal pragmatics. More generally, the motif of the public sphere is bound up with topics which all curb the political “mode” — i.e., the validity attributed to political statements (1), the weight given, in myriad ways, to morality in the public sphere (2), and the concern to preserve science and complexity no matter what (3). I examine each one in turn, in order to demonstrate how, precisely, through the limits imposed on them, they enable us to grasp the specificity of the public sphere as political instance and, from this basis, identify a place for the political in Jürgen Habermas’s theory. (shrink)

This paper tries to characterize the factors determining human relations with its environment and to identify the drives of those behavioral patterns and “praxis”. One scrutinizes the physiological and psychological factors that influence those drives, and tries to determine ways of overriding instinctive drives in favor of rational, sustainable ones. It focuses its attention on the way the different ecosystemic, economic and socio-cultural systems work, and pin-points the critical issues in view of the development of sustainable behavioral patterns. Also the (...) values that must build the new behavioral paradigm, as well as the ways to ensure the evolutionary quantum-leap necessary to ensure this sustainable condition, and the fulfilment, at every level, the different needs of humans and human societies, are analyzed. In conclusion, it stresses the fact that any reliable and long lasting change towards a sustainable behavior must start at the individual and the close social groups levels, and of the development of new factors of self-fulfillment and gratification, able to support and foster that change. The proposed epistemological approach is particularly innovative, precisely because of this emphasis on the individual drives and the way they determine the global patterns of environmental use, as well as the way they can evolve into a more rational character. In short, the paper focuses itself in the way man can evolve from its natural animal instincts and drives toward more rational ones, humanizing its behavior and turning, therefore, into an able actor of the process of sustainability building. (shrink)

This essay argues that Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics, Jürgen Habermas's communication theory, and Jacques Derrida's deconstruction all fit together within one philosophical paradigm: metamodernism. Metamodernism, as defined, is opposed to both modernism and radical forms of postmodernism. Within metamodernism, a political conundrum provides the key clue for understanding the relations among Gadamer, Habermas, and Derrida as well as for elaborating the contours of the paradigm. Specifically, the political implications of the three philosophies are intransitive: they seem to shift around rather (...) than being in fixed relations to each other. So, for instance, Gadamer sometimes seems to the political right of both Habermas and Derrida, but then, at different times, he stands between them, and then again, at other times, he seems to be to the left of both. This political paradox suggests that the traditional political categories of liberalism and conservatism do not suitably reflect the critical positions within metamodernism. Gadamer, Habermas, and Derrida are far more concerned with explaining the possibility and techniques of interpretive and social critique, while remaining true to the metamodernist paradigm, rather than fitting themselves into the traditional liberal or conservative political camps. (shrink)

The increasing centrality of business firms in contemporary societies calls for a renewed attention to the democratization of these actors. This paper sheds new light on the possibility of democratizing business firms by bridging recent scholarship in two fields—deliberative democracy and business ethics. To date, deliberative democracy has largely neglected the role of business firms in democratic societies. While business ethics scholarship has given more attention to these issues, it has overlooked the possibility of deliberation within firms. As argued in (...) the paper, a combination of reforms based on the ideas of workplace deliberation and business deliberation is necessary in order to promote the prospect of deliberation in different business contexts. The paper also discusses the importance of more democratic firms for deliberative democracy at large and, in particular, for the recent debate on deliberative systems. Finally, the paper suggests new areas of investigation to better understand the prospect of democratic deliberation in business firms. (shrink)

Abstract: Michael Walzer and David Miller defend the authority of democratic states to determine who will be allowed entry and membership. In support of this view they have claimed that the domestic solidarity necessary for social justice is threatened by the unregulated influx of outsiders. This empirical thesis proves to be false when applied to the United States, where heavy Latino and Latina immigration is more likely to increase civic solidarity than to diminish it. Seen in this light, the positions (...) of Jürgen Habermas and Carol Gould, giving human rights priority over democratic sovereignty in decisions about membership, cannot be criticized as utopian. Liberal philosophers can also defend open borders as a way to give oppressed peoples representation inside powerful countries where state decisions often threaten access to essential resources and basic freedoms in their home countries. (shrink)