The paper starts with a thesis on the dialectical structure of modern law that goes back the European revolutionary tradition and constitutes a legal structure that is at once emancipatory and repressive. Once it became democratic the modern nation states has solved more or less successfully the crises that emerged in modern Europe since the 16th Century. Yet, this state did not escape the dialectical snares of modern law and modern legal regimes. It’s greatest advance, the exclusion of inequalities presupposed (...) the exclusion of the internal other of blacks, workers, women etc, and the other that stemmed from the non-European world that furthermore was under European colonial rule or other forms of European, Northamerican and Japanese imperial control. Yet, the wars and revolutions of the 20th Century let to a complete reconstruction, new foundation and globalization of all national and international law. The evolutionary advance of the 20th Century was the emergence of world law, and this enabled the construction of international and national welfarism and the global expansion of the exclusion of inequalities. Nevertheless the dialectic of enlightenment came back again and led to new forms of postnational domination, hegemony, oppression and exclusion. The final section tries to detect some ideas and principles how to overcome the crisis. (shrink)

Bekanntester deutscher Philosoph der Gegenwart. Seit mehr als fünfzig Jahren prägt Jürgen Habermas das intellektuelle Leben Deutschlands und darüber hinaus. Mit seinem Werk nimmt er entscheidenden Einfluss auf die Wissenschaften, auf Politik und aktuelle gesellschaftliche Diskussionen. Neben einem Überblick zur Biografie stellt das Handbuch Habermas intellektuelle Kontexte, wie z. B. die Frankfurter Schule, vor und beleuchtet die wichtigsten Stationen seines komplexen Werkes. Der Schlussteil informiert über Begriffe und Konzepte, die sich durch das gesamte Werk ziehen.

The author of Critical Theory of Legal Revolutions discusses three major fields of objection against his outline of an evolutionary theory of public and international law. In the first part he discusses problems of action theory. There are at issue, first, the role of negation and moral resentment for the constitution of a normatively relevant social praxis, then the emergence of social systems within and from the context of the life-world, and the relation of revolutionary and gradual learning processes. The (...) second part discusses the relation of his theory to postcolonial and feminist studies. Finally, the debate centers in part III on the dialectic of Enlightenment. The problem of alienation and negativity is at stake, closely related to the negative aesthetic of law and the intertwinement of repression and emancipation within the legal form. In the end, it is an open question if we today still can rely on the negative aesthetic and hidden utopian form of law, or if we have already fallen back to constitutional kitsch and façade. (shrink)

Let me first thank Bill Scheuerman for his long and rich argument on my different considerations of global and European constitutionalism and democracy. It was an inspiring reading, and I have learnt a lot by it. I agree with most of his basic assumptions, and even with some of his more critical remarks. Here, I will first take the opportunity to make some revisions and clarify some conceptual misunderstandings. I will then make some additional remarks on my theoretical framework, and (...) the ideas of law and constitution which are fundamental for it. In the last section I discuss again the issue of state and constitution about which Scheuerman and I already had a short controversy in Constellations last year.1 This time, however, I will discuss the development of modern society in a broader historical, or evolutionary, perspective. Keywords: state; world state; monopoly of power; co-evolution; nation; national identity; territory; cituzenship; modern society (Published: 10 March 2009) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v2i1.1940. (shrink)

A political sociologist examines the concept of universal, egalitarian citizenship and assesses the prospects for developing democratic solidarity at the global level.

Jürgen Habermas is one of the most influential philosophers of our time. The Habermas Handbook offers a comprehensive overview and an in-depth analysis of Habermas's work. Habermas scholars elucidate his thought, providing essential insight into his key concepts and his influence across politics, law, the social sciences, and public life.

The truth potential of art is realized not only by great art (of educated elites) but also by the cultural industry that has become the art of the masses. Great art and cultural industry do not only contradict one another but often interpenetrate and overlap subversively. Especially in critical periods of crisis (and revolution) great art and cultural industry go together with political action. However, in more counterrevolutionary periods as nowadays post-truth democracy, Adorno's gloomiest interpretation of the cultural industry becomes (...) topical again. (shrink)

This paper aims to characterize the main actors in the Brazilian pharmaceutical industry — national companies, foreign companies and public laboratories — and analyze how they were affected and how they reacted to changes over the last 30 years in the institutional framework. The results show that national companies have been gaining prominence in the Brazilian pharmaceutical market with their internationalization movement and their strengthening of innovation strategies.

The complex figure of Theodor Adorno has made a lasting impact on modern political and philosphical development. Deeply interested in the flowering of modern art and an accomplished musician who was close to Schoenberg's circle, he was profoundly affected by revolutionary Marxism, although he always resisted its institutionalized manifestations. Adorno sought to highlight the negative characteristics of the Enlightenment while at the same time emphasizing its positive and empancipatory aspects. In both politics and philosophy he preferred the spontaneous to the (...) orthodox, the experimental to the conventional. His life's work rejects the capitalist system of the twentieth-century while at the same time acknowledging and affirming its creative cultural achievements. Hauke Brunkhorst's book is the first English-language assessment of Adorno's life and work. He stresses the links between Adorno and the dialectical thinking of Hegel and Marx, but also emphasizes the connection between Kant and Adorno. The book sheds new light on Adorno's negative dialectic and is an important contribution to the debate on this celebrated philosopher. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie Jahrgang: 66 Heft: 4 Seiten: 573-579.

Theodor W. Adorno (1903–69) grew up in Frankfurt. His father was a wine merchant, his mother a singer. The political culture of his parents’ home was liberal and cosmopolitan and their life‐style was bourgeois through and through. Adorno himself later compared his own childhood and youth to the development of a “hothouse plant.” This key phrase from his Minima Moralia, a collection of aphorisms written in America during World War II and concerning how to lead a right life in a (...) wrong one, allows autobiography to merge with a reflection of the fate of infant prodigies, such as Adorno himself, during the socialization process. Such prodigies “trouble the natural order, and malicious health revels in the danger that threatens them, while society distrusts them as the visible negation of the equation of success with effort” (Adorno 1969a, p. 17). (shrink)

The European Union today finds itself in the midst of its greatest crisis. The crisis is due not only to one of the greatest breakdowns in the history of the global economy, but also to the fascinating internal evolution of the European constitution since its beginning, shortly after World War II. Parallel to the growth of constitutional law, latent legitimation problems began to arise and grow cumulatively. However, once the big global banks, corporations and hedge-funds began a concerted attack on (...) the European periphery, the long lasting neoliberal turn from democratic capitalism to capitalist democracy has reached whole Europe, and the legitimation crisis becomes manifest. (shrink)

The following paper tries to bring Marx’s crisis theory up to date from a sociological and social-philosophy point of view. Crisis, in line with Marx and Kant, is interpreted as a negative sign of history. Marx’s crisis scenario, while founded in an ever pertinent critique of the destruction of egalitarian individualism by the capitalist system must be considered lacking in complexity for today’s world. Marx underestimated the historical role of the state. A revision of his crisis theory leads to a (...) re-evaluation of the latest two large-scale historical attempts to deal with the crises of modern capitalism; the mixed economy of the Keynesian welfare state, the crisis of which prepared the field for the succeeding crisis, the preventive counterrevolution of neoliberalism. This counterrevolution has plunged democracy into a crisis with slim prospects of escape. (shrink)

Als praktische Philosophie ist der Pragmatismus an Prinzipien und Mechanismen von Gesellschaft interessiert. Es geht im Kern darum, diese Prinzipien und Mechanismen zu verstehen, Handlungsformen und Institutionen mit Blick auf gesellschaftliche Probleme und deren Behebung zu entwickeln und auf diesem Wege Gesellschaft menschlicher, gerechter und demokratischer zu gestalten. Aus diesem Grund scheint der Pragmatismus für die kritische zeitgenössische Sozialwissenschaft von größter Bedeutung. Der vorliegende Band versammelt eine Reihe von Beiträgen, die das Themenfeld pragmatistischer Sozialforschung näher bestimmen. Diese lassen sich in (...) zwei Gruppen einteilen: Beiträge, die pragmatistische Theorien und Methoden mit anderen Denktraditionen oder Forschungsansätzen ins Gespräch bringen, sowie Beiträge, die pragmatistische Perspektiven auf zeitgenössische, gesellschaftliche Problemlagen beziehen. (shrink)

Aim is a robust theory of deliberative democracy. Therefore, three theses are explained by two historical examples, the revolution of 1848 in France, and the new social movements that emerged in the 1960s. The theses are that democratic will-formation is related internally to truth. The foundation and justification of all legal norms in public will-formation presupposes the sublation of the liberal dualism of democracy and rights and of the idealist dualism of rationality and reality in favor of a continuum of (...) public debates, social struggles, and legislative procedures. (shrink)

The author of Critical Theory of Legal Revolutions discusses three major fields of objection against his outline of an evolutionary theory of public and international law. In the first part he discusses problems of action theory. There are at issue, first, the role of negation and moral resentment for the constitution of a normatively relevant social praxis, then the emergence of social systems within and from the context of the life-world, and the relation of revolutionary and gradual learning processes. The (...) second part discusses the relation of his theory to postcolonial and feminist studies. Finally, the debate centers in part III on the dialectic of Enlightenment. The problem of alienation and negativity is at stake, closely related to the negative aesthetic of law and the intertwinement of repression and emancipation within the legal form. In the end, it is an open question if we today still can rely on the negative aesthetic and hidden utopian form of law, or if we have already fallen back to constitutional kitsch and façade. (shrink)

This article evaluates two opposing approaches to the Western transition from a monotheistic and metaphysically grounded religious dispensation to secularized modern political theory. Where some philosophers emphasize the independence of modern political ideals, others argue that these ideals cannot remain theoretically coherent or practically effective once they are separated from the religious sources that have given rise to them. The theory of communicative action can bring together the insights of both independency and dependency theorists, thereby accounting for the public-political significance (...) of redemptive criticism and other important forms of religious discourse. Yet given that religious groups are no longer embedded within the nation state, an additional and pressing contemporary challenge is to develop an adequate constitutional framework for global society. (shrink)

The author uses the heidegger debate to juxtapose adorno's modernism to the 'postmodernism' of heidegger and others, Including rorty and lyotard. In contrast to heidegger, The author finds adorno's modernity to be more informed by enlightenment categories. Starting with adorno's suggestion that "ratio" must "transcend" the self-Preservation of instrumental thought, The author interprets adorno as moving in a somewhat universalist direction. According to this interpretation, Although adorno would agree with heidegger's critique of "identifying thought," he would find the category of (...) "rational identity" something much more positive than did heidegger. In contrast to heidegger, Adorno's critique of instrumentality has a strong ethical component. (shrink)

In a lecture that Habermas gave on his 90th birthday he ironically, but with serious intent, called a good Kant a sufficiently Marxist educated Kant. This dialectical Kant is the only one of the many Kants who maintains the idea of an unconditioned moral autonomy but completely within evolution, history and in the middle of societal class and other struggles. The article tries to show what Kant could have learned from his later critics to enable him to become a member (...) of the Frankfurt School’s neo-Marxist theory of society. (shrink)