Presentists, who believe that only present objects exist, face a problem concerning truths about the past. Presentists should (but cannot) locate truth-makers for truths about the past. What can presentists say in response? We identify two rival factions ‘upstanding’ and ‘nefarious’ presentists. Upstanding presentists aim to meet the challenge, positing presently existing truth-makers for truths about the past; nefarious presentists aim to shirk their responsibilities, using the language of truth-maker theory but without paying any ontological price. We argue that presentists (...) should be nefarious presentists. (shrink)

Thisness Presentism outlines and defends a novel version of presentism, the view that only present entities exist and what is present really changes. Presentism is a view of time that captures a real and objective difference between what is past, present, and future, and which offers a model of reality that is dynamic and mutable, rather than static and immutable. The book advances a new defence of presentism by developing a novel ontology of thisness, combining insights about the nature of (...) essence, the metaphysics of propositions, and the relationship between true propositions and the elements of reality that make them true, alongside insights about time itself. It shows how, by accepting an ontology of thisness, presentists can respond to a number of pressing challenges to presentism, including claims that presentism cannot account for true propositions about the past, and that it is inconsistent with the reality of temporal passage and the openness of the future. This is one of the only book-length defences of presentism. It will be of interest to students and scholars working on the debate about presentism in the philosophy of time, as well as those interested in the metaphysics of propositions and truth-making, more generally. (shrink)

Presentism is the view that only present things exist. So understood, presentism is primarily an ontological doctrine; it’s a view about what exists, absolutely and unrestrictedly. The view is the subject of extensive discussion in the literature on time and change, with much of it focused on the problems that presentism allegedly faces. Thus, most of the literature that frames the development of presentism has grown up either in formulating objections to the view (e.g., Sider 2001: 11–52), or in response (...) to such objections (e.g., Bigelow 1996; Markosian 2004), with exceptions to this largely coming via the ways in which presentism is motivated. This entry mirrors the structure of that literature, for the most part. Here’s the plan for what follows. We begin with a more detailed sketch of presentism, unpacking its commitments and motivations. Then, we move to consider several concerns raised for presentists. We use these to illustrate the breadth and severity of the challenges that presentism faces, as well as the range of different versions of presentism developed to help meet these challenges. (shrink)

Presentists believe that only present things exist. But opponents insist this view has unacceptable implications: if only present things exist, we can’t express singular propositions about the past, since the obvious propositional constituents don’t exist, nor can we account for temporal passage, or the openness of the future. According to such opponents, and in spite of the apparent ‘common sense’ status of the view, presentism should be rejected on the basis of these unacceptable implications. In this paper, I present and (...) defend a version of presentism that avoids the unacceptable implications. The basic strategy I employ is familiar—I postulate presently existing entities to serve as surrogates for non-present entities—but some of the details of my proposal are more novel, and their application to these problems is certainly novel. One overarching thesis of this paper is that Thisness Presentism is preferable to other versions of presentism since it solves important problems facing standard iterations of the view. And I assume that this is a good positive reason in favour of the underlying thisness ontology. (shrink)

Recently, some have attempted to reformulate debates in first-order metaphysics, particularly in the metaphysics of time and modality, for reasons due to Williamson. In this paper, we focus on the ways in which the likes of Cameron, Correia and Rosenkranz, Deasy, Ingram, Tallant, Viebahn, inter alia, have initiated and responded to attempts to capture the core of presentism using a formal, logical machinery. We argue that such attempts are doomed to fail because there is no theoretical core to presentism. There (...) is no single view or family of views that is presentism. (shrink)

Presentists, who believe that only present objects exist, should accept a thisness ontology, since it can do considerable work in defence of presentism. In this paper, I propose a version of presentism that involves thisnesses of past and present entities and I argue this view solves important problems facing standard versions of presentism.

In this paper, we defend Lucretian Presentism. Although the view faces many objections and has proven unpopular with presentists, we rehabilitate Lucretianism and argue that none of the objections stick.

ABSTRACT Capitalism on Edge aims to redraw the terms of analysis of the so-called democratic capitalism and sketches a political agenda for emancipating society of its grip. This symposium reflects critically on Azmanova’s book and challenges her arguments on methodological, thematic, and substantive grounds. Azar Dakwar introduces the book’s claims and wonders about the nature of the anti-capitalistic agency Azmanova’s ascribes to the precariat. David Ingram worries about Azmanova’s deposing of “economic democracy” and the impact of which on the prospect (...) of radical change she advocates. William Callison casts doubt over the empirical plausibility of Azmanova’s vision of crisis-free transition out of democratic capitalism. Eilat Maoz interrogates Azmanova’s emancipatory project from the historical standpoint of (de)colonization and global imperialism. In her reply to these criticisms, Azmanova accepts some and parries others, while bringing their points closer to her anti-capitalist vision. (shrink)

Presentists face a familiar problem. If only present objects exist, then what 'makes true' our true claims about the past? According to Ross Cameron, the 'truth-makers' for past and future tensed propositions are presently instantiated Temporal Distributional Properties. We present an argument against Cameron's view. There are two ways that we might understand the term 'distribute' as it appears. On one reading, the resulting properties are not up to the task of playing the truth-maker role; on the other, the properties (...) are incompatible with presentism. (shrink)

Ross Cameron proposes to reconcile presentism and truth-maker theory by invoking temporal distributional properties, instantiated by present entities, as the truth-makers for truths about the past. This chapter argues that Cameron's proposal fails because objects can change which temporal distributional properties they instantiate and this entails that the truth-values of truths about the past can change in an objectionable way.

In his magnum opus, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, the distinguished philosopher Jurgen Habermas presented his ideas as a whole, providing the first major defense of his philosophy. David Ingram here summarizes the themes of Habermas's masterwork, placing them in the context of the philosopher's other work, relating them to poststructuralism, hermeneutics, and Neo-Aristotelianism, and surveying what other critics have said about Habermas. "Ingram's exposition of Habermas is impressive for its erudition and its faithful adherence to the major contours of Habermas's (...) work."—James Farganis, _Contemporary Sociology_ "A valuable contribution to the understanding of an important, but difficult, thinker."—_Ethics_ "The book is indispensable to an understanding of both Habermas and the contemporary human condition."—Scott Warren, _Social Science Quarterly _ "Ingram has done sociologists, philosophers, and political scientists a great service by demystifying Habermas's more recent theory of communicative action."—R. George Kirkpatrick, _American Journal of Sociology_ "Likely to be and to remain the leading study on Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action. What McCarthy did for Habermas's earlier writings, Ingram accomplishes for his more recent work."—Fred R. Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame. (shrink)

Truths depend upon what there is. So say many. A significant subset of that group say more; they say that the best way—perhaps the only way—to make sense of the claim that truth depends upon what there is, is to adopt a form of truth-maker theory. Truth-maker theorists claim that truths require ground; what’s true must depend upon what there is. Typically, truth-maker theory isn’t seen as a theory about the nature of truth. Rather, it’s seen as a theory about (...) what truths must do. Truths must depend. Relatedly, the claim that truths require ‘truth-makers’, that is, some putative ontological grounds, is used as a methodological tool in metaphysics. Put somewhat crudely, fix on what truths there are and locate the truth-makers—if necessary, add to your ontology until you satisfy this demand for truth-makers. Truth-making is thus at once both narrow and broad. It’s narrow insofar as it’s not a theory (it’s not a claim) about the nature of truth, and yet it’s broad insofar as it enables us to determine our ontological commitments. We take this to be a two-part orthodoxy about truth-making. We reject the orthodoxy on both counts. (shrink)

"This is a marvelous resource for anyone interested in better understanding the difficult and voluminous work of jurgen Habermas.

World Crisis and Underdevelopment examines the impact of poverty and other global crises in generating forms of structural coercion that cause agential and societal underdevelopment. It draws from discourse ethics and recognition theory in criticizing injustices and pathologies associated with underdevelopment. Its scope is comprehensive, encompassing discussions about development science, philosophical anthropology, global migration, global capitalism and economic markets, human rights, international legal institutions, democratic politics and legitimation, world religions and secularization, and moral philosophy in its many varieties.

Herbert Marcuse’s essay Repressive Tolerance (RP) has been praised by the Left and vilified by the Right for its alleged promotion of censorship targeting reactionary opinions and actions. I argue that this interpretation of the text is mistaken. According to my alternative reading of the text, RP should be understood as an exercise in provocation and irony aimed at defending civil disobedience and dissent. Marcuse’s defense of dissent, however, appeals to a critique of pure tolerance that exposes the unavoidably partisan (...) practice of tolerance, which invariably favors the reigning undemocratic status quo. The choice whether to tolerate in a manner that discriminates in favor of opinions and actions that are likely to advance the democratic conditions essential to a more just and epistemically sound exercise of toleration or to discriminate in favor of those that hinder them ---a distinction, as Marcuse sees it, that corresponds to the distinction between the Left and the Right---is dictated by reason itself, whose exercise depends on toleration. Because toleration must discriminate in the absence of full reason, its fallible exercise in favor of reason and democracy must proceed cautiously, not by suppressing voices on the Right so much as selectively encouraging those on the Left. I conclude that because this equation of impartial reason with a partisan view of society is unavoidable regardless of one’s political sympathies accusing Marcuse of being elitist and hypocritical is itself hypocritical. (shrink)

This chapter explores the contributions that the Frankfurt School of critical theory has made to philosophical discussions about the meaning and injustice of poverty. Critical theorists interpret poverty to mean more than material deprivation, and they see its injustice as 2 extending beyond wrongful suffering and the threat to a human right to life to encompass psychological impoverishment and dehumanization. The chapter begins by examining critical theory’s historical roots in the Marxist critique of capitalism. The next section discusses early efforts (...) by critical theorists to extend this critique to state-administered economies (capitalist and socialist) that have succeeded in sharply reducing absolute poverty at the cost of increasing relative poverty and domination. Later efforts by critical theorists focus on the social pathologies (or impoverishment of agency) caused by bureaucratic social welfare interventions aimed at controlling poverty and underdevelopment in developed capitalist societies. In North America, critical theorists expand this analysis to include intersectional categories of gender and racial oppression and emphasize the persistence of relative poverty within the Global North. The third section examines recent efforts by critical theorists to conceptualize global capitalism in its relationship to colonialism and as a crisis-ridden, impoverished form of life that portends unsustainable and uneven development. This is followed by an examination of one critical theory approach that has proven to be especially useful for illuminating the various forms of psychological harm attendant on capitalist poverty: recognition theory. The chapter concludes with a critical look at critical theory’s sociology of poverty as a theory of progressive enlightenment and emancipation. (shrink)

It is well known that Rawls and Habermas propose different strategies for justifying and classifying human rights. The author argues that neither approach satisfies what he regards as threshold conditions of determinacy, rank ordering, and completeness that any enforceable system of human rights must possess. A related concern is that neither develops an adequate account of group rights, which the author argues fulfills subsidiary conditions for realizing human rights under specific conditions. This latter defect is especially serious in light of (...) the different but equal roles that both subnational groups as well as supernational organizations play in bringing about a just global distribution of economic resources. (shrink)

The author shows that conceptions of rationality in current theories of science and law can account for neither the legitimacy of paradigm shifts nor the communitarian integrity internal to paradigms generally. He proposes an alternative conception of rationality that does.

This essay proposes recognition theory as a preferred approach to explaining poor women’s puzzling preference for patriarchal subordination even after they have accessed an ostensibly empowering asset: microfinance. Neither the standard account of adaptive preference offered by Martha Nussbaum nor the competing account of constrained rational choice offered by Harriet Baber satisfactorily explains an important variation of what Serene Khader, in discussing microfinance, dubs the self-subordination social recognition paradox. The variation in question involves women who, refusing to reject the combined (...) socio-economic benefits of patriarchal recognition and empowering microfinance, dissemble their subordination to men. In this situation, women experience a genuine form of divided consciousness which recognition theory frames as an identity crisis. Understanding the pathological nature of deceit as a way of life that blurs the boundaries between rational choice and rationalization, recognition theory shows how dissemblance itself is constrained by conflicting recognition orders in ways that prevent women who live such a life from successfully emancipating themselves. In this respect, recognition theory provides an important ---albeit, from the standpoint of recent feminist and intersectional research on identity and autonomy, inadequately qualified---norm of personal integrity and genuine agency requisite for conceptualizing adaptive preferences. (shrink)

A platonic theory of possibility states that truths about what’s possible are determined by facts about properties not being instantiated. Recently, Matthew Tugby has argued in favour of this sort of theory, arguing that adopting a platonic theory of possibility allows us to solve a paradox concerning alien properties: properties that might have been instantiated, but aren’t actually. In this paper, I raise a worry for Tugby’s proposal—that it commits us to negative facts playing an important truth-making role—and offer a (...) strategy to avoid the objectionable negativity. (shrink)

This paper assesses the effect of DNA barcoding—the use of informative genetic markers to identify and discriminate between species—on taxonomy. Throughout, we interpret this in terms of _varipraxis_, a concept we introduce to make sense of the treatment of biological variation by scientists and other practitioners. From its inception, DNA barcoding was criticised for being reductive, in attempting to replace multiple forms of taxonomic evidence with just one: DNA sequence variation in one or a few indicative genes. We show, though, (...) how DNA barcoding has not narrowed or reduced taxonomy in the way it was projected to. We examine the development and implementation of DNA barcoding across three kingdoms of life: animals, plants, and protists. Through this, we demonstrate that for DNA barcoding to work, the range of acceptable intra-specific variation needs to be demarcated from variation deemed to be characteristic of inter-specific differences. Consequently, biological processes responsible for particular patterns of variation need to be investigated and understood. This encourages an integrative disposition towards understanding and explaining the evolutionary processes affecting the rate and nature of change at the nucleotide level. We detail how the impact of DNA barcoding has manifested differently across the three kingdoms we examine, assessing this in terms of the ontological commitments that are held and instantiated in practice. Based on this evaluation, we consider the problem of studying multi-kingdom communities, and assess the consequences of our analysis for understanding classification and taxonomy. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the discourse theoretic account of human rights defended by Jürgen Habermas contains a fruitful tension that is obscured by its dominant tendency to identify rights with legal claims. This weakness in Habermas’s account becomes manifest when we examine how sweatshops diminish the secure enjoyment of subsistence, which Habermas himself (in recognition of the UDHR) recognizes as a human right. Discourse theories of human rights are unique in tying the legitimacy of human rights to democratic (...) deliberation and consensus. So construed, their specific meaning and force is the outcome of historical political struggle. However, unlike other legal rights, they possess universal moral validity. In this paper I argue that this tension between the legal and moral aspects of human rights can be resolved if and only if human rights are conceived as moral aspirations and not simply as legal claims. In particular, I shall argue that there are two reasons why human rights must be understood as moral aspirations that function non-juridically: First, the basic human goods to which human rights provide secure access are determinable only in relation to basic human capabilities that are progressively revealed in the course of an indefinite (fully inclusive and universal) process of collective learning; second, the institutional impediments to enjoying human rights are cultural in nature and cannot be remedied by means of legal coercion. (shrink)

Critical Theory and Philosophy illuminates one of the most complex and influential philosophical movements of this century. After tracking Critical Theory to its source in the works of Kant, Hegel, Marx, and Weber, David Ingram examines the four major figures of the Frankfurt School: Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, and Jurgen Habermas. The logical structure of this text guides both novice and veteran students through specific social and political concerns toward a gradual understanding of the philosophy of critical evaluation. (...) Includes chapters on: · The Philosophical Roots of Critical Theory · Freud and the Problem of Ideology · Weber and the Dialectic of Enlightenment · Marcuse and the New Politics of Liberation · Horkheimer and Habermas on Critical Methodology · Contemporary Trends in Social Philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter proposes a critical examination of ideological tendencies at work in two main democratic theories currently at play within the critical theory tradition: the deliberative theory advanced famously by Habermas and his acolytes, and the partisan theory advanced by Mouffe and others influenced by Gramsci and Schmitt. Explaining why these theories appeal to distinctive social groups on the Left, divided mainly by education and economic status, it argues that neither theory accounts for the possibility of a Left democratic, party-based (...) politics with broad appeal. Exhibiting tendencies that weaken party-based politics, each of these theories encourages populist forms of politics that obstruct democratic, emancipatory struggle. Their linkage being an essential condition for emancipatory struggle, I conclude that structural changes in capitalism, web-based communication, education, and working conditions offer limited opportunities to revitalize Left party politics with the popular support needed to reconnect working masses with party elites as both seek solutions to their precarity under global capitalism. (shrink)

It is well known that Rawls and Habermas propose different strategies for justifying and classifying human rights. The author argues that neither approach satisfies what he regards as threshold conditions of determinacy, rank ordering, and completeness that any enforceable system of human rights must possess. A related concern is that neither develops an adequate account of group rights, which the author argues fulfills subsidiary conditions for realizing human rights under specific conditions. This latter defect is especially serious in light of (...) the different but equal roles that both subnational groups as well as supernational organizations play in bringing about a just global distribution of economic resources. (shrink)

The article is a comprehensive comparison of Foucault and Habermas which focuses on their distinctive styles of critical theory. The article maintains that Foucault's virtue ethical understanding of aesthetic self-realization as a form of resistance to normalizing practices provides counterpoint to Habermas's more juridical approach to institutional justice and the critique of ideology. The article contains an extensive discussion of their respective treatments of speech action, both strategic and communicative, and concludes by addressing Foucault's understanding of parrhesia as a non-discursive (...) form of truth-telling. (shrink)

THE PAST DECADE has witnessed an extraordinary resurgence of interest in Kant's writings on aesthetics, politics, and history. On the Continent much of this interest has centered on the debate between modernism and postmodernism. Both sides of the debate are in agreement that Kant's differentiation of cognitive, practical, and aesthetic domains of rationality anticipated the fragmentation of modern society into competing if not, as Weber assumed, opposed lifestyles, activities, and value spheres, and that this has generated a crisis of judgment. (...) Tradition is deprived of its authority as a common reference point for deliberation; judgment appears to be all but submerged in the dark void of relativism. Yet, having both accepted Kant's differentiation of reason as emblematic of the pluralism of modern life, modernists and postmodernists remain divided in their response to its implications. Modernists--Habermas and Arendt too, I believe, can be classified under this rubric--attempt to circumvent the relativism of cultural fragmentation by appealing to a universal ideal of community. This solution recalls Kant's own grounding of judgments of taste in the notion of a sensus communis. By contrast, postmodernists such as Lyotard embrace relativism. Whereas the modernist emphasizes the capacity of rational agents to rise above the parochial limits of local community in aspiring toward an autonomous perspective, the postmodernist denies the possibility of impartiality altogether, thus binding judgment to the traditional constraints of practice. (shrink)

CLS advocates renew Marx's critique of liberalism by impugning the rationality of formal rights. Habermas and Dworkin argue against this view, while showing how liberal polity might permit reasonable conflicts between competing principles of right. Their models of legitimate legislation and adjudication, however, presuppose criteria of rationality whose appeal to truth ignores the manner in which law is--and sometimes ought to be--compromised. Hence a weaker version of the CLS critique may be applicable after all. I begin by discussing Weber's exclusion (...) of morality from law. After criticizing economic and functionalist legal theory I show that the inconsistencies CLS scholars find in liberal doctrine are exaggerated. I conclude with a discussion of Dworkin and Habermas. (shrink)

Rights, Democracy, and Fulfillment in the Era of Identity Politics develops a critical theory of human rights and global democracy. Ingram both develops a theory of rights and applies it to a range of concrete and timely issues, such as the persistence of racism in contemporary American society; the emergence of so-called 'whiteness theory;' the failure of identity politics; the tensions between emphases on antidiscrimination and affirmative action in the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990; the great unresolved issues of (...) workplace democracy; and the dilemmas of immigration policy for the U.S. and Europe. (shrink)

_The Political_ is a collection of readings by the most important political philosophers representing the six major schools of Continental philosophy: Phenomenology, Existentialism, Critical Theory, Poststructuralism, Postmodernism, and Postcolonialism.

I argue that the exception must be a legitimate possibility within law as a revolutionary project, in much the same way that civil disobedience is. In this sense, the exception is not outside law if by "law" we mean not positive law as defined by extant legal documents (statutes, legislative committee reports, written judgments, etc.) but law as a living tradition consisting of both abstract norms and a concrete historical understanding of them. So construed, the exception is what can be (...) exemplary - a law unto itself that best interprets and creatively extends (and transcends) the law that already exists, in order to make it inclusive of the other. In the final analysis, immigration law forces us to consider both the concrete individuality and abstract humanity of refugees, asylum seekers and other homeless persons who have been displaced by global economic underdevelopment. When combined with the "statelessness" of desperate classes of immigrants, this fact about immigration law reveals a revolutionary possibility for future development and perfection leading to its own transcendence: from an inhospitable immigration law that is administered exclusively by the nation state to a cosmopolitan law of universal citizenship under the auspices of a global human rights regime. (shrink)

Blumenberg's rejection of Karl Lowith's secularization thesis, as presented in Lowith's The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, and Blumenberg's defense of an alternative theory of functional reoccupations raises questions about the kind of progress he finds operant in historiography and historical understanding. These questions are best addressed within the framework of his recent Work on Myth, which defines the legitimacy of an age or myth in terms of progressive adaptability rather than autonomy. Neither this work nor the study on legitimacy, (...) however, succeeds in establishing a transcendental warrant for the historiographic deployment of categories of progress and novelty. Blumenberg would have us believe that historical understanding and action are functionally legitimated by defacto institutions, be they traditional authorities or rationally adaptive "instrumental" mechanisms, whose own normative, teleological legitimacy remains largely unquestioned. The rational subject of self-legislation who was originally constituted as an autonomous member of a community of ends has been replaced in his philosophy of history by an irrational subject of selfassertion, who can only be functionalized for the "arbitrarily chosen ends" of the system. (shrink)

This collection of ten essays offers the first systematic assessment of The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Jurgen Habermas's masterful defense of the rational potential of the modern age. An opening essay by Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves orients the debate between Habermas and the postmodernists by identifying two different senses of responsibility. Habermas's own essay discusses the themes of his book in the context of a critical engagement with neoconservative cultural and political trends. The main body of essays is divided into two (...) sections-Critical Rejoinders and Thematic Reformulations. These essays offer an important set of perspectives on Habermas's position by philosophers, social scientists, intellectual historians, and literary critics.(publisher, edited). (shrink)

Presentists, who believe that only present entities exist, face a problem of how to analyse tensed plural quantification. The idea, in broad outline, is that presentists can't employ the usual method for analysing tensed singular quantification, using primitive ‘slice’ tense operators, to analyse plurals. One option is to introduce a new theoretical primitive: a ‘span’‐operator. But there are reasons to worry about this option. For one, we might agree with Lewis that span‐operators are ill‐behaved or introduce unpalatable complexity. For another, (...) we might wish to avoid any additional theoretical primitives, regardless of whether spans can earn their keep alongside slices. In this paper, we offer a strategy for presentists to address the problem that requires only slice‐operators. Presentists who wish to avoid span‐operators, for whatever reason, should find our proposal attractive. (shrink)

It is well known that Hans Kelsen and Jürgen Habermas invoke realist arguments drawn from social science in defending an international, democratic human rights regime against Carl Schmitt’s attack on the rule of law. However, despite embracing the realist spirit of Kelsen’s legal positivism, Habermas criticizes Kelsen for neglecting to connect the rule of law with a concept of procedural justice (Part I). I argue, to the contrary (Part II), that Kelsen does connect these terms, albeit in a manner that (...) may be best described as functional, rather than conceptual. Indeed, whereas Habermas tends to emphasize a conceptual connection between law and morality, and has even been tempted by natural law arguments in developing his theory of jurisprudence (see Part IV), Kelsen is more receptive to arguments drawn from legal and political realism. Yet Habermas is hardly oblivious to these arguments, as can be seen from his recent acknowledgment that human rights that secure subsistence and development depend on ‘global domestic policy’ for their full enjoyment. This acknowledgment, I submit, brings Habermas’ legal philosophy closer to Kelsen’s monistic view that a supranational human rights regime must regulate political as well as purely legal matters (Part III). Given this stronger analogy between domestic and global institutions of governance, I argue (Part IV) that a global human rights regime must also incorporate features of constitutional review. Conceding this point, however, raises further questions about the insulation of international law from so-called extra-legal (political) influences. I conclude that not only do multicultural differences in understanding human rights (conflicts between legal paradigms) generate political problems for international courts but so do competing subsystems of international law. (shrink)

Kelsen’s critique of absolute sovereignty famously appeals to a basic norm of international recognition. However, in his discussion of legal obligation, generally speaking, he notoriously rejects mutual recognition as having any normative consequence. I argue that this apparent contradiction in Kelsen's estimate regarding the normative force of recognition is resolved in his dynamic account of the democratic generation of law. Democracy is embedded within a modern political ethos that obligates legal subjects to recognize each other along four dimensions: as contractors (...) whose mutually beneficial cooperation measures esteem by fair standards of contribution; as autonomous agents endowed with equal rights; as friends who altruistically care for each others’ welfare, and as fallible agents of diverse experiences and worldviews. (shrink)

Habermas claims that an inclusive public sphere is the only deliberative forum for generating public opinion that satisfies the epistemic and normative conditions underlying legitimate decision-making. He adds that digital technologies and other mass media need not undermine – but can extend – rational deliberation when properly instituted. This paper draws from social epistemology and technology studies to demonstrate the epistemic and normative limitations of this extension. We argue that current online communication structures fall short of satisfying the required epistemic (...) and normative conditions. Furthermore, the extent to which Internet-based communications contribute to legitimate democratic opinion and will formation depends on the design of the technologies in question. (shrink)

Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

Thanks to Axel Honneth, recognition theory has become a prominent fixture of critical social theory. In recent years, he has deployed his recognition theory in diagnosing pathologies and injustices that afflict institutional practices. Some of these institutional practices revolve around specifically juridical institutions, such as human rights and democratic citizenship, that directly impact the lives of the most desperate migrants. Hence it is worthwhile asking what recognition theory can add to a critical theory of migration. In this paper, I argue (...) that, although its contribution to a critical theory of migration is limited, it nonetheless carves out a unique body of ethical insights related to diagnosing the interpretative and epistemic pathologies and injustices associated with the legal processing of migrants’ claims for asylum. Going beyond discourse ethics, which mainly highlights procedural violations of legislative and judicial deliberation, it trains our gaze on the institutional biases that lead migrants to be misrecognized or under-recognized as credible witnesses to their own refugee status. (shrink)