This paper investigates whether and to what extent Giorgio Agamben's political theory offers theoretical resources to reflect on the issue of the emancipation of women in contemporary capitalist democracies. My goal is to investigate whether the Estate of Exception theory helps us to think about gender subjugation, which causes the constraint of women's participation in public life, their economic marginalization and cultural domination. I intend to suggest that this theory is internally blocked to deal with the gender issue, which is (...) mainly due to its diagnosis of contemporary democracies based on an excessive focus on government machinery and dominant institutions and the related negligence of civil society, its specific demands, its struggles and effective achievements. I also intend to question if this diagnosis would suggest that women's achievements, since the end of the nineteenth century, are illusory or not significant. (shrink)

Feminist theory needs both explanatory-diagnostic and anticipatory-utopian moments in order to be truly critical and truly feminist. However, the explanatory-diagnostic task of analyzing the workings of gendered power relations in all of their depth and complexity seems to undercut the very possibility of emancipation on which the anticipatory-utopian task relies. In this paper, I take this looming paradox as an invitation to rethink our understanding of emancipation and its relation to the anticipatory-utopian dimensions of critique, asking what conception of emancipation (...) is compatible with a complex explanatory-diagnostic analysis of contemporary gender domination as it is intertwined and entangled with race, class, sexuality, and empire. I explore this question through an analysis of two specific debates in which the paradoxical relationship between power and emancipation emerges in particularly salient and seemingly intractable forms: debates over subjection and modernity. Drawing on the work of Michel Foucault, I argue that a negativistic conception of emancipation offers the best way for feminist critical theory to transform the paradox of power and emancipation into a productive tension that can fuel critique. (shrink)

This paper provides a new analysis and critique of Rawlsian public reason’s handling of the abortion question. It is often claimed that public reason is indeterminate on abortion, because it cannot say enough about prenatal moral status, or give content to the (allegedly) political value which Rawls calls ‘respect for human life’. I argue that public reason requires much greater argumentative restraint from citizens debating abortion than critics have acknowledged. Beyond the preliminary observation that fetuses do not meet the criteria (...) of political personhood, I contend, public reasoners may say nothing about prenatal moral status. Indeed, respect for human life (as distinct from respect for persons) is not, I show, a genuine political value, whose interpretation lies within public reason’s remit. This fact does not, however, prevent deliberators from drawing determinate conclusions regarding the law of abortion. Instead, I show, public reason has radically permissive implications for the legal regulation of feticide, inclining heavily towards the view that abortion should be allowed with little or no qualification, right until birth. I end by giving grounds for thinking that, even if the argumentative restraint which public reason enjoins over prenatal moral status does not generate indeterminacy, it is nonetheless objectionable. (shrink)

Democracy and human rights have long been strongly connected in international covenants. In documents such as 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, democracy is justified both intrinsically in terms of popular sovereignty and instrumentally as the best way to “foster the full realization of all human rights.” Yet, even though they are human and thus universal rights, political rights are often surprisingly specific. In the Covenant, for example, “the (...) right to take part in the conduct of public affairs” is equated with “the right to vote and to be elected.” More often then not, their realization is left to states and their constitutions, as for example in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights. Political rights have a “peculiar” status among enumerated human rights, and this difficulty has to do with deep assumptions about the nature and scope of democracy and political community that remain unexamined by the drafters of these important declarations. (shrink)

On Conditions of Participation: The Deficits of Public Reason The paper analyzes the conditions of civic participation that are elucidated by criticism of the deficits of public reason. The interpretation proceeds in three steps. First, the idea of public reason and discourse is analyzed, followed by an explanation of democratic deficit and of the social deficit in the second and third steps, respectively. These deficits are analyzed as an essential limit to political and social conditions of the participation of citizens. (...) The analysis focuses thereby on the theory of public reason by one of the most influential political philosophers of the last decades, John Rawls. The paper identifies two main pitfalls in his theory: first, the deficit following from an inadequate integration of an individual into society, which, in this case, represents democratic deficit, second, the deficit linked with underrating the socio-distributive dimension of justice, which means a social deficit. (shrink)

This article deals with the empirical example of how social subjects, in this case women, have appropriated the language of rights in order to demand social inclusion. Since there are many different points of view in feminist theory with regard to how to deal with the idea of women’s rights, this article is divided into three sections. In the first section, I focus on how some important normative contents about democracy and rights have already been accepted by many different theorists (...) who speak from critical perspectives. In the second section, I deal with how women’s struggles have gained consensus about the importance of defending the idea of rights for their own struggles to overcome their exclusion. In the third and last section, I turn back to the theoretical efforts by leading feminists, in order to show how these struggles from women all over the world can be thematized in our global scenario. (shrink)

Contemporary moral philosophy has different approaches to provide justice and equality to groups that are traditionally discriminated on the grounds of gender, religion, age, sexual orientation, etc. On the other hand, functionally diverse (disabled) people have had a parallel approach to their discrimination, excluded from mainstream diversities. Including functional diversity and the diversity model in modern recognition and redistribution theories, as another human diversity, provides an extended ethical approach: diversity ethics. This general framework also includes other fundamental ideas for equality (...) such as human fragility, social domination logics, self-respect and auto-recognition. Diversity ethics provides sound foundations to defend justice and equality for all human diversities and an alternative to other approaches that broaden the moral community, excluding some humans, like Peter Singer’s ethics. (shrink)

In South Africa, the notion of an African Philosophy of Education emerged with the advent of post-apartheid education and the call for an educational philosophy that would reflect this renewal, a focus on Africa and its cultures, identities and values, and the new imperatives for education in a postcolonial and post-apartheid era. The idea of an African Philosophy of Education has been much debated in South Africa. Not only its content and purpose but also its very possibility have been, and (...) continue to be, the subject of understandably passionate exchanges. In this paper, after discussing some of the constitutive features of African Philosophy of Education, we indicate aspects with which we are sympathetic. Our central question is whether African Philosophy of Education is the revisioned, ‘typically African’ philosophy of education that it is claimed to be. We argue that it has revealed certain tendencies that are remarkably similar to characteristics of Fundamental Pedagogics, the repressive doctrine complicit in apartheid education that it claims to replace. More substantially still, African Philosophy of Education, by labeling itself uniquely and distinctly ‘African’, runs the risk of insulating itself not only from interaction with the wider world but also from any critical interrogation. (shrink)

How should patriotism be handled in schools? We argue that schools cannot afford to ignore the topic, but nor are they justified in either promoting or discouraging patriotic feeling in students. The only defensible policy is for schools to adopt a stance of neutrality and teach the topic as a controversial issue. We go on to show that there is general support among British teachers and students for school neutrality on patriotism and that the currently preferred classroom practice is to (...) address patriotic ideas in the context of open discussion. We conclude with some discussion of the extensive and often hostile coverage of our research in the British press. (shrink)

In a recent article, Iris Marion Young raises several challenges to deliberative democracy on behalf of political activists. In this paper, the author defends a version of deliberative democracy against the activist challenges raised by Young and devises challenges to activism on behalf of the deliberative democrat. Key Words: activism • deliberative democracy • Discourse • Ideology • public sphere • I. M. Young.

Freedom of religious expression is to many a fundamental element of their identity. Yet the jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights on the Islamic headscarf issue does not refer to autonomy and identity rights of the individual women claimants. The case law focuses on Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides a legal human right to freedom of religious expression. The way that provision is interpreted is critically contrasted here with the right to personal (...) autonomy and identity now developed by that court in interpreting Article 8 which contains a right to respect one’s private life. (shrink)

An education for cultural coherence tends to the child’s well-being through identity construction and maintenance. Critics charge that this sort of education will not bode well for the future autonomy of children. I will argue that culturally coherent education, provided there is no coercion, can lend itself to eventual autonomy and may assist minority children in countering the negative stereotypes and discrimination they face in the larger society. Further, I will argue that few individuals actually possess an entirely coherent identity; (...) rather, most of us possess hybrid identities that lend themselves to multiple, not necessarily conflicting allegiances. (shrink)

This paper considers the legislative debates in Australia that led to the passage of the Research Involving Human Embryos Act (Cth 2002) and the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act (Cth 2002). In the first part of the paper, we discuss the debate surrounding the legislation with particular emphasis on the ways in which demands for public consultation, public debate and the education of Australians about the potential ethical and scientific impact of human embryonic stem cells (hESC) research were deployed, and (...) the explicit and implicit framing of the scope of public consultation. We then ask whether, given the calls for public consultations, debate and understanding, current work in democratic theory could be helpful in analysing the process of policy-making in these areas. In particular, we canvass the literature relating to aggregative and deliberative models of democracy for processes that support the legitimacy of policy. We identify features of the debate that reflect the appeal of deliberative approaches as well as some of the possible hurdles or limitations to developing deliberative democratic approaches to policy in ethically contentious areas. (shrink)

Contemporary political theory (CPT) has approached questions of plurality and diversity by drawing rather implicitly on anthropological accounts of difference. This was the case with the ‘cultural turn’, which significantly shaped theories of multiculturalism. Similarly, the current ‘ontological turn’ is gaining influence and leaving a marked impact on CPT. I examine the recent turn and assess both the possibilities it offers and the challenges it poses for decentering CPT and opening radical, decolonial avenues for thinking difference otherwise. I take Paul (...) Nadasdy's critique of the ontological turn as an invitation to reflect on the methodological precepts that inform how the field frames the scope and limits of comparison. In pursuit of this, I examine the Zapatistas’ notion of a ‘world of many worlds’, which provides a way of approaching difference that captures the generative aspects of the ontological turn while avoiding the pitfalls of relativism and political inertia. I argue that the Zapatistas’ insights offer ethical guidance towards social and ecological thriving. Ultimately, my goal is to move CPT towards a more capacious form of making sense of what is out there in the world, and thus make room for better ways of inhabiting the Earth. (shrink)

Narratives of street life from British Bangladeshi Muslim mothers, collected in the aftermath of the suicide bombings in London in 2005, are the focus of this article. The author examines how temporal schemas that combine the unpredictable time of racist events with a rendering of a foreseeable linear temporality of racism and of intergenerational identifications in the future provide the women with a means of living with ontological insecurity and threat. Although this reproduction of linear time can appear to exclude (...) the singularity of unknown futures, with regard to the demands of multicultural living, understanding of time can be more open and undecided. The author locates an ethicality to the mothers’ deliberations in how to live in situations marked by racism and multiculturalism in both their negotiation of temporal registers and in the sharing and interrogation of perspectives and strategies with others. Particular attention is given to the ambivalent use of temporality as an instrument of narrative agency. The discussion also considers how the methodological apparatus of the focus group is engaged with matters of intimate citizenship, conveying and participating in the production of the research problem. (shrink)

Several authors have discussed and defended what is sometimes called the Asymmetry Thesis in social epistemology: that while reliance on testimony is essentially incontrovertible in epistemology, it is uniquely problematic for moral knowledge. This conclusion results, I argue, from considering the wrong sort of moral testimony: namely, ‘third-personal’ rather than ‘first-personal’ testimony. First-personal moral testimony is an inescapable part of the constitution of legitimate moral norms, and its role cannot be deflated as a form of mere information to be taken (...) up in private deliberation. The consequences of this argument for forms of hypothetical contractualism, in particular, are profound. (shrink)

The current debate over the hijab is often understood through the lens of a ‘clash of civilizations’ between a tolerant ‘secular’ ‘West’ and a chauvinist ‘religious’ ‘East’. The article argues that this polarization is the result of a specific secular semiotic understanding of religion and religious practices which is nowadays embedded in western law. In my analysis, secular’s normative assumptions, played around the control of women’s bodies and the definition of religious symbols in the public sphere, work as a marker (...) of ‘citizenship’ and ‘racialized religious belonging’. Through women’s bodies, western/secular law creates a link between gender, religion, ethnicity and belonging which forms a specific law and religious subject. Thus, secularism emerges not as the separation between private and public, state and religion, but as the reconfiguration of religious practices and sensitivities in the public secular space through the control of the visible. (shrink)

This paper makes two essential claims about the nature of shame and shame punishment. I argue that, if we properly understand the nature of shame, that it is sometimes justifiable to shame others in the context of a pluralistic multicultural society. I begin by assessing the accounts of shame provided by Cheshire Calhoun (2004) and Julien Deonna, Raffaele Rodogno, & Fabrice Teroni (2012). I argue that both views have problems. I defend a theory of shame and embarrassment that connects both (...) emotions to “whole-self” properties. Shame and embarrassment, I claim, are products of the same underlying emotion. I distinguish between moralized and nonmoralized shame in order to show when, and how, moral and non-moral shame may be justly deployed. Shame is appropriate, I argue, if and only if it targets malleable moral or non-moral normative imperfections of a person’s ‘whole-self.’ Shame is unjustifiable when it targets durable aspects of a person’s “whole-self.” I conclude by distinguishing shame punishments from guilt punishments and show that my account can explain why it is wrong to shame individuals on account of their race, sex, gender, or body while permitting us to sometimes levy shame and shame punishment against others, even those otherwise immune to moral reasons. (shrink)

The predominant influences on health are social or upstream factors. Poverty, inadequate education, insecure and toxic environments, and inferior opportunities for jobs and positions are inequitable disadvantages that adversely affect health across the globe. Many causal pathways are yet to be understood. However, elimination of these social inequalities is a moral imperative of the first order. Some physicians by word and deed argue that medical doctors should oppose the “structural violence” of social inequalities that greatly shorten lives and wreak so (...) much suffering. (shrink)

O debate entre Habermas e Rawls representa uma contribuição fundamental para a compreensão das questões sobre reconhecimento, multiculturalismo e pós-secularismo, introduzindo diferentes concepções filosóficas que podem contribuir sobre a temática acerca do uso público da razão, a fim de elucidar as diferentes percepções teóricas capazes de atender aos desafios propostos pelas sociedades pluralistas. Carlos Santiago Nino, por sua vez, estabeleceu uma estratégia teórica denominada “construtivismo epistemológico”, delineada a partir do debate Habermas-Rawls. Por conseguinte, pretendemos articular os fundamentos filosóficos atinentes à (...) concepção de razão pública delineada por Rawls e Habermas e ao construtivismo epistemológico de Carlos Santiago Nino com a análise da legitimidade democrática do STF na resolução de uma questão moral controvertida que é objeto de um desacordo moral razoável: o aborto de fetos anencéfalos.The Habermas - Rawls debate represents a fundamental contribution to understanding the issues about recognition, multiculturalism and post-secularism by introducing different philosophical views that can contribute about the issue of the public use of reason in order to elucidate the different theoretical insights that can meet the challenges of pluralistic societies. Carlos Santiago Nino, in turn, established a strategy called “epistemological constructivism” outlined from Rawls-Habermas debate. Therefore, we intend to articulate the philosophical foundations relating to the Rawls’s and Habermas’s conceptions of public reason and Carlos Santiago Nino’s epistemological constructivism with the analysis of democratic legitimacy of the Supreme Court to resolve a moral issue that is of a reasonable moral disagreement : the abortion of anencephalic fetuses. (shrink)

The aim of this article is twofold: first, to identify and address three central divisions in the field of authentic education that introduce ambiguity and at times inconsistencies within the field of authentic education. These divisions concern a) the relationship between autonomy and authenticity; b) the division between the two basic attitudes towards ‘care’ in the authenticity literature, and; c) the well-worn division between objective and subjective realms of knowledge and identity construction. Addressing these divisions through Charles Taylor's distinction between (...) active and passive aspects of authenticity, I believe, will lead to a better understanding of the main issues involved in conceptualising and applying authenticity-based education. Second, to present what I call The Postconventional Authentic Relation-to-Self as a basis for overcoming and reconciling the above divisions. I shall conclude by providing some examples of the way the perspective envisioned by PARTS can be applied to educational practices. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn Democratic Reason, Hélène Landemore argues that deliberation and the aggregation of citizens' dispersed knowledge should tend to produce better consequences than rule by the one or the few. However, she pays insufficient attention to the epistemic processes necessary to realize these democratic goods. In particular, she fails to consider the question of where citizens' beliefs and ideas come from, with the result that the democratic decision mechanisms she focuses on are insufficiently powerful to justify her consequentialist defense of mass (...) decision making. If “the few” are technocratic experts, Landemore supplies little reason to resist their rule on epistemic grounds, for she does not secure a knowledge base for the citizens that might compete with the knowledge that is often attributed to such “experts.” Aggregating and deliberating about poor information is no substitute for good information. Her book can therefore be seen as a call for a new phase of epistemic political theory that compares the real-world knowledgeability of ordinary citizens and putative experts, but it does not convincingly deliver on its goal to demonstrate the epistemic superiority of the former. (shrink)

Attitudes to questions of whether physician-assisted dying should be legalised in the UK, reflect one of the greatest challenges to moral stance in health care for both individuals and professional bodies, not least as indicated by public opinion. However, public opinion is a seductively deceptive notion, seemingly readily identifiable but in practice multifarious. At best, consensus regarding public opinion and assisted dying is illusory, sometimes transient and what is relevant in this matter is a comprehension of both majority (popular) opinion (...) and vocal dissent, but which do not them selves have a simple relationship with Parliamentary attitudes and legislation. Arguably, an increasingly important consideration to take account of is the influence of increasing population diversity. (shrink)

Proportionality is one of the most important adjudicatory tools, in human rights decision-making, primarily employed to balance rights and interests. Despite this there is very little feminist analysis of its use by the courts. This article discusses the doctrine of proportionality and considers its amenability to feminist legal methods. It relies on theories of deliberative democracy to argue that the proportionality test can be applied in a manner that facilitates a more “interactive universalism”, allows for greater participation in decision-making and (...) enables the courts to be more attentive to the disadvantaged. The commonalities between proportionality and feminist theory are examined, and its contribution to developing and reconstituting a more relational and contextual concept of rights is explored. (shrink)

What moral commitments do we manifest when we make claims upon one another? The practice of claiming is inescapable, and so any normative presuppositions of that practice are similarly inescapable (at least on pain of self-contradiction). This inquiry thus promises an Archimedian point from which to address intractable moral disagreements in modern society. Whatever we happen to differ about, we can be shown to agree about these premises, and therefore to share commitment to whatever can be derived from these premises. (...) The most prominent developer of this approach is Jürgen Habermas, who has sought to ground, inter alia, religious and cultural rights on this basis. I will argue that the strategy cannot resolve disagreement in the way Habermas hopes, and that this has been shown, perhaps inadvertently, by Stephen Darwall, who for very different reasons seeks to work out the premises of the practice of claiming (and who never discusses Habermas). Darwall has no apparent interest in finding a universally convincing basis for resolving moral controversies. He seeks to address, not the practical problems of a pluralistic society, but some specialized, albeit important, questions of metaethics, having to do with what kind of entity a moral claim is . Both Habermas and Darwall think that discourse presupposes a kind of respect among persons. Darwall, however, shows that respect is too fluid, and takes too many possible forms, to ground any but the most trivial specific moral claims. (shrink)

Women’s bodies, states Benhabib (Dignity in adversity: human rights in troubled times, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011: 168), have become the site of symbolic confrontations between a re-essentialized understanding of religious and cultural differences and the forces of state power, whether in their civic-republican, liberal-democratic or multicultural form. One of the main reasons for the emergence of these confrontations or public debates, says Benhabib (2011: 169), is because of the actual location of ‘political theology’. She asserts that within the context (...) of globalization, the concept of ‘political theology’ is complicated by its unstable location between religion and the public square; between the private and official; and between individual rights to freedom of religion versus state security and public well-being. Ultimately, therefore, the nature of the tension between religion as a political theology and the forces of state power can at best be described as a clash between identities of a collective nature (as envisaged by the nation-state) and identities of an individual nature (as manifested in different religions and cultures). Ongoing attempts to counter the ascendancy of religion, and as will be discussed in this article, specifically the ascendancy and visibility of Islamic identity as practiced by Muslim women, has brought into serious debate the notion of a (post) secular society and its implications for religious rights. What emerges from the state’s insistence that individuals not be allowed to enter the public discourse as religious beings, are, on the one hand, the constraints imposed on Muslim women by liberal democracies, and on the other hand, that Islam, as represented by Muslim women, is not constitutive of democratic citizenship. Will the inclusion and recognition of Muslim women, therefore, necessarily augment a democratic citizenship agenda, and will it lead to an alleviation of the conflict? Then, in exploring a re-articulation of an inclusive citizenship—one which is held accountable by its minimization of social inequality—what ought to be the parameters of inclusion and how should it unfold differently to what is already happening in liberal democracies? (shrink)

In recent decades, group autonomy approaches to have gained kgitimacy within both academic and policy circles. This article examines the centrality of group autonomy in the multiculturalism debate, particuhrly in the highly influential approach of Will Kymlicka. I argue that his response to the dilemmas of liberd-democratic multiculturalism relies on an underdeveloped conceptualization of group autonomy. Despite presumably good intentions, his narrow notion of cultural group autonomy obscures the requirements of minority group members' democratic capabilities and thereby works against the (...) kind of transformative change that "accommodated" groups are seeking from the state. Although some critics (Young 1990; Benhabh 2002) have gone so far as to reject autonomy-based approaches to accommodation altogether (Young 1990,251) I suggest that this position goes too far. In response, I offer an intermediary position between those that defend and those that reject an autonomy-based approach. Instead of fully rejecting autonomy as a guiàng principle for multiculturalism, I devebp an ethics of care approach to group autonomy based on relationality, which addresses the inadequacies of the dominant approach to multiculturalism. Such an account of group autonomy is a vital step toward recondling multiculturalism with the necessary components of Uberd-democratic citizenship. (shrink)

This article explores issues associated with schooling and political justice. Such issues are understood in light of the contention surrounding howWestern schooling contexts might best represent marginalised groups—in ways that accord them a political voice. The significance of group identity politics is explored drawing on international debates associated with ethnically segregated schooling. A postcolonial theorising of group identity highlights the ways in which segregated schooling can both support and undermine politically just representation for marginalised students. This theorising draws attention to (...) the problematic notion of voice in linking representation to identity in reductionist ways. The arguments presented point to the significance of people and their politics, rather than their membership to a particular identity group, in pursuing equity for marginalised groups. The article argues the imperative of understanding group identity as an aspect of negotiated social practice that can be drawn on in strategic and critical ways to address matters of political injustice. (shrink)

A serious problem confronting discourses on recognition is that of showing equal respect for citizens’ diverse cultural identities whilst at the same time attending to feminist concerns. This article focuses on the complex issues emerging from the recent legislation prohibiting the Muslim veil in French state schools. I respond to these problems by defending two conditions of a postcolonial and feminist approach to the politics of recognition. This approach should be, first, transformative, in the sense of widening its conception of (...) core values through an engagement with cultural difference. Second, it should be critical in its orientation to practices affecting women adversely within any social group. An integration of these concerns is proposed in terms of ‘affective citizenship’. This approach supports the different components of women’s autonomous functioning, through a universalistic commitment to the creative expression of their hybrid identities. (shrink)

This article focuses on public debates and public policy on the Islamic headscarf in the Netherlands and Germany. In the Netherlands the Islamic headscarf meets with an accommodating policy reaction, while in Germany some eight federal states have introduced legislation to ban the headscarf. This difference is explained, so I argue, by national differences in citizenship traditions. While the Netherlands represents a multicultural model, Germany used to be the paradigmatic example of an ethno‐cultural model of citizenship. Yet, the reaction of (...) the German left to the headscarf, while often non‐accommodating, is very differently inspired by German history than that of the right. A commonality is that in both countries the issue is framed as a conflict between public neutrality and religious freedom, not gender equality. An effect of the focus in the debate on neutrality is that it obscures the agency of Islamic women and the gender dynamics in Islamic communities. (shrink)

Raphael Cohen-Almagor’s Just, Reasonable Multiculturalism offers a different way of approaching multiculturalism from the systematic theoretical treatments that anchor the literature. While strongly committed to liberal democratic values, it presents not so much a theory or moral argument justifying minority or majority cultural rights as a set of values and principles for adjudicating controversial cases and oft-heard arguments against multicultural accommodation. After noting distinctive features of the approach, I discuss three areas of tension in the analysis. First, between its appeals (...) to Rawlsian justice and state neutrality and its support of state multiculturalism. Second, between its stated theoretical principles and its adjudication of some cases. Third, regarding how we think about a state’s entanglement with culture and, specifically, whether that should be in terms of an incomplete liberal neutrality, liberal perfectionism, or liberal nationalism. I suggest that as helpful as Cohen-Almagor’s liberal-democratic guidelines are, there remain some contextual factors which are no less important in justly responding to the pointy end of multiculturalism. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Volume 48, Issue 9, Page 1226-1246, November 2022. In this study, we claim that political liberalism, despite harsh criticism, is still the best option available for providing a just and stable society. However, we maintain that political liberalism needs to be revised so as to be justifiable from the perspective of not only the “reasonable” in a Rawlsian sense but also the ones whom Rawls labels as “unreasonable.” To support our claim, going beyond Rawls’s original account, (...) we unpack the concept of unreasonableness and identify three different subsets that we label as the “partially reasonable,” the “non-reasonable,” and the “unreasonable.” We argue that both the “fully” reasonable and the “partially reasonable” would be included into the constituency of public justification; more specifically, we claim that the latter would support liberal institutions out of their reasons: we define these reasons as mutually intelligible reasons and claim that they allow to acknowledge the importance of a convergence approach to public justification. As for the “non-reasonable” and “unreasonable,” we claim that they cannot be included in the constituency of public justification, but they nonetheless could be compliant with liberal institutions if political liberalism offers them some reasons to comply: here, we claim that political liberalism should include them through engagement and propose reasoning from conjecture as an effecting way of offering reasons for compliance. In particular, we claim that through reasoning from conjecture, the “non-reasonable” could find conciliatory reasons to comply with liberal institutions on a stable base. With regard to the “unreasonable” in the strict sense, we claim that through reasoning from conjecture, their unreasonableness could be contained and they could find reasons—even if just self-interested—for complying with liberal institutions rather than defying them. In our discussion, we consider the different subsets not as “frozen” but as dynamic and open to change, and we aim to propose a more complex and multilayered approach to inclusion that would be able to include a wider set of people. To strengthen our argument, we show that the need for a wider public justification and for broader inclusion in liberal societies is grounded in respect for persons both as equal persons and as particular individuals. In particular, we claim that individuals’ values, ends, commitments, and affiliations activate demands of respect and can strengthen the commitment to the liberal–democratic order. Through a reformulation of the role of respect in liberal societies, we also show a kind of social and communitarian dimension that, we claim, is fully compatible with political liberalism and opens it up to “civic friendship” and “social solidarity,” which are constitutive elements for the development of a sense of justice and for the realization of a just and stable society. (shrink)

New technologies provide new forums for the expression and challenging of racism. This article explores the potential of an interactive blog about asylum-seekers to serve as part of the Habermasian ‘public sphere’, facilitating debate between those with opposing views. We offer evidence that pro- and anti-asylum seeker arguments made in blogs construct a binary between those in favour and those against. Arguments are collectively constructed producing relatively coherent discourses, despite being articulated by different individuals. We then explore the ways in (...) which pro-asylum seeker postings utilize strategies which social scientists have identified as effective in challenging racism. As such, the blog is a site where what has come to be called ‘bystander anti-racism’ is being practised, producing a counter-hegemonic discourse. Our evidence suggests that despite arguments to the contrary, blogs are potentially useful sites for the development of communicative consciousness in relation to race issues, particularly the challenging of racism. (shrink)

Liberal approaches to multiculturalism and cultural nationalism have met with severe criticism in recent years. This article makes the case for an alternative, Aristotelian approach developed in the work of the ‘founding father’ of culture, J. G. Herder. According to Herder, culture is worthy of political recognition because it contributes to the realization of our common but contradictory human telos. Only a plurality of cultures, each realizing a unique balance of our contradictory needs, can bring wholeness to our common nature. (...) In conclusion, I argue for the merits of this Aristotelian approach in resolving some recurring problems of multiculturalism. (shrink)

This article suggests that an epistemological and ontological pluralist perspective may enable human beings to cooperate each other and live with less injustice. Intercultural cooperation may help for a reformulation of the Human rights in order to consider aspects of different ways of life like the variations of moral, political and judicial norms. I expound that Liberal pluralism does not respond adequately to present day multiculturalism. Additionally, I explain that Human rights are not inclusive norms for all ways of life. (...) -/- I definitely sustain that some communities do not have to agree to live in the same moral world as others, but, that it is indeed necessary to know each other’s differences so as to be able to respect them. (shrink)

This dissertation attempts to preserve the central tenets of a global moral theory called “the capabilities approach” as defended by Martha Nussbaum, but to do so in a way that better realizes its own goals of identifying gender injustices and gaining cross-cultural support by providing an alternative defense of it. Capabilities assess an individual’s well-being based on what she is able to do (actions) and who she is able to be (states of existence). Nussbaum grounds her theory in the intuitive (...) idea that each and every person is worthy of equal respect and dignity. The problem with grounding a theory in a version of intuitionism is that it runs the risk of authoritarian moral reasoning. I argue Nussbaum, in fact, is the final arbiter who decides which intuitions are mistaken, which are not, and how to interpret what people say to fit into her own framework. This method of justifying capabilities is most problematic in cases of social inequality whereby dominant group members do not feel they need to check their intuitions against non-dominant group members, and even if they did, they are not forced to take the non-dominant group’s intuitions seriously. I find capabilities as a global moral theory to be very promising, and I agree with Nussbaum that a list of capabilities is beneficial for identifying people who are not able to live a truly dignified human life. However, I am also sympathetic to the criticism of defending capabilities using a version of intuitionism. So, I offer an alternative method of justifying the capabilities rooted in the discourse ethics tradition. This method seeks all persons that are affected by the outcome to freely and equally share their opinion. This avoids the charge of authoritarian moral reasoning, because (1) it seeks perspectives other than simply one’s own, but unlike traditional ethics, it (2) pays special attention to the ways in which power relations shape dialogue. Ultimately, I hope to have preserved the central tenets of the capabilities approach while better realizing Nussbaum’s commitment to defending a theory that is gender sensitive and has gained cross-cultural support. (shrink)

_Excavates the experiential structure of Habermas’s communicative action._.

Can sociology comprehend evil? The contemporary relevance of Kurt H. Wolff’s sociology is his lucid, critical vision of modernity which does not shy away from understanding what evil is. This is accompanied not by pessimism, but by trust in human beings and their positive ability to appeal to the moral conscience. Read today, Wolff’s pages must be placed in the category of a new understanding of the human subject and the diagnosis of our time, the request for which threads in (...) and out of contemporary social theory. Awareness of history, rejection of sociological nominalism, emphasis upon the role of the human subject in an unprecedented situation: in Wolff, these themes converge and invite us to open ourselves to the re-enchantment of the world. After describing with some detail the main concepts of Wolff’s sociological theory and phenomenological approach, the paper suggests a reading of the re-enchantment of the world in terms of a sociological confrontation with evil, which has all too often been bypassed by sociology. We cannot grasp the evildoer's motivations from the perspective of an autonomous, rationally disengaged and masterful subject which tends to eclipse emotive and embodied senses of selfhood. By suspending the taken-for-granted definitions which exist in mainstream literature, by making an excruciating effort in looking at or reading detailed descriptions of evildoing, by assuming the victim’s suffering as part of our sociological explanation, we can start understanding what evil is today and in what way it is connected to modernity. (shrink)

Arguments which in their premises or warrants touch basic norms and values of a cultural community can be defined as culture sensitive. The paper will demonstrate how insensitivity to the cultural backgrounds of audiences may spoil an argument, and identify which kinds of arguments prove particularly open to cultural sensitivity. It will define the areas on which cultural communities may differ and determine how this bears on problems of globalization and political correctness.

This paper responds to Love's Labor, Eva Feder Kittay's seminal contribution to feminist disability theory, arguing that Kittay's “nested obligations” approach creates a two-tiered system of justice in which care relationships built around private dependence and private obligation are figured as wholly prepolitical, to the detriment of both gender justice and disability justice. I suggest that centering the civic membership of the disabled person allows us to keep what is valuable in Kittay's contribution, namely her theorization of the nature of (...) care and its political significance, and her call for collective support of care relationships, while omitting the nesting of obligations and resituating care recipients and care workers as equal and interdependent. (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 (excluded) 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. (shrink)

Male-dominated and sex segregated elite professional and amateur sport1 in North America constitutes a "sport nexus" (Burstyn, 1999; Heywood & Dworkin, 2003) that combines economic and cultural influence to reinforce and perpetuate gender injustice. The sport nexus is an androcentric sex-segregated commercially powerful set of institutions that is highly visible and at the same time almost completely taken for granted to the extent that its anti-democratic impetus goes virtually unnoticed. The sport nexus’s hegemonic role in defining sporting norms (Coakley & (...) Donnelly, 2004) means that its role in shaping lower level amateur and recreational sporting institutions and cultures is highly significant. Fraser (2007) defines gender justice, and hence democracy, in terms of "participatory parity," that is, material and cultural equality for women. The sport nexus itself is characterized by highly gendered occupational segregation (Coventry, 2004). It further contributes to gender injustice, homophobia and transphobia by promoting the ideology of the two sex system (Fausto-Sterling, 2000) and gendering citizenship as fundamentally male (Burstyn, 1999). Feminist strategies for sport reformation attempt to reduce or eradicate the role of the sport nexus in legitimating and perpetuating gender injustice. In this article I consider the potential of these strategies and conclude with a set of recommendations for transforming organized sport at both elite and recreational levels. (shrink)