This article explains how the issue of inclusion is central to Habermas’s theory of democracy and how it is deeply rooted in his conception of a political public sphere. After recalling Habermas’s views on the public sphere, I present and discuss various objections raised by other critical theorists: Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge, Nancy Fraser, Axel Honneth and Iris Marion Young. These criticisms insist on the paradoxically excluding effects of a conception of democracy that promotes civic participation in the public (...) debate. Negt, Kluge and Fraser develop a Marxist line of analysis that question who can participate in the public sphere. Honneth and Young criticize in various ways the excluding effect of argumentation: are unargumentative speeches excluded from the public debate? I show how Habermas’s model can provide some responses to these various objections by drawing inspiration from his treatment of the gap between religious and post-metaphysical world views. (shrink)

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This article strives to make a critical assessment of the claim of discourse ethics, as articulated by Jürgen Habermas, to meet with the challenges of moral consciousness and communicative action today. The article locates Habermas' theory of discourse ethics in the contemporary movement to remoralize institutions and to build a post-conventional moral theory. It describes Habermas' agenda and looks into incoherences in his project in accordance with his own norms. Beginning with an internal critique of Habermas, the article, however, is (...) engaged in an interrogation of the Habermasian agenda from outside its own frame of reference precisely because the issues that the discovered tensions raise, cannot be resolved within the rationalist framework of Habermas. The article argues that in order to realize the lofty agenda of transformation that discourse ethics sets for itself, it must now make a dialogue with critical and practical spir ituality. It gives a brief sketch of the agenda of spiritual transformations that can help discourse ethics solve some of its own stated problems such as the problems of anthropocentrism and cognitive distantiation and be a transformative agent in thinking through the theory and practice of moral consciousness and communicative action today. (shrink)

This article explores Adorno’s negative dialectics as a critical social theory of economic objectivity. It rejects the conventional view that Adorno does not offer a critique of the economic forms of capitalist society. The article holds that negative dialectics is a dialectics of the social world in the form of the economic object, one that is governed by the movement of economic quantities, that is, real economic abstractions. Negative dialectics refuses to accept the constituted economic categories as categories of economic (...) nature. Instead, the article argues, it amounts to a conceptualized social praxis [ begriffene Praxis] of the capitalistically constituted social relations, which manifest themselves in the form of seemingly independent economic categories. Economic nature is a socially constituted nature, which entails the class antagonism in its concept. The article concludes that for negative dialectics the explanation of real economic abstractions lies in the understanding of the class-divided nature of human practice. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Habermas’s genealogical approach to modern reason and methodological agnosticism can lead us to a better understanding of the role of religion in our societies. I underline the relevance of Habermas’s awareness that ‘something is missing’ when we take faith out of modernity and consider the truths of philosophical reason to be infallible. Habermas succeeds in highlighting the complexity of the modern relationship between the religious and the secular domains, a relationship that is not merely (...) epistemic, but also embodied in various practical relationships between religious and secular citizens. On this basis, and in the light of Habermas’s idea of modernity as an unfinished project, I argue that religion can be interpreted as a dimension allied to political modernity and democracy as well. (shrink)

Over the last twenty years, Jürgen Habermas has been at the forefront of debates involving religion in the public sphere. In the wake of 9/11 he has responded to the problems of terrorism, “radical Islam,” and the so-called Muslim question in Europe, attempting to align these issue with his broader theories of deliberative democracy and postsecularism. Although Habermas aims for an inclusive model of deliberation in the public sphere, I argue that his reliance on macro theories of secularization and modernization (...) reproduce an ideal of secular liberal democracy as the standard by which to think about various “Others,” including Muslims. As a result, I claim that he ends up reproducing a soft variety of the “clash of civilizations” thesis by failing to account for the complexity of Muslim identities. In conclusion, I look at alternative models that are better able to historicize and contextualize “Islam” in the past and present, and point to significant gaps that must be filled if his proposals are to be taken seriously. (shrink)

Artikkelissa tutkitaan kriittisesti Honnethin Gadamer -kritiikkiä kolmen eri historiatietoisuuden kautta, joista historiallisesti vaikuttunut tietoisuus edustaa korkeinta astetta ja samalla Gadamerin tarkoittamaa hermeneuttista kokemusta. Artikkeli esittelee aluksi, kuinka Honneth tulkitsee Gadamerin Truth and Method –teoksen esittävän kaksi virheellistä historian ymmärryksen traditiota; esineellistävän ja reflektiivis-holhoavan hermeneutiikan tradition. Gadamerille esineellistävä ymmärrys ja holhoava ymmärtäminen perustuvat molemmat sekä tiedolliselle että moraalirikkeelle, joissa tulkitsija kuvittelee paremmin ymmärtävänsä dialogikumppania ja historiaa, joko asettuen objektiivisesti historian ulkopuolelle tai puhtaasti omista lähtökohdistaan käsin. Honneth korostaa kuitenkin, että tällaisissa dialogin (...) vääristymissä on kyse ontologisen sosiaalisen kontekstin rakenteellisesta vääristymistä, eikä tiedollisesta tai moraalirikkeestä. Gadamerin hermeneutiikka on Honnethin mukaan kyvytön kuvaamaan modernin yhteiskunnan rakenteellisia ongelmia, jotka saavat yksilöt omaksumaan instrumentaalisia ja holhoavia näkökulmia. Ne mekanismit, jotka saavat aidot vastavuoroisen tunnustamisen ontologiset ennakkoehdot unohtumaan moderneilta subjekteilta, jäävät Gadamerin mallissa vaille selitystä. Toiseksi artikkeli analysoi Honnethin argumenttia, jonka mukaan Gadamerin historiallisesti vaikuttuneen tietoisuuden idea ei voi edustaa moraalin korkeinta astetta minä-sinä-dialogisuhteissa ja samalla historian ymmärtämisessä. Gadamerin historiallisesti vaikuttunut tietoisuus näyttää edistyneemmältä kahteen edelliseen hermeneutiikan traditioon nähden. Gadamer kritisoidessaan Kantin kunnioituksen käsitettä ja moraalin univeraalisuus-vaadetta ei kykene kehittelemään dialogisuhteille riittävää ’yleistyneen toisen’ ideaa. Honneth esittää, että historiallisesti vaikuttunutta tietoisuutta määrittävä radikaali avoimuus toista ja historiaa kohtaan ei voi toteutua ilman riittävästi kehittynyttä yleistyneen toisen jaettua näkökulmaa. Artikkelissa verrataankin Gadamerin Sensus communiksen ideaa Honnethin Mead-tulkintoihin – ikään kuin selvennykseksi, kuinka Gadamerin hermeneutiikasta näyttäisi uupuvan tällainen riittävä yleistyneen toisen idea. Tutkimuksen tuloksena esitetään Honnethin ajatus ”sosiaalisen kokemuksen hermeneutiikasta”, joka kääntää gadamerilaisen hermeneutiikan fokuksen tulkitsemaan yksilöiden implisiittisiä kokemuksia epäoikeudenmukaisuudesta ja moraaliloukkauksista ohitunnustamisen termein. Honnethin kritiikin voikin tiivistää argumenttiin, jonka mukaan Gadamerin hermeneutiikka on sokea arkielämän rakenteellisia epäoikeudenmukaisuuden muotoja ja moraaliloukkausten kokemuksia kohtaan. (shrink)

The German philosopher and intellectual historian Karl Löwith is known and discussed mainly in the English language via his major work on secularization – Meaning in History, first written and published in English – and the more recently translated essays that criticize Martin Heidegger. However, Löwith’s body of work is rarely considered for the original contribution that it offers to the discourse on the questions of modernity and modern life. This oversight is due much to the way in which Hans (...) Blumenberg and Jürgen Habermas have each ‘dealt’ with Löwith’s position; Löwith in each case becomes a flagstone in the path to their own theories. This article reappraises Löwith’s thought through an exploration of his major works, and discovers that the concepts and motivations behind the critical force of his intellectual histories suggest a more sensitive reading of the modern condition than his critics allow. His notions of nature, cosmos and eternity, and his steadfast skepticism, reveal Löwith to be a theorist of the limits of human finitude, and set him apart from his contemporaries and his former teacher Heidegger. It is these aspects of his work that will continue to be provocative for both defenders of freedom and defenders of nature. (shrink)

In the recent critique of ‘Western metaphysics’ by post‐structuralist and postmodern theorists, there has emerged a distinctive line of thought which seeks to apply such critique to the domain of political theory. This paper approaches Hannah Arendt's conceptualisation of the political as a proto‐type of such a theorisation, deploying as it does key elements of the Heideggerian position so as to rethink the nature of the political. By delineating the specifically ‘post‐metaphysical’ moments of Arendt's theory and its corresponding critique of (...) political modernity, I endeavour to illuminate both the advantages and pitfalls of contemporary efforts at developing a philosophical conception of the political on the basis of a neo‐Heideggerian position. (shrink)

The criticism is often made of sociology, especially in the US, that it is mired in ethnocentrism, provincialism, needlessly scientistic methods, and a depoliticized quest for the status of a ‘true science’. Though a strong case can be made for such an accusation, it is also true that certain exemplars have succeeded in transcending these crippling shortcomings of practice and imagination. One such scholar is examined in this article with an eye toward not only the scope of the work attempted, (...) but the rhetorical posture that made his notable success possible. It seems to be the case that certain gifted members of the ‘Sixties generation’, through cross-disciplinary education and with cosmopolitan intentions, managed to create a new type of sociology in the US during the 1980s and 1990s which had not existed before. This article explores one such case. (shrink)

Naturalists seek continuity between epistemology and science. Critics argue this illegitimately expands science into epistemology and commits the fallacy of scientism. Must naturalists commit this fallacy? I defend a conception of naturalized epistemology which upholds the non-identity of epistemic ends, norms, and concepts with scientific evidential ends, norms, and concepts. I argue it enables naturalists to avoid three leading scientistic fallacies: dogmatism, one dimensionalism, and granting science an epistemic monopoly.