According to Jürgen Habermas, his Theory of Communicative Action offers a new account of the normative foundations of critical theory. Habermas’ motivating insight is that neither a transcendental nor a metaphysical solution to the problem of normativity, nor a merely hermeneutic reconstruction of historically given norms, is sufficient to clarify the normative foundations of critical theory. In response to this insight, Habermas develops a novel account of normativity, which locates the normative demands of critical theory within the socially instituted practice (...) of communicative understanding. Although Habermas has claimed otherwise, this new foundation for critical theory constitutes a novel and innovative form of “immanent critique.” To argue for and to clarify this claim, I offer, in section 1, a formal account of immanent critique and distinguish between two different ways of carrying out such a critique. (shrink)

Останніми роками у світі прискорюється процес заміщення старих технологій на сучасні, пов’язані насамперед з відновлювальною енергетикою та штучним інтелектом, що неминуче призведе до перевороту у суспільних відносинах та до кардинальних змін у ідентичності. Реструктуризація ідентичності веде і до зміни практичних орієнтацій суб’єктів, до переосмислення ними власного місця у світі та взаємовідносин з Іншими. За антропним принципом науки, поза іншим, будь-яка система за посередництвом самореферентних процесів прагне самоорганізуватися з метою самозбереження та передбачає існування Спостерігача. На рівні живих систем код ДНК забезпечує (...) природну ідентичність організму. У суспільному житті ідентичність забезпечує саморегуляцію взаємовідносин індивіда та Інших в контексті суспільного середовища. Протягом історії людства ідентичність ускладнюється та є чинником самоорганізації суспільних відносин. Поняття ідентичності починає формуватися ще з античного соціуму, починаючи з «вісьового часу» та виникнення рефлексивної моралі (Сократ, Аристотель, Конфуцій, Будда та ін.); продовжується цей процес і у філософії Нового часу та у класичній німецькій філософії у вигляді поняття рефлексивного духу, трансцендентальної аперцепції, рефлексивної самосвідомості; зазначені феномени розглядалися по суті справи як внутрішній живий механізм самоконструювання ідентичності (Р. Декарт, Т. Гобс, П. Гасенді, І. Кант, І. Фіхте, Г. Гегель). Ю. Габермас, спираючись на Л. Кольберга, Е. Еріксона, Ж. Піаже, пов’язав рівень розвитку ідентичності з рівнями та етапами розвиненості моральної свідомості. Мислителі та практикуючі філософи кінця ХХ – початку ХХІ століть (К. Вілбер, Ф. Лалу та ін.) в умовах сучасного технологічного та соціоорганізаційного вибуху виявляють та досліджують нові типи множинної гуманізованої ідентичності. (shrink)

Jos yhteiskuntatieteilijöitä on uskominen, yhteiskuntatieteet ovat aina kriisissä, mutta onneksi kulloisellakin puhujalla on tarjottavanaan ratkaisun avaimet. Tämä artikkeli noudattaa tuota hyväksi havaittua kaavaa. Se lähtee liikkeelle Immanuel Wallersteinin 1990-luvun lopussa käynnistämästä yhteiskuntatieteiden fragmentoituneisuuskeskustelusta ja tarkastelee sen jälkeen ensin Wallersteinin omia ja sitten Michael Mannin historiallisen sosiologian kriisiin tarjoamia ratkaisuesityksiä. Edellisiä voidaan pitää ongelmallisina ja jälkimmäistä kaikesta laaja-alaisuudestaan huolimatta liian kapeana aikakautemme polttavimpien ongelmien analyysiin. Siksi käsittelenkin seuraavaksi Mannin ideologisiin, taloudellisiin, sotilaallisiin ja poliittisiin valtalähteisiin keskittyvän ns. IEMP-mallin laajentamista vieläkin kattavammaksi tutkimusohjelmaksi, (...) joka tiivistyy ns. NACEVP-malliksi. Kirjaimet mallin lyhenteessä viittavat naturaaliseen, artefaktuaaliseen, kulttuuriseen, taloudelliseen, väkivaltaan liittyvään ja poliittiseen valtaan. Lopuksi elaboroin mallin käyttöä tutkimuksessa analysoimalla sen avulla populismin viimeaikaista nousua OECD-maissa, ja aivan viimeiseksi teen yhteenvedon. (shrink)

Developments in biosemiotics and democratic theory enable renewed appreciation of the possibilities for ecological democracy. Semiotics is the study of sign processes in meaning-making and communication. Signs and meanings exist in all living systems, and all living systems are therefore semiotic systems. Ecological communication can involve abiotic and biotic communication, including human language, facilitating an integration of politics and ecology in the form of ecological democracy encompassing communicative networks in nature and human society.

Issues concerning naturalism have increasingly become the subject of philosophical reflections involving ontological, epistemological, and even ethics affairs. The most popular topic for contemporary philosophy has been the relationship between ontological results of Darwinism and epistemology. Despite the varied circumstances of its establishment, naturalism almost always produces recommendations that reflect a worldview much “weaker” (as in the case of Habermas) than the strong one more common among scientism. There are good structural reasons for this difference. The aim of this paper (...) is to elucidate some of distinctive social features of Habermas's conception of the human being and its implications in the Theory of Communicative Action (1982). Therefore, it is shown that his anthropology takes a naturalistic and Darwinist perspective in the weak naturalism perspective. In the first part, Darwin ́s legacy is analysed as a research program, and Habermas ́s studies on biological anthropology are compared with the latest research in genetics and palaeontology. In the second part, we will show Habermas's proposal to confront an epistemological dualism through a weak non‐reductionist naturalism as a critique of modern metaphysics, which structures a new pragmatic realism. (shrink)

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

Jurgen Habermas is a second-generation social philosopher of the Frankfurt school, the birthplace of critical theory. He suggests that modernity is a project of substituting rationality for religion. In his analysis, such a succession is the result of a process of social evolution, in which each developmental stage has its basic concepts and modes of understanding subjective, objective, and social worlds. For him, the salient feature of rationality consists of differentiation between various validity claims of truth, truthfulness, and sincerity which (...) are indistinguishable in religious language. The rationalization of religion, hence, progresses in terms of a differentiation between validity claims, a decentration of human understanding, the disenchantment of the world, and the linguistification of the sacred. Habermas proposes a universal pragmatics in which two modes of language use are separated: instrumental-strategic, and communicative. He thinks that the failure of the enlightenment movement to replace religion with reason stems from its preoccupation with instrumental reason and language use, dispensing with communicative rationality; and the remedy lies in communicative rationality. (shrink)

The concept of deliberation in the Ukrainian philosophical discourse is both underestimated and overestimated. Underestimated — as a self-sufficient category that is not reducible to another con- cept, even if it is the concept of consensus or the concept of democracy. Deliberation appears pri- marily as a careful weighing and selection of arguments when making an important decision. Collegiality may or may not be present here, as well as openness. Therefore, the concept of deliber- ation is somewhat overestimated as something (...) that necessarily improves the quality of democratic procedures, and therefore, supposedly, deliberation itself is something democratic in nature. American political philosopher Joshua Cohen drew attention to the fact that deliberation can be of at least three types: individual deliberation, jury deliberation, and oligarch deliberation. The article analyzes these three types of deliberation and found that the closest to the democratic type of government is individual deliberation, or rather, joint deliberation of responsible citizens. While the deliberation of the jury is mostly closed, it is naturally limited access to the extent of the necessary competence of its possible participants. The deliberation of the oligarchs is even more closed and often even secret. However, the article states that it is more appropriate to replace the name «oligarchs» with the term «captains of business»: then the deliberation of the oligarchs ceases to be a cartel conspiracy, and turns into a coordinated protection of the interests of the national economy. However, for this, de- liberation itself is not enough, so not procedural, but other, namely, value factors of decision-making are needed. Democracy benefits from deliberation when the latter is complemented by the liberal and patriotic values of the participants in the deliberation. Already John Locke convincingly argues the importance of citizens achieving a common conscious agreement in state matters. However, for Locke, the very fact of having property was important, while in practice, achieving an effective agreement requires mechanisms for reconciling the positions of owners with very different amounts of property. To some extent, this problem can be solved by John Rawls` concept of justice. (shrink)

Nikolay Kondratieff is known primarily for his theory of long cycles. However, it is worth recalling that he was among the first who started to investigate the nature of different economic cycles and their systematic interaction. Actually the primary classification of cycles into short, medium and long belongs to Kondratieff.

William Booth's 'On the Idea of the Moral Economy' (1994) is a scathing critique of the economic historians labelled as 'moral economists', chief among them Karl Polanyi, whose The Great Transformation is the groundwork for much of the later theorizing on the subject. The most devastating of Booth's criticisms is the allegation that Polanyi's normative prescriptions have anti-democratic, Aristotelian and aristocratic undertones for being guided by a preconceived notion of 'the good'. This article presents an attempt to rescue Polanyi from (...) this charge by reinterpreting his view of the relationship between the economic and the political, while elucidating the practical meaning of a moral economy. (shrink)

In keeping with the radical openness of his theory of democracy, Habermas avoided pre-determining the ideal mode of economic organization for his favoured model of deliberative democracy. Instead of attempting a full-blown derivation, in this article, I propose adapting the Rawlsian method of comparing different political–economic regimes as candidate applications of his theory of justice to Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy. Although both theorists are seen as endorsing liberal democratic world views, from the perspective of political economy, the corollary of (...) their conceptions of democracy would arguably veer elsewhere: in Rawls’s case, into the territory of property-owning democracy or democratic socialism, and in Habermas’s, into any political–economic regime which guarantees the real exercise of full political and discursive liberties against the background of legitimate lawmaking. The ultimate aim of this article is to discuss whether a concrete conception of democratic socialism, if any, is compatible with Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy. (shrink)

Historical progress is a core belief of the Enlightenment and modernity, also a spiritual catalyst of human emancipation in the past centuries. However, due to the naive understanding of scholars and its misuse by political power, the idea of progress has fallen from a realistic political belief in the pursuit of liberty and democracy to a metaphysical faith and a one-sided ideology. Instead of abandoning the concept itself, this paper will provide a new version for progress. In this version, supported (...) theoretically with ideas from a Marxian critique of the paradox of progress in capitalist society and a Habermasian reconstruction of social evolution and progress, progress shall not be understood as an intrinsic trend of history itself, but a “historical-practical project” of humanity. The intent of rewriting progress is to transcend the dilemma between progressivism and catastrophism while at the same time preserving its positive meaning. (shrink)

Historical progress is a core belief of the Enlightenment and modernity, also a spiritual catalyst of human emancipation in the past centuries. However, due to the naive understanding of scholars and its misuse by political power, the idea of progress has fallen from a realistic political belief in the pursuit of liberty and democracy to a metaphysical faith and a one-sided ideology. Instead of abandoning the concept itself, this paper will provide a new version for progress. In this version, supported (...) theoretically with ideas from a Marxian critique of the paradox of progress in capitalist society and a Habermasian reconstruction of social evolution and progress, progress shall not be understood as an intrinsic trend of history itself, but a “historical-practical project” of humanity. The intent of rewriting progress is to transcend the dilemma between progressivism and catastrophism while at the same time preserving its positive meaning. (shrink)

Pippin offers his reconstruction of Hegel's account of practical reason as a point of departure for contemporary social theory, yet he does not address the implications for us of Hegel's claim that social reflection can achieve its knowledge only on the basis of a world that has already become rational. After arguing that the unreasonableness of our world can be seen from the suffering it generates, I argue that an account of violence may be a way to retrieve the promise (...) of Hegelian insights so long as it draws in turn on existing challenges to violence and the suffering it causes. The argument discusses four kinds of violence (direct, formative, structural, and symbolic) and confronts these with a neo-Hegelian conception of social learning. (shrink)

Стаття присвячена проблемам етики в контексті миру та війни. Сьогодні під час збройної агресії рф проти України особливо актуальним є повернення до етичної проблематики, до таких понять як справедливість, істина, безсмертя, поблажливість, подія, вірність собі тощо. Ситуація війни змушує по-новому осмислювати їхнє значення через відкриті дискусії, які допомагають покращувати ментальний стан українського суспільства та підтримувати надію на перемогу. Автори статті, відштовхуючись від етичних теорій А. Бадью та Р. Жирара, намагаються дати відповідь на складне питання сьогодення про те, як залишатись людиною (...) під час військового протистояння. За А. Бадью, будь-яке етичне твердження вимагає контекстуальної застосовності до ситуації. Зважаючи на це, філософ розвиває концепт події, згідно з яким подія – це не так те, що відбувається з суб’єктом, як те, що суб’єкт робить в ситуації ‒ його активна участь – відповідь на зовнішній виклик. Далі автори застосовують теорію Р. Жирара про міметичне суперництво для виявлення причин військової агресії рф проти України. Однією з таких причин є невизнання окремості України, повне заперечення її існування й ототожнення українського народу з проєкцією ворогів, в боротьбі з якими росіяни формують свою ідентичність. В кінці свого аналізу автори висновують: якщо ненавидіти та ментально їсти ворога як канібал, то від цього можна отримати хвилинне задоволення, але така позиція ніколи не дасть можливості кращого майбутнього й справжнього розвитку; ненависть веде лише до ненависті та руйнування. Важливі завдання етики під час війни полягають у запобіганні тому, що може травмувати особистість, у пошуку підґрунтя для того, щоб допомогти зберегти душу від руйнівного ресентименту й залишитися людиною, яка спроможна розвиватися. (shrink)

My contribution intends to show that the traditional philosophical concept of work leaves out a crucial dimension. Work is reduced, for example, to the interaction with nature, the problem of recognition, or economic self-preservation. But work also establishes an ethical relation having to do with the needs of others and to the common good—a view of work that should be of particular interest for feminist and gender philosophy. This dimension makes visible, as socially necessary work, the so-called reproductive sphere pertaining (...) to giving birth and raising children, but it also generalizes the aspect of care, which plays a significant role in traditional woman's work. The ethical relation to the other is a characteristic feature of human work and in this sense, the possibility of working is a part of a good life. (shrink)