Modern society is challenged by a loss of efficiency in national governance systems values, and lifestyles. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourse builds upon a conception of organizational legitimacy that does not appropriately reflect these changes. The problems arise from the a-political role of the corporation in the concepts of cognitive and pragmatic legitimacy, which are based on compliance to national law and on relatively homogeneous and stable societal expectations on the one hand and widely accepted rhetoric assuming that all members (...) of society benefit from capitalist production on the other. We therefore propose a fundamental shift to moral legitimacy, from an output and power oriented approach to an input related and discursive concept of legitimacy. This shift creates a new basis of legitimacy and involves organizations in processes of active justification vis-à-vis society rather than simply responding to the demands of powerful groups. We consider this a step towards the politicization of the corporation and attempt to re-embed the debate on corporate legitimacy into its broader context of political theory, while reflecting the recent turn from a liberal to a deliberative concept of democracy. (shrink)

The United Nations Global Compact – which is a Global Public Policy Network advocating 10 universal principles in the areas of human rights, labor standards, environmental protection, and anticorruption – has turned into the world's largest corporate responsibility initiative. Although the Global Compact is often characterized as a promising way to address global governance gaps, it remains largely unclear why this is the case. To address this problem, we discuss to what extent the initiative represents an institutional solution to exercise (...) global governance. We suggest that new governance modes, which have arisen in the context of globalization, often adopt a multiactor, multilevel, and network-based approach. We then analyze how far the Global Compact's institutional design reflects this multiactor, multilevel, and network-based steering mode. Drawing on this discussion, we offer suggestions regarding how the initiative can be further developed. (shrink)

Globalization arguably generated a governance gap that is being filled by transnational rule-making involving private actors among others. The democratic legitimacy of such new forms of governance beyond nation states is sometimes questioned. Apart from nation-centered democracies, such governance cannot build, for example, on representation and voting procedures to convey legitimacy to the generated rules. Instead, alternative elements of democracy such as deliberation and inclusion require discussion to assess new instruments of governance. The recently published standard ISO 26000 is an (...) interesting example of transnational governance. ISO 26000 was developed in a lengthy multiorganizational process for the purpose of giving guidance on the social responsibility of organizations. By assessing the specific case of ISO 26000, this study sheds light on the question of how legitimacy beyond nation-state democracy is ensured or constricted. Centering on the idea of deliberate democracy and democratic legitimacy, the study offers in-depth insights on the normative legitimacy of the development process of ISO 26000. Positioned on the interface of business studies and public policy, this article contributes to the academic literature on transnational governance and on the role of multistakeholder processes in shaping the role of business in society. (shrink)

This article examines the moral, political and pedagogical tensions that are created from the entanglement of patriotism and human rights, and sketches a response to these tensions in the context of critical education. The article begins with a brief review of different forms of patriotism, especially as those relate to human rights, and explains why some of these forms may be morally or politically valuable. Then, it offers a brief overview of human rights critiques, especially from the perspectives of Foucault, (...) critical legal studies and postcolonial theory, and emphasizes that foundationalist perspectives of human rights need to be constantly contested. The next part of the article discusses how to overcome issues of incompatibility between patriotism and human rights. The final part proposes that a ‘rapprochement’ between patriotism and human rights in the context of critical education has to take into consideration that patriotic feelings (as a form of love for one’s country) constitute a particular form of ‘emotional education’. As such, the teaching of both patriotism and human rights would benefit from the notion of ‘critical pedagogies of emotion’ that interrogates the emotional commitments of patriotism and human rights and the consequences of these commitments. (shrink)

Much of the most influential free speech scholarship emphasises that ‘political speech’ warrants the very highest standards of protection because of its centrality to self-governance. This central idea mitigates against efforts to justify the regulation of political speech and renders some egregiously offensive or harmful speech worthy of protection from a theoretical perspective. Yet paradoxically, in practice, in many liberal democracies such speech is routinely restricted. In this paper, I develop an argument that is compatible with both the argument from (...) democracy and the notion of political speech, and that can justify the regulation of hate speech, by joining an understanding of the constitutive role of speech in individuals’ lives derived from Nussbaum's capabilities theory with ideas of democratic deliberation and legitimation drawn from a Habermasian framework. This approach attends to the conditions required at an individual level for democratic legitimation to occur at a social level. It permits the development of a robust theoretical justification for the protection of a broad range of speech. It simultaneously provides a guiding framework for regulatory policy designed to ameliorate the effects of, and inhibit the expression of, that speech, which could imperil the conditions required for individuals to develop their own capabilities and which instantiates anti-democratic practice, and thus discourse, preventing the very communications required to perform democracy from being uttered. Thus, my argument also strengthens and transforms the argument from democracy as a justification for free speech protection more generally. (shrink)

The article advances an understanding of responsible leadership in global business and offers an agenda for future research in this field. Our conceptualization of responsible leadership draws on deliberative practices and discursive conflict resolution, combining the macro-view of the business firm as a political actor with the micro-view of leadership. We discuss the concept in relation to existing research in leadership. Further, we propose a new model of responsible leadership that shows how such an understanding of leadership can address the (...) challenges of globalization. We thereby propose positive outcomes of responsible leadership across levels of analysis. The model offers research opportunities for responsible leadership in global business. (shrink)

Education is oftentimes understood as a deeply ethical practice for the development of the person. Alternatively, education is construed as a state-enforced apparatus for inculcation of specific codes, conventions, beliefs, and norms about social and political practices. Though holding both of these beliefs about education is not necessarily mutually contradictory, a definite tension emerges when one attempts to articulate a cogent theory involving both. I will argue in this paper that Habermas’s theory of discourse ethics, when combined with his statements (...) on constitutional democracy and law, manifests this tension for formal education. Through a contrast with Dewey’s social-liberal view of education on the one hand, and the procedural liberalism and its associated view of education, common to Rawls and others writing in the contemporary Anglo-American tradition on the other, the questions of what this means for education and why it matters are raised and addressed. (shrink)

The primary purpose of government is to secure public goods that cannot be achieved by free markets. The Coordination Principle tells us to consolidate sovereign power in a single institution to overcome collective action problems that otherwise prevent secure provision of the relevant public goods. There are several public goods that require such coordination at the global level, chief among them being basic human rights. The claim that human rights require global coordination is supported in three main steps. First, I (...) consider Pogge's and Habermas's analyses as alternatives to Hobbesian conceptions of justice. Second, I consider the core conventions of international law, which are in tension with the primacy of state sovereignty in the UN system. Third, I argue that the just war tradition does not limit just causes for war to self-defense; it supports saving innocent third parties from crimes against humanity as a just reason for war. While classical authors focused less on this issue, the point is especially clear in twentieth-century just war theories, such as those offered by the American Catholic bishops, Jean Elshtain, Brian Orend, and Michael Walzer. Against Walzer, I argue that we add intractable military tyranny to the list of horrors meriting intervention if other ad bellum conditions are met. But these results require us to reexamine the "just authority" of first resort to govern such interventions. The Coordination Principle implies that we should create a transnational federation with consolidated powers in place of a treaty organization requiring near-unanimity. But to be legitimate, such a global institution must also be directly answerable to the citizens of its member states. While the UN Security Council is inadequate on both counts, a federation of democracies with a directly elected executive and legislature could meet both conditions. (shrink)

There exists a standard view of Kant’s position on global order and this view informs much of current Kantian political theory. This standard view is that Kant advocates a voluntary league of states and rejects the ideal of a federative state of states as dangerous, unrealistic, and conceptually incoherent. This standard interpretation is usually thought to fall victim to three equally standard objections. In this essay, I argue that the standard interpretation is mistaken and that the three standard objections miss (...) their target. Kant does advocate the establishment of a non-coercive league of states, at least in his mature political writings (such as Perpetual Peace and the Metaphysics of Morals), but he does so for different reasons than is usually thought and without rejecting the ideal that a world federation of states eventually be realized. I end by indicating how Kant’s revised view can be made productive for present-day philosophical purposes. (shrink)

The word ‘cosmopolitan’, which derives from the Greek word kosmopolitês (‘citizen of the world’), has been used to describe a wide variety of important views in moral and socio political philosophy. The nebulous core shared by all cosmopolitan views is the idea that all human beings, regardless of their political affiliation, do (or at least can) belong to a single community, and that this community should be cultivated. Different versions of cosmopolitanism envision this community in different ways, some focusing on (...) political institutions, others on moral norms or relationships, and still others focusing on shared markets or forms of cultural expression. The philosophical interest in cosmopolitanism lies in its challenge to commonly recognized attachments to fellow citizens, the local state, parochially shared cultures, and the like. (shrink)

: Reilly offers an account of cosmopolitan feminism as emancipatory political practice in an age of globalization. This entails a critical engagement with international human rights law; a global feminist consciousness that contests patriarchal, capitalist, and racist power dynamics in a context of neoliberal globalization; cross-boundaries dialogue that recognizes the intersectionality of forms of oppression; collaborative transnational strategizing on concrete issues; and the utilization of global forums as sites of cosmopolitan solidarity and citizen action.

What does social cohesion require in culturally diverse post-immigration societies? Immigration and social cohesion are, in the public debate, believed to be incompatible. In normative political philosophy, a similar understanding manifests in the argument that social cohesion-based on a common national identity-is incompatible with immigration. In so doing, its proponents justify restrictive border policies. In this chapter, I will critically engage with this argument by reconnecting the literature in social sciences to normative political philosophy. I will offer a conditional and (...) pro tanto argument that social cohesion in post-immigration societies justifies open and non-discriminatory border policies. My argument is conditional in two senses: first, it assumes social cohesion is based on a common identity, and second, it only applies to the societies with significant cultural, religious, and ethnic diversity that can be best described as post-immigration societies. My argument implies that liberal nationalists have a choice: they can either keep defending social cohesion in the traditional way, which comes with open borders; or they can abandon this view, thereby losing one of the strongest justifications for restrictive borders. (shrink)

There is a perennial ambiguity in the rule-of-law preposition: it predicates that the law shall rule, but which law? This legal loophole has led to a diverse array of interpretations of the concept. Of these, two appear particularly adverse to what the rule of law should primarily be—the rulership of the law—yet still remain dominant. On the one hand, the rule of law is intended to be the vehicle to deliver above-the-law goods such as human rights or other individual entitlements (...) like property, and to forever shield them against any other force, including the law. On the other hand, the rule of law is believed to be a tool at the rulers’ disposal, who make use of the law but are not bound by it, for either legal or practical reasons. In both cases, a pre-legal setting for society allocates rulership to something but not the law, against the very essence of the ideal: an authoritative legal practice for the sake of regulating the present society. As such, the rule of law has to meet certain requirements of craftsmanship, like conditions in law-making and law-enforcement, and sources, which are to be democratically underpinned. (shrink)

This article investigates media representations of the European financial crisis in Greece and Italy. We study the Euro crisis as an ‘emergency situation’ with domino effects, where media played a central role in shaping communication practices at the national level as well as between the two countries. Drawing upon vertical and horizontal dynamics of Europeanization, we map the convergences and divergences in media discourses that surround the period 2011–2015. In doing so, we elaborate a qualitative analysis of newspaper articles focusing, (...) in particular, on the themes of austerity and the fragmentation of Europe. Our argument suggests that national public spheres in times of transnational crisis become increasingly nationalized; yet under certain circumstances such as when the supranational infrastructure is the target of blame, they converge, opening the path toward a transnational discursive dialogue. (shrink)

For the most part, current reflections on the social seem to overemphasize either homogeneity (society/nation-state, modernization/globalization) or heterogeneity (sociality, cosmopolitanism). Against this, here the argument is put forward that it is appropriate to think of the social as consisting of aspects of homogeneity or shared frames of reference and aspects of heterogeneity at the same time. This thought is developed particularly in contrast to normative concepts such as Bauman's sociality—republicanism nexus or Beck and Grande's ideas on European cosmopolitanism. With the (...) help of concepts such as sociation, glocalization and conflict, a basis will be developed for the elaboration of particular socials (e.g. Europe) as a general social theory. This avoids falling into normative traps, which are usually risky when starting out from a historical particularity to explain current and future structures and features of notions such as European society. (shrink)

This article aims to make two points. First, seeking and granting recognition is an ambivalent process that may lead to results completely the opposite from what was intended. Certain social pathologies, including reification, develop because of the way the desire for recognition is expressed and satisfied. Nevertheless, the concept of recognition remains central to critical theory. A normative concept of recognition is needed in order to identify these pathologies. Second, a critical theory of society that understands itself as praxis must (...) justify the possibility of its ‘reception’ by members of society. The theory’s addressees must ‘recognize themselves’ in the theory. They must recognize in it the conceptual expression of their own experience of society. Therefore, social theory must account for the emergence of a critical standpoint on society. These two main points are addressed by means of a ‘dialectical’ approach. The tensions and interactions between global society, states, and value-communities – the dialectic within and between these spheres – account for the diverse and conflicting meanings of the concept of recognition. At the same time, such a dialectic makes it possible to understand the emergence of a critical viewpoint on society. (shrink)

At a moment when a new crisis threatens Europe—a crisis containing, among other ingredients, COVID-19, a faltering economy, immigration and Brexit—the European Union (EU)’s motto ‘Europe united in diversity’ would appear progressively less attainable. This paper submits that the European ideal is still both desirable and possible through the fostering of political unity at the constitutional (regime) level by using the notions of analogical state and analogical culture, and at the community level by the enablement of public sphere secularity and (...) relational interculturalism. These concepts share the intuition that the EU should be envisaged in a more flexible manner, and carry several policy implications for the future of European integration. (shrink)

In 2004 Jürgen Habermas and Joseph Ratzinger participated in a debate on the ‘pre-political moral foundations of the free-state’. Their contributions showed broad agreement on the role of religion in today’s Western secular state and on areas of collaboration and mutual enrichment between Modernity and Christianity in Europe and the West. They diverged regarding the need or not of a common cultural background prior to the existence of the polity. Their diverging point becomes all the more fascinating to the extent (...) that the matter requires wider empirical, analytical and normative research before it can be settled. Nevertheless, the implications that derive from one or the other possibility are very different in terms, for instance, of immigration and citizenship policies. This is already clear in Europe and is becoming more evident in general in Western democracies. (shrink)

Habermas’ critical theory is partly an attempt to identify the limitations of critique and emancipation as espoused in the first generation critical theory of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. In their attempt to develop an interdisciplinary, reflexive, emancipatory and dialectical reason that is critical towards accepted realities, Horkheimer and Adorno in their monumental work The Dialectic of Enlightenment pictured a world trapped in instrumental rationality. Taking and revolutionizing traditional critical theory, Habermas argues that reason entails both emancipator as well as (...) instrumental possibilities. Through an exposition of Habermas’ critique of Horkheimer and Adorno in his discourse of modernity, this article argues that although Habermas successfully identifies the equation of the rational with the instrumental and offers an emancipator model in return; still he ends up not paying sufficient attention to aesthetic truth. (shrink)

Based on the ideas of two main representatives of the academic discourse on Ubuntu, Michael O. Eze and Mogobe B. Ramose, the paper shows how the concept of Ubuntu can contribute to transcending conventional concepts of cosmopolitanism. Referring to the concept of Ubuntu, Ramose and Eze criticize ‘Western’ concepts of cosmopolitanism because they always seem to start from binary oppositions (‘I’ and ‘other’), which must be reconciled. ‘Western’ cosmopolitanism continues to build on boundaries (nations, cultures, etc.) that constitute communities and (...) exclude the ‘other’. Here the boundary remains a place of exclusion. Therefore, it is necessary to conceptualize categories such as ‘boundary’ and the ‘Other’ in a different way. Ubuntu as a concept where the human being is essentially a relational being (one who exists in and through relationships) seems to offer an alternative in the sense of a ‘critical’ (Mignolo, 2002a) or ‘emancipatory’ cosmopolitanism. (Pieterse, 2006; Ngcoya, 2015). (shrink)

In this paper, we compare the two Global Reporting Initiative reporting standards, G3.1, and the most current version G4.0. We do this through the lens of political corporate social responsibility theory, which describes the broadened understanding of corporate responsibility in a globalized world building on Habermas’ notion of deliberative democracy and ethical discourse. As the regulatory power of nation states is fading, regulatory gaps occur as side effects of transnational business. As a result, corporations are also understood to play a (...) “political role” to fill regulatory gaps and contribute to a global governance system by voluntarily engaging in self-regulation. Such corporate political action, however, is not always legitimate as it suffers from a democratic deficit. Consistent with scholars in the field of political CSR, this paper argues that only by means of communication and discourse can this drawback be avoided. That is why CSR reporting and guidelines for standardizing the disclosed CSR information is key for political CSR. By comparing the GRI standards from a political CSR perspective, one can see whether these often-used reporting guidelines fulfill the communicative requirements and whether they are adequate tools to face the challenges of the twenty-first century. We present results from a theory-derived and criteria-driven comparison of the two guidelines. Indication of the effectiveness of voluntary self-regulation is, for example, important considering the 2014 directive of the European Union to make CSR reporting mandatory. We offer a guideline-based view on current CSR theory as well as CSR reporting practice. We discuss implications for CSR theory, particularly the appropriateness of deliberation in the Habermasian sense, which is the basis of political CSR theory. We do so by introducing the notion of “uncommitted deliberation” with regard to the refined concept of materiality in GRI 4.0, which induces subjectivity and reduces data-driven comparability. Finally, we address the limitations of this research as well as research questions for future studies. (shrink)

The discursive character of human rights prevents a precise summary of historical origin, rationale, or definition outside of the various codifications in religious texts, secular philosophies, founding national documents, and international treaties, charters, conventions, covenants, declarations, and protocols. Regarding the objects of human rights, we can speak of a “foundational five” 1) Personal security 2) Material subsistence 3) Elemental equality 4) Personal Freedom and 5) Recognition as a member of the human community. Despite, or perhaps because of its multivalence, the (...) concept of human rights has been criticized as “foundationalist,” “essentialist,” or “ethnocentric”—its universalism being used as a weapon against itself by critics of cultural imperialism. Even the tolerance discourses so popular in critical theory, however, gain their normative force from the same basic notion of individual or group rights. Notwithstanding these rhetorical abuses, the concept of human rights has proved robust as a doctrine of equality owing to its openness to a pluralism of justifications grounding the basic “goods” agreed as necessary for human development. (shrink)

My aim in this article is twofold. First, I will illuminate the triangular conceptual connections between responsibility, authority, and power as they are exposed in the organizational realm; second, I will show how the three concepts are distinct. Relying on the work of Peter Strawson and his followers on responsibility for my point of departure, I will show that the connection between the inner corporational authority and its inner matching responsibility is different from the connection between the outer corporational forces (...) and influences and the CSR that they develop in reaction to these. This will expose another important distinction between two kinds of responsibility: the organizational kind, as instantiated in organizations, and the social kind, which constitutes the outer aspect of the CSR. Though many thinkers address different kinds of responsibility, a comparative perspective of these different concepts is missing. I attempt to bring three of these separate discourses together to examine them alongside one another, evaluating them in the light of their differences and similarities. This will expose a new typology of ‘responsibility’ that penetrates and illuminates the relations between corporations and society and as such enhance our understanding of organizational responsibility. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn this article, we explore the debate on corporate citizenship and the role of business in global governance. In the debate on political corporate social responsibility it is assumed that under globalization business is taking up a greater political role. Apart from economic responsibilities firms assume political responsibilities taking up traditional governmental tasks such as regulation of business and provision of public goods. We contrast this with a subsidiarity-based approach to governance, in which firms are seen as intermediate actors who (...) have political co-responsibilities in society endowed upon them by national governmental institutions. We argue that both approaches face conceptual and empirical problems, and do not make clear the content and scope of political corporate responsibility. Based on Iris Marion Young’s account of political responsibility we argue that corporate actors and governmental actors have a shared responsibility to tackle societal problems. Taking political corporate responsibility not only entails engaging in private action or engaging in public–private partnerships, but it also includes aiding governmental actors to remedy injustice or even create public institutions where they do not yet exist. By adding this perspective we contribute to the debate on responsibility in corporate citizenship and clarify the political role business can play in global governance. (shrink)

Human rights are a contested concept. One important strand of criticism concerns the charge of their Eurocentrism, formulated in particular by postcolonial theorists and scholars. Although postcolonial perspectives are now increasingly acknowledged, attempts to incorporate non-Western approaches into the discourse on human rights are still rare. This article considers whether Islamic human rights concepts can address the postcolonial critiques and decenter human rights discourse and politics from the West. Working within the methodological framework of comparative political thought, the article regards (...) Islamic approaches not simply as counter-discourses but analyzes their potential to supplement the dominant theory and practice of human rights and correct some of its inherent flaws. Informed by the critical analysis of Makau Mutua and Gayatri C. Spivak, the primary focus is on alternatives to the liberal individualist framework of human rights as evident in the concept of the autonomous individual subject of rights, and the balancing of individual rights with ethics and notions of responsibility in particular. (shrink)

This article investigates the model of the transnational cosmopolitan moral-legal community of limitless communication. This model, using philosophical means, appears as an attempt to underscore the impossibility of authoritarian monopolies of power which resulted in the dictatorial regimes and national totalitarian communities of the 20th century. I will reconstruct this model of the supranational community, and analyze the mode of morally-oriented intersubjective interactions within this community. I will show that the differentiation of limits between the “interior” and the “exterior” worlds (...) is an essential communicative and ethical problem in Habermas’ theory. According to this differentiation, subjective “verity” of an individual/local community may be defined and justified by purposes, axiological preferences, and tastes of a particular individual/community; while a claim pretending to be an intersubjective norm should be justified and voluntary accepted by all concerned with this norm. The non-differentiation of limits between what one believes to be “veritable”, and what one claims others should accept as a norm underlies most social, political, ethnical, confessional conflicts, and communicative deformations. Until recently, academic literature did not pay much attention to this key aspect of Habermas’ theory. At the same time, it is this differentiation between the subjectively “veritable” and the intersubjectively valid that makes Habermas’ community anti-totalitarian, and reveals the deep political significance of intersubjective limits. (shrink)

This paper combines reflections on the current “state of war” in the Middle East with an epistemological discussion of the meaning and implications of the category “war” itself, in order to dissipate the confusions arising from the idea of a “War on Terror.” The first part illustrates the insufficiency of the ideal type involved in dichotomies which are implicit in the naming and classifications of wars. They point nevertheless to a deeper problem which concerns the antinomic character of a collective (...) institution of violence. The second part discusses the extent to which, in spite of the historical transformations in the means and political objectives of wars, the contemporary confrontation still obeys the rules of warfare described by Clausewitz, particularly with respect to temporality (“friction”). The third part discusses “non‐clausewitzian” aspects of the “new wars” defined by Martin Van Creveld and Mary Kaldor, while suggesting that they have left aside the most salient contradiction illustrated by the US interventions, which results from the combination of a claim to universal sovereignty and a reduction of war to generalized police operations. (shrink)

Introduction: A Theory of Democracy and Justice.

In Between Facts and Norms, Habermas articulates a system of rights, including human rights, within the democratic constitutional state. For Habermas, while human rights, like other subjective rights have moral content, they do not structurally belong to a moral system; nor should they be grounded in one. Instead, human rights belong to a positive and coercive legal order upon which individuals can make actionable legal claims. Habermas extends this argument to include international human rights, which are realised within the context (...) of a cosmopolitan legal order. The aim of this paper is to assess the relevance of law as a mechanism for securing human rights protection. I argue that positive law does make a material difference to securing individual human rights and to cultivating and augmenting a general rights culture both nationally and globally. I suggest that Habermas' model of law presents the most viable way of negotiating the tensions that human rights discourse gives rise to: the tensions between morality and law, between legality and politics, and between the national and international contexts of human rights protection. (shrink)

In this article, I will argue that it is time to rethink and reconfigure some of the established assumptions underlying our conception of moral responsibility. Specifically, there is a mismatch between the individualism of our common sense morality and the imperative for collaborative responses to global problems in what I will call the “collective age.” This must have an impact also on the way we think about the responsibility of corporations. I will argue that most plausibly we ought to reframe (...) corporate responsibility as a conception of collaborative responsibility. Such a conception of collaborative responsibility is characterized by five key elements: first, it is based on the moral imperative for collaboration. Second, it shifts emphasis from commission to omission. Third, it is not only negative but also, and perhaps essentially, positive responsibility. Fourth, it is political responsibility. And finally, it is, most basically, human rights responsibility. (shrink)

This study is an intervention in postcolonial theorising through a critique of technologies of representation. It examines the effects of technologically-mediated representation in a postcolonial condition that the Philippines has exemplified. New media technologies are mechanisms of representations that embody the logic of spectrality presented in Jacques Derrida’s later work. Spectrality, which brings doubts, ephemerality, and instability to dominant discourses and modes of representation, provides a chance for change.Spectres are effects of technologically-mediated representation that articulate the infinite demand for justice (...) under conditions of enduring inequality. As quasi-transcendental elements of deconstruction, spectres are not reducible to either human or technical intervention; they express the relation of humans to technologies, in which representation is central to the mediation of political authority. This technological representation is the condition of what Derrida calls “iteration,” or the transformation of hegemonic authority through the very repetition of its fundamental terms of identification. The examination of emancipatory new media technologies in a postcolonial condition is inspired by the work of Jacques Derrida, in his deconstructive reading of Marx’s spectres. However, the writings of Habermas and Adorno have offered an implicit appraisal of the ontology of spectres. Habermas’s theory of the public sphere and Adorno’s negative dialectics are discourses that unwittingly solicit spectres. The account of the postcolonial condition in the Philippines works through the questions of universality, subalternity, and the right to theory that are raised by the project of Western critical theory. (shrink)

In this article I argue that Jürgen Habermas’ notion of morality (moral norms) has more in common with Hegel’s notion of ‘ethical life’ as a ‘ sittlich ’ relation – understood as a socially integrative force – rather than Kant’s supreme principle of personal morality. I show that Habermas and Hegel, each in his own way, make a distinction between morality and ethics. However, I make the case that Habermas’ conception of ‘morality’ incorporates aspects of Hegel’s notion of ‘ethical life’, (...) while Habermas’ conception of ‘ethical’ – referring to individual and group conceptions of the good life – is a remedy to the shortcomings in Hegel’s overly unified ethical life. I offer an alternative reading of Habermas’ principle of morality, which I suggest should be read as his attempt to provide a binding process to set up the norms that ought to condition a modern political community understood as a civil association. (shrink)

Until recently, businesses and corporations could argue that their only real commitments were to maximise the return to their shareholders whilst staying within the law. However, the world has changed significantly during the last ten years and now most major corporations recognise that they have significant responsibility to local and global societies beyond simply making profit. This means that there is now an increasing concern with the question of how corporations, and their employees, ought to behave, and this leads us (...) to consider ethics as the appropriate theoretical and philosophical domain.I will bring into the debate two relatively recent approaches to ethics: Jürgen Habermas's discourse ethics ; and the critical realist approach of Roy Bhaskar. These are interesting for several reasons: they both draw on traditional ethical theories, although different ones; they bring in innovations of practical relevance; and they both share an over-arching critical perspective. After a critical introduction to both ethical theories, their similarities and differences are explored. The article ends by considering the extent to which they may be practically useful within business. (shrink)

The debate about global distributive justice is characterized by an often stark opposition between universalistic approaches, advocating an egalitarian global redistribution of wealth (Beitz, Pogge, Barry, Tan), and particularistic positions, aiming to justify a restriction of redistribution to the domestic community (D. Miller, R. Miller, Blake, Nagel, Rawls). I argue that an approach starting from the deliberative model of democracy (Habermas) can overcome this opposition. On the one hand, the increasingly global scope of economic interactions implies that the range of (...) individuals concerned with the redistribution of wealth should also be increasingly universal. On the other hand, the need for democratic deliberation refers to the fact that demands of justice should be contextual and should take into account the particular circumstances, needs and values of the people concerned. Both concerns can be realized simultaneously only within a multi-layered democratic system in which redistribution is a concern at the domestic, the international and the global level. (shrink)

Is it possible to look at schools as spaces for encounters? Could schools contribute to a deliberative mode of communication in a manner better suited to our own time and to areas where different cultures meet? Inspired primarily by classical (Dewey) and modern (Habermas) pragmatists, I turn to Seyla Benhabib, posing the question whether she supports the proposition that schools can be sites for deliberative communication. I argue that a school that engages in deliberative communication, with its stress on mutual (...) communication between different moral perspectives, gives universalism a procedurally oriented meaning, serving as an arena for encounters that represents a weak public sphere. An interactive universalism of this kind attaches importance to developing an ability and willingness to reason on the basis of the views of others and to change perspectives. In that respect, the institutional arrangements of schools are potential parts of the political dimension of cosmopolitanism, as well as its moral dimension, in terms of the obligations and responsibilities we develop through our institutions and in our actions as human beings towards one another. (shrink)

The proponents of critical pedagogy criticize the earlier Neo‐Marxist theories of education, arguing that they provide only a ‘language of critique’. By introducing the possibility of human agency and resistance, critical pedagogists attempt to develop not only a pedagogy of critique, but also to build a pedagogy of hope. Fundamentally, the aim of critical pedagogy is twofold: 1) to correct the pessimistic conclusions of Neo‐Marxist theories, and 2) to transform a ‘language of critique’ into a ‘language of possibility’ . Then, (...) what political projects do critical pedagogies present to us? What alternative visions of schooling do critical pedagogies offer against the mainstream pedagogy? The purpose of this paper is to identify main projects of critical pedagogy, and to explore overarching politics that underlie the field of critical pedagogy. Although there are diverse theories and approaches in critical pedagogy, three overarching projects can be identified, which I call: 1) the project of experience, 2) the project of anti‐system, and 3) the project of inclusion. Based on an examination of the general trends and characteristics of these three projects of critical pedagogy, I argue that three prominent politics that underlie the field of critical pedagogy are culturalist politics, self/identity politics, and grassroots politics. In trying to better understand why and how critical pedagogy has developed the political stances as it has, the last part of the paper links these three politics to the historical developments of the New Left and the New Social Movements. (shrink)

A citizen is a member of a political community who enjoys the rights and assumes the duties of membership. This broad definition is discernible, with minor variations, in the works of contemporary authors as well as in the entry “citoyen” in Diderot's and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie..

The paper surveys selected alternative conceptions of rationality in contemporary and (especially) traditional economics and sociology. While the status of rationality as one of the master concepts, subjects and objectives of social science and philosophy has been further promoted in contemporary economics and sociology, questions often arise among economists and sociologists themselves as to its meaning or definition. As an attempt to help address this issue, the paper selects and examines a (limited) number of pertinent definitions and conceptions of rationality (...) from both economic and sociological theory. By virtue of its coverage of economics and sociology, this study is thoroughly interdisciplinary and contributes toward filling in a void in the current literature in which such studies are relatively rare. (shrink)

Across the globe, radical conservative political forces and ideas are influencing and even transforming the landscape of international politics. Yet IR is remarkably ill-equipped to understand and engage these new challenges. Unlike political theory or domestic political analyses, conservatism has no distinctive place in the fields’ defining alternatives of realism, liberalism, Marxism, and constructivism. This paper seeks to provide a point of entry for such engagement by bringing together what may seem the most unlikely of partners: critical theory and the (...) New Right. Important parts of today’s New Right represent self-conscious appropriations of Critical themes and thinkers—turning them to self-declared “reactionary” ends. Developing outside the confines of the academy, these forms of thought have woven insights from across Critical theory into new and mobilizing forms of conservative ideology, seeking to link that ideology to social forces that play increasingly active roles in global politics. Our intention here is not to somehow blame Critical perspectives for the ideas of the New Right, either directly or by association. Rather, we seek to show how an engagement with Critical theory helps us understand the New Right, while also demonstrating some of the direct challenges the New Right poses for critical perspectives. (shrink)

The article examines the patient-doctor relationship, relying on Michel Foucault’s concept of the clinical gaze. We argue that during the last decades, a profound transformation of the social nature of medicine took place, one that Foucault’s understanding of the clinical gaze cannot adequately account for. First, the article offers an elaboration of the three-node network of clinical gaze, the clinic, and nosology to explain the positioning of the doctor and the patient within the specific social ontology generated by the rise (...) of medicine. We then discuss intensive but irresolute developments brought by technological advancements, especially the X-ray tube. Finally, we argue that in the contemporary clinic, equipped with a plethora of sophisticated devices, the position of the doctor endured the most radical transformation in comparison with Foucault’s proponent of the clinical gaze at the dawn of modern medicine. (shrink)

The claim that we are entering a “postsecular” age supposedly marks a new openness toward public religion, which was expected to wither as societies modernized. Similarly, postcolonial theory has attempted to think through the public resurgence of indigenous culture after the collapse of “Western” political regimes, which also predicted and prescribed its privatization. Drawing on the work of Partha Chatterjee, this paper argues that the “postsecular,” particularly as it is deployed by Jürgen Habermas and Alasdair MacIntyre, seeks to seduce religious (...) believers and practitioners into just this same logic of self-colonization so that they might be recognized as defenders of an increasingly insecure, liberal nation-state against those who might seek to take advantage of its vulnerability. (shrink)