In this article I intend to show the strict relation between the notions of “second nature” and “recognition”. To do so I begin with a problem (circularity) proper to the theory of Hegelian and post- Hegelian Anerkennung. The solution strategy I propose is signifi cant also in terms of bringing into focus the problems connected with a notion of “space of reasons” that stems from the Hegelian concept of “Spirit”. I thus broach the notion of “second nature” as a bridgeconcept (...) that can play a key role both for a renewal of the theory of Anerkennung and for a rethinking of the “space of reasons” within the debate between Robert Brandom and John McDowell. Against this background I illustrate the novelties introduced by the dialectical conception of the relation between fi rst and second nature developed by Hegel and the contribution this idea can make to a revisited theory of recognition as a phenomenon articulated on two levels. I then return to the question of the space of reasons to show the contribution the renewed conception of recognition as second nature makes to the definition of its intrinsic sociality as something that is not in principle opposed to a sense of naturalness. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ : Dans sa lecture du rôle de la religion dans l’espace public, Habermas fait abstraction du pouvoir de la religion d’instituer symboliquement les communautés. Gauchet part d’une vision de la religion dans laquelle cette dimension est centrale. Je considère toutefois que Gauchet sous-estime également la mesure dans laquelle la religion a conservé ce pouvoir au sein de la société post-séculière. ABSTRACT: This article seeks to demonstrate that in his reading of the role of religion in the public realm, Habermas (...) has overlooked religion’s power to symbolically institute communities. Although Gauchet starts from a vision of religion in which this dimension is central, I contend that he too underestimates the extent in which religion has retained this power within postsecular society. (shrink)

Die Frage nach den Bedingungen eines guten Lebens erlebt aktuell in der Ethik eine Renaissance. Allerdings gilt es, diese Frage ausdrücklich auf das ganze Leben des Menschen und insbesondere auf die spätere Lebenszeit zu beziehen. Im Altern vollzieht sich eine Radikalisierung der menschlichen Grundsituation, die ein Werden zu sich selbst ermöglicht. Deshalb vermag gerade das Altern einen Zugang zu der elementaren Zeitlichkeit des Menschen und dem grundlegenden Zusammenhang von Endlichkeit und Sinn zu eröffnen. Der vorliegende Beitrag geht von einer Auseinandersetzung (...) mit Heideggers Todesanalysen aus. Dabei wird Heideggers thanatologische Engführung der Sinnkonstitution kritisiert und eine systematische Transformation der Bestimmung der Endlichkeit in interpersonaler und praktischer Hinsicht vorgenommen. Die so aufgewiesene Beziehung von Endlichkeit und Sinn wird schließlich im Blick auf eine philosophische Ethik des späteren Lebens und des Alterns konkretisiert. Das Altern zeigt sich dabei als zugleich gefährdeter und chancenreicher Weg der Identitätsbewahrung und der Identitätsbewährung. (shrink)

Starting from the sensuous perception of what is seen, an attempt is made at re-casting a Husserlian theory of constitution of the object of intuition, as one leaves the natural attitude through a transcendental method, by positing several theses so as to avoid the aporias of philosophical binary oppositions such as rationalism and empiri-cism, realism and idealism, logicism and psychologism, subjectivism and objectivism, transcendentalism and ontologism, metaphysics and positivism. Throughout fifty-five theses on constitution, the Husserlian proposal of continuously reforming philosophizing (...) by transcendental reduction is revisited, leaving the latter incomplete as new conversions are required by noetic-noematic correlations between world and consciousness. (shrink)

In this article, we develop a concept of stakeholder dialogue in responsible innovation (RI) processes. The problem with most concepts of communication is that they rely on ideals of openness, alignment and harmony, even while these ideals are rarely realized in practice. Based on the work of Burke, Habermas, Deetz and Levinas, we develop a concept of stakeholder dialogue that is able to deal with fundamentally different interests and value frames of actors involved in RI processes. We distinguish four main (...) characteristics of stakeholder dialogue. Dialogical responsiveness (1) enhances self-criticism, (2) is characterized by the constitution and the destruction of the self or identity of the actors involved, (3) consists only in the actual enactment of the dialogue and (4) is primarily responsive to the grand challenges of our time. Based on our findings, we provide a novel conceptualization of the central notion of responsiveness in the RI literature. (shrink)

The aim of this study is to proof the argument – i.e. ‘there are significant linkages amongst tolerance, hybrid identities and migration.’ These linkages can be comprehended by means of conceptualising extensions of hybrid identities in aggregate trans/inter-migration processes. It can be put forward that arising hybrid identities are embedded in a blurring structure of thoughts, beliefs, states of affairs, facts, belongings and so forth. From multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism viewpoints, it is argued that tolerance and migration ought to be analysed (...) in frame of sociology of law, human rights, international migration law, and of course the European Union law. So far, normative arguments and soft law approaches are very much well integrated with social aspects of migration, tolerance, identity and culture. In this context, the study examines to what extent cultural and human components are protected by law in multiple levels from an interdisciplinary perspective. In this framework, it is crucial to raise the research enquiries: What are possible criteria for the limits of tolerance? To what extent tolerance is related to human rights and morality? What ought to be the limit of tolerance towards hybrid identities in multicultural and cosmopolitan societies? In a consistent manner, the criteria and standards developed by some leading scholars were reconstructed and discussed throughout this paper. These criteria and standards are both moral (part of a universal system of morality) and legal (international, supranational, or national – i.e. constitutional). In order to apply such standards their validity was discussed (i.e. the respective normative power has the norms at the various levels). In the case of morals, their difference to particular ethnic systems was established (i.e. criteria by which the two can be distinguished). Then the research argument was elaborated on whether and how the legal standards comply with the moral standards, how national standards comply with supranational or international standards. Likewise, the study highlights the crucial contributions of “World Society and World System Paradigms” that are associated with social space, global civil society, cosmopolitanism, ethnic diversity, cultural hybridity, human rights activism and public sphere. Recent debates in Refugee Studies (e.g. Syrian Refugee Crisis, Dual and Multiple Citizenship Issues and so forth) highlight the fact that the European Union needs to consider new aspects of tolerance for hybrid identities and tolerate cultural rights of hybrid identities, create cohesion in communities and establish intercultural dialogue amongst home-states and host-states. Sanguinely, the efforts of hybrid identities are strengthening the relations between home-host states and these ought to attract some considerable attention. The authors of this study hope that their endeavours may contribute somewhat towards that. (shrink)

Departing from a critical norm research perspective, the paper first sketches the need to unveil the Eurocentric and secular bias of International Relations (IR) as a discipline in general and its constructivist norm research program in particular. With regard to human rights norms, and religious freedom in particular, the dominant liberal-secular international human rights law understanding of religious freedom marginalizes religious, and especially, Islamic grounds and understandings of this truly global norm. Indeed, it demonstrates both, the dominant ideational perspective of (...) religious freedom as a Western human right grounded by Western-canonical thinkers, and the limits of accommodating religion and religious voices in IR. In contrast, and against the background of a post-secular IR, the paper seeks to unveil alternative and marginalized bodies of Islamic knowledge for the sake of a more comprehensive picture to be painted by IR. By reconstructing reformist Islamic thought and Islamic ideational perspectives and conceptualizations of religious freedom, the paper seeks to let these voices speak for themselves as truly genuine Islamic contributions to IR. The overall aim is threefold: to theoretically connect critical norm research and post-secular approaches with reformist Islamic thought by conceptualizingijtihadas religious norm contestation; to unveil the double marginalized character of critical Muslim voices in IR; and finally to paint a broader and more comprehensive picture of Islam and IR by revealing an alternative Islamic genealogy of universal religious freedom. (shrink)

This article provides a critical assessment of Habermas’s recent work on religion and its role in the public sphere by comparing it to Kant’s phi-losophy of religion on the one hand and that of Kierkegaard on the other. It is argued that although Habermas is in many ways a Kantian, he diverges from Kant when it comes to religion, by taking a position which comes closer to the Kierkegaardian view that religiousness belongs to private faith rather than philosophy. This has (...) implications not just for the conception of religion but also for the very roles of communication, validity, rationality, and philosophy. (shrink)

Habermas se ha valido a menudo de la expresión "sociedad postsecular" para referirse al proceso de aprendizaje mutuo entre la razón ilustrada y la conciencia religiosa en el seno de las sociedades modernas. Esa expresión es utilizada por el pensador alemán en dos acepciones distintas. Unas veces la emplea como categoría sociológica descriptiva y otras como categoría filosófica de carácter normativo. En este trabajo rechazamos el uso descriptivo del concepto de sociedad postsecular, haciéndonos eco de las críticas que contra él (...) se han vertido desde la sociología de la religión contemporánea. A la vez, reconocemos el interés que reviste la propuesta normativa de Habermas. Tras exponer el sentido preciso de esa propuesta, examinamos la principal acusación que contra ella cabe formular: la de funcionalismo religioso. (shrink)

I tackle the definition of the relation between first and second nature while examining some problems with McDowell's conception. This, in the first place, will bring out the need to extend the notion of second nature to the social dimension, understanding it not just as `inner' second nature — individual mind — but also as `outer' second nature — objective spirit. In the second place the dialectical connection between these two notions of second nature will point the way to a (...) critical use of the concept itself, which will link up with a theory of reification. Furthermore, I shall endeavor to fit my reflection into the problematic constellation of critical theory: my analysis in fact rests on the question whether, within a critical theory, the philosophy of nature can be recaptured today, in such a way as to give meaning to the very notion of socio-philosophical criticism of reality. (shrink)

Since Jürgen Habermas' speech for the Peace Price of the German Book Trade in October 2001, secular reason – personified by one of its main protagonists – has been able to debate with religion anew. For the purpose of an unbiased encounter between philosophy and religion, Habermas introduced the term “postsecular” back then in order to emphasize that this dialogue was inevitably necessary, all the more in the face of religiously motivated terrorism. Nonetheless, this willingness to debate was accompanied by (...) the conviction that secular reason itself, as a matter of fact, would be “ideologically neutral”. However, taking the necessity of accomplishing the confrontation with “world” (Weltbewältigung) seriously, the reflection on world view as a whole unveils its implied tasks of granting metaphysical and existential certainty (metaphysische Sicherheit), therefore resulting in the statement that there cannot be a neutral world view at all. Only dialogue as exchange of beliefs generates the general framework within which the discursive issues of world views are separated from their existential aspects, thus enabling a reasonably conducted debate without endangering the existential certainty of its participants. As a consequence, the neutrality of world views exclusively rests in dialogue and is no unique feature of secular reason at all. Eventually, this leads to the reconsideration of the conditions that must be given for an argument to be called “rational”. The article tries to point out that an argument in political contexts, whether given by a religious or a secular person, should only be acknowledged rational if it takes at least all living people – regardless of their group affiliations – into account. (shrink)

In his recent writings, Jürgen Habermas asks how the liberal constitutional principle of separation between church and state, religion and politics, should be understood. The problem, he holds, is that a liberal state guarantees equal freedom for religious communities to practise their faith, while at the same time shielding the political bodies that take collectively binding decisions from religious influences. This means that religious citizens are asked to justify their political statements independently of their religious views, resulting in a burden (...) that secular citizens do not experience. To compensate, Habermas demands from secular citizens that they open their minds to the possible truth content of religion, enter into dialog and contribute to the translation of religious reasons into generally acceptable reasons. This article focuses on Habermas’s assumption that religious citizens suffer an asymmetrical cognitive burden that should be compensated, and his claim that his approach to religion in the public sphere is less restrictive than that of John Rawls. (shrink)

Issues of the truth potential of religions and its alleged incompatibility with scientific objectivity are among the questions that cannot be bypassed in discourses aiming to an integral understanding of society. In this paper, we will examine and compare two specific approaches that share the intention of taking into consideration religious truths when describing and criticising both modern societies and methods permitting their scientific examination within the academic field. As perennialism focuses on common metaphysical truth shared by all religions, and (...) post-secularism deals with a possible form of cooperation between secular and religious morality, it is expected to find that their offered solutions to social crisis phenomena will be essentially different. However, the results show that basically both see the solution as a reorganizational task. (shrink)

This article contributes to the debate on governance of emerging technologies, focusing in particular on the international level and taking into account the fact that these technologies are developed through a common effort of different stakeholders including governments, research communities, industry and civil society actors. These issues are explored from the perspective of communitarian ethical criticism of liberal social contract thinking, in order to enhance visibility of the influence collective non-state actors exercise on the development of these technologies. In particular, (...) the effect of different values in the discussion on emerging technologies on the perceived governance options is explored. A paradigm shift from defensive values such as security, risk and human rights to more optimistic values like peace, justice and integrity of creation is proposed and discussed. (shrink)

In this article I analyze Rawls' and Habermas' accounts of the role of religion in political deliberations in the public sphere. After pointing at some difficulties involved in the unequal distribution of deliberative rights and duties among religious and secular citizens that follow from their proposals, I argue for a way to structure political deliberation in the public sphere that imposes the same deliberative obligations on all democratic citizens, whether religious or secular. These obligations derive from the ideal of mutual (...) accountability that is supposed to guide political deliberation in a deliberative democracy. The main advantage of this proposal is that it recognizes the right of all democratic citizens to adopt their own cognitive stance (whether religious or secular) in political deliberation in the public sphere without giving up on the democratic obligation to provide reasons acceptable to everyone to justify coercive policies with which all citizens must comply. (shrink)

Este ensaio busca oferecer uma coleção de materiais historiográficos, em sua maior parte traduzidos do alemão, a bem da contextualização mais detalhada do papel de Moisés Mendelssohn no debate filosófico alemão da segunda metade do XVIII, em especial no que concerne à provável influência de suas reflexões em Kant e Hegel. Inicio com a consideração das novidades trazidas à tona por M. Serres no que concerne à interpretação de Leibniz, e o faço com o intuito de introduzir em sentido amplo (...) a problemática da _característica universal_, que servirá de fio condutor neste percurso. Tal introdução me permite definir alguns dos termos mediante os quais observaremos o debate entre Kant e Mendelssohn, a começar com a análise de alguns aspectos do concurso sobre a cientificidade da metafísica proposto pela Academia de Ciências da Prússia em 1762, e em seguida com a observação, mesmo que sumária, de alguns outros momentos importantes do contato entre ambos os filósofos. Meu objetivo é ilustrar a posição mendelssohniana, mesmo que de maneira introdutória, no intuito de se lançar alguma luz sobre seu projeto crítico de impor limites à razão teórica da matemática clássica e à razão prática da mística cabalística – diapasão em que se exercita a mágica e o fascínio do ideário da característica universal – o que promete, por sua vez, iluminar tanto alguns aspectos fundamentais do projeto da _Crítica da Razão Pura_ de Kant quanto da _Ciência da Lógica_ de Hegel. À guisa de conclusão relatarei, mesmo que de maneira episódica e sumária, aspectos da _querela do panteísmo_ e indicaremos brevemente como Kant e Hegel, de maneiras opostas, a ela reagiram. (shrink)

Religie wordt vaak opgevat als een illusionaire macht waarmee onderscheid wordt gemaakt tussen het seculiere en het sacrale en daarmee tussen mensen die wel en mensen die niet uitverkoren zijn. Macht en geweld vallen in een dergelijke opvatting vrijwel samen. Aan de hand van het werk van Pierre Bourdieu laat ik zien dat dit leidt, hetzij tot een positie waarin ieder onderscheidend vermogen tussen wat waar of niet waar is verdwijnt, hetzij tot een positie waarin de criteria zo hoog worden (...) opgeschroefd dat waarheidsvinding nauwelijks mogelijk meer is. Tot slot verdedig ik een positie waarin religie begrepen wordt als een normatieve praktijk, waarin ook aan de uitoefening van macht een eigen plaats toekomt. (shrink)

The Rawls–Habermas debate is having a revival. In this article I argue that both philosophers develop different freestanding conceptions of political legitimacy, and show how they diverge when it comes to how political legitimacy can be justified. Habermas is looking for a deeper justification than Rawls will allow for. I then proceed to show how the different meta-ethical positions yield two different versions of democratic theory, focusing in particular on rights and popular sovereignty. I demonstrate how both conceive of the (...) co-originality of private and public autonomy, and subsequently take issue with Habermas’ reading of Rawls. I argue that Rawls should not be understood as a natural rights theorist, that Habermas misunderstands the role of the original position, and that Rawls cannot be considered a strong constitutionalist. Thus, the real difference between Rawls and Habermas revolves around their different conceptions of political legitimacy. (shrink)

Dieser Beitrag gibt einen Überblick der zentralen postsäkularen Debatten im Kontext der Schnittstelle von Religions- und Geschlechterforschung. Aus postkolonialer, postsäkularer und Geschlechter-/queerer Perspektive ist eine eigene Epistemologie für die Untersuchung von ‚Religion‘ und ‚Geschlecht‘ entwickelt worden. Die Methode der Intersektionalität wird für die Analyse von ‚Religion‘ überarbeitet. Die Kategorie ‚Religion‘, die in der Geschlechterforschung häufig vernachlässigt oder essentialisiert wird, wird in Abhängigkeit von ‚Geschlecht‘, ‚Sexualität‘, ‚Race‘, ‚Nation‘, ‚Klasse‘, ‚Spezies‘ etc. weiterdiskutiert und als diskursive, intersektionale, performative Kategorie elaboriert. ‚Geschlecht‘ und ‚Religion‘ (...) werden als diskursive, intersektionale, performative Kategorien der Wissensproduktion erarbeitet. Diese Kategorien werden nicht nur dekonstruiert und deessentialisiert, sondern konsequent denaturalisiert und desidentifiziert, um epistemische Gewalt zu überkommen. Weiterhin kann Religion – konzeptualisiert als Wissenskategorie – nicht nur zum individuellen, sondern auch zum kollektiven Handlungsmachtgewinn beisteuern. Zudem werden Weiterentwicklungen feministischer Theorie im postsäkularen Kontext und in der queer-feministisch-materialistischen Theoriebildung und Religion diskutiert. (shrink)

The first part of the paper recalls the structural relationship between the religious attitudes and practices and the problem of evil, starting from an anthropological–sociological point of view and ending with more philosophical considerations. The second part deals with the forms of evil engendered or potentiated by religion itself mainly in the public-collective dimension, especially with constraint and violence connected with monotheistic traditions, and finally indicates the antidotes available in them.

The article considers Jürgen Habermas's views on the relationship between postmetaphysical philosophy and religion. It outlines Habermas's shift from his earlier, apparently dismissive attitude towards religion to his presently more receptive stance. This more receptive stance is evident in his recent emphasis on critical engagement with the semantic contents of religion and may be characterized by two interrelated theses: the view that religious contributions should be included in political deliberations in the informally organized public spheres of contemporary democracies, though translated (...) into a secular language for the purposes of legislation and formal decision making and the view that postmetaphysical philosophy should seek to salvage the semantic contents of religious traditions in order to supply the evocative images, exemplary figures, and inspirational narratives it needs for its social and political projects. With regard to, it argues that the translation requirement impairs the political autonomy of religious believers and other metaphysically inclined citizens, suggesting that this difficulty could be alleviated by making a distinction between epistemologically authoritarian and non-authoritarian religious beliefs. With regard to, it argues that the salvaging operation is not as straightforward as Habermas seems to suppose and that social and political philosophy may not be able to tap the semantic power of religious traditions without relying on metaphysical assumptions; it concludes that, here, too, a distinction between authoritarian and non-authoritarian approaches to knowledge and validity may be useful. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to critically assess the ‘three-world theory’ as it is presented—with some slight but decisive differences—by Jürgen Habermas and Karl Popper. This theory presents the philosophy of science with a conceptual and material problem, insofar as it claims that science has no single access to all aspects of the world. Although I will try to demonstrate advantages of Popper’s idea of ‘the third world’ of ideas, the shortcomings of his ontological stance become visible from the (...) pragmatic point of view in Habermas’s theory of communicative acts. With regard to the critique that the three-world theory has met in both its pragmatic and ontological versions, I will take a closer look at John Searle’s naturalistic counter-position. By teasing out some problematic implications in his theory of causation, I aim to show that Searle’s approach is, in fact, much closer to Popper’s than he might think. Finally, while condoning Habermas’s distinction between the natural world and the lifeworld, I will opt for a pragmatically differentiated view of ‘the real’, rather than speaking of different worlds. (shrink)

This article analyses how recent critiques of secularism in political philosophy and cultural anthropology might productively be combined and contrasted with each other. I will show that Jürgen Habermas' postsecularism takes insufficient account of elementary criticisms of secularism on the part of anthropologists such as Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood. However, I shall also criticize Saba Mahmood’s reading of secularism by arguing that, in the end, she replaces the secular–religious divide with a secularity–piety divide; for example, in her reading of (...) Nasr Abu Zayd’s secular Islamic hermeneutics. This inhibits the use of her framework of analysis for a criticism of a problem central to Habermas' postsecularism, namely that it remains focused on specific intensities of belief. I shall then argue that, combined with the anthropological critiques of the secular, the political-historical nature of the fanaticism–piety–violence nexus should be integrated into political philosophical debates on secularism and postsecularism. (shrink)

This essay is an attempt to analyze an important decision Brzozowski took at the end of his life, i.e. his late turn towards Catholicism, which, despite his own objections, we should nonetheless call a religious conversion. The main reason why Brzozowski resisted the traditional rhetoric of conversion lies in his often repeated conviction that faith cannot invalidate life, because “what is not biographical, does not exist at all.” Brzozowski, therefore, rejects conversion understood as a radical and abrupt revolution of the (...) soul, which annuls everything that happened before, and turns to a model of religiosity (“Catholicism, undoubtedly”) which preserves his entire biographical past. In this manner, Brzozowski seeks his own formula of faith, more adequate to the “situation” of the modern man who lives in and through History. I argue that the model of “conversion without conversion” Brzozowski chose as representative of modern man is typically, though avant la lettre , post-secular: closer to the Jewish sources of past-oriented tschuva than to the mystical timelessness of traditionally Christian metanoia . The idea that redemption consists not in a liberation of a pure spirit but in a patient working-through of the universal history of creation is an implicit credo of the whole modern age, first fully articulated by Brzozowski and only later in the writings of Hermann Cohen, Franz Rosenzweig, and Walter Benjamin. Brzozowski emerges as a relatively early precursor of the future post-secular option whose advocates, like the author of The Diary , will not allow themselves to “lose a single moment,” either of their lives or the world’s history. (shrink)

This article seeks to demonstrate that in his recent reading of the role of religion in the postsecular public realm, Habermas overlooks a most fundamental dimension of religion: its power to symbolically institute communities. For his part, Gauchet starts from a vision of religion in which this fundamental dimension is central. In his evaluation of the role of religion in postsecular society, he therefore arrives at results which are very different from those of Habermas. However, I believe that Gauchet too (...) underestimates the extent to which religion’s power of symbolic community institution has remained intact within modern, postsecular society. In support of this position, I show how relatively heterogeneous phenomena within Western societies, such as the renewed importance of religion in the public realm, the revival of certain forms of nationalism and the associated demand for recognition of group rights and hence for forms of legal pluralism, may prefigure a new transformation of the public realm. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to characterize the pragmatist and anti-deflationist notions of truth. I take Habermas’s rather recent discussion and present the interpretation that his notion of truth relies on the reliabilist conception of knowledge rather than the internalist conception that defines knowledge as a justified true belief. Then, I show that my interpretation is consistent with Habermas’s project of weak naturalism. Finally, I draw some more general implications about the pragmatist notion of truth.

Neo-Kantianism emerged over the course of the 1860s and it occupied a leading position in the German universities from the 1870s until the First World War. Demands for getting "back to Kant" had become common since the early 1860s, and these demands were discussed in the meetings of the Philosophical Society of Berlin (Philosophische Gesellschaft zu Berlin; PGB), which was the international organization of Hegelians. In this paper I address some reactions among the PGB members to the 1860s Kant revival. (...) The journal "Der Gedanke", the organ of the PGB, reported closely how Kant returned to the spotlight of German philosophy. The reactions of the PGB members to the Kant revival was not only critical. Over the course of the 1860s the interest on Kant among the members grew little by little. (shrink)

Este artículo analiza la lectura fenomenológica que GuillermoHoyos Vásquez propuso sobre la obra de Nicolás Gómez Dávila, resalta la peculiaridad de su diálogo y muestra las fuentes de la misma. Concentrándose principalmente en la cuestión del pensamiento reaccionario y en la crítica a la democracia que realiza Gómez Dávila, presenta los motivos de cercanía y de distanciamiento entre los dos autores y propone algunos matices a las ideas de ambos pensadores.

This article attempts, for the first time, to link some central motives in the thought of Jürgen Habermas with the biographical experiences of the philosopher and social theorist. What are the relations which Habermas himself thematizes in his life story by means of discursive analysis? Three elements are central: the change in significance of the nation state against the backdrop of the process of European integration, the concept of a deliberative democracy, and the timely and controversial issue of the taming (...) of world capitalism. Finally, the article discusses the question of how plausible it is that there is no alternative to capitalism and to what extent democracy can tame capitalism. (shrink)

The U.S.-led military incursion in Iraq and the subsequent occupation has been filled with myriad examples of the Bush Administration using misleading statements in an effort to win the support of American citizens, and in a secondary sense, the international community and the Iraqis. This situation provides many opportunities to analyze the use of sophistry and linguistic sleight of hand. In this paper, I draw upon the insights offered by Hannah Arendt in the earlier context of her critiques of totalitarianism (...) during the 1930s and 1940s, and her later critique of the United States upon the publication of the Pentagon Papers in the midst of the U.S. war in Vietnam. Her insights regarding truth and lying in politics shed light on what is wrong with U.S. approaches today. Similar methods continue to be used today since people have continued to be gullible to these methods. (shrink)

Jeg diskuterer i denne artikel en række principielle spørgsmål angående det der kaldes «religionens genkomst» i det moderne demokrati. Mit hovedeksempel er den såkaldte «Muhammed-krise», som stadigvæk debatte­res med stor intensitet i nationale og internationale sammenhænge. De tre hovedspørg­smål lyder: Hvilken plads kan religiøse synspunkter og ytringer gøre krav på i den demokratiske offentlighed? Kan vi indholdsmæssigt fastsætte grænsen for religiøs blasfemi ved lov eller står den til løbende demokratisk debat? I hvilken grad kan reli­giøse minoritetsgrupper kræve anerkendelse fra – (...) og beskyttelse mod – majoritetskultu­ren i moderne, liberale demokratier? Til det første spørgsmål svarer jeg med Jürgen Habermas at religiøse grupper bør forsøge at oversætte deres holdninger til ikke-religiøse argumenter, samtidig med at denne oversættelse af forskellige årsager ikke kan fremtvin­ges retsligt eller afkræves som betingelse for demokratisk deltagelse. Mht. til det andet spørgsmål argumenterer jeg – igen med Habermas – for, at den konkrete anvendelse af abstrakte retsprincipper som ytringsfrihed og religionsfrihed kræver åben, demokratisk debat med bred deltagelse for athave legitimitet. Resultatet af denne debat kan godtvære et strengt syn på, hvad der tæller som blasfemisk, men muligheden for at kritisere dette syn – eller for generel religionskritik – kan ikke undertrykkesuden at gå kompromis med det liberale demokratis grundprincipper. Som svar på det tredje spørgsmål, og som et kritisk supplement til Habermas, fremfører jeg med Axel Honneth, at samfundsmæssig integration ikke skabes af demokratiske debatter alene. Der kræves også en vis før-dis­kursiv atmosfære af solidaritet: Religiøse minoritetsgrupper kan ganske vist ikke kræve juridisk beskyttelse af religiøse følelser, men de kan påpege «asymmetriske anerkendel­sesforhold», f.eks. ensidigt negative fremstillinger i medierne, som forringer deres mulighed for at bidrage til samfundet som anerkendte og anerkendende medborgere. (shrink)

In his latest book, Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie, Jürgen Habermas attempts nothing less than a reconceptualisation of the history of human reason. Why, according to the central question that runs through the book like a red thread, can we, in the face of all social adversities and psychological obstacles, still be morally motivated to stand up for overcoming injustice in the world? This almost classic question about what I can hope for undoubtedly bears Kantian traits. And yet Habermas clearly (...) goes beyond Kant. We argue that this becomes visible, first, in his post-metaphysical conception of motivation, which links individual and collective moral learning processes. The enormous explosive power of this conception comes into its own, secondly, especially against the background of some additional assumptions (trust, grief, open future). Nevertheless, thirdly, the question arises to what extent the Habermasian narrative of progress does not have a blind spot because it is in some sense not dialectical enough. The negative side of reason, which Adorno and Benjamin emphasised, are not included in the progress narrative, or only indirectly, which makes the conception of moral motivation seem weaker than it ought to be. (shrink)

This article gives an overview of 4 important lacunae in political liberalism and identifies, in a preliminary fashion, some trends in the literature that can come in for support in filling these blind spots, which prevent political liberalism from a correct assessment of the diverse nature of religious claims. Political liberalism operates with implicit assumptions about religious actors being either ‘liberal’ or ‘fundamentalist’ and ignores a third, in-between group, namely traditionalist religious actors and their claims. After having explained what makes (...) traditionalist religious actors different from liberal and fundamentalist religious actors, the author develops 4 areas in which political liberalism should be pushed further theoretically in order to correctly theorize the challenge which traditional religious actors pose to liberal democracy. These 4 areas are: the context of translation; the politics of exemptions; the multivocality of theology; and the transnational nature of norm-contestation. (shrink)

Since the turn of the millennium Jürgen Habermas's contributions to social and political theory have been increasingly turning toward matters of religious and theological relevance. This article weighs up the import and coherence of Habermas's recent reflections on religious belief and its relationship to reason and modernity in Western philosophical culture. At the forefront of the analysis stands Habermas's conception of appropriate “limits” and “boundaries” between the domains of knowledge and faith and the possibility and desirability of a process of (...) “discursive translation” of contents of religious language into forms of secularized, universalizing moral argument. The article defends the thesis that Habermas's project of a rapprochement between contents of religious language and norms of scientific thinking founders on its attempt to reconcile too many different, conceptually centrifugal tendencies. However, these difficulties and inconsistencies in Habermas's recent thinking remain instructive and ought to continue to engage the interest of scholars concerned today with the question of how far the philosophy of the social sciences can and cannot accommodate commitments to theism in the practice of research. (shrink)

This article explores the much neglected work of the German philosopher and cultural theorist Hans Blumenberg, a figure still relatively little known in the Anglophone world. The thesis is defended that Blumenberg's conception of The Legitimacy of the Modern Age (1966) offers valuable resources for addressing some important questions about the philosophical self-understanding of the modern social sciences in relation to theological and religious sources of thought and language. The article begins with an assessment of the contemporary relevance of Blumenberg's (...) critique of the idea of modern scientific culture as a merely `secularized form' of theological thinking. This critique is then compared with Blumenberg's account of the relationship of theoretico-scientific inquiry to mythological consciousness in his second major philosophical monograph of 1979, Work on Myth. The article concludes with a range of reflections on ways in which Blumenberg's work helps us understand how certain explanatory constructs and devices employed in the modern social sciences can be said to incorporate, assimilate, and at the same time critically transform figures of thought and language that display a mythic, religious and theological context of historical origination, provenance or genealogy. (shrink)

This article seeks to enrich the social-theoretical and sociological approach to climate change by arguing in favour of a weak naturalistic ontology beyond the usually presupposed methodological sociologism or culturalism. Accordingly, attention is drawn to the elementary social forms that mediate between nature and the sociocultural form of life and thus figure as the central object of a critical sociological explanation of impediments retarding or preventing a transition to a sustainable global society. The argument is illustrated by a comparison of (...) the current situation of climate change to a similar situation some 10,000 years ago which conditioned the transition from hunting-gathering to farming. The crucial factor in the prehistoric transition had been the newly acquired cognitive fluidity, which not only became the defining feature of the modern human mind, but is also foundational of the corresponding social form of life. The cognitively fluid mind made possible new generative practices and the imagination of counterfactuals possessing an incursive force that is capable of transforming existing practices and social structures. The ultimate question, then, is twofold: whether there is enough potential left in the cognitively fluid mind for its societal significance to be activated to the benefit of a transformation of the current recalcitrant social formation; and whether we today are able and willing to recognize such potential and corresponding realizable possibilities upon which to act. (shrink)

La diferenciación y globalización estructural de la moderna sociedad mundial produce, a nivel normativo, una tensión entre criterios de justicia global y múltiples formas de justicia sectorial asociadas a ámbitos sociales diferenciados como el comercio, el deporte y las finanzas, entre otros. Las teorías contemporáneas de justicia global, así como las teorías clásicas del derecho estatal, han reaccionado de modo más bien escéptico ante los nuevos desarrollos de justicia sectorial argumentando déficit de legitimación. Mediante el análisis del caso de la (...) lex mercatoria, este artículo sostiene que justicia global y justicia sectorial se unen por medio de lo que se denomina momentos de universalidad normativa, esto es, principios limitativos y constituyentes de la justicia sectorial. De este modo, justicia global y sectorial aparecen como formas complementarias y no antagónicas de derecho global en la sociedad mundial. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that political philosophers like Rawls and Habermas that characterize their methods as non-metaphysical or postmetaphysical depend on constitutions in order to provide a positive and public reference point for democratic participants. Michelman shows how this dependency is problematic, by contending that disagreement about the meaning of constitutional rights and the indeterminacy of their application undermines the rationality of consensus. I argue that his concerns raise serious problems for Rawls’ theory. Habermas, on the other hand, has (...) some tools to deal with Michelman’s critique — namely, his distinction between discourses of justification and application, and his idea of constitutional patriotism — but he must concede that much of the substance of constitutional democracy is basically up for grabs. I conclude by suggesting why these consequences are less threatening than they may seem. (shrink)