Este libro promete ser una contribución para el estudio de la teoría crítica en general y para el análisis de la historia de la Escuela de Frankfurt en particular. Todos los trabajos que están contenidos en este volumen hacen parte del amplio marco teórico de la teoría crítica de la sociedad. Muchos siguen las huellas de los fundadores de esta tendencia, mientras que otros se presentan como críticos de la misma y unos cuantos más tratan de vincular problemas y contextos (...) de relevancia a los conceptos más destacados que se empezaron a construir hace cien años en Frankfurt. Encontramos como buena excusa para su publicación precisamente el año centenario del Instituto de Investigación Social. Además, hemos creído conveniente organizar los materiales en secciones que van desde la historia de la Escuela de Frankfurt hasta la consideración de algunos interrogantes de actualidad motivados por el desarrollo de la teoría crítica. No obstante, con esto no pretendemos establecer límites absolutos de clasificación. Confesamos que nuestra forma de organizar los ensayos responde simplemente a criterios editoriales más que a cuestiones teóricas y conceptuales. Claramente las intersecciones entre los estudios aquí presentados son amplias y hacen que cada una de las propuestas pueda dialogar con las otras en función de sus evidentes parecidos de familia. (shrink)

This paper seeks to show that the proposition of 'double contingency' introduced by Parsons and defended by Luhmann and Habermas is insufficient under the conditions of contemporary communication societies. In the latter context, the increasing differentiation and organization of communication processes eventuated in the recognition of the epistemic authority of the public, which in turn compels us to conceptualize a new level of contingency. A first step is therefore taken to capture the role of the public in communication societies theoretically (...) by what may be called 'triple contingency'. Since the process of the definition of reality and its outcome, to which the response of the public is central, is best seen in constructivist terms, attention is also paid to relevant methodological and epistemological questions. Key Words: cognitive turn • communication • constructivism • double contingency • Habermas • Luhmann • observation • Parsons • situationalism • the third point of view. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to show that Hegel's concept of personal respect is of great interest to contemporary Critical Theory. The author first analyzes this notion as it appears in the Philosophy of Right and then offers a new interpretation of the conceptual relation between personal respect and the institutions of property and markets. In doing so, he shows why Hegel's concept of personal respect allows us to understand markets as possible institutionalizations of this kind of recognition, (...) and why it is compatible with a critique of neoliberal capitalism. He argues that due to these features Hegel's notion of personal respect is of great interest to theoreticians within the tradition of critical theory. (shrink)

This article examines two approaches to the analysis and critical assessment of scientific argumentation. The first approach employs the discourse theory that Jurgen Habermas has developed on the basis of his theory of communicative action and applied to the areas of politics and law. Using his analysis of law and democracy in his Between Facts and Norms as a kind of template, I sketch the main steps in a Habermasian discourse theory of science. Difficulties in his approach motivate my proposal (...) of an alternative approach that starts not with a theory of communicative action but with some broad categories drawn from argumentation theory. Using these categories, one can survey the various conceptions of scientific argumentation that have already emerged in the multi-disciplinary field of science studies. The more flexible, open-ended theoretic categories put one in a better position to'develop cooperative interdisciplinary studies that can inform the critical assessment of scientific argumentation. (shrink)

The conviction that political recognition is accomplished through the extension and completion of the Enlightenment project of toleration is shared by some of the most influential political theorists of our time. John Rawls, Charles Taylor and Will Kymlicka all formulate the issue of recognition as if it were a corollary of the principle of toleration based in equal liberty or dignity. This raises important issues which political thought must confront and engage with. Above all, it means reconsidering the primacy of (...) Enlightenment critique for our understanding of ourselves, our world and our encounter with others. In this article I examine the liberal conviction that tolerance (in the sense of a commitment to individual autonomy) best promotes recognition of cultural diversity. I argue that two weaknesses haunt the liberal project and undermine this belief. They prevail because of a failure adequately to address the question of recognition in its normative, ontological and symbolic aspects. In contrast, I argue that philosophical hermeneutics affords a critical perspective on democratic theory and practice that must be taken up and extended following the experience of identity politics. Key Words: hermeneutics • Kymlicka • multicultural democracy • normativity • Rawls • ontology • symbolic • Taylor. (shrink)

Although the success of Habermas’s theory of communicative action depends on his dialogical model of understanding in which a theorist is supposed to participate in the debate with the actors as a ‘virtual participant’ and seek context-transcendent truth through the exchange of speech acts, current literature on the theory of communicative action rarely touches on the difficulties it entails. In the first part of this paper, I will examine Habermas’s argument that understanding other cultural practices requires the interpreter to virtually (...) participate in the “dialogue” with the actors as to the rationality of their cultural practice and discuss why, according to Habermas,such dialogue leads to the “context-transcendent truth”. In the second part, by using a concrete historical example, I will reconstruct a “virtual dialogue” between Habermas and Michael Polanyi as to the rationality of scientific practice and indicate why Habermas’s dialogical model of understanding based on the methodology of virtual participation cannot achieve what it professes to do. (shrink)

In a provocative recent study, Bent Flyvbjerg makes a sustained case for the need for a revitalized conception of social inquiry with direct input into the policy-making and planning process, contending that it is only in this way that social science can be made to matter again. Flyvbjerg further contends that to do justice to the reality of contemporary policy forums, we need to embrace a thoroughgoing dialogical conception of the policy-making process itself. To vindicate this contention and theoretically ground (...) the envisaged dialogical ideal, Flyvbjerg draws extensively on the work of both Habermas and Foucault. In so doing, he makes a valuable contribution to delineating the requirements that contemporary policy forums must meet if participants can judiciously claim to be engaging in decision-making in the best interests of the community at large. However, the overall tenability of Flyvbjerg’s proposal is diminished because, motivated by his convictions about the importance of power relations in determining real-world policy outcomes, he engages in a one-sided defence of the merits of Foucault’s contribution to the neglect of Habermas’s input in informing us about the ground rules needed to structure policy debate to ensure an equitable outcome. The aim of the present article is to redress this imbalance. To this end, I argue that given certain weaknesses in Foucault’s formulation of his position, we must draw on Habermas as a corrective if we are to succeed in advancing the dialogical ideal envisaged by Flyvbjerg. Beyond defending the need for a complementary reading of these theorists, I undertake to facilitate the implementation of the envisaged dialogical ideal by further elucidating the discursive conditions needed to underpin it. (shrink)

On Foucault’s own telling, his distinctive approach to critique is to be characterized as a ‘limit attitude’. Definitive of this limit attitude is a problematizing, transgressive style of thinking oriented toward challenging existing ways of being and doing, with a view to liberating new possibilities for advancing ‘the undefined work of freedom’. From the outset, however, the efficacy of this problematizing approach to critique has been beset by doubts about the adequacy of its normative resources. In the present article, it (...) is argued that progress can be made toward a productive resolution of this contested issue if adequate account is taken of both the Nietzschean and the Kantian dimensions of Foucault’s thought. Specifically, it is argued that the balance between these potentially conflictual elements must be appropriately (re)negotiated, if the normative efficacy of Foucauldian critique is to be ensured, while its distinctive problematizing thrust is preserved. In defending this view, the Foucauldian concept of autonomy is seen to have a pivotal role to play both in advancing the task of problematization and, in its relation to intersubjectivity, in securing its normative efficacy. In thus vindicating the integrity of Foucault’s distinctive approach to critique, new light is shed on the structure, dynamics and logic of a contemporary mode of inquiry committed to the problematizing exercise of critical reason. (shrink)

This paper considers the utility of Ethnomethodology (EM) for the study of healthcare ethics as part of the empirical turn in Bioethics. I give a brief introduction to EM through its respecification of sociology, the specific view on the social world this generates and EM's posture of ‘indifference’. I then take a number of EM concepts and articulate each in the context of an EM study of healthcare ethics in professional practice. Having given an overview of the relationship and perspective (...) EM might bring to the professional practice of healthcare ethics I consider whether and how such an approach could be deployed. Whilst an ethnographic study might be problematic I suggest a number of alternative methods through which such EM research could be accomplished. I conclude with the suggestion that, as a particular approach to sociological research, EM offers good deal of potential for the empirical study of healthcare ethics in practice which could result in an improved reflexive understanding of professional ethical practices in bioethics. (shrink)