To understand the politics of recognition, one must conceive of it as a politics of representation. Like representation, recognition proceeds at once in a constative and a performative mode, whereby they bring into being what is simultaneously represented or recognized. This structure has paradoxical implications. The politics of recognition is also a politics of representation in the sense that it always involves questions such as, Which representations are recognized? Whose representations are they? The reverse is also true: the politics of (...) representation involves recognition because representatives and representations must be recognized in order to gain authority. In short, we can examine recognition as representation, and there is no recognition without representation, and vice versa. This is demonstrated through a reading of a recent British legal case, Begum, where the issue at stake concerned which representation of Islam should form the basis for the recognition of Islam in the school uniform policy. (shrink)

Many political theorists today appeal to, or assume the existence of, a political culture in which the public values of Western liberal democracies are embedded – a political culture that is necessary to render their ideas plausible and their proposals feasible. This article contrasts this approach with the more ambitious arguments advanced by Jürgen Habermas in his original account of discourse ethics – a moral theory to which, he supposed, all human beings were demonstrably and ineluctably bound by the communicative (...) constitution of collective life. Although these arguments have been largely discredited, I argue that Habermas’ analysis can be enlisted in defence of a weaker claim: namely, that principled commitment to discussion is not always necessary for genuine deliberative engagement to occur. As a result, there may be hope for democratic deliberation in contexts where a liberal democratic political culture is lacking. (shrink)

This paper situates Karl Popper's ‘paradox of tolerance’ as foundation within the context of interrogating multifaceted violent identity politics propagated in contemporary Nigeria. The paper argues that the ‘active’ virtue of tolerance which requires that subjects within the Nigerian polity engage each other in rationally‐driven discourse on issues of dissent does not presume long‐suffering or passive endurance of violence propagated by a side of the dissenting divide. It is thus pertinent that an appropriate intervention by the Nigerian state delineating the (...) limits of tolerance in the face of perennial intolerance and the proliferation of violent identity politics is inevitable. (shrink)

Recent controversies concerning freedom of expression on university campuses have raised the question of how the limits of free speech can be determined in a justified way in a pluralistic public space such as the campus. The article addresses this question from the viewpoint of two complementary theoretical perspectives: Rainer Forst’s respect conception of toleration, and the discourse theory of democracy developed by Jürgen Habermas and Seyla Benhabib. These theories are argued to provide a non-arbitrary, impartial and procedural model for (...) determining the limits of free speech on campus. Deriving primarily from the discourse model, the article suggests that the limits of freedom of expression on campus should be determined by collective deliberative processes involving the affected students. Moreover, it is argued that, instead of prohibiting controversial topics or views, the university administration and teachers should focus on establishing procedural rules of rational deliberation. This is argued to increase students’ understanding of the nature of legitimate democratic discussion and thus accomplish the university’s educational task of fostering students’ ability to use their freedom of speech in a responsible way. (shrink)

What today divides analytical from Continental philosophy? This paper argues that the present divide is not what it once was. Today, the divide concerns the styles in which philosophers deal with intellectual problems: solving them, pressing them, resolving them, or dissolving them. Using ‘the boundary problem’, or ‘the democratic paradox’, as an example, we argue for two theses. First, the difference between most analytical and most Continental philosophers today is that Continental philosophers find intelligible two styles of dealing with problems (...) that most analytical philosophers find unintelligible: pressing them and resolving them. Second, when it comes to a genuine divide in which not understanding the other side’s basic philosophical purposes combines with disagreement on fundamental questions of doctrine, the only such divide today is that between those analytical philosophers who tend to solve problems and those Continental philosophers who tend to press problems. It is among these subgroups that there is a real philosophical divide today. So the analytical–Continental divide is more a matter of style than of substance; but as we try to show, differences in style shape differences over substance. (shrink)

O artigo examina a idéia rawlsiana de razão pública, em primeiro lugar, e a defesa habermasiana do princípio da igualdade cívica, a seguir, afim de apresentar a noção de pós-secularismo de Habermas como resultado dos debates contemporâneos sobre a relação entre religião e política influenciados pela concepção de cidadania democrática de Rawls.The article examines the Rawlsian idea of public reason, fi rst, and the Habermasian defense of the principle of civic equality, then, in order to present Habermas’s notion of post-secularism (...) as a result of the contemporary debates on the relationship between religion and politics infl uenced by Rawls’s conception of democratic citizenship. (shrink)

Albinism is a global public health issue but it assumes a peculiar nature in the African continent due, in part, to the social stigma faced by persons with albinism in Africa. I argue that there are two essential reasons for this precarious situation. First, in the African consciousness, albinism is an alterity or otherness. The PWA in Africa is not merely a physical other but also an ontological other in the African community of beings, which provides a hermeneutic for the (...) stigmatising separateness or difference of the PWA. The second reason hinges on a distinction drawn by Jürgen Habermas between the ethical point of view and the moral point of view. While the former consists of the ethos, customs, or idea of the good shared by a group of persons with a shared tradition or way of life, the latter consists of what is good for all and transcends particular traditions or ways of life. Consequently, the African ethical point of view, the ethics of solidarity, justifies within the African worldview the established alterity and, by implication, stigmatization of PWAs. On this view, actions that promote harmony and prevent discord and disequilibrium among accepted beings in the African community are permissible. I further show that unless there is a change in the physical and ontological conception of PWAs and a leap from the ethical point of view to the moral point of view, the negative attitudes toward PWAs will not change. The leap to the moral point of view does not suggest an abandonment of the ethical point of view but only recommends that the two meet halfway in respect for universally accepted norms of human actions. To achieve this, I will show that much needs to be done in the areas of policy formulation, law, health care services, and education. (shrink)

Tolerance, the mere “putting up” with disapproved behaviour and practices, is often considered a too negative and passive engagement with difference in the liberal constitutional state. In response, liberal thinkers have either discarded tolerance, or assimilated it to the moral and legal precepts of liberal justice. In contradistinction to these approaches I argue that there is something distinctive and valuable about tolerance that should not be undermined by more ambitious, rights-based models of social cooperation. I develop a conception of tolerance (...) as a complementary principle and an interim value that is neither incompatible with, nor reducible to, rights-based liberalism. Tolerance represents a particular, non-communitarian expression of the general dictum that the liberal state, having released its citizens into liberty, rests on social presuppositions it cannot itself guarantee. (shrink)