Ever since Hegel made poignant the difference between morality and ethical life, philosophical discourse in the traditions that developed subsequently, up to and including the Frankfurt school, has oscillated between those poles. This paper starts out with a short exposition of autonomy as one of the few large-scale innovations in the history of philosophy and then proceeds to discuss Hegel’s concept of “Sittlichkeit” and the objections to be raised against it from a Kantian point of view. Political theory, however, has (...) to move beyond pure normativism and consider actual social relations of power, as Marx disclosed. Mapping out this winding trajectory from Kant to Marx provides some perspective that may be illuminating for challenging present-day issues. (shrink)

While post- and decolonial theorists have thoroughly debunked the idea of historical progress as a Eurocentric, imperialist, and neocolonialist fallacy, many of the most prominent contemporary thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School--Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rainer Forst--have persistently defended ideas of progress, development, and modernity and have even made such ideas central to their normative claims. Can the Frankfurt School's goal of radical social change survive this critique? And what would a decolonized critical theory look like? Amy Allen fractures (...) critical theory from within by dispensing with its progressive reading of history while retaining its notion of progress as a political imperative, so eloquently defended by Adorno. Critical theory, according to Allen, is the best resouce we have for achieving emancipatory social goals. In reimagining a decolonized critical theory after the end of progress, she rescues it from oblivion and gives it a future. (shrink)

It is widely accepted that electoral representative democracy is better—along a number of different normative dimensions—than any other alternative lawmaking political arrangement. It is not typically seen as much of a competition: it is also widely accepted that the only legitimate alternative to electoral representative democracy is some form of direct democracy, but direct democracy—we are told—would lead to bad policy. This article makes the case that there is a legitimate alternative system—one that uses lotteries, not elections, to select political (...) officials— that would be better than electoral representative democracy. (shrink)

Since the 1980s, society's wealthiest members have claimed an ever-expanding share of income and property. It has been a true counterrevolution, says Pierre Rosanvallon--the end of the age of growing equality launched by the American and French revolutions. And just as significant as the social and economic factors driving this contemporary inequality has been a loss of faith in the ideal of equality itself. An ambitious transatlantic history of the struggles that, for two centuries, put political and economic equality at (...) their heart, The Society of Equals calls for a new philosophy of social relations to reenergize egalitarian politics. For eighteenth-century revolutionaries, equality meant understanding human beings as fundamentally alike and then creating universal political and economic rights. Rosanvallon sees the roots of today's crisis in the period 1830-1900, when industrialized capitalism threatened to quash these aspirations. By the early twentieth century, progressive forces had begun to rectify some imbalances of the Gilded Age, and the modern welfare state gradually emerged from Depression-era reforms. But new economic shocks in the 1970s began a slide toward inequality that has only gained momentum in the decades since. There is no returning to the days of the redistributive welfare state, Rosanvallon says. Rather than resort to outdated notions of social solidarity, we must instead revitalize the idea of equality according to principles of singularity, reciprocity, and communality that more accurately reflect today's realities. (shrink)

Ever since Hegel made poignant the difference between morality and ethical life (“Sittlichkeit”), philosophical discourse in the traditions that developed subsequently, up to and including the Frankfurt school, has oscillated between those poles. This paper starts out with a short exposition of autonomy as one of the few large-scale innovations in the history of philosophy and then proceeds to discuss Hegel’s concept of “Sittlichkeit” and the objections to be raised against it from a Kantian point of view. Political theory, however, (...) has to move beyond pure normativism and consider actual social relations of power, as Marx disclosed. Mapping out this winding trajectory from Kant to Marx provides some perspective that may be illuminating for challenging present-day issues. (shrink)

Normative political philosophy always refers to a standard against which a society's institutions are judged. In the first, analytical part of the article, the different possible forms of normative criticism are examined according to whether the standards it appeals to are external or internal to the society in question. In the tradition of Socrates and Hegel, it is argued that reconstructing the kind of norms that are implicit in practices enables a critique that does not force the critic's particular views (...) on the addressee and can also be motivationally effective. In the second part of the article, Axel Honneth's theory of recognition is examined as a form of such reconstructive internal critique . It is argued that while the implicit norms of recognition made explicit in Honneth's philosophical anthropology help explain progressive social struggles as moral ones, his theory faces two challenges in justifying internal critique. The Priority Challenge asks for the reasons why the implicit norms of recognition should be taken as the standard against which other implicit and explicit norms are to be judged. The Application Challenge asks why a social group should, by its own lights, extend equal recognition to all its members and even non-members. The kind of functional, prudential, conceptual, and moral considerations that could serve to answer these challenges are sketched. (shrink)