David Ingram on "Habermas and Group Rights"

Professor David B. Ingram has posted a new paper on SSRN:

"Habermas and Group Rights"

Abstract:
I focus on the recent attempt by Habermas to provide a formal criterion for testing the legitimacy of group rights. Habermas argues that group-rights are legitimate only when they protect groups from discrimination by other groups. Group rights that aim to preserve groups against their own members, by contrast, are illegitimate. In my opinion, this way of drawing the distinction overlooks the link between anti-discrimination and preservation. Furthermore, I argue that preservation of a group identity can be legitimate so long as the group in question allows freedom of exit from the group.

The paper will be presented at the Western Political Science Association 2011 Annual Meeting, April 21 - 23, 2011, San Antonio, Texas.

David Ingram is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of "Habermas and the Dialectic of Reason" (Yale University Press, 1989), "Group Rights: Reconciling Equality and Difference" (University Press of Kansas, 2000) and "Habermas: Introduction and Analysis" (Cornell University Press, 2010).