Review of Ingram's introduction to Habermas

At "Notre Dame Philosophical Review", Eduardo Mendieta reviews David Ingram's "Habermas: Introduction and Analysis" (Cornell University Press, 2010):

Review of "Habermas: Introduction and Analysis"

Excerpt:

"David Ingram has provided us with what is unquestionably the most comprehensive introduction to one of the most demanding systems of thought, without sacrificing critical distance.(.....) The book is a versatile toolbox, which will make it a must for anyone aiming to teach Habermas or the transformations of Critical Theory in the last decades. Above all, however, it is also a substantive contribution to the tradition to which Habermas belongs, for it is a critique of reason by way of an immanent critique of communicative rationality itself. Seasoned Habermasians will have to read it as well."

The review also contains some information on a forthcoming book by Habermas on "Faith and Reason":

"Since 2008, Habermas has been working on a large manuscript on "Faith and Reason" in which he is rethinking Western sociological theory in light of the failure of religion to wither away like a flower in the desert of rationalized world-views. In this manuscript Habermas is also revising his theory of the origins of language, taking up the work of paleontologists, anthropologists, and cognitive and brain development theorists. In addition, he is revisiting his phenomenological theory of the life-world and the emergence of world-views from the secularization of religious doctrines."

See my post on David Ingram's new book here.

Thanks to Ali Rizvi for the pointer.

Reviews of Dworkin's "Justice for Hedgehogs"

Six reviews of Ronald Dworkin's new book "Justice for Hedgehogs" (Belknap Press, 2011):

* Simon Blackburn in "Times Higher Education" (January 2011)

* Ed Voves in "California Literary Review" (February 2011)

* Jonathan Sumption in "The Specator" (March 2011) Update

* Gordon Gearty in "New Humanist" (March/April 2011) Update

* Stuart Jeffries in "The Guardian" (April 1, 2011) Update

* Gerald Doppelt in "Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews" (August 4, 2011) Update

* Phillip Pettit in "The Times Literary Supplement" (August 18, 2011)


See also my post on Dworkin's book here.

And my post on critical papers on Dworkin's book here.


Ronald Dworkin runs a webblog, where he comments on critique of his book.

Neues Buch: "Die Herausbildung normativer Ordnungen"

Die Herausbildung normativer Ordnungen

(Hg.) von Rainer Forst & Klaus Günther

(Campus Verlag, 2011)

267 Seiten




Kurzbeschreibung

Wie kommt es, dass sich Menschen an normative Ordnungen halten, und aus welchen Normen bestehen diese? Die Frage nach deren bindender Kraft beleuchten die philosophischen Beiträge dieses Bandes. Ergänzend wird aus historischer Sicht untersucht, wie sich unterschiedliche Rechtfertigungsweisen von Ordnungen entwickelt haben. Der Konstruktion neuer internationaler Rechtsordnungen gehen die rechtswissenschaftlichen Beiträge nach. Aus politikwissenschaftlicher Perspektive wird schließlich gezeigt, auf welchen Prinzipien die institutionelle Gestaltung unserer politischen Welt beruht beziehungsweise beruhen sollte.

Inhalt

Die Herausbildung normativer Ordnungen. Zur Idee eines interdisziplinären Forschungsprogramms [pdf]
Rainer Forst & Klaus Günther

1. Konzeptionen von Normativität

Konzeptionen der Normativität: Einige grundlegende philosophische Fragen
R. Jay Wallace

Die Konstitution der normativen Wirklichkeit
Peter Stemmer

2. Die Geschichtlichkeit normativer Ordnungen

In welche(r/n) normativen Ordnung(en) hat die Welt im modernen Weltsystem gelebt?
Immanuel Wallerstein

Sklavenhandel, Abolition und Kolonialismusaals vernetzte normative Ordnungen
Robert Harms

3. Transnationale Gerechtigkeit, Demokratie und Frieden

Die globale internationale Gesellschaft als normative Ordnung
Andrew Hurrell

Gerechtigkeit, faire Verfahren und globales Regieren
Simon Caney

4. Die Herausbildung von Rechtsnormen zwischen den Nationen

Die Autorität des Völkerrechts – Ein Blick unter die Schleier über den Staaten
Samantha Besson

Völkerrecht als öffentliches Recht: Konturen eines rechtlichen Rahmens für Global Governance
Armin von Bogdandy, Philipp Dann & Matthias Goldmann

Rainer Forst ist Professor am Institut für Politikwissenschaft der Universität Frankfurt/M.

Klaus Günther ist Professor für Rechtstheorie, Strafrecht und Strafprozessrecht an der Universität Frankfurt/M.

Four lectures by Axel Honneth in Paris

In March, Professor Axel Honneth will hold four lectures on "The democratic ethos" at L’École normale supérieure (ENS), Paris:

March 3
"Théorie de la justice et analyse de la société"

March 10
"La possibilité de la liberté"

March 17
"L’effectivité de la liberté"

March 22
"Le marché comme un exemple de la liberté sociale"

More information here.

Axel Honneth is Professor of Social Philosophy at Goethe University and Director of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt am Main. Later this year, Honneth will join the Philosophy Department at Columbia University.

A new book by Honneth, entitled "Das Recht der Freiheit: Grundriß einer demokratischen Sittlichkeit", is coming out this summer on Suhrkamp Verlag.

Rainer Forst on the Concept of Human Dignity

New working paper by Professor Rainer Forst (Frankfurt):

"The Grounds of Critique: On the Concept of Human Dignity in Social Orders of Justification" [pdf]

An earlier version of the paper was published as "Der Grund der Kritik. Zum Begriff der Menschenwürde in sozialen Rechtfertigungs-ordnungen", Rahel Jaeggi & Tilo Wesche (eds.), Was ist Kritik? (Suhrkamp Verlag, 2009).

Rainer Forst is Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main. His books include "Kontexte der Gerechtigkeit" (1994) [English: "Contexts of Justice" (2002)], "Toleranz im Konflikt" (2003) and "Das Recht auf Rechtfertigung. Elemente einer konstruktivistischen Theorie der Gerechtigkeit" (2007) [An English translation is coming out on Columbia University Press.]

Habermas's Laudatio for Ken'ichi Mishima

In "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (February, 18), Jürgen Habermas's laudatio for the Japanese philosopher Ken'ichi Mishima:

"Er zeigt auf unseren blinden Fleck" (now available online)

Dr. Ken'ichi Mishima received an honorary doctorate degree at The Free University of Berlin on February 17, 2011.

See my post on the event here.

Excerpts:

"Gleichviel, zu wem und über welches Thema er in aller Welt spricht, er tut es immer auch als Japaner, und zwar in dem hochreflektierten Bewusstsein, dass niemand aus seiner kulturellen Haut heraus kann; aber ich bin bisher keinem Japaner begegnet, der sich unter uns Europäern, besonders unter uns Deutschen, intellektuell so bewegt, als stecke er in unserer Haut."

"Mishimas Gesellschaftstheorie ist empfindlich für die kulturelle Vielfart der Modernisierungsprozesse; zugleich hütet sie sich davor, kulturelle Überlieferungen zu geschlossenen Totalitäten aufzupreizen. Heute löst die globale Ausbreitung derselben Kommunikationsmedien, derselben Märkte, derselben administrativen und gesellschaftlichen Infrastrukturen auf ganz verschiedenen Zivilisationspfaden die gleiche, auch aus Europa bekannte Dialektik von Tradition und Moderne aus. Die Prägekraft einer selbstbewussten Aneignung der gesellschaftlichen Moderne aus jeweils eigenen kulturellen Ressourcen lässt, wenn es gutgeht, viele Modernen entstehen. In dieser Dimension bewegen sich Michimas wissenschaftliche Interessen und öffentliche Interventionen. Hier haben seine Studien ihren eigentlichen Ort."

"Zwar müssen jede Nation und jede Region einen solchen Aneignungsprozess aus eigener Kraft bewältigen, aber sie können das nur in der Kommunikation mit anderen Kulturen. Diese anstrengenden Prozesse vollziehen sich auf offener Bühne, auf der jeden beobachtet und jeder von den Beobachtungen der anderen affiziert wird. Der Selbstbild ist immer auch ein Reflex der Bilder vom eigenen im Anderen. Dieser verwirrende Echoraum ist Mishimas Forschungsterrain."

"Die Frage nach dem Zentrum von Mishimas akademischen Arbeiten könnte man damit beantworten, dass dieser produktive Geist gut in den interdisziplinären Kreis um Horkheimer gepasst hätte, freilich in der subversiven Funktion eines Querdenkers, der diesen Alteuropäern bei aller Begeisterung für deren Programm den blinden Punkt ihrer Fixierung auf die westliche Moderne zu Bewusstsein gebracht hätte".

Update:
See also Arno Widmann's reports:
"Lob des Misstrauens" (Frankfurter Rundschau)
"Lob des destruktiven Charakters" (Berliner Zeitung)

New book on "Habermas and Theology"

Habermas and Theology

by Maureen Junker-Kenny

(Continuum, February 2011)

176 pages




Description

With his theory of communicative rationality, Jürgen Habermas has been one of the most influential social philosophers of the 20th century and a major dialogue partner for theology in the different stages of his work. Systematic and practical theology, theory of religious education and theological ethics have offered creative receptions and astute critiques. The book explores Habermas's renewal of Critical Theory of the first generation of the Frankfurt School through his paradigm change from the philosophy of consciousness to language. His postmetaphysical understanding of philosophy and the foundations of his discourse ethics are followed up into his recent demand for a species ethics in critique of genetic enhancement. The philosophical critiques of his work that are relevant for theology are explained and the successive phases of his view of religion are traced: supersessionism, co-existence, and finally cooperation in offering specific resources and shared criteria for public debate on the future directions of a technologically shaped pluralist culture.

Contents [preview]

Introduction

Part 1. The Theological Reception and Critique of Habermas's Work in the First Two Phases of Its View of Religion

1. Attraction and Critique of Habermas's Theory of Communicative Action in the Disciplines of Theology

Part 2. Habermas's Theory of Communicative Reason in Philosophical Debate

2. The Paradigm Change from the Philosophy of Consciousness to Language Theory
3. The Relationship of Metaphysics to Modernity
4. Postmetaphysical Philosophy as Stand-in and as Interpreter
5. The Foundation of the Discourse Theory of Morality
6. The Motivation for Agency and the Aporias of Morality

Part 3. The Current Phase: Cooperation and Translation in Theological Debate

7. The Rediscovery of Religion in the Genealogy of Reason and the Foundation of a Species Ethics
8. Religious Resources for the Project of Modernity in Theological Debate

Conclusion

Maureen Junker-Kenny is Associate Professor of Theology at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. She is the author of "Argumentationsethik und christliche Praxis. Eine praktisch-theologische Auseinandersetzung mit der Handlungstheorie Jürgen Habermas" (Kohlhammer Verlag, 1998).

Other books on Habermas and religion:

Michael Reder & Josef Schmidt (eds.) - An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Post-secular Age (Polity Press, 2010)

Knut Wenzel & Thomas M. Schmidt - Moderne Religion? Theologische und religionsphilosophische Reaktionen auf Jürgen Habermas (Herder Verlag, 2009)

Rudolf Langthaler & Herta Nagl-Docekal (eds.) - Glauben und Wissen: Ein Symposium mit Jürgen Habermas (Akademie-Verlag, 2006)

Nicholas Adams - Habermas and Theology (Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Marc P. LaLonde - Critical Theology and the Challenge of Jürgen Habermas (Peter Lang, 1999)

Edmund Arens (ed.) - Kommunikatives Handeln und christlicher Glaube: Ein theologischer Diskurs mit Jürgen Habermas (Schöningh, 1997)

Don S. Browning et.al. (eds.) - Habermas, Modernity, and Public Theology (Crossroad, 1992)

Edmund Arens (ed.) - Habermas und die Theologie (Patmos Verlag, 1989)

Rudolf Siebert - From Critical Theory to Communicative Theology: Universal Solidarity (Peter Lang, 1989)

Paul Weithman on Rawls's Political Liberalism

Why Political Liberalism?
On John Rawls's Political Turn

by Paul Weithman

(Oxford University Press, 2011)

388 pages



Description

In Why Political Liberalism?, Paul Weithman offers a fresh, rigorous, and compelling interpretation of John Rawls's reasons for taking his so-called "political turn".

Weithman painstakingly reconstructs Rawls's attempts to show that a just society would be stable, and just as carefully shows why Rawls came to think those arguments were inconsistent with other parts of his theory. Weithman then shows that the changes Rawls introduced into his view between "Theory of Justice" and "Political Liberalism" result from his attempt to remove the inconsistency and show that the hazard of the generalized prisoner's dilemma can be averted after all. Recovering Rawls's two treatments of stability helps to answer contested questions about the role of the original position and the foundations of justice as fairness. The result is a powerful and unified reading of Rawls's work that explains his political turn and shows his enduring engagement with some of the deepest concerns of human life.

Contents [preview]

Introduction

1. The Public Basis View
2. Stability and Congruence
3. Ideals and Inconsistency
4, The Acquisition of Four Desires
5. Thin Reasons to Be Just
6. The Argument from Love to Justice
7. Kantian Congruence and the Unified Self
8. The Great Unraveling
9. The Political Ideals of Justice as Fairness
10. Comprehensive Reasons to Be Just
11. Conclusion: Why Political Liberalism?

Paul Weithman is Professor of Philosophy at University of Notre Dame. He is the author of "Religion and the Obligations of Citizenship" (Cambridge University Press, 2002).

Habermas honors Ken'ichi Mishima

The Free University of Berlin will confer an honorary doctorate degree to the Japanese philosopher Dr. Ken'ichi Mishima at a cermony on February 17, 2011.

The Laudatio will be delivered by Jürgen Habermas.

Further information here.

Dr. Ken'ichi Mishima is professor for social philosophy and contemporary philosophy at Tokyo Keizai University. He is the author of numerious books on German philosophy and critical theory, including works on Nietzsche and Walter Benjamin. Since 2002, he has been a member of the international council for the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt/Main.

See Ken'ichi Mishima's essay "Zur Rezeption von Habermas in Japan" (2009).

See Martin Orth's portrait of Ken'ichi Mishima - "Der Habermas-Freund" (2009).

New book: George Kateb on Human Dignity

Human Dignity

by George Kateb

(Belknap Press, 2011)

256 pages




Description

Given our concern with human dignity, it is odd that it has received comparatively little scrutiny. Here, George Kateb asks what human dignity is and why it matters for the claim to rights. He proposes that dignity is an “existential” value that pertains to the identity of a person as a human being. To injure or even to try to efface someone’s dignity is to treat that person as not human or less than human — as a thing or instrument or subhuman creature. Kateb does not limit the notion of dignity to individuals but extends it to the human species. The dignity of the human species rests on our uniqueness among all other species. In the book’s concluding section, he argues that despite the ravages we have inflicted on it, nature would be worse off without humanity. The supremely fitting task of humanity can be seen as a “stewardship” of nature.

Contents [preview]

1. The Idea of Human Dignity
2. Individual Status and Human Rights
3. Human Uniqueness: Traits and Attributes
4. Human Stature and Great Achievements

George Kateb is Professor Emeritus of Politics at Princeton University. His books include "The Inner Ocean: Individualism and Democratic Culture" (Cornell University Press, 1992), "Emerson and Self-Reliance" (Rowman & Littlefield, 1994), and "Patriotism and Other Mistakes" (Yale University Press, 2007).

Hear a conversation with George Kateb on the Brian Lehrer Show, January 5, 2011, WNYC.

Update

See Clifford Orwin's review of "Human Dignity" here.

Charles Taylor's new essay collection

Dilemmas and Connections
Selected Essays

by Charles Taylor

(Belknap Press, 2011)

424 pages



Description

There are, always, more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in oners"s philosophy-and in these essays Charles Taylor turns to those things not fully imagined or avenues not wholly explored in his epochal A Secular Age. Here Taylor talks in detail about thinkers who are his allies and interlocutors, such as Iris Murdoch, Alasdair MacIntyre, Robert Brandom, and Paul Celan. He offers major contributions to social theory, expanding on the issues of nationalism, democratic exclusionism, religious mobilizations, and modernity. And he delves even more deeply into themes taken up in A Secular Age: the continuity of religion from the past into the future; the nature of the secular; the folly of hoping to live by "reason alone"; the perils of moralism. He also speculates on how irrationality emerges from the heart of rationality itself, and why violence breaks out again and again.In A Secular Age, Taylor more evidently foregrounded his Catholic faith, and there are several essays here that further explore that faith.

Contents

1. Iris Murdoch and Moral Philosophy
2. Understanding the Other: a Gadamerian View on Conceptual Schemes
3. Language not Mysterious? [word]
4. Celan and the Recovery of Language
5. Nationalism and Modernity
6. Conditions of an Unforced Consensus on Human Rights [pdf]
7. Democratic Exclusion (and its Remedies?)
8. Religious Mobilizations [excerpt]
9. Themes from a Secular Age
10. The Immanent Counter-Enlightenment
11. Notes on the Sources of Violence: Perennial and Modern
12. The Future of the Religious Past
13. Disenchantment-re-enchantment
14. What Does Secularism Mean?
15. Die blosse Vernunft ("Reason Alone")
16. Perils of Moralism
17. What was the Axial Revolution?

Charles Taylor is Professor Emeritus of McGill University, Montreal. He is the author of "A Secular Age" (Harvard University Press, 2007).