Benhabib on the Morality of Migration

Online article by Seyla Benhabib (The Stone / The New York Times, July 29, 2012):

"The Morality of Migration"

Seyla Benhabib is Professor of Political Science and Philosophy at Yale University. Her most recent book is "Dignity in Adversity: Human Rights in Troubled Times" (Polity Press, 2011).

Interview with Karl Heinz Bohrer

In "Die Welt" (July 30, 2012), Mara Delius interviews Karl Heinz Bohrer about his memoirs "Granatsplitter" (Hanser Verlag, 2012).

"Von der Erotik des Denkens"

Excerpt:
"Habermas war der scharfsinnige linksliberale Analytiker der Gesellschaftssituation par excellence, der sich von der Mehrheit der Utopiker strikt unterschied. Wenn auch sein wichtigstes Buch "Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit" damals zu einem Katechismus der linken Bewegung geworden war. Aber noch wichtiger: Habermas war die Erscheinung des freimütigen, in Deutschland so noch nie gesehenen Intellektuellen! Witzig und ernst zugleich, temperamentvoll und streng in Einem. Und: er hatte enormen Stil in seiner partiell frustrierend schwierigen Diktion. Also ein Mann voller Spannung, die mir lag."

Karl Heinz Bohrer is Professor Emeritus of Modern German Literary History at Bielefeld University. He was editor of the monthly magazine "Merkur - Deutsche Zeitschrift für europäisches Denken" 1984-2011. Among his books are "Die Kritik der Romantik. Der Verdacht der Philosophie gegen die literarische Moderne" (Suhrkamp Verlag, 1989), "Ästhetische Negativität" (Hanser Verlag, 2002) and "Selbstdenker und Systemdenker" (Hanser Verlag, 2011).

Until 1990 Jürgen Habermas published many of his essays in "Merkur". He cancelled his relations with the journal because of political disagreements about the re-unification of Germany (see here).

Habermas on the European integration - two articles

Two articles by Jürgen Habermas, based on his book "The Crisis of the European Union" (Polity Press, 2012):

* "The Crisis of the European Union in the Light of a Constitutionalization of International Law", The European Journal of International Law, vol. 23 no. 2 (2012) pp. 335-348.

Abstract:
The crisis of the European Union showcases the asymmetry between transnational capacities for political action and social as well as economic forces unleashed at the transnational level. But recovering the regulatory power of politics by way of increased supranational organization frequently arouses fears about the fate of national democracy and of the democratic sovereign threatened to be dispossessed by executive powers operating independently at the global level. Against such political defeatism this contribution takes the example of the European Union to refute the underlying claim that a transnationalization of popular sovereignty cannot be achieved without lowering the level of democratic legitimation. It focuses on three components of every democratic polity – the association of free and equal legal persons, a bureaucratic organization for collective action, and civic solidarity as a medium of political integration – to argue that the new configuration they take at the European level, when compared with the context of the nation-state, does not in principle diminish the democratic legitimacy of the new transnational polity. The contribution continues to argue, however, that the sharing of sovereignty between the peoples and citizens of Europe needs to be better reflected in symmetry between Council and Parliament while political leadership and the media must contribute to a greater sense of civil solidarity.

   
* "Bringing the Integration of Citizens into Line with the Integration of States", European Law Journal, vol. 18 no. 4 (2012), pp. 485-488.

The text was originally published in "Reset - Dialogues on Civilizations" (March, 2012).

New book on the Mechanisms of Collective Wisdom

 

Collective Wisdom
Principles and Mechanisms

Ed. by Hélène Landemore & Jon Elster

(Cambridge University Press, 2012)

424 pages

Description

James Madison wrote, "Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob." The contributors to this volume discuss and for the most part challenge this claim by considering conditions under which many minds can be wiser than one. With backgrounds in economics, cognitive science, political science, law, and history, the authors consider information markets, the Internet, jury debates, democratic deliberation, and the use of diversity as mechanisms for improving collective decisions. At the same time, they consider voter irrationality and paradoxes of aggregation as possibly undermining the wisdom of groups. Implicitly or explicitly, the volume also offers guidance and warnings to institutional designers.

Contents

1. Collective Wisdom: Old and New - Hélène Landemore
2. Prediction Markets: Trading Uncertainty for Collective Wisdom - Emile Servan-Schreiber
3. Designing Wisdom Through the Web - Gloria Origgi
4. Some Microfoundations of Collective Wisdom - Scott Page & Lu Hong
5. What has Collective Wisdom to do with Wisdom? - Daniel Andler
6. Legislation, Planning, and Deliberation - John Ferejohn

7. Epistemic Democracy in Classical Athens - Josiah Ober
8. The Optimal Design of a Constituent Assembly - Jon Elster
9. Sanior Pars and Major Pars in the Contemporary Aeropagus - Philippe Urfalino
10. Collective Wisdom: Lessons from the Theory of Judgment Aggregation - Christian List
11. Democracy Counts: Should Rulers be Numerous? - David Estlund

12. Democratic Reason: The Mechanisms of Collective Intelligence in Politics - Hélène Landemore

13. Rational Ignorance and Beyond - Gerry Mackie
14. The Myth of the Rational Voter and Political Theory - Bryan Caplan
15. Collective Wisdom and Institutional Design - Adrian Vermeule
16. Reasoning as a Social Competence - Dan Sperber & Hugo Mercier
17. Conclusion - Jon Elster

Hélène Landemore is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale University.

Jon Elster is Robert K. Merton Professor of the Social Sciences at Columbia University.

The book is based on the contributions to an international conference on "Collective Wisdom", which took place at the Collège de France in Paris, May 22-23, 2008. See videos from the conference here.

Interviews with Christine Korsgaard & Elizabeth Anderson

In the "3:AM Magazine", interviews with two great philosophers:

* Christine Korsgaard - Treating People as Ends in Themselves (June 2012)

* Elizabeth Anderson - The New Leveller (July 2012)

Korsgaard's book recommendations:

John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism
T. M. Scanlon, What We Owe To Each Other
Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy
Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons, especially Part III

Anderson's book recommendations:

Stephen Darwall, The Second Person Standpoint
Debra Satz, Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale
Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice
Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom
George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier

Debate between Jürgen Habermas and Friedrich Wilhelm Graf

July 19, 2012, Jürgen Habermas talked at "The Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung" in Munich. Here he discussed his views on religion in the secular society with Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, who is Professor of Theology at the University of Munich.

Reports of the discussion:

Christian Greyer - "Gefährlicher mentaler Stoff"
(Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 21, 2012)

Uwe Justus Wenzel - "Sollen die Gläubigen an die Demokratie glauben?" (Neue Zürcher Zeitung, July 23, 2012)

Michael Stallknecht - "Da gräbt einer nach der knappen Ressource Solidarität"
(Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 21, 2012) [Not available online]

Excerpts from Stallknecht's report:
Folgt man Friedrich Wilhelm Graf, dann ist der Philosoph Jürgen Habernas inzwischen also ein "Sozialkonservativer". Dass die Institutionen des säkularen Staates zu schwach sein, um die individualistische Auflösung der Gesellschaft zu verhindern, stellte der Theologe Graf als typische Position einiger Konservativer des 19. Jahrhunderts dar, etwa der französischen Staatstheoretiker Joseph de Maistre oder L. G. A. de Bonnard. Ein liberaler Staat werde notwendig auch vom liberalen Markt zerstört, postulierten sie, am Ende blieben wenige starke Gewinner. Genau das aber ist, auch wenn Graf diesen Bezug nicht ausdrücklich herstellt, die Überlegung von Habermas: dass es, wo der globale Kapitalismus sich gegenüber politischer Einflussnahme zunehmend verselbständige, vielleicht der Religion bedürfe, um die "knappe Ressource Solidarität! aufrechtzuerhalten.
(…….)
Für viele Kulturen, erinnert Habermas, stelle die Säkularisierung auch heute "einen Schock" dar. So beschreite der Westen etwa mit der strikten Trennung von Glauben und Wissen sonst in der Regel den Charakter eines Heilsweges, so werde die moderne Wissenschaft im Laufe der Neuzeit für das gute Leben unzuständig.
Für Habermas darf das aber nun eben nicht bedeuten, dass etwa bei Stammzell-debatten nur noch der Biologe gefragt werde, weil diese Fragen sich rein szientistisch schlicht nicht verhandeln liessen. Zugleich müsse sich der Westen daran erinnern, dass "der weltgeschichtliche Bruch der Säkularisierung" in seiner endgültigen Form gerade einmal zweihundert Jahre alt sei. Deshalb verdienen religiöse Gruppierungen für Habermas schon historisch mehr Gehör als andere Interessengruppen. Wie im geschichtlichen Prozess sakrale Begriffe oft in säkulare überführt worden seien, wie also zum Beispiel die Aufklärung von der Religion ein ethisches Destillat erstellt habe, so könnten wir schlicht nicht wissen, ob in religiösen Begriffen unserer Tage nicht noch "unabgegoltene Geltungsansprüche" steckten, die es der Vernunft zuzuführen gelte.
Das alles bedeuten natürlich keinerlei Abwendung von der Moderne. "Man kann etwas aus guten Gründen verloben haben" , sagt Habermas. So argumentiert er etwa hinsichtlich der Konfrontation mit traditionellen Kulturen nicht kulturalistisch. Der Universalitätsanspruch des säkularen Vernunftkonzeptes steht nicht zur Disposition; fremden Kulturen, sagt Habermas in München, gelte es "ebenso lernbereit wie selbstbewusst" gegenüberzutreten. Er sei sich bloss nicht sicher, ob eine "schwach modellierte Vernunftmoral" ohne religiösen Hintergrund etwa eine künftige Weltgesellschaft zu tragen vermöge.
Ebenso warnt Habermas vor allen Formen der Sakralisierung auf Staatsebene. Die Menschenrechte etwa seien Grundrechte und damit einfach Rechte, es gebe nicht den mindesten Grund, hinter die Herausbildung, selbsttragender Rechtssysteme in religiöse Überhöhungen zurückzufallen.

Review of Habermas's book on the EU crisis

In "The Nation" (July 30 - August 6, 2012), Anson Rabinbach reviews "The Crisis of the European Union" by Jürgen Habermas:

"The Good European: On Jürgen Habermas"

Excerpts:
Habermas’s most recent book, Die Verfassung Europas, has caused a stir in Germany since its publication by Suhrkamp in November; it has just been published here in an English translation as The Crisis of the European Union. But its appeal in Germany has rested not so much on Habermas’s justified indignation about the EU, but instead on his tempered optimism about the future of democracy in Europe. Die Zeit called Die Verfassung Europas “the book of the hour”; Der Spiegel, “a philosopher’s mission to save the EU”; and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a manifesto for “a second chance for a united Europe.” The near unanimous enthusiasm of reviewers probably reflected less a consensus about the book’s arguments than sheer relief, given the daily bad news from Europe, that Habermas had written a hopeful book. He affirms his longstanding commitment to a cosmopolitan Europe in which the dynamics of global capitalism can be remastered beyond the nation-state, at a supranational and global level, and he sees a radically altered European Union as a model - indeed, as the precursor - for a constitutionally sanctioned cosmopolitan world order based not on utopian illusions but on realistic assessments. [.....]

There is a wide gulf between Habermas’s despair at the growing rule of the “potentates” and his competing vision of a supranational constitutional democracy. The current crisis is hardly winning Europeans over to the eurocrats in Brussels and Strasbourg, and venues for the expression of the popular will are few. Nor do the decisions of the European Parliament have the force of international law. But for Habermas, there are still three reasons that the European Union points the way to a cosmopolitan community. First, the more populations that engage in the deliberative process of governing beyond the nation-state, the more likely it is that normative criteria will emerge and find general assent. Second, global citizenship, like European citizenship, does not require a global ethnicity or national identity: citizenship can just as well be based on shared principles, such as freedom of thought, political integrity, justice and the rule of law. Third, as in the EU, individuals simultaneously legitimize the new polity as citizens of their respective states and as citizens of the new commonwealth. States would no longer be fully sovereign powers, but would regard themselves as members of the international community. Because of its transnational character and the need for new communicative structures, the solidarity of world citizens would no longer be “embedded in the context of a shared political culture.”

Anson Rabinbach is Professor of History at Princeton University. He is the author of "In the Shadow of Catastrophe: German Intellectuals Between Apocalypse and Enlightenment" (University of California Press, 1997).  

See my previous posts on Habermas's book here (German edition), here (English edition), and here (reviews).

See also the review in "The Financial Times" (April 7, 2012).

New Book on Deliberative Systems

Deliberative Systems
Deliberative Democracy at the Large Scale

Ed. by John Parkinson & Jane Mansbridge

(Cambridge University Press, July 2012)

204 pages

Description

'Deliberative democracy' is often dismissed as a set of small-scale, academic experiments. This volume seeks to demonstrate how the deliberative ideal can work as a theory of democracy on a larger scale. It provides a new way of thinking about democratic engagement across the spectrum of political action, from towns and villages to nation states, and from local networks to transnational, even global systems. Written by a team of the world's leading deliberative theorists, Deliberative Systems explains the principles of this new approach, which seeks ways of ensuring that a division of deliberative labour in a system nonetheless meets both deliberative and democratic norms. Rather than simply elaborating the theory, the contributors examine the problems of implementation in a real world of competing norms, competing institutions and competing powerful interests. This pioneering book will inspire an exciting new phase of deliberative research, both theoretical and empirical.

Contents [preview]

1. A Systemic Approach to Deliberative Democracy - Jane Mansbridge, James Bohman, Simone Chambers, Thomas Christiano, Archon Fung, John Parkinson, Dennis F. Thompson and Mark E. Warren
2. Rational Deliberation Among Experts and Citizens - Thomas Christiano
3. Deliberation and Mass Democracy - Simone Chambers4. Representation in the Deliberative System - James Bohman
5. Two Trust-based Uses of Minipublics in Democratic Systems - Michael K. MacKenzie and Mark E. Warren [Draft]
6. On the Embeddedness of Deliberative Systems - Yannis Papadopoulos7. Democratizing Deliberative Systems - John Parkinson

John Parkinson is Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of Warwick. He is the author of "Deliberating in the Real World" (Oxford University Press, 2006) and "Democracy & Public Space" (Oxford University Press, 2012). He is running a blog.

Jane Mansbridge is Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values at Harvard University. She is the author of "Beyond Adversary Democracy" (Basic Books, 1980) and editor of "Beyond Self-Interest" (University of Chicago Press, 1990).

See a lecture by Jane Mansbridge on "The Deliberative System" (Paris, June 2011).

Giles Fraser reviews Martha Nussbaum

In "The Guardian" (June 30, 2012), Giles Fraser reviews "New Religious Intolerance" (Harvard University Press, 2012) by Martha Nussbaum:

"Martha Nussbaum and the New Religious Intolerance"

Giles Fraser is priest-in-charge at St Mary's Newington in south London and the former canon chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral. He is the author of "Redeeming Nietzsche: On the Piety of Unbelief" (Routledge, 2002).

See my post on Martha Nussbaum's new book here.