A review by Rutger Claassen of Axel Honneth's "Freedom's Right. The Social Foundations of Democratic Life" (Columbia University Press, 2014):
"Social Freedom and the Demands of Justice" [pdf]
[Published in Constellations vol. 21 no. 1 (March 2014). Also available here.]
Abstract:
"In his most recent voluminous work Das Recht der Freiheit (2011) Axel Honneth brings his version of the recognition paradigm to full fruition. Criticizing Kantian theories of justice, he develops a Hegelian alternative which has at its core a different conception of freedom. In this paper, I will scrutinize Honneths latest work to see whether he offers a promising alternative to mainstream liberal theories of justice. I will focus on two key differences with Kantian theories of justice. Substantively, Honneth criticizes the Kantian concept of ‘reflexive freedom’ and proposes instead as the core of his own theory the concept of ‘social freedom’. Methodologically, he proposes a method of ‘normative reconstruction’, and explicitly develops this in contrast to Kantian constructivism. I investigate the robustness of these shifts by seeing how they are actually used in Honneth’s reconstruction of the market sphere. I conclude that his method of normative reconstruction does not provide the kind of guidance Honneth thinks it does. His conception of social freedom fares slightly better but can either be reduced to the mainstream’s idea of reflexive freedom, or else faces some serious challenges.
Rutger Claassen is Associate Professor of Ethics & Political Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Utrecht University. More papers by Rutger Claassen here.
See also seven critical essays on Axel Honneth's book here (Krisis, Journal of Contemporary Philosophy, 2013) and Honneth's reply.
Democracy Disfigured
Opinion, Truth, and the People
by Nadia Urbinati
(Harvard University Press, 2014)
320 pages
Description
In Democracy Disfigured, Nadia Urbinati diagnoses the ills that beset the body politic in an age of hyper-partisanship and media monopolies and offers a spirited defense of the messy compromises and contentious outcomes that define democracy.
Urbinati identifies three types of democratic disfiguration: the unpolitical, the populist, and the plebiscitarian. Each undermines a crucial division that a well-functioning democracy must preserve: the wall separating the free forum of public opinion from the governmental institutions that enact the will of the people. Unpolitical democracy delegitimizes political opinion in favor of expertise. Populist democracy radically polarizes the public forum in which opinion is debated. And plebiscitary democracy overvalues the aesthetic and nonrational aspects of opinion. For Urbinati, democracy entails a permanent struggle to make visible the issues that citizens deem central to their lives. Opinion is thus a form of action as important as the mechanisms that organize votes and mobilize decisions.
Urbinati focuses less on the overt enemies of democracy than on those who pose as its friends: technocrats wedded to procedure, demagogues who make glib appeals to “the people,” and media operatives who, given their preference, would turn governance into a spectator sport and citizens into fans of opposing teams.
Contents
Introduction
1. Democracy’s Diarchy
2. Unpolitical Democracy [paper]
3. The Populist Power
4. The Plebiscite of the Audience and the Politics of Passivity
Conclusion
Nadia Urbinati is Professor of Political Theory and Hellenic Studies at Columbia University. She is is the author of "Mill on Democracy" (University of Chicago Press, 2002) and "Representative Democracy: Principles and Genealogy" (University of Chicago Press, 2008).
See a video of a panel discussion on Nadia Urbinati's book, Columbia University, March 2014 (with Victoria Murillo, Federico Finchelstein, Maria Pia Lara, Ira Katznelson, and Nadia Urbinati).
See also Urbinati's paper on "Procedural Democracy" (2013).
Ingrid Robeyns has uploaded a new paper at SSRN:
"Capabilitarianism"
Abstract:
"Despite the proliferation of scholarly work on the capability approach, and its wide endorsement as a theoretical framework in a variety of applications, there are very few sufficiently detailed accounts of what the capability approach exactly is. This is unfortunate, since a more robust understanding of what the capability approach is, and what it is not, would be beneficial for both the applied and empirical work, as well as a more solid foundation for advanced philosophical analysis. This paper presents an account of the capability approach that provides that basis: the concentric circles account. The concentric circles account allows us to distinguish what belongs to the core of the capability approach and what does not. It also allows us to see that there is a huge range of capabilitarian theories and applications possible, given that the core commitments can be combined with various (and diverse) additional normative and ontological claims in the outer circles. The concentric circles account also enables us to see why the Martha Nussbaum’s description of the capability approach, which is at present the only sufficiently specific account of the capability approach, is biased and misleading."
Ingrid Robeyns is Professor of Ethics of Institutions at the Utrecht University. She is co-editor (with Harry Brighouse) of "Measuring Justice. Primary Goods and Capabilities" (Cambridge University Press, 2010). [See my blog post on the book here.] A monograph by Robeyns on "The Capability Approach" is coming out later this year.
See also:
* Ingrid Robeyns's article on the capability approach at "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy".
* A video with Ingrid Robeyns talking about the capability approach (2013).
* Ingrid Robeyns's review of "Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach" (Harvard University Press, 2011) by Martha Nussbaum.
Benjamin Hertzberg has uploaded an interesting paper at SSRN:
"Chains of Persuasion in the Deliberative System: Addressing the Pragmatics of Religious Inclusion"
[Forthcoming in "The Journal of Politics" 2015.]
Abstract:
"If one accepts that religious arguments ought to be included in democratic deliberations, three problems immediately arise. First, religious arguments will not persuade those who do not accept the religious premises, so religious arguments do not seem to contribute to deliberative opinion and will formation. Second, democratic arguments will not persuade religious citizens who prioritize their religious commitments ("integralists"), who seem to be excluded from deliberative opinion and will formation. Third, if an integralist makes a religious argument intending to persuade, then she seems to be appealing to an invidious double standard: she expects her fellows to be potentially persuaded by her religious argument when she is not reciprocally open to persuasion on the basis of their comprehensive views. I argue that approaching deliberation from a deliberative systems view provides a powerful approach to each of these three problems unavailable to more traditional understandings of deliberative democracy."
Benjamin Hertzberg is Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Science at Brigham Young University. More papers by Benjamin Hertzberg are available here.
"Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik" (August, 2014) features Seyla Benhabib's speech to mark the 100th anniversary of Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, June 4, 2014:
"Von Horkheimer zu Habermas und in die Neue Welt. Der ethisch-politische Horizont der Kritischen Theorie"
Excerpt:
"Eine der überraschendsten und unerwarteten Richtungsänderungen der Kritischen Theorie durch und nach Habermas war sicherlich die eingehende Auseinandersetzung mit dem Liberalismus von John Rawls und Ronald Dworkin. Im deutschen Kontext wird oftmals missverstanden, dass der politische Liberalismus in den Vereinigten Staaten keine Spielart des ökonomischen Liberalismus ist, sondern eine politische Philosophie des Sozialstaats der Nachkriegszeit. Er impliziert eine Form sozialstaatlich abgesicherter und demokratischer Wirtschaftspolitik, ja mehr noch: John Rawls‘ zweites Gerechtigkeitsprinzip, das „Differenzprinzip“, würde – wenn jemals institutionalisiert – zu der radikalsten Umverteilung von Reichtum und Neuordnung vieler öffentlicher und privater Institutionen führen. Darüber hinaus liefern uns die Arbeiten von Rawls und Dworkin die umfassendste philosophische Rechtfertigung konstitutionell verfasster liberaler Demokratien.
Ich habe mich oft gefragt: „Was wäre die Haltung Max Horkheimers zu diesen Denkern gewesen?“ Und meine Antwort war, mit Horkheimer gesprochen: „Im Gegensatz zum Irrationalismus versucht der Materialismus die Einseitigkeit des Analytischen aufzuheben, ohne es zu verwerfen.“ Es ist eine der größten Leistungen zeitgenössischer Kritischer Theorie, die Grenzen des Rawlsschen Paradigmas distributiver, umverteilender Gerechtigkeit aufzuzeigen, und es zu ergänzen mit Formen der Missachtung durch Ausgrenzung, die sich auf Geschlecht, Hautfarbe, Ethnizität und sexuelle Neigung beziehen."
Futher information on the event here.
Updated entry on Jürgen Habermas in "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy" (August 4, 2014):
"Jürgen Habermas"
by James Bohman & William Rehg.
A video of Jürgen Habermas's lecture on ”Transnationalization of Democracy: The Example of the European Union” at the Boston College Law School, May 7, 2014, is now available:
"Transnationalization of Democracy” (100 minutes).
Habermas presented the same paper at Princeton University on May 1, 2014. A video of this lecture is available here.
An English translation of an interview with Jürgen Habermas from June 2014 is now available at "Reset: Dialogues on Civilizations":
"Internet and Public Sphere"
Excerpt:
Q: Is internet beneficial or unbeneficial for democracy?
A: It is neither one nor the other. After the inventions of writing and printing, digital communication represents the third great innovation on the media plane. With their introduction, these three media forms have enabled an ever growing number of people to access an ever growing mass of information. These are made to be increasingly lasting, more easily. With the last step represented by Internet we are confronted with a sort of “activation” in which readers themselves become authors. Yet, this in itself does not automatically result in progress on the level of the public sphere. Throughout the nineteenth-century – with the aid of books and mass newspapers – we witnessed the birth of national public spheres where the attention of an undefined number of people could simultaneously apply itself to the same identical problems. This however, did not depend on the technical level with which facts were multiplied, accelerated, rendered lasting. At heart, these are the same centrifugal movements that still occur today in the web. Rather, the classical public sphere stemmed from the fact that the attention of an anonymous public was “concentrated” on a few politically important questions that had to be regulated. This is what the web does not know how to produce. On the contrary, the web actually distracts and dispels. Think about, for example, the thousand portals that are born every day: for stamp collectors, for scholars of European constitutional law, for support groups of ex-alcoholics. In the mare magnum of digital noises these communicative communities are like dispersed archipelagos: there are billions of them. What these communicative spaces (closed in themselves) are lacking is an inclusive bind, the inclusive force of a public sphere highlighting what things are actually important. In order to create this “concentration”, it is first necessary to know how to choose – know and comment on – relevant contributions, information and issues. In short, even in the mare magnum of digital noise, the skills of good old journalism – as necessary today as they were yesterday – should not be lost.
The interview was published in German in "Frankfurter Rundschau" on June 14, 2014, titled "Im Sog der Gedanken". It has also been published in "Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger" and "Berliner Zeitung".
Egalitarianism
by Iwao Hirose
(Routledge, 2014)
208 pages
Description
Some people are worse off than others. Does this fact give rise to moral concern? Egalitarianism claims that it does, for a wide array of reasons. It is one of the most important and hotly debated problems in moral and political philosophy, occupying a central place in the work of John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, G. A. Cohen and Derek Parfit. It also plays an important role in practical contexts such as the allocation of health care resources, the design of education and tax systems, and the pursuit of global justice.
"Egalitarianism" explains how rival theories of egalitarianism evaluate distributions of people’s well-being, and carefully assesses the theoretical structure of each theory. It also examines how egalitarian theories are applied to the distribution of health and health care, thus bringing a deceptively complex philosophical debate into clear focus.
Contents [pre-view]
Introduction
1. Rawlsian egalitarianism
2. Luck egalitarianism
3. Telic egalitarianism
4. Prioritarianism
5. Sufficientarianism
6. Equality and time
7. Equality in health and health care
Conclusion
Iwao Hirose is Associate Professor at the Philosophy Department, McGill University, Canada. He is co-author (with Greg Bognar) of "The Ethics of Health Care Rationing" (Routledge, 2014). A book on "Moral Aggregation" is coming out in November 2014 on Oxford University Press.
Hirose's PhD Theses on "Equality, Priority, and Aggregation" (2004) is available here [pdf].
See also two papers by Hirose:
* "Reconsidering the Value of Equality" (pdf, 2009)
* "Aggregation and the Allocation of Health Care Resources" (pdf, 2009)
Jürgen Habermas's lecture in Budapest, May 29, is now available online:
"Europa, Ungarn und das Projekt einer transnationalen Demokratie" [pdf]
In his speech Habermas criticized Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orbán, and the government.
Excerpts:
"Ich freue mich, wieder einmal in Budapest zu sein, zum dritten Mal seit 1989. Ich freue mich vor allem, alte Freunde wiederzusehen. Aber ich möchte auch die in letzter Zeit undurchsichtiger gewordene Lage der Nachbarn, mit denen wir doch vertraut zu sein meinten, besser verstehen lernen. Dieses Mal mischt sich nämlich in die Vorfreude auf ein Wiedersehen mit dieser schönen, im europäischen Gedächtnis so erinnerungsträchtig verankerten Metropole an der Donau ein anderes Gefühl – das Gefühl, dass die Entfernung größer geworden ist. Ungarn scheint sich von Europa entfernt zu haben, obwohl es doch die Ungarn waren, die 1989 als erste den Eisernen Vorhang durchlöchert haben. [.......]
1956 waren es die Ungarn, die unter dem Reformkommunisten Imre Nagy der sowjetischen Unterdrückung den stärksten Widerstand entgegengesetzt und später innerhalb des sowjetischen Herrschaftsbereichs ein vergleichsweise „liberales“ Regime, wenn man so will, durchgesetzt haben. Deshalb war nach der Epochenwende von 1989 die Linke keineswegs wie in anderen postkommunistischen Ländern vollständig diskreditiert. Natürlich hat Ungarn nach dem Systemwechsel das ökonomische Schicksal dieser Länder geteilt. In nicht-larmoyanten Worten hat Janos Háy diesen Erfahrungen einen bewegenden literarischen Ausdruck verliehen. Während jener Übergangsperiode waren dies, nachdem das lange verschlossene Tor zum „märchenhaften Abendland“ aufgesprungen war, die niederdrückenden Erfahrungen einer neuen sozialen Ungleichheit, einer Entwurzelung und Pauperisierung ganzen Schichten, einer Verödung von ganzen Produktionszweigen und Landstrichen. Im Gegenlicht der wiedergewonnen Freiheit schmerzte die Reaktion auf dieses Elend umso mehr: „Das Goldene Tor steht sperrangelweit offen....(Aber) nicht das moderne Denken hat unsere Grenzen überschritten, sondern das bunte Blendwerk des westlichen Marktes, die Reklamen, die grellen Privatsender, die inmitten dieser Verwahrlosung wie die Plastiktüten wirken, die wir einst so stolz mit uns herumgetragen hatten.“
Diese eindringliche Beschreibung beantwortet freilich nicht die Frage, warum gerade in Ungarn nach dem in Mitteleuropa üblichen Auf und Ab der politischen Eliten, nach dem üblichen Hin und Her zwischen Aufbruch und Korruption, nach dem Pendelschlag zwischen Margareth Thatcher und Nostalgie - warum nur hier das Ergebnis einer ganz gewöhnlichen demokratischen Wahl zu einer „Revolution an der Wahlurne“ umdeklariert worden ist. Wie Sie wissen, haben jene energischen Maßnahmen, die einen Regierungswechsel zu einem Regimewechsel vertiefen und verstetigen sollten, im übrigen Europa Sorgen ausgelöst. Es wäre falsche Höflichkeit, wenn ich um diese Befürchtungen herumreden würde. Ein bekannter deutscher, heute in Princeton lehrender Politikwissenschaftlers, der lange in diesem Lande gelebt und gearbeitet, übrigens auch seine Frau hier gefunden hat, warnt davor, „dass die Demokratisierungsprozesse in den relativ neuen EU-Staaten vielleicht doch umkehrbar sein könnten. Man denke an Rumänien, wo im Sommer 2012 ein vom Parlament initiierter ‚kalter Coup’ nur knapp scheiterte, und vor allem an Ungarn, wo die Regierung des national-populistischen Ministerpräsidenten Viktor Orbán den Rechtsstaat seit 2010 immer weiter aushöhlt und – so viele Kritiker im In- und Ausland – dabei ist, eine ‚illiberale’ oder gelenkte Demokratie zu errichten.“ [Jan-Werner Müller]
Meine Damen und Herrn, mir fehlt die Kompetenz, um diese Entwicklung zu beurteilen. Ich habe nur über meine gemischten Gefühle nachgedacht. Auch diese Bemerkung hätte ich unterdrückt, wenn ich nicht als Kollege und Freund persönlich davon betroffen wäre, dass eine bedeutende ungarische Philosophin [Ágnes Heller] nach einem schweren politischen Lebensschicksal - nach der tödlichen Bedrohung des jungen Mädchens im Budapest des Jahres 1944, nach einer Dissidenten-Existenz in diesem Lande, nach der belastenden Emigration in Australien und in den USA und nach dem Aufatmen einer glücklichen Rückkehr in die befreite Heimat – dass eine solche von der politischen Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts gezeichnet Person noch in ihrem neunten Lebensjahrzehnt erneut politischen Anfeindungen in der Öffentlichkeit und Repressalien vonseiten der Justiz ausgesetzt worden ist. Das habe ich mir in Ungarn nicht vorstellen können."
See my previous post on the event here.
See also Habermas's article on the political situation in Hungary: "Protect the Philosophers!" (2011).
Forthcoming in "Bioethics":
"Autonomy, Natality and Freedom: A Liberal Re-examination of Habermas in the Enhancement Debate" [pdf]
by Jonathan Pugh (Oxford University)
Abstract
"Jürgen Habermas has argued that carrying out pre-natal germline enhancements would be inimical to the future child's autonomy. In this article, I suggest that many of the objections that have been made against Habermas' arguments by liberals in the enhancement debate misconstrue his claims. To explain why, I begin by explaining how Habermas' view of personal autonomy confers particular importance to the agent's embodiment and social environment. In view of this, I explain that it is possible to draw two arguments against germline enhancements from Habermas' thought. I call these arguments ‘the argument from negative freedom’ and ‘the argument from natality’. Although I argue that many of the common liberal objections to Habermas are not applicable when his arguments are properly understood, I go on to suggest ways in which supporters of enhancement might appropriately respond to Habermas' arguments."
