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15Remarks on legitimation through human rightsPhilosophy and Social Criticism 24 (2-3): 157-171. 1998.
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14Book Review: Natural Law, Economics, and the Common Good, edited by Samuel Gregg and Harold James (review)Journal of Moral Philosophy 11 (6): 773-776. 2014.
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14Solidarity and the Common Good: An Analytic FrameworkJournal of Social Philosophy 38 (1): 7-21. 2007.
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14Review of Jan kyrre Berg Olson, Evan Selinger, Søren Riis (eds.), New Waves in Philosophy of Technology (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2009 (6). 2009.
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12Ideals of Argumentative Process and the Ethnomethodology of Scientific Work: Implications for Critical Social TheorySymposium 9 (2): 313-337. 2005.
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12Insight and Solidarity: The Discourse Ethics of Jürgen HabermasUniversity of California Press. 1994.Discourse ethics represents an exciting new development in neo-Kantian moral theory. William Rehg offers an insightful introduction to its complex theorization by its major proponent, Jürgen Habermas, and demonstrates how discourse ethics allows one to overcome the principal criticisms that have been leveled against neo-Kantianism. Addressing both "commun-itarian" critics who argue that universalist conceptions of justice sever moral deliberation from community traditions, and feminist advocates…Read more
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12Review of 'Recognition and Social Ontology' (review)Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2011 (12.23). 2011.In assembling the contributions to Recognition and Social Ontology, the editors aim to bring together "two contemporary, intensively debated fields of inquiry: Hegel-inspired theories of recognition (Anerkennung) and analytic social ontology" (1). Considering the difficulty of this goal, the collection does rather well overall. Robert Brandom, whose own work deeply embodies the analytic engagement with Hegel, provides the lead contribution. Brandom's chapter in turn provokes critical reactions i…Read more
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11Habermas on Moral Motivation and Secular HopeProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 95 67-78. 2021.In his massive 2019 work on the history of the faith-reason discourse in the West, Habermas replies to Kant’s question of rational hope with the prospect of an eventual intercultural agreement on cosmopolitan principles of justice. To warrant such hope he points to the growth of democratic institutions and human rights across the globe. Habermas’s answer thus relies on political structures that foster transformative social movements—but not on modern moral attitudes, which he regards as too indi…Read more
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9These 11 essays by noted philosophers and social theorists take up the philosophical aspects of Jürgen Habermas's unfinished project of reconstructing enlightenment rationality. They range in subject matter from classical problems to contemporary debates, covering historical perspectives, theoretical issues, and post-enlightenment challenges. A companion volume of essays will take up the cultural and political aspects of the work. Together, the two volumes underscore the richness and variety of …Read more
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8Discourse and Democracy: The Formal and Informal Bases of Legitimacy in Habermas' Faktizität und GeltungJournal of Political Philosophy 4 (1): 79-99. 2006.
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8Lonergan’s Performative Transcendental Argument Against ScepticismProceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 63 257-268. 1989.
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629. Critique of Knowledge as Social Theory: Knowledge and Human Interests (1968)In Hauke Brunkhorst, Regina Kreide & Cristina Lafont (eds.), The Habermas handbook, Columbia University Press. pp. 271-287. 2018.
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5A Practical Heuristic for Dialogical Argument-Making in Applied EthicsJournal of Clinical Research and Bioethics 7 (1). 2016.
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312. Against SubordinationIn Michel Rosenfeld & Andrew Arato (eds.), Habermas on Law and Democracy: Critical Exchanges, Univ of California Press. pp. 257-271. 1998.
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3Moral discourse as reflection: Comments on James Swindal’s Reflection RevisitedPhilosophy and Social Criticism 29 (2): 127-136. 2003.In his Reflection Revisited, James Swindal interprets Habermas’s formal pragmatics as recasting the traditional philosophy of reflection in intersubjective, augmentation-theoretic terms. In this review essay, I consider some aspects of Swindal’s interpretation for situated moral criticism. I focus in particular on Swindal’s claim that moral discourse must be preceded by meta-discourses in which actors discuss issues related to the initiation of moral discourse. Although I reject Swindal’s argume…Read more
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2Discourse ethics and the Communitarian Critique of Neo-KantianismPhilosophical Forum 22 (2): 120-138. 1990.
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2Communicative Action and Rational Choice (review)Dialogue 41 (3): 622-623. 2002.Of all the components that go into Jürgen Habermas's heroic efforts to elaborate the rational basis for critical social theory, his pragmatic theory of language—the "theory of communicative action" —is both the most important and the most ambitious. However, his arguments for this theory tend to be speculative, controversial, or even obscure at key points. This is unfortunate, given the potential significance of TCA as an account of the rationality of moral action. To remedy the situation, Josep…Read more
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243. Cognitive InterestsIn Hauke Brunkhorst, Regina Kreide & Cristina Lafont (eds.), The Habermas handbook, Columbia University Press. pp. 489-493. 2018.
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2Discourse ethicsIn Edith Wyschogrod & Gerald P. McKenny (eds.), The Ethical, Blackwell. pp. 5--83. 2003.
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1Habermas's Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy: An Overview of the ArgumentIn David M. Rasmussen (ed.), Handbook of critical theory, Blackwell. 1996.
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The Transformation of Critical Theory: Essays in Honor of Thomas McCarthy (edited book)MIT Press. 2001.
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Insight and Solidarity: The Idea of a Discourse EthicsDissertation, Northwestern University. 1991.In this dissertation I present Jurgen Habermas's discourse ethics as a theory of practical reasoning that addresses a number of the shortcomings attributed to Kantian moral theory and its descendants. In this context the following objections are most significant: the neo-Aristotelian/neo-Hegelian charge that deontological approaches unduly detach moral deliberation from its anchors in community tradition and conceptions of the good life, and the ethics of care objection that the Kantian focus on…Read more
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Argumentation Theory and the Philosophy of Science Since KuhnInquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy. forthcoming.