William Rehg

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 of the "ethics of care" who stress the moral significance of caring for other individuals, Rehg shows that discourse ethics combines impartiality with solidarity. He provides the first systematic reconstruction of Habermas's theory and explores its relationship to the work of such contemporary philosophers as Charles Taylor. His book articulates a bold alternative to the split between the "right" and the "good" in moral theory and will greatly interest philosophers, social and legal scholars, and political theorists.

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 in several subsequent chapters. A number of chapters attempt to show how Hegel can inform analytic social philosophy. And chapters that do not explicitly focus on Hegel nonetheless contribute to the analysis of mutual recognition.

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 individualistic to generate collective action. I argue that Habermas, following Kant, relies on flawed assumptions about social movements. As a result, his structural approach provides an incomplete basis for hope. In the spirit of ongoing dialogue between religion and secular thought, I translate Aquinas’s treatment of fraternal correction into an ethics of moral leadership that can fill the gaps in Habermas’s project.

These 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 Habermas's project. Contributors Karl-Otto Apel, Richard J. Bernstein, Peter Bürger, Martin Jay, Thomas McCarthy, Herbert Schnädelbach, Charles Taylor, Michael Theunissen, Ernst Tugendhat, Albrecht Wellmer.

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 arguments for the necessity of such meta-discourses, I provide further arguments for their theoretical possibility and practical desirability for a contextualized critical social theory.

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, Joseph Heath carefully reworks—and significantly revises—the basic steps in Habermas's argument.

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 universally valid norms neglects the moral significance of caring for particular persons in concrete situations. ;I argue that the discourse-ethical concept of impartiality contains the systematic resources for remedying such deficits in Kantian moral theory. Part One elaborates the key to this reply: a dialogical principle of universalization that links moral insight with real perspective taking and thereby explodes the monological, subject-centered notion of reason predominant in modern moral theory. This forges an intrinsic link between moral insight and solidarity, which allows for a systematically unified response to the above criticisms. ;In Part Two I show how -governed moral discourse takes real needs, interests and conceptions of the good life into consideration without falling behind the Kantian distinction between moral questions and questions of the good life. In response to Charles Taylor's charge that modern moral theories surreptitiously presuppose constitutive goods, I argue that the good of rational cooperation underlying discourse ethics is not one substantive good among others, but a metavalue without viable alternatives in today's world. ;In Part Three I attempt to situate discourse ethics in more concrete contexts. I show, first, how a discourse-ethical account of application builds a care perspective into moral impartiality. Second, I indicate how discourse ethics is actually practiced in contemporary settings; this raises further questions which suggest that only partly captures the moral intuitions governing real discourse. Nevertheless, the discourse-ethical account of intersubjective moral insight points to a multi-level concept of solidarity capable of systematically integrating aspects of morality that deontological approaches too often neglect