Cristina Lafont

In this essay I analyze some conceptual difficulties associated with the demand that global institutions be made more democratically accountable. In the absence of a world state, it may seem inconsistent to insist that global institutions be accountable to all those subject to their decisions while also insisting that the members of these institutions, as representatives of states, simultaneously remain accountable to the citizens of their own countries for the special responsibilities they have towards them. This difficulty seems insurmountable in light of the widespread acceptance of a state-centric conception of human rights, according to which states and only states bear primary responsibility for the protection of their citizens' rights. Against this conception, I argue that in light of the current structures of global governance the monistic ascription of human rights obligations to states is no longer plausible. Under current conditions, states are bound to fail in their ability to protect the human rights of their citizens whenever potential violations either stem from transnational regulations or are perpetrated by non-state actors. In order to show the plausibility of an alternative, pluralist conception of human rights obligations I turn to the current debate among scholars of international law regarding the human rights obligations of non-state actors. I document the various ways in which these obligations could be legally entrenched in global financial institutions such as the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank. These examples indicate feasible methods for strengthening the democratic accountability of these institutions while also respecting the accountability that participating member states owe to their own citizens. I conclude that, once the distinctions between the obligations to respect, protect and fulfill human rights are taken into account, no conceptual difficulty remains in holding states and non-state actors accountable for their respective human rights obligations.

Any attempt to elucidate the interconnections between phenomenology and critical theory must at some point confront the question of what role Heidegger's philosophy plays in that equation. The historical or biographical side of the question is interesting in its own right and can be philosophically illuminating.1 My focus here, however, will be systematic. In particular, I would like to analyze the similarities and differences between Heidegger's hermeneutic transformation of phenomenology in Being and Time and Habermas's transformation of critical theory in his Theory of Communicative Action. As a way of narrowing my focus, I will take as a guide the..

The main thesis of this article consists in that the two concepts “reference” and “truth” have an ultimate realist sense of which all epistemologizing conceptions -like relativism and incommensurabilist theses- necessarily have to come short. The arguments for this thesis are embedded in a revision of the ‘direct’-reference-position as well as of recent arguments against epistemic notions of truth, to show in the next,evaluating step how it is exactly the realist kernel of both concepts that makes arguments as to the corrective function of both notions within epistemic practices possible. This nucleus of both notions, necessary for every intent to explain learning from experience, consists in the supposition of an objective world to which all speakers refer using the same concepts and which is represented by their statements. This supposition does not inevitably have to be interpreted as a metaphysical postulate of a world in itself, but can be seen, the author argues, as a necessary formal presupposition ofcommunication, which is mastered by the speakers themselves through their having learned to use desigantive expressions referentially as well as to use the true/false distinction in its normative bipolarity

This book is a major contribution to the understanding of Heidegger and a rare attempt to bridge the schism between traditions of analytic and Continental philosophy. Cristina Lafont applies the core methodology of analytic philosophy, language analysis, to Heidegger's work providing both a clearer exegesis and a powerful critique of his approach to the subject of language. In Part One, she explores the Heideggerean conception of language in depth. In Part Two, she draws on recent work from theorists of direct reference (Putnam, Donnellan and Kripke inter alia) to reveal the limitations of Heidegger's views and to show how language shapes our understanding of the world without making learning impossible. The book first appeared in German but has been substantially revised for the English edition.