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29Do Practices Explain Anything? Turner's Critique of the Theory of Social PracticesHistory and Theory 36 (1): 93-107. 1997.
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75Introducing Democracy across Borders: from dêmos to dêmoiEthics and Global Politics 3 (1): 111. 2010.Before launching into the précis of my book, let me first describe the state of democracy, as I see it, in order to discuss the motivations for writing a book about democracy across borders. It is the best of times and the worst of times. According to the current wisdom, we live in the golden age of democracy. In the absence of any viable alternative, liberal democracy is taken to be the only feasible formof democracy and goes unchallenged. Democracy is now recognized in international documents …Read more
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67Democracy Across Borders: From Dêmos to DêmoiMIT Press. 2007.Today democracy is both exalted as the "best means to realize human rights" and seen as weakened because of globalization and delegation of authority beyond the nation-state. In this provocative book, James Bohman argues that democracies face a period of renewal and transformation and that democracy itself needs redefinition according to a new transnational ideal. Democracy, he writes, should be rethought in the plural; it should no longer be understood as rule by the people, singular, with a sp…Read more
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War and democracyIn Larry May & Emily Crookston (eds.), War: Essays in Political Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. 2008.
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35Causal Pluralism Without Levels: Comments on HumphreysSouthern Journal of Philosophy 34 (S1): 115-127. 1996.
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134The Democratic Minimum: Is Democracy a Means to Global Justice?Ethics and International Affairs 19 (1): 101-116. 2005.I argue that transnational democracy provides the basis for a solution to the problem of the “democratic circle”—that in order for democracy to promote justice, it must already be just—at the international level. Transnational democracy could be a means to global justice. First, I briefly recount my argument for the “democratic minimum.” This minimum is freedom from domination, understood in a very specific sense. Employing Hannah Arendt's conception of freedom as “the capacity to begin,” the fo…Read more
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1Improving democratic practice : practical social science and normative idealsIn Jeroen Van Bouwel (ed.), The Social Sciences and Democracy, Palgrave-macmillan. 2009.
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360Realizing deliberative democracy as a mode of inquiry: Pragmatism, social facts, and normative theoryJournal of Speculative Philosophy 18 (1): 23-43. 2004.
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Frankfurt SchoolIn Audi Robert (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge University Press. pp. 278--279. 1995.
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33Pluralism and the Pragmatic Turn: The Transformation of Critical Theory, Essays in Honor of Thomas Mccarthy (edited book)MIT Press. 2001.The essays in this volume reflect on and expand Frankfurt School critical theory as reformulated after World War II by Karl-Otto Apel, Jürgen Habermas, and others. Frankfurt School critical theory since the pragmatic turn has become a richer source of critical analysis that is at the same time socially and politically more effective. The essays are dedicated to Thomas McCarthy, who has done perhaps more than any other scholar to introduce English-speaking audiences to contemporary German critica…Read more
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17Democratic Experimentalism: From Self-Legislation to Self-DeterminationContemporary Pragmatism 9 (2): 273-285. 2012.As developed by Sabel, Dorf and Cohen, and John Dewey before them, democratic experimentalism is based on the premise that current democratic practices are no longer able to deal with central and pressing social and political problems. Beginning with the criticism of democracy as command and control, Dorf and Sabel show how current democratic practices are part of the problem rather than the solution. Even as democratic experimentalists have successfully explored democracy beyond the state in th…Read more
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57Pluralism, indeterminacy and the social sciences: Reply to Ingram and Meehan (review)Human Studies 20 (4): 441-458. 1997.This article defends methodological and theoretical pluralism in the social sciences. While pluralistic, such a philosophy of social science is both pragmatic and normative. Only by facing the problems of such pluralism, including how to resolve the potential conflicts between various methods and theories, is it possible to discover appropriate criteria of adequacy for social scientific explanations and interpretations. So conceived, the social sciences do not give us fixed and universal feature…Read more
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78A response to my critics: Democracy across BordersEthics and Global Politics 3 (1): 71-84. 2010.It is a special privilege for me to have my book, Democracy across borders, discussed by insightful critics, all of whom in one way or another have contributed to emerging thinking about democracy, globalization, and international institutions. But it is also a privilege to have it discussed in this particular journal, which I see as a very good example of a transnational (rather than international) space for reflection and communication on matters of global politics. It is transnational, at lea…Read more
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34Nondomination and transnational democracyIn Cécile Laborde & John W. Maynor (eds.), Republicanism and Political Theory, Blackwell. pp. 159--216. 2008.
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37Constituting Humanity: Democracy, Human Rights, and Political CommunityCanadian Journal of Philosophy 35 (sup1): 227-252. 2005.Democracy and human rights have long been strongly connected in international covenants. In documents such as 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights, democracy is justified both intrinsically in terms of popular sovereignty and instrumentally as the best way to “foster the full realization of all human rights.” Yet, even though they are human and thus universal rights, political rights are often surprisingly spe…Read more
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341Survey article: The coming of age of deliberative democracyJournal of Political Philosophy 6 (4). 1998.
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60Hegel's Political Anti-Cosmopolitanism: On the Limits of Modern Political CommunitiesSouthern Journal of Philosophy 39 (S1): 65-92. 2001.
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63Reflexivity, agency and constraint: The paradoxes of Bourdieu's sociology of knowledgeSocial Epistemology 11 (2). 1997.(1997). Reflexivity, agency and constraint: The paradoxes of Bourdieu's sociology of knowledge. Social Epistemology: Vol. 11, New Directions in the Sociology of Knowledge, pp. 171-186.
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299Deliberative TolerationPolitical Theory 31 (6): 757-779. 2003.Political liberals now defend what Rawls calls the "inclusive view" of public reason with the appropriate ideal of reasonable pluralism. Against the application of such a liberal conception of toleration to deliberative democracy "the open view of toleration is with no constraints" is the only regime of toleration that can be democratically justified. Recent debates about the public or nonpublic character of religious reasons provide a good test case and show why liberal deliberative theories ar…Read more
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42Democracy, solidarity and global exclusionPhilosophy and Social Criticism 32 (7): 809-817. 2006.
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1Deliberating about the Past: Decentering Deliberative DemocracyIn Chad Kautzer & Eduardo Mendieta (eds.), Pragmatism, Nation, and Race: Community in the Age of Empire, Indiana University Press. pp. 110. 2009.
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7On the Reliability of Science: The Critical Rationalist Version (review)Philosophy of the Social Sciences 43 (1): 100-115. 2013.Error and Inference discusses Deborah Mayo’s theory that connects the reliability of science to scientific evidence. She sees it as an essential supplement to the negative principles of critical rationalism. She and Aris Spanos, her co-editor, declare that the discussions in the book amount to tremendous progress. Yet most contributors to the book misconstrue the Socratic character of critical rationalism because they ignore a principal tenet: criticism in and of itself comprises progress, and e…Read more
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119We, Heirs of enlightenment: Critical theory, democracy and social scienceInternational Journal of Philosophical Studies 13 (3). 2005.My goal here is to come to terms with the Enlightenment as the horizon of critical social science. First, I consider in more detail the understanding of the Enlightenment in Critical Theory, particularly in its conception of the sociality of reason. Second, I develop an account of freedom in terms of human powers, along the lines of recent capability conceptions that link freedom to the development of human powers, including the power to interpret and create norms. Finally, I show the ways in wh…Read more
St. Louis, Missouri, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Social Science |
Areas of Interest
Social and Political Philosophy |
Philosophy of Social Science |