Maeve Cooke

The article considers Jürgen Habermas's views on the relationship between postmetaphysical philosophy and religion. It outlines Habermas's shift from his earlier, apparently dismissive attitude towards religion to his presently more receptive stance. This more receptive stance is evident in his recent emphasis on critical engagement with the semantic contents of religion and may be characterized by two interrelated theses: the view that religious contributions should be included in political deliberations in the informally organized public spheres of contemporary democracies, though translated into a secular language for the purposes of legislation and formal decision making and the view that postmetaphysical philosophy should seek to salvage the semantic contents of religious traditions in order to supply the evocative images, exemplary figures, and inspirational narratives it needs for its social and political projects. With regard to, it argues that the translation requirement impairs the political autonomy of religious believers and other metaphysically inclined citizens, suggesting that this difficulty could be alleviated by making a distinction between epistemologically authoritarian and non-authoritarian religious beliefs. With regard to, it argues that the salvaging operation is not as straightforward as Habermas seems to suppose and that social and political philosophy may not be able to tap the semantic power of religious traditions without relying on metaphysical assumptions; it concludes that, here, too, a distinction between authoritarian and non-authoritarian approaches to knowledge and validity may be useful.

The article deals with Habermas's intersubjective approach to critical social theory, focusing on his intersubjective accounts of truth, justice and democratic legitimacy. Distinguishing between stronger and weaker versions of an intersubjective account, it draws attention to Habermas's recent move from a strong intersubjective, constructivist, interpretation of truth to a weaker, non-constructivist, one. It then looks at his refusal to make a similar move in the case of justice, arguing that it is not well-founded, even from the point of view of Habermas's overall concerns. It contends, in particular, that a strong intersubjective conception is not necessary in order to maintain the close link between normative validity and argumentation that plays an important role in Habermas's project of a critical social theory and concludes that the advantages of abandoning a strong intersubjective position outweigh the disadvantages. Consequently, it recommends extension of the weaker, non-constructivist, account that Habermas now proposes in the case of truth to justice as well. In the final section, it considers the implications of this recommendation for Habermas's conception of normative validity in the domain of law and politics.

This article offers a general framework for thinking about civil disobedience as transformative political action. Positing authority as the mode of power corresponding to obedience, and authority and freedom as internally related, it proposes a model of freedom and political authority as a basis for this framework. The framework is sufficiently general to allow for context-dependent variations – for example, as to whether publicity or non-violence is required – while specifying a view of civil disobedience as transformative action driven by a constellation of ethical, legal and political concerns. A reconfigured conception of conscience has a place within this account, but is not an indispensable element.

I consider argumentation from the point of view of context-transcendent cognitive transformation through reference to the critical social theory of Jürgen Habermas. My aim is threefold. First, to make the case for a concept of context-transcendent cognitive transformation. Second, to clarify the transformatory role of argumentation itself by showing that, while argumentation may contribute constructively to context-transcendent cognitive transformation, such transformation presupposes the existence of a reality conceptually independent of argumentation. Third, to cast light on the problem of how to justify argumentatively the poetically formulated, novel and innovative semantic contents that may be required for context-transcendent cognitive transformation. I conclude that the difficulties involved in argumentatively assessing novel and innovative semantic contents should not be misconstrued as evidence of an unbridgeable gap between language and experience but rather suggest the need for a more dynamic normative conception of language and for a more receptive model of autonomous agency

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