Maeve Cooke

Narrative fiction has the power to unsettle our deep-seated intuitions and expectations about what it means to live an ethically good life, and the kind of society that best facilitates this. Sometimes its disruptive power is disclosive, leading to an ethically significant shift in perception. I contend that the disruptive and disclosive powers of narrative fiction constitute a potential for ethical knowledge. I construe ethical knowledge as a learning process, oriented by a concern for truth, which involves the rational agency and affective engagement of an embodied human subject. For the purposes of showing this, I engage critically with Adorno’s reading of Kafka, using Kafka's story ‘In the Penal Colony’ to challenge Adorno’s analysis.

The article examines Habermas’s formal‐pragmatic theory of meaning from the point of view of his attempt to defend a postmetaphysical yet context‐transcendent conception of validity. It considers his attempt to develop a pragmatic account of understanding utterances that emphasises the mediation of knowledge through socio‐cultural practices while simultaneously stressing that understanding has a cognitive dimension that is inherently context‐transcendent. It focuses on his recent “Janus‐faced” conception of truth, looking more briefly at his purely epistemic conception of moral validity. It raises three objections: the first to his attempt to maintain a notion of “unconditionality” that has no otherworldly origins but is purely immanent to this world, the second to the alleged non‐arbitrary status of his conception of truth, and the third to his rejection of metaphysical thinking. It concludes that the objections, if valid, have profound implications for Habermas’s postmetaphysical enterprise and for his programme of formal pragmatics.

In a widely publicized lecture in 2008, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, expressed his concern that the conception of law and democratic citizenship prevailing in England may lead to ghettoization. The problem, in his view, is that the bulk of the convictions and commitments that define a given citizen’s identity are seen as a matter of individual choice and relegated to the private realm. In diagnosing this problem, Williams tacitly distances himself from a privatizing view of democratic politics. In response to the problem, he calls for consideration of the possibility of supplementary jurisdictions, whereby certain legal functions would be delegated to the religious courts of a community. The article is broadly supportive of Williams’ concern to avoid privatization and his emphasis on the importance of openness to learning from other legal codes. However, it finds no convincing case for legally recognizing plural jurisdictions. It concludes that this aim is better served by Seyla Benhabib’s proposal for vibrant, ongoing exchanges between different legal codes, and between such codes and political and cultural beliefs, traditions and practices.

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

Essays on Philosophy and Economic Methodology By Daniel M. Hausman Cambridge University Press, 1992. Pp. 259. ISBN 0?521?41740?6. £35.00. Le Fondement de la morale: Essai d'éthiquephilosophique By André Léonard Cerf, 1991. Pp. 381. ISBN not available. FF240. The Philosophy of Time Edited By Robin Le Poidevin and Murray MacBeath Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp. 230. ISBN 0?19?823998?X. £27.50. The Ethics and Politics of Human Experimentation By Paul M. McNeill Cambridge University Press, 1993. Pp. 315. ISBN 0?521?41627?2. £35.00. Modern Conditions, Postmodern Controversies By Barry Smart Routledge, 1991. Pp. 241. ISBN 0?415?06952. £10.99. Religion in Relation. Method, Application and Moral Location By Ivan Strenski Macmillan, 1993. Pp. ix + 257. ISBN 0?333?53469?7. £45.00. Robert Nozick: Property, Justice and the Minimal State By Jonathan Wolff Polity Press, 1991. Pp. ix + 168. ISBN 0?7456?0603?2. £8.95 pbk

One of the principal challenges facing contemporary social philosophy is how to find foundations that are normatively robust yet congruent with its self-understanding. Social philosophy is a critical project within modernity, an interpretative horizon that stresses the influences of history and context on knowledge and experience. However, if it is to engage in intercultural dialogue and normatively robust social critique,social philosophy requires non-arbitrary,universal normative standards.The task of normative foundations can thus be formulated in terms of negotiating the tension between 'contextualism' and 'objectivism'. Six contemporary responses to this challenge are examined.Their respective limitations call for renewed reflection on justificatory strategies, in particular for a conception of 'objectivity' based in a normative theory of social learning processes.

In liberal democracies it is now a commonplace that public debates in the institutionalized political sphere should involve only arguments and reasons that are in principle intelligible, accessible and acceptable to all citizens. Many political theorists take the view that religious arguments and reasons do not meet these requirements. My article interrogates this widely held position, considering each of the three requirements in turn. Motivating my discussion is the view that religious beliefs and practices should not be regarded as essentially private matters, with discussion of their validity confined to some antecedently demarcated sphere. Rather, claims made for the validity of religious beliefs and practices should be thematized and evaluated in public processes of deliberation, opening them to possible challenges from other citizens, irrespective of whether these other citizens are religious believers. My article offers a freedom-based argument for this position.

Jürgen Habermas's program in formal pragmatics fulfills two main functions. First, it serves as the theoretical underpinning for his theory of communicative action, a crucial element in his theory of society. Second, it contributes to ongoing philosophical discussion of problems concerning meaning, truth, rationality, and action. By the "pragmatic" dimensions of language, Habermas means those pertaining specifically to the employment of sentences in utterances. He makes clear that "formal" is to be understood in a tolerant sense to refer to the rational reconstruction of general intuitions or competences. Formal pragmatics, then, aims at a systematic reconstruction of the intuitive linguistic knowledge of competent subjects as it is used in everyday communicative practices. His program may thus be distinguished from empirical pragmatics -- for example, sociolinguistics -- which looks primarily at particular situations of use. This anthology brings together for the first time, in revised or new translation, ten essays that present the main concerns of Habermas's program in formal pragmatics. Its aim is to convey a sense of the overall purpose of his linguistic investigations while introducing the reader to their specific details, in particular to his theories of meaning, truth, rationality, and action

The discussion starts with the fact of ethical disagreement in contemporary liberal democracies. In responding to the question of whether such conflicts are reconcilable, it proposes a normative model of deliberative democracy that seeks to avoid the privatization of ethical concerns. It is argued that many contemporary models of democracy privatize ethical matters either because of a view that ethical conflicts are fundamentally irreconcilable or because of a mis trust of the ideal of rational consensus in the fields of law and politics. Against this, the article contends that most ethical disagree ments are reconcilable in principle; it further suggests that mistrust of the ideal of rational consensus in the fields of law and politics is based on misunderstanding. Here, Habermas's model of deliberative democracy is drawn on. His account of public ethical deliberation is criticized and his negative interpretations of civic republicanism and ethical patterning are questioned; however, his model is seen as fundamentally fruitful from the point of view of dealing with ethical conflict. Key Words: civic republicanism • coercion • consensus • deliberative democracy • ethical disagreements • ethical patterning • ethical-political discourses • ethical privatization • Habermas.

Critical social theory has an uneasy relationship with utopia. On the one hand, the idea of an alternative, better social order is necessary in order to make sense of its criticisms of a given social context. On the other hand, utopian thinking has to avoid ‘bad utopianism’, defined as lack of connection with the actual historical process, and ‘finalism’, defined as closure of the historical process. Contemporary approaches to critical social theory endeavour to avoid these dangers by way of a post metaphysical strategy. However, they run up against the problem that utopian thinking has an unavoidable metaphysical moment. Rather than seeking to eliminate this moment, therefore, they should acknowledge its inevitability. The challenge is to maintain a productive tension between closure and contestability and between attainability and elusiveness. The paper outlines a strategy for meeting this challenge, a strategy that is based on a distinction between the metaphysical content of utopian projections and their fallible claims to validity. Key Words: critical social theory • fallibilism • metaphysical closure • postmetaphysical thinking • reflexivity • regulative idea • utopia.

The article considers the role of translation in encounters between religious citizens and secular citizens. It follows Habermas in holding that translations rearticulate religious contents in a way that facilitates learning. Since he underplays the complexities of translation, it takes some steps beyond Habermas towards developing a more adequate account. Its main thesis is that the required account of translation must keep sight of the question of truth. Focusing on inspirational stories of exemplary figures and acts, it contends that a successful translation makes truth appear anew; further, that it is the central role of truth in translation that enables the prospect of learning from the inspirational messages of religion. By highlighting truth as the point of continuity between intercultural learning and learning from religion, it provides support for the thesis that encounters between religious and secular citizens are a subset of intercultural encounters and, as such, contexts of possible mutual learning.