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4Questioning autonomy: The feminist challenge and the challenge for feminismIn Richard Kearney & Mark Dooley (eds.), Questioning ethics: contemporary debates in philosophy, Routledge. pp. 258--282. 1999.
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3Habermas' social theory : the critical power of communicative rationalityIn Karin de Boer & R. Sonderegger (eds.), Conceptions of Critique in Modern and Contemporary Philosophy, Palgrave Macmillan. 2011.
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69Between 'objectivism' and 'contextualism': The normative foundations of social philosophyCritical Horizons 1 (2): 193-227. 2000.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…Read more
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20Unintelligible! Inaccessible! Unacceptable! Are religious truth claims a problem for liberal democracies?Philosophy and Social Criticism 43 (4-5): 442-452. 2017.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…Read more
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Speech Acts and Validity ClaimsIn David M. Rasmussen & James Swindal (eds.), Jürgen Habermas, Sage Publications. pp. 4--136. 2002.
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20On the Pragmatics of Communication (edited book)MIT Press. 1998.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…Read more
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1Dual character of concepts and the discourse theory of lawIn Matthias Klatt (ed.), Institutionalized reason: the jurisprudence of Robert Alexy, Oxford University Press. 2012.
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87Are ethical conflicts irreconcilable?Philosophy and Social Criticism 23 (2): 1-19. 1997.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 …Read more
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75Redeeming redemption: The utopian dimension of critical social theoryPhilosophy and Social Criticism 30 (4): 413-429. 2004.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 p…Read more
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44Language and Reason: A Study of Habermas's PragmaticsMIT Press. 1997.Language and Reason opens up new territory for social theorists by providing thefirst general introduction to Habermas's program of formal pragmatics: his reconstruction of theuniversal principles of possible understanding that, he argues, ...
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Barry Smart, "Modern Conditions, Postmodern Controversies"International Journal of Philosophical Studies 2 (2): 385. 1994.