Marek Hrubec

On Conditions of Participation: The Deficits of Public Reason The paper analyzes the conditions of civic participation that are elucidated by criticism of the deficits of public reason. The interpretation proceeds in three steps. First, the idea of public reason and discourse is analyzed, followed by an explanation of democratic deficit and of the social deficit in the second and third steps, respectively. These deficits are analyzed as an essential limit to political and social conditions of the participation of citizens. The analysis focuses thereby on the theory of public reason by one of the most influential political philosophers of the last decades, John Rawls. The paper identifies two main pitfalls in his theory: first, the deficit following from an inadequate integration of an individual into society, which, in this case, represents democratic deficit, second, the deficit linked with underrating the socio-distributive dimension of justice, which means a social deficit.

O artigo trata da questão dos direitos humanos quanto ao potencial de consenso entre culturas através do diálogo intercultural. Trata-se de uma contribuição para superar os confrontos entre civilizações e a imposição coercitiva de direitos humanos sobre outras culturas. O paper mostra que a promoção intercultural de direitos humanos entre culturas individuais que se reconhecem mutuamente é uma das formas efetivas de resistência contra a falta de reconhecimento. Todavia, é mister uma formulação dos direitos humanos embasada nos valores de culturas individuais e no diálogo entre elas. A interpretação aqui adotada é uma contribuição para criar ‘unidade na pluralidade’, i.e. uma universalidade de direitos humanos dentro da pluralidade de culturas

The paper deals with a conception of international order and its limits in the trans­national and global context from the point of view of a theory of social and political recognition. It concentrates especially on the conception developed by Axel Honneth. It is a reconstruction as well as an interpretation of the conception, showing the pos­sibilities and limitations of its application on transnational and global levels. First, the paper analyses Honneth’s arguments concerning moral realism and international recog­nition. It discusses the need of international recognition as related to the political and cultural recognitions. Then, it shows the insufficiencies of the conception of interna­tional recognition on the background of globalization on one hand and the individual/society relationship on the other. The following part of the paper deals with problems of a transposition of patterns of recognition from the national level to international and transnational levels, and explains limits of arguments developed by V. Heinz, T. Pogge and A. Wendt. In mapping the tendencies to transnational and global recognitions, the paper focuses on the important transitory phenomenon of extraterritorial recognition. It also articulates arguments how a theory of recognition can be developed on transna­tional and global levels.

The article deals with an issue of a critical concept of injustice. It concentrates on injustice by focusing on three fundamental elements of Critical theory of society: critique, explanation, and normativity. Firstly, it clarifies the need for critical social criticism to have an internal character. Secondly, it concentrates on relations between individual elements of the above-mentioned trichotomy, and stresses the consequences of such an analysis for a Critical social theory. It shows that only an articulation of all three elements in their mutual constitutive relations will enable to work out a critical concept of in/justice.

The paper analyzes recognition in relation to the global legal arrangements. It articulates of an extra-territorial recognition of right-holders by means of the development of a philosophical theory of recognition on the global level. It examines contemporary possibilities of extra-territorial recognition that are bound to the nation-states hitherto. The paper indicates an increasing influence of various transnational agents in order to show (1) the possibilities and limits of extra-territorial recognition based on a state-centric approach, and (2) a demand of supranational recognition. Therefore, it maps the development from thecontemporary international system to the system that can contain also important supranational elements. In its practical consequences, it leads not only to rethinking social, political and legal philosophy but also to a philosophical reinvention of the United Nations because a new supranational stage of recognition requires not only a responsibility of the nation-states but also a direct responsibility of non-state transnationalagents.