Rainer Forst

This paper lays some groundwork for a critical theory of trust. It challenges widespread assumptions in trust research according to which “thick” forms of trust emerge in socially and culturally homogeneous communities, which regard trust and conflict as opposing terms, or that view trust generally as a value. The paper suggests a distinction between a general, non-normative concept and various normative conceptions of trust, depending on context. With regard to the justification of trust, a distinction between particular and full justification is introduced, and the justification of trust is linked to relations of justification between trusters and trusted. Finally, it argues that trust in conflicts emerges where such relations exist among the parties of a conflict.

John Rawls famously claimed that “the accidents of natural endowment and the contingencies of social circumstance” are “arbitrary from a moral point of view.” Luck egalitarians believe that a conception of justice that eliminates the effects of circumstance but not of choice captures that intuition better than Rawls’s own principles of justice. This chapter argues that the opposite is the case. We can learn from Rawls that one cannot overcome moral arbitrariness in social life by using a morally arbitrary distinction between choice and circumstance. Furthermore, the chapter argues that the incompatibility between these two approaches points to a deeper difference between a deontological and a teleological paradigm that is crucial for the debate between relational and nonrelational notions of political and social justice.

Wer verstehen will, wie gesellschaftliche Ordnungen sich herausbilden, verändern, stabilisieren oder zerbrechen, muss ihr normatives Innenleben erschließen. Der Frankfurter Forschungsverbund »Normative Ordnungen« hat eine viel beachtete Methode entwickelt, die die konstitutiven Rechtfertigungen nationaler wie transnationaler Ordnungen untersucht: ihre narrative Struktur, ihre moralische, religiöse, konventionelle, politische, rechtliche Natur – oder eine Kombination davon, so spannungsreich sie auch sein mag. Auf welchen Wegen, in welchen Verfahren und Konflikten entstehen solche Rechtfertigungen? Wann schwindet ihre Kraft? Der Band präsentiert in interdisziplinärer Zusammenarbeit eine Antwort auf diese Fragen.

_Contexts of Justice,_ highly acclaimed when it was published in Germany, provides a significant new intervention into the important debate between communitarianism and liberalism. Rainer Forst argues for a theory of "contexts of justice" that leads beyond the narrow confines of this debate as it has been understood until now and posits the possibility of a new conception of social and political justice. This book brings refreshing clarity to a complex topic as it provides a synthesis of traditions and theories that leads to a truly original approach. Forst makes a four-part distinction to decipher the debate between communitarianism and liberalism. These four parts concern the constitution of the self, the neutrality of law, the ethos of democracy, and the opposition between universalism and contextualism. He shows that a comprehensive theory of justice needs to take these different contexts adequately into account. He discusses recent debates about discursive democracy and feminist critiques of liberalism, and addresses such topics as multiculturalism and civil society.

All human beings are born with equal dignity and possess equal rights. This statement appears normatively just as irrefutable as it is empirically refuted every day. But what are the grounds of this principle, and how should we think about its realization? Its philosophical truth can best be explained by going back to (and beyond) Kant’s notion of a ‘noumenal republic’ in which every person is an equal co-author of the laws that bind all. At the same time, a critical analysis of society and politics must show the extent to which the reality of power and ideology makes a mockery of this constructivist conception of dignity. To bridge the gap between unworldly idealism and practical hopelessness, we need a critical theory after Kant. Rainer Forst, one of the world’s most influential political philosophers, works to develop just such a theory in this powerful and illuminating volume. It contains no less than a new systematic account of concepts such as alienation, progress and regression, solidarity, human rights, justice, power and non-domination.

Contemporary philosophical pluralism recognizes the inevitability and legitimacy of multiple ethical perspectives and values, making it difficult to isolate the higher-order principles on which to base a theory of justice. Rising up to meet this challenge, Rainer Forst, a leading member of the Frankfurt School's newest generation of philosophers, conceives of an "autonomous" construction of justice founded on what he calls the basic moral right to justification. Forst begins by identifying this right from the perspective of moral philosophy. Then, through an innovative, detailed critical analysis, he ties together the central components of social and political justice—freedom, democracy, equality, and toleration—and joins them to the right to justification. The resulting theory treats "justificatory power" as the central question of justice, and by adopting this approach, Forst argues, we can discursively work out, or "construct," principles of justice, especially with respect to transnational justice and human rights issues. As he builds his theory, Forst engages with the work of Anglo-American philosophers such as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Amartya Sen, and critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser, and Axel Honneth. Straddling multiple subjects, from politics and law to social protest and philosophical conceptions of practical reason, Forst brilliantly gathers contesting claims around a single, elastic theory of justice.