James Gordon Finlayson

I. The Problem of Normative Foundations: Habermas's Original Criticism of Adorno and Horkheimer In The Theory of Communicative Action, Jürgen Habermas writes:From the beginning, critical theory labored over the difficulty of giving an account of its own normative foundations …1Call this Habermas's original objection to the problem of normative foundations. It has been hugely influential both in the interpretation and assessment of Frankfurt School critical theory and in the development of later variants of it. Nowadays it is a truth almost universally acknowledged that any critical social theory in possession of normative…

The thesis is that Adorno has a normative ethics, albeit a minimal and negative ethics of resistance. However Adorno’s ethical theory faces two problems: the problem of the availability of the good and the problem of whether a normative ethics is consistent with philosophical negativism. The author argues that a correct of understanding the role of the ineffable in Adorno’s Negative Dialectics solves both problems: it provides an account of the availability of the good that is consistent with his philosophical negativism. The author counters the prevalent objection that Adorno’s aporetic philosophy, like some negative theology, leads to irrationalism and mysticism. The parallel with negative theology is developed by means of a comparison with Nicholas of Cusa. Drawing on Wittgentstein’s saying/showing distinction and Adrian Moore’s work the author argues that Nicholas and Adorno can be seen to share a philosophically defensible notion of ineffable knowledge

This article re-examines the Habermas–Rawls debate. It contends that what is at issue in this dispute has largely been missed. The standard view that principle and the original position form a useful point of comparison between their respective theories and that the dispute between them can be fruitfully understood on this basis is rejected. I show how this view has arisen and why it is wrong. The real issue between them lies in their respective accounts of the justification of political norms,and in their competing conceptions of legitimacy. I show how these two concepts connect. I distinguish between methodological disputes arising from the differences in approach that each takes to the questions of political legitimacy and political justification, and substantive issues about whether, and if so how moral reasons are germane to the justification of political norms

J|rgen Habermas is the most renowned living German philosopher. This book aims to give a clear and readable overview of his philosophical work. It analyzes both the theoretical underpinnings of Habermas's social theory, and its more concrete applications in the fields of ethics, politics, and law. Finally, it examines how Habermas's social and political theory informs his writing on real, current political and social problems. The author explores Habermas's influence on a wide variety of fields--including philosophy, political and social theory, cultural studies, sociology, and literary studies. He uses a problem-based approach to explain how Habermas's ideas can be applied to actual social and political situations. The book also includes a glossary of technical terms to further acquaint the reader with Habermas's philosophy. Unlike other writing on Habermas, this Introduction is accessibly written and explains his intellectual framework and technical vocabulary, rather than simply adopting it.

What is a thing? It is an apparently simple question to which few philosophers or social scientists have devoted any serious attention. This chapter attempts to explain this neglect, and then to develop a way of thinking about the question by distinguishing things, and the concept ‘thing’, from objects and entities with which they are often conflated. This more refined and adequate conception of the thing is then deployed in order to help answer two related questions: ‘Why do things matter? What are the grounds of our attachment to them, and of our obligations towards them?’ It is argued that an endemic failure within philosophy and social science to reflect on what constitutes the thinghood of things makes it harder than it need be to answer questions concerning their value and why they matter to us.

Discourse ethics is originally conceived as a programme of philosophical justification of morality. This depends on the formal derivation of the moral principle (U) from non-moral principles. The moral theory is supposed to fall out of a pragmatic theory of meaning. The original programme plays a central role in Habermas's social theory: the moral theory, if true, provides good evidence for the more general theory of modernization. But neither Habermas nor his followers have succeeded in providing a formal derivation. This essay shows how and why Habermas's proposed derivation is impossible. As if aware of the lacuna, Habermas has recently suggested that (U) can be derived by 'abduction' rather than deduction. The proposal draws heavily on modernization theory; hence the only justification for (U) now available to him rests on premises drawn from that theory. The original programme of the justification of morality has thus given way to the weaker programme of the philosophical elucidation of morality. Further, since Habermas's moral theory is no longer justified independently of modernization theory, but at least partly by it, the moral theory cannot without circularity provide evidence for the modernization theory.