Cristina Lafont

This chapter analyzes the relationship between hermeneutic phenomenology and transcendental philosophy in Heidegger’s Being and Time. This work exhibits conflicting tendencies. On the one hand, it aims to single out the essential structures of any human existence and in so doing exemplifies the ahistorical mode of philosophizing characteristic of transcendental philosophy. On the other hand, its substantive claims demonstrate the radical facticity, historicality, and situatedness of human existence. The chapter argues that hermeneutic phenomenology is indeed a variety of transcendental philosophy: it aims to show that the hermeneutic conditions of understanding anything as meaningful are the ultimate transcendental conditions of any human experience whatsoever. However, once these hermeneutic conditions are finally revealed, they turn out to be very different from traditional transcendental conditions, since they disclose the radical facticity and situatedness of all human experience.

This article argues for an intermediate standpoint concerning the theory of truth which finds an equilibrium between realist an epistemic conceptions of truth. At the same time it is accepted that truth is a notion with an ultimate realist sense, but it is made clear that this intuitive sense does only have a non-trivial (i.e. non-“disquotational”), reading if the function of “truth” is seen from within the epistemic framework of our practices of belief-formation (i.e. of confirmation and revision). Following the realist line one can reconstruct the unconditional validity attributed to the intuitive concept of truth out of its internal relation with the concept of “reality”; this in turn makes clear that the epistemic strategy of extracting this uncoditionality from an emphatic concept of perfect, infallible knowledge is more than weak. This is because only preserving the decisive function of truth as a corrective, as a fallibilist reserve (incompatible therefore with any concept of “infallible” knowledge) one can see how truth relates to cognitive learning processes. On the other hand, the strategy of this paper shows thus how this is possible avoiding the bad alternative of metaphysical realism and relativism.

In his book The Future of Human Nature, Habermas argues against the moral and legal permissibility of any future practices of genetic human enhancement as well as against current practices such as embryonic research or preimplantation genetic diagnosis. After analyzing the core of Habermas’s argument against positive eugenics, I argue that his attempt to derive a principle of abstention under uncertainty from the principle of counterfactual consent assumes that non-interference is the proper default norm in the absence of consent. Yet, this cannot be a plausible default norm for parental relationships. Moreover, since Habermas agrees that the no-harm principle justifies negative eugenics, once technical possibilities of genetic manipulation become available, non-interference becomes as much in need of normative justification as interference. I conclude that if our normative innocence regarding positive eugenics must be lost for the sake of negative eugenics, then it is an innocence well lost.

In this essay I defend an institutional approach to democratic legitimacy against proceduralist approaches that are commonly endorsed by deliberative democrats. Although deliberative democrats defend a complex view of democratic legitimacy that aims to account for both the procedural and substantive dimensions of legitimacy, most accounts of the relationship between these dimensions currently on offer are too proceduralist to be plausible (I). By contrast, I argue that adopting an institutional approach helps provide a more convincing account of the interplay between procedural and substantive aspects of democratic legitimacy which in turn illuminates the intricate relationship between public deliberation and decision-making procedures such as voting (II). This account also enables us to see what is wrong with interpreting the legitimacy of majoritarian and non-majoritarian institutions in terms of an alleged conflict between popular sovereignty and rights protections. In opposition to this view, I argue that the proper standard for judging the democratic legitimacy of both majoritarian and non-majoritarian institutions is whether they enable an ongoing recursive process of deliberative contestation or whether they generate antidemocratic shortcuts instead (III).

Martin Heidegger generalizes hermeneutics from a traditional method for interpreting authoritative texts (mainly sacred or legal texts) to a way of understanding human beings themselves. It is precisely because human beings are nothing but interpretation all the way down that the activity of interpreting a meaningful text offers the most appropriate model for understanding any human experience whatsoever. Recognizing the linguistically articulated intelligibility that Dasein shares with others by virtue of sharing a natural language leads to the crucial hermeneutic claim of Being and Time, namely, the priority of understanding over perception. The most challenging feature of Heidegger's application of his projective view of interpretation to cognition is the transformation of the traditional conception of a priori knowledge that follows from it. This transformation lies behind Heidegger's choice of the term “fore‐structure of understanding” to explicitly mark the presuppositional character of all interpretation.

Jürgen Habermas is one of the most significant contributors to the development of hermeneutics in contemporary philosophy. His specific approach to critical theory is heavily indebted to the hermeneutic conception of language. This chapter highlights the basic features of that approach through an analysis of the main philosophical issues at the center of Habermas's sustained engagement with Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. The hermeneutic model of a linguistically articulated lifeworld that makes mutual understanding possible is the key conceptual resource that enabled Habermas to break with the paradigm of mentalism that was predominant in the work of the first generation of Frankfurt School critical theorists. The chapter focuses on the normative difficulty that arises in an attempt to integrate hermeneutics and critical theory. It remains an open question whether the Habermasian approach to critical theory can succeed in its goals.

The separation of church and state is generally taken to be a requirement of constitutional democracies. However, there is little agreement on the precise meaning of the ideal of separation. Some liberal conceptions of democratic legitimacy interpret the ideal of separation such that religious beliefs and reasons should be excluded from political justification. This exclusivist view raises fears that a commitment to liberal democracy is suitable only for secular citizens and religious citizens who are practical atheists, but not for genuinely religious citizens. Against this view, liberal critics argue that the democratic ideal of equal treatment requires the inclusion of religious reasons on equal footing with secular reasons in political deliberation. This inclusivist view, however, raises fears that a commitment to democracy is suitable only for members of religious majorities. For, according to this view, a majority of religious citizens could impose coercive policies on secular citizens or citizens of different faiths without any obligation to give them reasons that they can reasonably accept. Against both views, I defend a conception of political justification and democratic legitimacy that does not rely on the religious–secular distinction in order to show how the normative commitments of constitutional democracies can be reflectively endorsed by all democratic citizens, whether religious or secular.