•  2
    Since its inception critical theory has been ambivalent about what kind of political practice it should promote and in the name of what kind of solidarity. Oversimplifying somewhat, the choices fall somewhere between two extremes: Should it promote institutional reform in the name of achieving democratic solidarity? Or should it promote anarchic revolution in the name of achieving solidarity with suppressed nature, redeeming integral life in its totality from narrow self-interest and instrumenta…Read more
  •  6
    This chapter explores recent research by critical theorists concerning theories of (under)development. Drawing from the research of Thomas McCarthy, Axel Honneth, Jurgen Habermas, Amy Allen, Nancy Fraser, and others, the author explores some of the divergent responses critical theorists have given toward the theory and practice of global developmental assistance. Some theorists defending a strong modernist approach to development (e.g., McCarthy, Habermas and Honneth) appear to endorse a logic o…Read more
  •  21
    Herbert Marcuse’s essay Repressive Tolerance (RP) has been praised by the Left and vilified by the Right for its alleged promotion of censorship targeting reactionary opinions and actions. I argue that this interpretation of the text is mistaken. According to my alternative reading of the text, RP should be understood as an exercise in provocation and irony aimed at defending civil disobedience and dissent. Marcuse’s defense of dissent, however, appeals to a critique of pure tolerance that expos…Read more
  •  3
    European and American Philosophers
    with John Marenbon, Douglas Kellner, Richard D. Parry, Gregory Schufreider, Ralph McInerny, Andrea Nye, R. M. Dancy, Vernon J. Bourke, A. A. Long, James F. Harris, Thomas Oberdan, Paul S. MacDonald, Véronique M. Fóti, F. Rosen, James Dye, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Lisa J. Downing, W. J. Mander, Peter Simons, Maurice Friedman, Robert C. Solomon, Nigel Love, Mary Pickering, Andrew Reck, Simon J. Evnine, Iakovos Vasiliou, John C. Coker, Georges Dicker, James Gouinlock, Paul J. Welty, Gianluigi Oliveri, Jack Zupko, Tom Rockmore, Wayne M. Martin, Ladelle McWhorter, Hans-Johann Glock, Georgia Warnke, John Haldane, Joseph S. Ullian, Steven Rieber, Nick Fotion, George Rainbolt, Thomas Sheehan, Gerald J. Massey, Barbara D. Massey, David E. Cooper, David Gauthier, James M. Humber, J. N. Mohanty, Michael H. Dearmey, Oswald O. Schrag, Ralf Meerbote, George J. Stack, John P. Burgess, Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Nicholas Jolley, Adriaan T. Peperzak, E. J. Lowe, William D. Richardson, Stephen Mulhall, and C.
    In Robert L. Arrington (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophers, Blackwell. 2017.
    Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categ…Read more
  •  29
    Critical Theory and Poverty
    In Routledge Handbook of Poverty, . forthcoming.
    This chapter explores the contributions that the Frankfurt School of critical theory has made to philosophical discussions about the meaning and injustice of poverty. Critical theorists interpret poverty to mean more than material deprivation, and they see its injustice as 2 extending beyond wrongful suffering and the threat to a human right to life to encompass psychological impoverishment and dehumanization. The chapter begins by examining critical theory’s historical roots in the Marxist crit…Read more
  •  9
    The Role of Recognition in Kelsen's Account of Legal Obligation and Political Duty
    Austrian Journal of Political Science 51 (3): 52-61. 2022.
    Kelsen’s critique of absolute sovereignty famously appeals to a basic norm of international recognition. However, in his discussion of legal obligation, generally speaking, he notoriously rejects mutual recognition as having any normative consequence. I argue that this apparent contradiction in Kelsen's estimate regarding the normative force of recognition is resolved in his dynamic account of the democratic generation of law. Democracy is embedded within a modern political ethos that obligates …Read more
  •  8
    The Ethics of Development: An Introduction
    with Thomas Derdak
    Routledge. 2018.
    The Ethics of Development: An Introduction systematically and comprehensively examines the ethical issues surrounding the concept of development. The book addresses important questions such as: What does development mean? Is there a human right to development? If we aim for sustainable development in an age of global climate change, should developed nations sacrifice economic growth for the sake of allowing developing countries to catch up? Should eradication of poverty or diminution of radical …Read more
  •  75
    Rights and privileges: Marx and the jewish question
    Studies in East European Thought 35 (2): 125-145. 1988.
  •  16
    Rights and privileges: Marx and the Jewish question
    Studies in Soviet Thought 35 (2): 125-145. 1988.
  •  5
    Respect for human dignity and the common good in democratic regimes cannot be sustained by reason alone. Citizen faith commitments endorsing both of these values are necessary. However, negotiating in practice the relationship between civic values and religious morality is extremely challenging in a democracy. As a contribution to greater balance in these matters, Ingram argues that the capacity of religion to promote democratic reform in a way that respects fair procedures (rule of law) must ex…Read more
  • Book reviews (review)
    with Robert D. Cumming and Tom Rockmore
    Man and World 16 (1): 67-84. 1983.
  • Recognition and positive freedom
    In John Philip Christman (ed.), Positive Freedom: Past, Present, and Future, Cambridge University Press. 2021.
  •  5
    This chapter examines how European thinkers working from within and without the Frankfurt School of critical theory have understood the public sphere as a distinctive political category. First-generation members of the school rejected institutional democracy and mass politics as ideologies that mask domination. The succeeding generation, whose most important representative is Jürgen Habermas, rejected that diagnosis. Habermas’s more optimistic assessment of the emancipatory potential of the publ…Read more
  •  8
    Poverty and Critical Theory
    In Adrienne Martin (ed.), Routledge Handbook of Love. forthcoming.
    This chapter surveys the various critical theory approaches from Marx to the present in the study of poverty and underdevelopment in relationship to capitalism, democracy, and intersectionality.
  •  129
    This chapter proposes a critical examination of ideological tendencies at work in two main democratic theories currently at play within the critical theory tradition: the deliberative theory advanced famously by Habermas and his acolytes, and the partisan theory advanced by Mouffe and others influenced by Gramsci and Schmitt. Explaining why these theories appeal to distinctive social groups on the Left, divided mainly by education and economic status, it argues that neither theory accounts for t…Read more
  •  1
    P o l i t i c a l Philosophy
    In Constantin V. Boundas (ed.), The Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophies, Edinburgh University Press. pp. 570-589. 2007.
  •  17
    Thanks to Axel Honneth, recognition theory has become a prominent fixture of critical social theory. In recent years, he has deployed his recognition theory in diagnosing pathologies and injustices that afflict institutional practices. Some of these institutional practices revolve around specifically juridical institutions, such as human rights and democratic citizenship, that directly impact the lives of the most desperate migrants. Hence it is worthwhile asking what recognition theory can add …Read more
  •  14
    A number of well-known Hegel-inspired theorists have recently defended a distinctive type of social freedom that, while bearing some resemblance to Isaiah Berlin’s famous description of positive freedom, takes its bearings from a theory of social recognition rather than a theory of moral self-determination. Berlin himself argued that recognition-based theories of freedom are really not about freedom at all but about solidarity, More strongly, he argued that recognition-based theories of freedom,…Read more
  •  7
    This article examines the theoretical pathways connecting Benhabib’s thoughts on ethical normativity, human rights, legality, democracy, liberalism, pluralism, and the tragedy of the political. It endorses Benhabib’s dialectical treatment of these paradoxical political tropes but notes a possible unresolved tension in her discussion of the ambiguous moral and legal nature of human rights. I propose a pluralist approach to the moral grounding of legal human rights that might be at odds with Benha…Read more
  •  17
    This essay proposes recognition theory as a preferred approach to explaining poor women’s puzzling preference for patriarchal subordination even after they have accessed an ostensibly empowering asset: microfinance. Neither the standard account of adaptive preference offered by Martha Nussbaum nor the competing account of constrained rational choice offered by Harriet Baber satisfactorily explains an important variation of what Serene Khader, in discussing microfinance, dubs the self-subordinati…Read more
  •  6
    Response to my commentators
    Ethics and Global Politics 12 (4): 53-69. 2019.
  •  1
  •  27
    Reconciling positivism and realism: Kelsen and Habermas on democracy and human rights
    Philosophy and Social Criticism 40 (3): 237-267. 2014.
    It is well known that Hans Kelsen and Jürgen Habermas invoke realist arguments drawn from social science in defending an international, democratic human rights regime against Carl Schmitt’s attack on the rule of law. However, despite embracing the realist spirit of Kelsen’s legal positivism, Habermas criticizes Kelsen for neglecting to connect the rule of law with a concept of procedural justice (Part I). I argue, to the contrary (Part II), that Kelsen does connect these terms, albeit in a manne…Read more
  • A commonplace misconception identifies Kelsen as a one-dimensional legal positivist and Habermas as a one-dimensional legal moralist. I argue, on the contrary, that both theorists defend a complex normative conception of democratic proceduralism that straddles the positivism/naturalism divide. I then show how their extension of this conception to international law commits them to a monistic human rights regime. I conclude that their realistic acknowledgment of the fragmented nature of legal para…Read more
  •  16
    Imaginaries of modernity: politics, culture, tensions
    Tandf: Critical Horizons 20 (1): 88-94. 2017.
    Volume 20, Issue 1, February 2019, Page 88-94.
  •  7
    Hermeneutics and Truth
    Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 15 (1): 62-78. 1984.