Maeve Cooke

New Books on Philosophy of Religion Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks By Nicholas Wolterstorff, Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. 326. ISBN 0–521–47557–0. $18.95 (pbk). The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The Incamational Narrative as History By C. Stephen Evans, Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. 386. ISBN 0–19–826397‐X $17.95 (pbk). Consciousness and the Mind of God By Charles Taliaferro, Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. 349. ISBN 0–521–46173–1. $65.00 (hbk). Wittgenstein and Quine By Robert L. Arrington and Hans‐Johann Glock (eds) Routledge, 1996. Pp. xvii + 286. ISBN 0–415–09676–6. £40.00. Language and Reason: A Study of Habermas's Pragmatics By Maeve Cooke, MIT Press, 1997 (hbk 1994). Pp. 232. ISBN 0–262–53145–3. £12.00 (pbk). Form and Good in Plato's Eleatic Dialogues By Kenneth Dorter, University of California Press, 1994. Pp. x + 156. ISBN 0–520–08331–8. $45.00 Plotin über Sein, Zahl und Einheit By Christoph Horn, B. G. Teubner, 1995. Pp. 368. ISBN 3–519–07611‐X. The Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinas's Natural Theology in Summa Contra Gentiles I By Norman Kretzmann, Clarendon Press, 199. Pp. 000. 0–19–823660–3. Price £35.00. Reason, Truth and Self: The Postmodern Reconditioned By Michael Luntley, Routledge, 1995. Pp. xv + 248, ISBN 0–415–11853–0. £11.99 Approaches to Intentionality By William Lyons, Clarendon Press, 1995. Pp. 261. ISBN 0–19–823526–7. £30.00 Benacerraf and his Critics Edited by Adam Morton and Stephen P. Stich, Blackwell, 1996. Pp. xi + 271. ISBN 0–631–19268–9. £45.00. Atheism and Theism By Jack J. C. Smart and John J. Haldane, Blackwell Publishers, 1996. Pp. 234. ISBN 0–631–19291–3 (hbk). £40.00. ISBN 0–631–19292–1 (pbk). £12.99. Human Lives: Critical Essays on Consequentialist Bioethics Edited by David S. Oderberg and Jacqueline A. Laing Macmillan Press, 1997. Pp. viii + 244. ISBN 0–333–62980–0. £40 Freedom within Reason By Susan Wolf, Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp. 162. ISBN 0–19–508565–5. £13.99 (pbk). An Introduction to Political Philosophy By Jonathan Wolff, Opus, Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. 230 + index. ISBN 19–289251–7 £8.99.

New Books on Philosophy of Religion Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim that God Speaks By Nicholas Wolterstorff, Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. 326. ISBN 0–521–47557–0. $18.95. The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The Incamational Narrative as History By C. Stephen Evans, Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. 386. ISBN 0–19–826397‐X $17.95. Consciousness and the Mind of God By Charles Taliaferro, Cambridge University Press, 1994. Pp. 349. ISBN 0–521–46173–1. $65.00. Wittgenstein and Quine By Robert L. Arrington and Hans‐Johann Glock Routledge, 1996. Pp. xvii + 286. ISBN 0–415–09676–6. £40.00. Language and Reason: A Study of Habermas's Pragmatics By Maeve Cooke, MIT Press, 1997. Pp. 232. ISBN 0–262–53145–3. £12.00. Form and Good in Plato's Eleatic Dialogues By Kenneth Dorter, University of California Press, 1994. Pp. x + 156. ISBN 0–520–08331–8. $45.00 Plotin über Sein, Zahl und Einheit By Christoph Horn, B. G. Teubner, 1995. Pp. 368. ISBN 3–519–07611‐X. The Metaphysics of Theism: Aquinas's Natural Theology in Summa Contra Gentiles I By Norman Kretzmann, Clarendon Press, 199. Pp. 000. 0–19–823660–3. Price £35.00. Reason, Truth and Self: The Postmodern Reconditioned By Michael Luntley, Routledge, 1995. Pp. xv + 248, ISBN 0–415–11853–0. £11.99 Approaches to Intentionality By William Lyons, Clarendon Press, 1995. Pp. 261. ISBN 0–19–823526–7. £30.00 Benacerraf and his Critics Edited by Adam Morton and Stephen P. Stich, Blackwell, 1996. Pp. xi + 271. ISBN 0–631–19268–9. £45.00. Atheism and Theism By Jack J. C. Smart and John J. Haldane, Blackwell Publishers, 1996. Pp. 234. ISBN 0–631–19291–3. £40.00. ISBN 0–631–19292–1. £12.99. Human Lives: Critical Essays on Consequentialist Bioethics Edited by David S. Oderberg and Jacqueline A. Laing Macmillan Press, 1997. Pp. viii + 244. ISBN 0–333–62980–0. £40 Freedom within Reason By Susan Wolf, Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp. 162. ISBN 0–19–508565–5. £13.99. An Introduction to Political Philosophy By Jonathan Wolff, Opus, Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. 230 + index. ISBN 19–289251–7 £8.99

No matter where or how we live, we face enormous challenges today: inequalities continue to deepen, democratic institutions are being attacked and undermined, the environment is being destroyed and climate change is bringing humanity to a point where its very survival as a species is at stake. What does the tradition of critical theory have to say about the great challenges confronting us? In _Transformations in Critical Theory_, Maeve Cooke seeks to renew and revitalize Frankfurt School critical theory in ways that will help it engage with key contemporary issues and challenges, while at the same time remaining true to its mission of identifying ways to create a better world for everyone. She seeks to foster communication between critical theory and other intellectual traditions, pushing it beyond Eurocentrism and anthropocentrism and enabling it to expand and enrich its critical methodology and emancipatory visions. She urges critical theory to look outwards, beyond the epistemological and ontological contexts of Western modernity, and to investigate possibilities for better futures opened by this outwards movement. She also urges critical theory to move beyond anthropocentrism and adopt a more ecologically attuned perspective that acknowledges the importance of human relations to other-than-human beings and the ecosystems that sustain all life. Revitalized in this way, the kind of critical theory developed by Cooke re-envisions individual freedom as ethically oriented, self-determining, self-transforming human agency, always opening outwards and towards the future. Such agency is constituted in interrelation with other-than-human entities, attentive to others, human and other-than-human, receptive for new and possibly unsettling experiences and politically as well as ethically-existentially always on the move. This bold work demonstrates that critical theory in the Frankfurt School tradition is not merely a static repository of texts that belong to the early 20th century and only of historic interest but rather a living tradition ready to learn from other traditions, open to the future and capable of being renewed in ways that can help us address some of the great challenges of the 21st–century.

A remark made by Theodor W. Adorno in 1942 gains a new relevance in our current situation of on-going anthropogenic planetary depredation and the ecological challenges it poses: ‘Need is a social category. Nature as “drive” is contained within it’. With this remark, Adorno appears to attribute both a natural moment and a social moment to the category of human need. I propose a reading of it in which there are two aspects to need’s natural moment: a transgressive power and a reminder of the constitutive materiality of human agency. Moving beyond Adorno I elaborate the first as a call for interpretations and evaluations of human need through reference to human-transcending ideas of ‘the good’ or ‘the just’. I elaborate the second as a call for attentiveness to the normative importance for ethical agency of the multiple, complex entanglements between human agency and other-than-human-agencies. Taken together they call for a decentring and opening of the idea of autonomous agency prevalent in contemporary political theory. This has implications for the politics of need.

Our present situation of anthropogenic ecological disaster calls on Western philosophy in general, and Frankfurt School critical theory in particular, to reconsider some long-standing, entrenched assumptions concerning what it means to be a human agent and to relate to other agents. In my article, I take up the challenge in dialogue with the idea of critical theory articulated by Max Horkheimer in the 1930s. My overall concern is to contribute to on-going efforts to decentre Frankfurt School critical theory in multiple dimensions. With the help of Horkheimer, I seek to show that this theoretical tradition has itself an important contribution to make to the endeavour. In Section 1, I argue that the methodology he advocates for critique of society offers a view of the relationship between the human mind and reality, as well as of humans with other humans, that avoids dogmatic rigidity and is hospitable towards mutual learning through engagement with other philosophical and cultural traditions. In Section 2, I consider the more specific challenge of anthropocentrism, suggesting the need for a more differentiated account of this. While critical theory is unavoidably anthropocentric in certain respects, it could avoid more pernicious forms of anthropocentrism that establish epistemic and ethical hierarchies between humans and other-than-human entities and that conceive of ethical validity as a purely human construction, with no independence of human needs and concerns.

After the Second World War, Adorno was politically engaged as a critical public intellectual in the new Federal Republic of Germany. Nonetheless, in the 1960s, a time of active protest against established norms and the underlying socio‐economic and political conditions, he was widely perceived by the protesting activists as adopting an attitude of resignation in blatant contradiction to the aims of his critical social theory. The chapter considers the validity of this accusation. Section 37.1 sets out Adorno's position with regard to the relationship between theory and praxis from the 1950s onwards. Section 37.2 considers the adequacy of his position from the point of view of Critical Social Theory's fundamental concern with radical societal transformation. Contending that Adorno does in effect adopt a stance of resignation vis‐à‐vis radical societal transformation, it draws attention to some questionable elements in his theory that push him toward adopting this stance. It concludes that his theory would benefit from dispensing with them.

I address the question of human agency from the perspective of critical social theory, starting from the premise that, today, such theories must focus on the global ecological disaster. I assume, furthermore, that radical societal change is necessary in order to arrest our current disastrous ecological trajectory. Radical societal change calls for a fundamental re-orientation in values globally, on both an individual and collective level. This entails a thorough-going change in perceptions of what it means to lead an ethically good life, including revision of deepseated conceptions of ethical agency, in particular, the idea of individual freedom. Wearing the hat of an engaged theorist, I propose a re-imagining and rearticulation of freedom as ecologically attuned, self-directing, self-transforming political agency. Taking social institutions as an example, I discuss non-authoritarian authority as a force for forming and transforming ethical perceptions and attribute a similar non-authoritarian potential to critical social theories, in this case a disclosive one. While a change in ethical perceptions will not be sufficient for the required societal transformation, I claim that it is an integral component of it.

Habermas dialogically recasts the Kantian conception of moral autonomy. In a legal-political context, his dialogical approach has the potential to redress certain troubling features of liberal and communitarian approaches to democratic politics. Liberal approaches attach greater normative weight to negatively construed individual freedoms, which they seek to protect against the interventions of political authority. Communitarian approaches prioritize the positively construed freedoms of communal political participation, viewing legal-political institutions as a means for collective ethical self-realization. Habermas’ discourse theory of law and democracy seeks to overcome this competition between the negative and positive liberties. Doing so entails reconciling private and public autonomy at a fundamental conceptual level. This is his co-originality thesis, which seeks to show that private and public autonomy are internally connected and evenly balanced. I support his aim but argue that he fails to achieve it due to an unsatisfactory account of private autonomy. I suggest an alternative dialogical conception of autonomy as ethically self-determining agency that would enable him to establish his thesis.

The article considers the role of translation in encounters between religious citizens and secular citizens. It follows Habermas in holding that translations rearticulate religious contents in a way that facilitates learning. Since he underplays the complexities of translation, it takes some steps beyond Habermas towards developing a more adequate account. Its main thesis is that the required account of translation must keep sight of the question of truth. Focusing on inspirational stories of exemplary figures and acts, it contends that a successful translation makes truth appear anew; further, that it is the central role of truth in translation that enables the prospect of learning from the inspirational messages of religion. By highlighting truth as the point of continuity between intercultural learning and learning from religion, it provides support for the thesis that encounters between religious and secular citizens are a subset of intercultural encounters and, as such, contexts of possible mutual learning.

Habermas emphasizes the importance for critical thinking of ideas of truth and moral validity that are at once context-transcending and immanent to human practices. in a recent review, Peter Dews queries his distinction between metaphysically construed transcendence and transcendence from within, asking provocatively in what sense Habermas does not believe in God. I answer that his conception of “God” is resolutely postmetaphysical, a god that is constructed by way of human linguistic practices. I then give three reasons for why it should not be embraced by contemporary critical social theory. First, in the domain of practical reason, this conception of transcendence excludes by fiat any “Other” to communicative reason, blocking possibilities for mutual learning. Second, due to the same exclusion, it risks reproducing an undesirable social order. Third, it is inadequate for the purposes of a critical theory of social institutions.