Nekrolog över Svante Hansson (1938-2023).

The selectionsfrom the work of fourteen contemporary philosophers not only display the multiplicity of approachesbeing pursued since the breakup of any consensus on what philosophy is, but also help to clarifythis proliferation of views and ...

It is a special privilege for me to have my book, Democracy across borders, discussed by insightful critics, all of whom in one way or another have contributed to emerging thinking about democracy, globalization, and international institutions. But it is also a privilege to have it discussed in this particular journal, which I see as a very good example of a transnational (rather than international) space for reflection and communication on matters of global politics. It is transnational, at least in (...) part; not just because of what is discussed here, but also because of the norms that underlie its public form of communication: the norm of open access by which some of the barriers for the exercise of communicative freedom across borders are removed. Such communicative spaces did not exist even 10 years ago, although some people were already attempting to find new ways to realize communicative freedom. Other scholars may have objected that scholarly discussion should not be conducted this way, that it violated established norms of the profession and would always be marginal. However, those making such objections realized that the idea of open access would be potentially transformative, allowing the emergence of new publics and creating a dynamic process by which the norms of communicative freedom would be realized and strengthened by new institutions. Such a process might be described as transnationalization, a process that fills out the communicative infrastructure on which novel publics are based and through which they can reconstitute themselves for a variety of political purposes. (Published: 5 February 2010) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2010, pp. 71-84. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v3i1.4855. (shrink)

The practice of confessing one's sexual sins has historically provided boys and men with mixed messages. Engaging in coercive sex is publicly condemned; yet it is treated as not significantly different from other transgressions that can be easily forgiven. We compare Catholic confessional practices to those of psychoanalytically oriented male writers on masculinity. We argue that the latter is no more justifiable than the former, and propose a progressive confessional mode for discussing male sexuality.

Recension av Carl Henrik Carlssons Judarnas historia i Sverige. 400 s.

Before launching into the précis of my book, let me first describe the state of democracy, as I see it, in order to discuss the motivations for writing a book about democracy across borders. It is the best of times and the worst of times. According to the current wisdom, we live in the golden age of democracy. In the absence of any viable alternative, liberal democracy is taken to be the only feasible formof democracy and goes unchallenged. Democracy is (...) now recognized in international documents as ‘the best means to realize human rights,’ so that some now argue that international law, formerly unconcerned with internal affairs of states, establishes a ‘democratic entitlement.’1 At the same time, it is often claimed that democracy has never been weaker. It is increasingly unable to solve many collective problems and to gain legitimacy, thus leading to economic crisis, to the declining legitimacy of states in ever more numerous demands for succession, and to greater internal conflicts and even civil wars. As a result, some electoral and representative democracies increasingly cede many areas of social policy to delegated and increasingly non-democratic forms of authority. Possible responses to these facts lie between two extremes of a continuum. On the one hand, liberal nationalists call for the renewal of social consensus through a democratic ethos, and some participatory democrats demand decentralization into smaller units. On the other hand, cosmopolitans argue that only supranational levels of governance can solve the many collective action and coordination problems ranging from global warming to sustainable growth to grave human rights abuses and genocide. (Published: 5 February 2010) Citation: Ethics & Global Politics, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2010, pp. 1
11. DOI: 10.3402/egp.v3i1.4849. (shrink)

Today democracy is both exalted as the "best means to realize human rights" and seen as weakened because of globalization and delegation of authority beyond the nation-state. In this provocative book, James Bohman argues that democracies face a period of renewal and transformation and that democracy itself needs redefinition according to a new transnational ideal. Democracy, he writes, should be rethought in the plural; it should no longer be understood as rule by the people, singular, with a specific territorial (...) identification and connotation, but as rule by peoples, across national boundaries. Bohman shows that this new conception of transnational democracy requires reexamination of such fundamental ideas as the people, the public, citizenship, human rights, and federalism, and he argues that it offers a feasible approach to realizing democracy in a globalized world.In his account, Bohman establishes the conceptual foundations of transnational democracy by examining in detail current theories of democracy beyond the nation-state and offers a deliberative alternative. He considers the importance of communicative freedom in the transnational public sphere, human rights as the normative basis of transnational democracy, and the European Union as a transnational polity. Finally, he examines the relationship between peace and democracy, concluding that peace requires democratization on interacting state and suprastate levels. (shrink)

Bohman develops a realistic model of deliberation by gradually introducing and analyzing the major tests facing deliberative democracy: cultural pluralism, social inequalities, social complexity, and community-wide biases and ideologies.

The contributions in this anthology address tensions that arise between reason and politics in a democracy inspired by the ideal of achieving reasoned agreement among free and equal citizens.

The essays in this volume reflect on and expand Frankfurt School critical theory as reformulated after World War II by Karl-Otto Apel, Jürgen Habermas, and others. Frankfurt School critical theory since the pragmatic turn has become a richer source of critical analysis that is at the same time socially and politically more effective. The essays are dedicated to Thomas McCarthy, who has done perhaps more than any other scholar to introduce English-speaking audiences to contemporary German critical theory.The book is organized (...) into three parts. Part one deals with social theory and the rational basis of communication, including basic issues raised by the pragmatic turn. Part two examines conceptions of autonomy and the self. Part three deals with political theory, focusing on problems stemming from sociocultural pluralism. Together, the essays provide an overview of the latest developments in Frankfurt School critical theory as it responds to the challenges of pragmatism and social pluralism. (shrink)

It is often assumed that democracies can make good use of the epistemic benefi ts of diversity among their citizenry, but difficult to show why this is the case. In a deliberative democracy, epistemically relevant diversity has three aspects: the diversity of opinions, values, and perspectives. Deliberative democrats generally argue for an epistemic form of Rawls' difference principle: that good deliberative practice ought to maximize deliberative inputs, whatever they are, so as to benefi t all deliberators, including the least eff (...) ective. The proper maximandum of such a principle is not the pool of reasons, but rather the availability of perspectives. Th is sort of diversity makes robustness across different perspectives the proper epistemic aim of deliberative processes. Robustness also offers a measure of success for those democratic practices of inquiry based on the deliberation of all citizens. (shrink)

In 1795 Immanuel Kant published an essay entitled "Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch." The immediate occasion for the essay was the March 1795 signing of the Treaty of Basel by Prussia and revolutionary France, which Kant condemned as only "the suspension of hostilities, not a peace." In the essay, Kant argues that it is humankind's immediate duty to solve the problem of violence and enter into the cosmopolitan ideal of a universal community of all peoples governed by the rule (...) of law.The essay's two-hundredth anniversary, 1995, also marked the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II and of the establishment of the Charter of the United Nations. The essays in this volume were written for a conference held in Frankfurt in May 1995 to commemorate these three anniversaries. Together, the authors argue for the continued theoretical and practical relevance of the cosmopolitan ideals of Kant's essay. They also show that history has both confirmed and outstripped Kant's prognoses. As recent events have shown, we certainly have not emerged from the violence of the state of nature. Accelerating globalization also gives these reconstructions and reappraisals of Kant's cosmopolitan ideal a new urgency.Contributors : Karl-Otto Apel, Kenneth Baynes, James Bohman, Jürgen Habermas, David Held, Axel Honneth, Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, Thomas McCarthy, Martha Nussbaum. (shrink)

With her conception of epistemic injustice, Miranda Fricker has opened up new normative dimensions for epistemology; that is, the injustice of denying one?s status as a knower. While her analysis of the remedies for such injustices focuses on the epistemic virtues of agents, I argue for the normative superiority of adapting a broadly republican conception of epistemic injustice. This argument for a republican epistemology has three steps. First, I focus on methodological and explanatory issues of identifying epistemic injustice and argue, (...) against Fricker, that identity prejudice fails to provide a sufficient explanatory basis for the spread and maintenance of such systematic epistemic injustice. Second, this systemic basis can be found not so much in the psychological attitudes of individual knowers, but in the relations of domination among groups and individuals in a society. Third, if such a presence of domination plays a primary explanatory role in all forms of epistemic injustice, it is likely that those who suffer from epistemic injustice will also suffer other forms of injustice and loss of status via the exercise of other forms of power and exclusion. (shrink)

This article defends methodological and theoretical pluralism in the social sciences. While pluralistic, such a philosophy of social science is both pragmatic and normative. Only by facing the problems of such pluralism, including how to resolve the potential conflicts between various methods and theories, is it possible to discover appropriate criteria of adequacy for social scientific explanations and interpretations. So conceived, the social sciences do not give us fixed and universal features of the social world, but rather contribute to the (...) task of improving upon our practical knowledge of on-going social life. After arguing for such a thorough-going pluralism based on the indeterminacy of social action, I defend it from the post-modern and hermeneutic objections by suggesting the possibility of an epistemology of interpretive social science as a form of practical knowledge. (shrink)