The Rawls–Habermas debate is having a revival. In this article I argue that both philosophers develop different freestanding conceptions of political legitimacy, and show how they diverge when it comes to how political legitimacy can be justified. Habermas is looking for a deeper justification than Rawls will allow for. I then proceed to show how the different meta-ethical positions yield two different versions of democratic theory, focusing in particular on rights and popular sovereignty. I demonstrate how both conceive of the (...) co-originality of private and public autonomy, and subsequently take issue with Habermas’ reading of Rawls. I argue that Rawls should not be understood as a natural rights theorist, that Habermas misunderstands the role of the original position, and that Rawls cannot be considered a strong constitutionalist. Thus, the real difference between Rawls and Habermas revolves around their different conceptions of political legitimacy. (shrink)

Este libro promete ser una contribución para el estudio de la teoría crítica en general y para el análisis de la historia de la Escuela de Frankfurt en particular. Todos los trabajos que están contenidos en este volumen hacen parte del amplio marco teórico de la teoría crítica de la sociedad. Muchos siguen las huellas de los fundadores de esta tendencia, mientras que otros se presentan como críticos de la misma y unos cuantos más tratan de vincular problemas y contextos (...) de relevancia a los conceptos más destacados que se empezaron a construir hace cien años en Frankfurt. Encontramos como buena excusa para su publicación precisamente el año centenario del Instituto de Investigación Social. Además, hemos creído conveniente organizar los materiales en secciones que van desde la historia de la Escuela de Frankfurt hasta la consideración de algunos interrogantes de actualidad motivados por el desarrollo de la teoría crítica. No obstante, con esto no pretendemos establecer límites absolutos de clasificación. Confesamos que nuestra forma de organizar los ensayos responde simplemente a criterios editoriales más que a cuestiones teóricas y conceptuales. Claramente las intersecciones entre los estudios aquí presentados son amplias y hacen que cada una de las propuestas pueda dialogar con las otras en función de sus evidentes parecidos de familia. (shrink)

In the US and UK Births in obstetric units vastly outnumber births that take place outside of an obstetric unit. Still non-obstetric births are increasing in both countries. Is it professionally responsible to support a non-obstetric birth? It is morally responsible to choose to give birth at home? This debate has become heated with those on both sides finding empirical support for their positions. Indeed this moral debate is often carried out in terms of empirical evidence. While to some this (...) debate over the evidence is a distraction from what is genuinely at stake, namely different non-epistemic values, I will argue in this paper that the way forward is to take a closer and more fine grained look at the evidence. This closer look will first require that we distinguish between evidence of risk acceptability and evidence of safety and then focus carefully on evidence of the safety of non-obstetric births compared to obstetric births. (shrink)

Using the example of contemporary Islamic fundamentalism, and especially the writings of Sayyid Qutb, this article raises questions about discourse ethics as a mode of conflict resolution. It appears that discourse ethics is only relevant when all parties have already agreed to settle disputes deliberatively and already share the notions of rational deliberation and individual autonomy. This raises questions not only about the capability of discourse ethics to incorporate a deep plurality of worldviews, but also about its capability to successfully (...) solve disputes. When confronting situations where the willingness to deliberate is absent, discourse ethics is left standing empty handed. This, I argue, is due to both the conceptual distinction between communicative action and strategic action, as well as the abstracted nature of Habermas's discourse ethics. (shrink)

Contrary to the tendency to harmony, consensus and alignment among stakeholders in most of the literature on participation and partnership in corporate social responsibility and responsible innovation practices, in this chapter we ask which concept of participation and partnership is able to account for stakeholder engagement while acknowledging and appreciating their fundamentally different judgements, value frames and viewpoints. To this end, we reflect on a non-reductive and ethical approach to stakeholder engagement, collaboration and partnership, inspired by the philosophy of Emmanuel (...) Levinas. We contrast a cognitive approach with an ethical approach to stakeholder engagement, collaboration and partnership, and explore four characteristics of this ethical approach. Based on the ethical approach to stakeholder engagement, collaboration and partnership, we also provide a three-stage framework for partnership formation in CSR and RI practices. (shrink)

A comprehensive account of human kindness.

: Seyla Benhabib's critique of Jürgen Habermas's moral theory claims that his approach is not adequate for the needs of a feminist moral theory. I argue that her analysis is mistaken. I also show that Habermas's moral theory, properly understood, satisfies many of the conditions identified by feminist moral philosophers as necessary for an adequate moral theory. A discussion of the compatibility between the model of reciprocal perspective taking found in Habermas's moral theory and that found in María Lugones's essay (...) "Playfulness, 'World'-Travelling, and Loving Perception" reinforces the claim that his moral theory holds as yet unrecognized promise for feminist moral philosophy. (shrink)

Seyla Benhabib's critique of Jürgen Habermas's moral theory claims that his approach is not adequate for the needs of a feminist moral theory. I argue that her analysis is mistaken. I also show that Habermas's moral theory, properly understood, satisfies many of the conditions identified by feminist moral philosophers as necessary for an adequate moral theory. A discussion of the compatibility between the model of reciprocal perspective taking found in Habermas's moral theory and that found in Maria Lugones's essay “Playfulness,‘World’-Travelling, (...) and Loving Perception” reinforces the claim that his moral theory holds as yet unrecognized promise for feminist moral philosophy. (shrink)

Recent proposals for computer-assisted argumentation have drawn on dialectical models of argumentation. When used to assist public policy planning, such systems also raise questions of political legitimacy. Drawing on deliberative democratic theory, we elaborate normative criteria for deliberative legitimacy and illustrate their use for assessing two argumentation systems. Full assessment of such systems requires experiments in which system designers draw on expertise from the social sciences and enter into the policy deliberation itself at the level of participants.

The ‘Other’ can be near to us, or far from us. We are in-relation with both. Given that, we explore whether, from a moral philosophical perspective, the ‘near-other’ is in tension with the ‘far-other’. We argue that we find our relationship with the near-other through a transcendent metaphysical empathy derived from the noumenon, which is manifest in the phenomenon as compassion and justice. We then argue that perceived differences in the phenomenon mean that we do not reliably transfer this empathy (...) for the near-other, to the far-other. Further, empathic and constructive dialogue is made more difficult because of our proclivity to actively engage in ‘othering’ those not-like-us. Properly, moral decision-making is positioned in a space cognizant of the other. Near-otherness makes consensus in the decision-making process easier, while far-otherness makes consensus more difficult. In our post-modern, multicultural and multifaith era, we need to be alert to the other’s perspective, to find a way to have a meaningful dialogue and thus achieve consensus in our moral decision-making. (shrink)

This article seeks to revisit the distinction between the words ethics and morals. First, we understand the word ethics to be focused on the way we seek to live our own life, and hence to connote a relativistic and essentially subjective perspective, whereas we understand the word morals to be focused on the way we should live our lives together, especially through sensitivity to viewpoints other than our own. Second, we perceive a usefulness in such a differentiation when the ethical (...) values of those in a dilemmatic situation are conflicted in order to prioritize moral decision making in contemporary society. We argue that in our current era, characterized by a multiplicity of faiths and by pronounced value pluralism, a philosophical basis for moral decision making needs to be clearly attuned with intersubjectivity and interconnectivity among people. It should be able to determine principles of conduct toward others, no matter how one’s own ethical values, conceptions of the good, or life choices might differ from those of others. To do this, we relocate ethical decision making away from an essentially monological reflection on our own values and purposes into a social space wherein we have an inclusive, noncoercive, and reflective dialogue. (shrink)

This paper advocates inclusion of a wider set of ethical theories into the accounting canon. We find that the mainstream accounting curriculum does not adequately engage with non-Western ethical theories or contemporary Western ethical thought, as evidenced by the ethics content of core accounting texts and the International Federation of Accountants’ ethics publications. We suggest adopting a ‘thematic’ approach to teaching ethics as an integrated part of accounting curricula. This approach addresses two competing principles implicit in International Education Standard 4: (...) (i) that all accountants need to be educated to meet global ethical standards, and (ii) that teaching ethics should accommodate ethical traditions and practices that could vary between nations and cultures. The thematic approach we propose requires less additional space within existing accounting curricula and less additional preparation by accounting educators than the alternative approach of teaching substantive ethical theories from a sufficiently diverse range of cultures and traditions. The paper also provides exemplars of this thematic approach to teaching ethics in accounting. (shrink)

In discussions of practical reason we often encounter the view that a fact is a reason for an agent to act only if the fact is capable of moving the agent to act. This view figures centrally in many philosophical controversies, and while taken for granted by some, it is vigorously disputed by others. In this essay I show that if the disputed position is correctly interpreted, it is well armored against stock objections and implied by a premise that is (...) not only plausible, but generally accepted by the position's critics. (shrink)

I present a theory of alienation that accounts for the cognitive processes involved with moral thinking and political behavior in modern societies. On my account, alienation can be understood as a particular kind of atrophy of moral concepts and moral thinking that affect the ways individuals cognize and legitimate the social world and their place within it. Central to my argument is the thesis that modern forms of social integration—shaped by highly institutionalized, rationalized and hierarchical forms of social life—serve to (...) constrain the moral- cognitive powers of subjects leading to a condition of alienation as moral atrophy. This state results from the withering of the subject's internal powers of moral reflection and an overriding predisposition to rely on external value schemas to make sense of moral and political problems. I then present an analysis of alienated moral consciousness and its implications for modern social theory. (shrink)

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the concept of critique in Habermasian thought. Given that the concept of critique is a central theoretical category in the work of the Frankfurt School, it comes as a surprise that little in the way of a systematic account which sheds light on the multifaceted meanings of the concept of critique in Habermas's oeuvre can be found in the literature. This paper aims to fill this gap by exploring the various meanings (...) that Habermas attributes to the concept of critique in 10 key thematic areas of his writings: (1) the public sphere, (2) knowledge, (3) language, (4) morality, (5) ethics, (6) evolution, (7) legitimation, (8) democracy, (9) religion, and (10) modernity. On the basis of a detailed analysis of Habermas's multifaceted concerns with the nature and function of critique, the study seeks to demonstrate that the concept of critique can be considered not only as a constitutive element but also as a normative cornerstone of Habermasian thought. The paper draws to a close by reflecting on some of the limitations of Habermas's conception of critique, arguing that in order to be truly critical in the Habermasian sense we need to turn the subject of critique into an object of critique. (shrink)

Critics of Jürgen Habermas's theory of communicative action argue that he has failed to recognize the extent to which moral argumentation is grounded in particular historical contexts, cultural traditions, collective identities, or social lifeworlds. Although he has engaged in a series of strategies aimed at acknowledging the role of particularistic considerations without abandoning his primary commitment to ethical universalism, Habermas has not succeeded in meeting all of the objections of his critics. This paper treats the contradiction between formal and substantive (...) rationality, which lies at the heart of the debate, as an empirical phenomenon within the social world. It argues that the antinomy of formal and substantive rationality plays a central role in historical processes of social change. Through critical argumentation, social actors deliberate on contradictions among strategic, moral, and ethical standards of validity, and they struggle to resolve these contradictions through collective action and the reform of laws, policies, and institutions. Examples are drawn from US political history to substantiate the argument, and some questions are raised for further research. (shrink)

This article introduces a distinction in the paradigm of multiple modernities between a comparative-civilizational and a post-secular perspective. It argues that the former perspective helps us to understand modernization processes in large cultural-civilizational units, whereas the latter viewpoint focuses on actors and cultural domains within civilizational units and on inter-civilizational crossovers. The two perspectives are complementary. What we gain from this distinction is greater precision in the use of multiple modernities to explain the place of religion in modern societies. The (...) example of Russian Orthodoxy is used to clarify the difference between these two perspectives: whereas from a comparative-civilizational viewpoint, Russian Orthodoxy may appear as Europe’s ‘other’; from a post-secular viewpoint, Orthodox religion is part of Europe’s religious pluralist landscape and partakes in an ongoing process of defining the meaning of European political and cultural integration. (shrink)

The paper develops ethical guidelines for the development and usage of persuasive technologies (PT) that can be derived from applying discourse ethics to this type of technologies. The application of discourse ethics is of particular interest for PT, since ‘persuasion’ refers to an act of communication that might be interpreted as holding the middle between ‘manipulation’ and ‘convincing’. One can distinguish two elements of discourse ethics that prove fruitful when applied to PT: the analysis of the inherent normativity of acts (...) of communication (‘speech acts’) and the Habermasian distinction between ‘communicative’ and ‘strategic rationality’ and their broader societal interpretation. This essay investigates what consequences can be drawn if one applies these two elements of discourse ethics to PT. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Habermas' proceduralist model of law can be put to feminist ends in at least two significant ways. First, in presenting an alternative to the liberal and welfare models of laws, the proceduralist model offers feminism a way out of the equality/difference dilemma. Both these attempts to secure women's equality by emphasising women's sameness to men or their difference from men have placed the onus on women to either find a way of integrating themselves into (...) existing institutions or to confront the so-called question of women's difference. The proceduralist model renders this dilemma irrelevant. Instead, it proceeds from the fact of sexual difference; a fact that produces competing and conflicting needs and interests that require interpretation by both men and women. This, I argue, marks a change in the very way we conceptualise the so-called problem of women's difference, insofar as the question is no longer framed in these terms. Second, I argue that this deliberative process over the interpretation of conflicting interests affects a fundamental shift in the nature of legal institutions themselves, insofar as law is no longer a vehicle for promoting male interests. (shrink)

Many proponents of deliberative democracy expect reasonable citizens to engage in rational argumentation. However, this expectation runs up against findings by behavioral economists and social psychologists revealing the extent to which normal cognitive functions are influenced by bounded rationality. Individuals regularly utilize an array of biases in the process of making decisions, which inhibits our argumentative capacities by adversely affecting our ability and willingness to be self-critical and to give due consideration to others’ interests. Although these biases cannot be overcome, (...) I draw on scientifically corroborated insights offered by Adam Smith to show that they can be kept in check if certain affective and cognitive capacities are cultivated. Smith provides a compelling account of how to foster sympathetic, impartial, and projective role-taking in the process of interacting with others, which can greatly enhance our capacity and willingness to critically assess our own interests and fairly consider those of others. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the moment where speech becomes violent because it wants to name at any price - something that can be felt as a desire in speech, a tension of creation and destruction. I discuss Habermas' theory of communicative action and the propositional conception of truth that underpins it. That conception of truth can be contrasted to the theory of truth as event, as it has been developed by Alain Badiou. A similarity between Badiou's theory of truth (...) and the latent utopianism of Adorno's negative dialectics shows that, for contemporary philosophy, the first phase of Frankfurt School theorising remains important. A philosophy that is able to 'motivate and guide the will' (Habermas) needs to include a non-propositional conception of truth; only with a non-propositional conception of truth can we articulate what is involved in communicative violence and come to understand what the place of what cannot be said is, in thought as well as in private, social and political life. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre has developed a theory of the rationality of traditions that is designed to show how we can maintain both the tradition-bound nature of rationality, on the one hand, and non-relativism, on the other. However, his theory has been widely criticized. A number of recent commentators have argued that the theory is either inconsistent with his own conception of rationality or else is dependent on the standards of his particular tradition and therefore fails to defuse the threat of relativism. (...) In the present essay, I argue that this objection is mistaken. (shrink)

This text reconstructs the Kohlberg/Gilligan controversy between a male ethics of justice and a female ethics of care. Using Karl-Otto Apel's transcendental pragmatics, the author argues for a mediation between both models in terms of a reciprocal co-responsibility. Against this backdrop, she defends the circular procedure of an exclusively argumentative-reflexive justification of a normative ethics. From this it follows for feminist ethics that it cannot do without either of the two types of ethics. The goal is to assure the evaluative (...) variety of different types of an ethics of the good without endangering the normative boundaries of a deontological discourse ethics. (shrink)

The recent exchange between Robert Brandom and Jürgen Habermas provides an opportunity to compare and contrast some aspects of their systems. Both present broadly inferential accounts of meaning, according to which the content of an expression is determined by its role in an inferential network. Several problems confront such theories of meaning - one of which threatens the possibility of communication because content is relative to an individual's set of beliefs. Brandom acknowledges this problem and provides a solution to it. (...) The point of this paper is to argue that it arises for Habermas's theory as well. I then present several solutions Habermas could adopt and evaluate their feasibility. The result is that Habermas must alter his theory of communicative action by contextualizing the standards for successful communication. (shrink)

Dialogic or dialogical education is an umbrella term that encompasses a myriad of different and at times conflicting approaches. As there is no agreed-upon definition of ‘dialogue’ (not that there is or should be one unified definition), and even fewer clear and systematic guidelines for application, researchers and practitioners in the DE field are faced with countless questions and dilemmas. My aim in this paper is therefore to offer some ideas for a general outline of how to employ systematic thinking (...) on DE. This outline can serve as a basis for the development of a methodological tool that can enable researchers and practitioners to think about and apply dialogical practices with greater clarity, coherency and consistency. Following a normatively oriented (rather than instrumental) systematic line of reasoning, this paper will begin by discussing the basic values of three central dialogical approaches and then move on to discuss more practical parameters that surpass strictly pedagogical and didactic concerns. (shrink)

The aim of this article is twofold: first, to identify and address three central divisions in the field of authentic education that introduce ambiguity and at times inconsistencies within the field of authentic education. These divisions concern a) the relationship between autonomy and authenticity; b) the division between the two basic attitudes towards ‘care’ in the authenticity literature, and; c) the well-worn division between objective and subjective realms of knowledge and identity construction. Addressing these divisions through Charles Taylor's distinction between (...) active and passive aspects of authenticity, I believe, will lead to a better understanding of the main issues involved in conceptualising and applying authenticity-based education. Second, to present what I call The Postconventional Authentic Relation-to-Self as a basis for overcoming and reconciling the above divisions. I shall conclude by providing some examples of the way the perspective envisioned by PARTS can be applied to educational practices. (shrink)

Dialogical ethics are a procedural alternative to substantive ethics such as consequentialism, deontology, principlism, casuistry, virtue ethics and care ethics. Dialogical ethics are procedural in that they do not establish goods in advance, unlike substantive ethics, but rather determine goods through a procedure enacted by the actual parties involved (although some substantive notion of justice may still be required); and they are dialogical in that the procedure is that of dialogue, involving both empathic critical discussion and negotiation. A fundamental tenet (...) of dialogical ethics may be the use of appropriate rules of order regulating dialogue among the parties involved. Some of the central characteristics of such rules of order are that they are reciprocally regulated by dialogue, that they override other ethical considerations, and that they institute empathic critical discussion and negotiation within the ethical dialogue. Dialogical bioethics are the application of dialogical ethics to ethical problems in medicine. The approach of dialogical bioethics has proven fruitful for resolving bioethical problems such as that of medical futility, where approaches of substantive ethics have reached an impasse. There is room for further study of special challenges within dialogical bioethics, such as the incompetence of some involved parties, conflicts of interests of third parties, and the cost-effectiveness of this ethical approach. (shrink)

ABSTRACTCritical Discourse Studies positions itself as a critical, transformative practice that seeks to expose the ways in which discourse is able to constitute social, political, economic, gendered, racial, and sexual inequalities as normal and unremarkable. In this respect, CDS is an expressly political and therefore ethical project. Nevertheless, this article posits that, quite remarkably, the ethical frameworks that guide CDS have remained largely under-theorized and taken for granted. Accordingly, this paper seeks to contribute to this much-needed area of theoretical inquiry (...) by offering a brief discussion of how CDS has tended to define its own criticality and identifies three problems that emerge from how CDS practitioners have tended to formulate the praxis of critique: namely, the tendency to conceive of CDS as a demystificatory practice, the implicit logocentrism of modeling ethics upon the Habermasian Ideal Speech Situation, and finally, the deontological nature of discourse ethics. Each of the three problems is discussed in relation to a brief multimodal critical discourse analysis of three online employer profile videos. As such, the study is offered to demonstrate not only the analytical strength of multimodal analysis but also the political-ethical relations beyond Discourse Ethics that are immanent in such analyses. (shrink)

This article argues that the Bakhtin Circle presents a more realistic theory of concrete dialogue than the theory of discourse elaborated by Habermas. The Bakhtin Circle places speech within the “concrete whole utterance” and by this phrase they mean that the study of everyday language should be analyzed through the mediations of historical social systems such as capitalism. These mediations are also characterized by a determinate set of contradictions—the capital-labor contradiction in capitalism, for example—that are reproduced in unique ways in (...) more concrete forms of life (the state, education, religion, culture, and so on). Utterances always dialectically refract these processes and as such are internal concrete moments, or concrete social forms, of them. Moreover, new and unrepeatable dialogic events arise in these concrete social forms in order to overcome and understand the constant dialectical flux of social life. But this theory of dialogue is different from that expounded by Habermas, who tends to explore speech acts by reproducing a dualism between repeatable and universal “abstract” discursive processes (commonly known as the ideal speech situation) and empirical uses of discourse. These critical points against Habermas are developed by focusing on six main areas: sentences and utterances; the lifeworld and background language; active versus passive understandings of language; validity claims; obligation and relevance in language; and dialectical universalism. (shrink)

This chapter argues that the distinction between ambitious and modest transcendental arguments, developed and deployed by various authors in the wake of Stroud’s influential critique of transcendental reasoning, may be pointless when applied to transcendental arguments from performative inconsistency that have moral statements as their conclusions. If moral truth is assertorically constrained, then any modest moral transcendental argument from performative inconsistency can be converted into an ambitious moral transcendental argument. The chapter provides an account of performative inconsistency and suggests an (...) alternative to the widespread reading of transcendental conditionals in terms of an ‘if-then’-sentences whose antecedents express a proposition to the effect that some x is possible and whose consequents express a statement to the effect that some y is actual. (shrink)

This article examines two approaches to the analysis and critical assessment of scientific argumentation. The first approach employs the discourse theory that Jurgen Habermas has developed on the basis of his theory of communicative action and applied to the areas of politics and law. Using his analysis of law and democracy in his Between Facts and Norms as a kind of template, I sketch the main steps in a Habermasian discourse theory of science. Difficulties in his approach motivate my proposal (...) of an alternative approach that starts not with a theory of communicative action but with some broad categories drawn from argumentation theory. Using these categories, one can survey the various conceptions of scientific argumentation that have already emerged in the multi-disciplinary field of science studies. The more flexible, open-ended theoretic categories put one in a better position to'develop cooperative interdisciplinary studies that can inform the critical assessment of scientific argumentation. (shrink)

Attempts to employ discourse ethics for assessing communication and information technologies have tended to focus on managerial and policy-oriented contexts. These initiatives presuppose institutional resources for organizing sophisticated consultation processes that elicit stakeholder input. Drawing on Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethics, this paper supplements those initiatives by developing a more widely usable framework for moral inquiry and reflection on problematic cyberpractices. Given the highly idealized character of discourse ethics, a usable framework must answer two questions: How should those who lack organizational (...) power conduct their moral inquiry under non-ideal conditions of discourse? How ought they to understand the moral force of the judgments they reach under such conditions? In response, I develop the heuristic implications of Habermas’s principle of universalization. To render that principle usable for non-ideal discourse, I propose a modification that yields a scalar measure of “dialogically robust” judgments that are responsive to the actual state of discussion. To illustrate the use of these principles, I sketch two case studies, which examine the moral acceptability of violent video gaming and government cyber-surveillance. (shrink)

The idea that business firms qualify as group moral agents offers an attractive basis for understanding corporate moral responsibility. However, that idea gives rise to the “corporate autonomy problem” (CAP): if firms are moral agents, then it seems we must accept the implausible conclusion that firms have basic moral rights, such as the rights to life and liberty. The question, then, is how one might retain the fruitful idea of firms as moral agents, yet avoid CAP. A common approach to (...) avoiding CAP appeals to specific features of human embodiment, such as vulnerability to pain, as the basis for attributing moral rights to human persons but not to firms. But that response has less purchase in a Kantian framework, which does not ground moral status in such particularities of human embodiment, but rather in the rational nature that humans share with other rational beings. To avoid CAP while retaining a (broadly) Kantian framework, one does better to rely on features of firms as cooperative, compositionally derivative moral agents, created for the pursuit of specific ends. As derivative agents, firms do not qualify as Kantian ends in themselves, and thus are not appropriate bearers of basic moral rights. To further clarify the level of consideration we owe to firms, I draw on Darwall’s distinction between recognition respect and moral esteem, arguing that we should not respect firms as unconditional ends in themselves, but rather esteem morally autonomous firms as collective achievements of their human members. (shrink)

The issue of corporate responsibility has long been discussed in relationship to universities, but generally only in an ad hoc fashion. While the role of universities in teaching business ethics is one theme that has received significant and rather constant attention, other issues tend to be raised only sporadically. Moreover, when issues of corporate responsibility are raised, it is often done on the presumption of some understanding of a liberal arts mandate of the university, a position that has come under (...) much attack in recent years. The purpose of this article is to investigate more systematically the nature of the obligations that the university has to promote more responsible corporate behaviour. It does so on the basis of a reinterpretation of the liberal arts tradition from a critical theory perspective. This entails: (1) an initial conceptualization of the roles and functions of the university; (2) an examination of these functions at two formative periods of the liberal arts tradition, the medieval university and the rise of the modern university in Germany in the early 19th century; (3) an investigation of ruptures in the understanding and practices of the liberal arts tradition, resulting in large part from the rise of the bureaucratic state and the industrial capitalist economy; (4) a reinterpretation of the liberal arts tradition from a critical theory perspective; and (5) a systematic elaboration of the obligations of the university vis-à-vis corporations based upon the university's key functions of teaching, research, formation and professional development. (shrink)

In the mid-1960s and 1970s the field of business ethics saw a basic shift in emphasis from personal responsibility to corporate responsibility. While the notion of corporate responsibility has come to be a dominant concept in the field of business ethics since that time, it is a contested concept that admits of a range of conceptions. A concern underlying this paper is that many of these conceptions are less adequate than they might be. This paper has two overlapping goals. First, (...) it seeks to elaborate a more adequate conception of corporate responsibility by drawing upon critical theory to distinguish three different normative realms (viz., legitimacy, morality and ethics). Second, the paper attempts to indicate from a critical theory perspective the nature of corporate responsibilities in each of these realms. The paper begins with a short introduction to German critical theory and an explanation of the different normative realms. The following three sections elaborate in turn the responsibilities of corporations in each on the three normative realms. Finally, the conclusion attempts to indicate some of the advantages of a critical theory conception of corporate responsibility. (shrink)

Abstract:This article elaborates a normative Stakeholder Management Theory (SHMT) from a critical theory perspective. The paper argues that the normative theory elaborated by critical theorists such as Habermas exhibits important advantages over its rivals and that these advantages provide the basis for a theoretically more adequate version of SHMT. In the first section of the paper an account is given of normative theory from a critical theory perspective and its advantages over rival traditions. A key characteristic of the critical theory (...) approach is expressed as a distinction between three different normative realms, viz., legitimacy, morality, and ethics. In the second section, the outlines of a theory of stakeholder management are provided. First, three basic tasks of a theoretically adequate treatment of the normative analysis of stakeholder management are identified. This is followed by a discussion of how a critical theory approach to SHMT is able to fulfill these three tasks. (shrink)

The increased recognition and reported prevalence of autism spectrum disorders combined with the associated societal and clinical impact call for a broad grassroots community-based dialogue on treatment related ethical and social issues. In these Stony Brook Guidelines, which were developed during a full year of community dialogue with affected individuals, families, and professionals in the field, we identify and discuss topics of paramount concern to the ASD constituency: treatment goals and happiness, distributive justice, managing the desperate hopes for a cure, (...) sibling responsibilities, intimacy and sex, diagnostic ethics, and research ethics. The members of the dialogue core committee included doctors, ethicists, administrators, social workers, ministers, disability experts, and many family members of individuals with autism who were especially engaged in community activities on behalf of their constituency, including siblings, parents, and grandparents. Our guidelines are not based on “top-down” imposition of professional expertise, but rather on a “bottom-up” grass roots attention to the voices of affected individuals and families speaking from experience. These guidelines can inform clinical practice, but they also are meaningful for the wider social conversation emerging over the treatment of individuals with ASD. (shrink)

According to an often repeated definition, economics is the science of individual choices and their consequences. The emphasis on choice is often used – implicitly or explicitly – to mark a contrast between markets and the state: While the price mechanism in well-functioning markets preserves freedom of choice and still efficiently coordinates individual actions, the state has to rely to some degree on coercion to coordinate individual actions. Since coercion should not be used arbitrarily, coordination by the state needs to (...) be legitimized by the consent of its citizens. The emphasis in economic theory on freedom of choice in the market sphere suggests that legitimization in the market sphere is “automatic” and that markets can thus avoid the typical legitimization problem of the state. In this paper, I shall question the alleged dichotomy between legitimization in the market and in the state. I shall argue that it is the result of a conflation of choice and consent in economics and show how an independent concept of consent makes the need for legitimization of market transactions visible. Footnotes1 For helpful comments and suggestions I am most grateful to Marc Fleurbaey, Alain Marciano, Herlinde Pauer-Studer, Thomas Pogge, Hans Bernhard Schmid, to seminar or conference participants in Aix-Marseille, Tutzing, Paris, and Amsterdam, and to two anonymous referees. (shrink)

Since contemporary societies are deeply multicultural and plural, the partisan ideological politics obviously animate conflict of opinions and hard bargains that brings coercion into play. Thus political power is exercised to establish legitimacy and stability in the polity. The use of public reason as a tool of public inquiry is considered as most effective in deciding upon the outcomes of laws and policies. The idea of public reason is one of the contemporary innovations of liberal thinking in democracy and has (...) gained a wider currency among the political theorists after John Rawls adoption of it into his political thinking. On this background, my concern is to see the feasibility of public reason alone into democratic outcomes through coercive use of power provided that this is widely accepted among the epistemic peers in a democracy. I propose that the exclusiveness of public reason is inadequate to arbitrate on fundamental questions of politics in situations where disagreement becomes acute because of the adversary positions held by citizens. And hence love and truth add to the rigorousness of reason as strong ideals to combat an insurgency of deadly disagreements. It is an attempt to engage love and truth to public reason to make public deliberations more productive in the arena of law making and policy outputs. The strengthening of this democratic process is pioneering effort of M. K. Gandhi. (shrink)

Modern society is challenged by a loss of efficiency in national governance systems values, and lifestyles. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) discourse builds upon a conception of organizational legitimacy that does not appropriately reflect these changes. The problems arise from the a-political role of the corporation in the concepts of cognitive and pragmatic legitimacy, which are based on compliance to national law and on relatively homogeneous and stable societal expectations on the one hand and widely accepted rhetoric assuming that all members (...) of society benefit from capitalist production on the other. We therefore propose a fundamental shift to moral legitimacy, from an output and power oriented approach to an input related and discursive concept of legitimacy. This shift creates a new basis of legitimacy and involves organizations in processes of active justification vis-à-vis society rather than simply responding to the demands of powerful groups. We consider this a step towards the politicization of the corporation and attempt to re-embed the debate on corporate legitimacy into its broader context of political theory, while reflecting the recent turn from a liberal to a deliberative concept of democracy. (shrink)

Minorities comprise a tiny fraction of media owners, and continued media consolidation exacerbates existing disparities. This article examines this problem by integrating the work of Jurgen Habermas and Jacques Ellul. These theorists identify a common concern—described alternately as technicization and colonization—involving homogenization of content, loss of localism, and decreased ownership diversity. In different ways, each acknowledges the possibility that social action can make a difference. Habermas' discourse ethics provides a normative foundation for arguing on behalf of ownership diversity and policy (...) reform. Though Ellul is skeptical of institutional reform, he offers a complementary vision of concrete action on the part of local, independent community groups. While their solutions are different, we argue that both are necessary. Media reform efforts must incorporate both Habermasian and Ellulian approaches by supplementing federal regulatory reform with independent grassroots activism. A combination of such efforts is essential to the movement's success. (shrink)

I will discuss two themes that can be found in Mark Sagoff's most recent book, Price, Principle, and the Environment. Built from pieces fashioned in his entertaining and incisive critical es...

I argue that several recent criticisms Lopez Frias has made against my conventionalist version of broad internalism fail to hit their mark. I further argue that the author's use of Habermas's account of discourse ethics to make his criticisms also misfires because Habermas expressly warned against using his account to resolve normative conflicts that arise from the often conflicting ways different communities order their ethical lives, to include their athletic lives. My main aim in responding to Lopez Frias was to (...) bring critical attention to the normative difficulties that result when we cannot agree on how sport should be done because we cannot agree on what is/are the purpose of sport. (shrink)