Charles Sanders Peirce was one of the United States’ most original and profound thinkers, and a prolific writer. Peirce’s game theory-based approaches to the semantics and pragmatics of signs and language, to the theory of communication, and to the evolutionary emergence of signs, provide a toolkit for contemporary scholars and philosophers. Drawing on unpublished manuscripts, the book offers a rich, fresh picture of the achievements of a remarkable man.

CDA has become widespread not only in Europe but also in the international arena. The concept and practice of the ‘critical’ may become problematic when they cross cultural, social and political boundaries. This paper focuses on the meanings of the English word critical and on the Chinese words used to translate it. We assume that the meaning of each set of words is linked to the historical discourse practices in which it emerged. We briefly examine the cultural and socio-political histories (...) of the two sets with a view to stimulating questions concerning the question: Is the concept and practice of critique culturally relative or a human universal? We suggest some ways in which this fundamental question, not hitherto posed in CDA, may be approached in today's global scientific environment. (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 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)

In the face of pluralism, moral constructivists attempt to salvage cognitivism by separating moral and ethical issues. Divergence over ethical issues, which concern the good life, would not threaten moral cognitivism, which is based on identifying generalizable interests as worthy of defending, using reason. Yet this approach falters given the inability of the constructivist to provide us a sure path by which to discern generalizable interests in difficult cases. Still, even if this approach to constructivism fails, cognitivist aspirations may not (...) be defeated if we can continue discursively in a project of identifying and appreciating the interests of others. Grasping the interests of others may require a transformation of moral sensibility such that agents recognize values they have not acknowledged before. This view calls for external moral discourse—that is, moral discourse that makes no appeal to an agent's present interests or desires but rather engages in description of the moral situation in hopes of bringing about a change in moral sensibility. (shrink)

Normative questions concerning political authority and political obligation are widely seen as central questions of political philosophy. Current global transformations require an innovative response from normative political thinking about these two topics. In light of a concrete example of the supranational forms of authority and obligation that have been and are emerging beyond the national state and beyond the traditional domains of international law, I lay out what has become the standard approach to authority and obligation and indicate why this (...) approach is inadequate in contemporary circumstances. I sketch an alternative approach and suggest how the most promising exemplar of this kind, Habermas’ discourse theory of law and politics, can better deal with the example. Having thus made plausible the advantages of the discourse theory of the alternative approach, I end with an ‘internal’ critique of Habermas’ own recent writings on the global political order. (shrink)

As a result of a new understanding of the relation between theory and practice, the "New Frankfurt School," with Jürgen Habermas as its major representative, highly values the philosophical tradition of American pragmatism, in contrast to the first generation Critical Theorists represented by Max Horkheimer. In Habermas, the idea of"critique" is, both substantially and methodologically, closely connected with the idea of "praxis" in the following senses: communicative action, rational argumentation, public discussion and political culture. "Critique" is thus found to be (...) immanent in "praxis"; or, a la Horkheimer, pragmatism turns out to be a "critical philosophical analysis" without "falling back upon objective reason and mythology.". (shrink)

The metaproblematic of this article is the cognitive structure of morality. In the context of an investigation into Habermas’s theory of validity which respects his strong cognitivism and emphasis...

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)

I draw on Security Council Resolution 1674 to demonstrate that the political assumptions Jacques Derrida holds in his politically-oriented texts are inconsistent with the assumptions of his linguistic texts, and that Jürgen Habermas's political theory is consistent with the political implications of his approach to language. Habermasian pragmatism offers a critical theory of society and discourse of modernity that touches on the same themes of politics and meaning as Derrida and other deconstructionists, but is more coherent, consistent, and explanatorily persuasive.

In this paper, I am concerned with the practical aspect of joint attention. In particular, I ask what enables us to engage in joint activities, and go on to suggest that on a representational account of joint attention, this question cannot be satisfactorily answered. I explore John Campbell's "relational" approach and suggest that if one couples it with Peter Hobson's notion of "feeling perception", one may be in a position to account for the action-enabling aspect of joint engagements. This approach (...) can usefully be thought of as describing a practical kind of collective knowledge. (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)

This article describes some of the main arguments for the existence of other minds, and intersubjectivity more generally, that depend upon a transcendental justification. This means that our focus will be largely on ‘continental’ philosophy, not only because of the abiding interest in this tradition in thematising intersubjectivity, but also because transcendental reasoning is close to ubiquitous in continental philosophy. Neither point holds for analytic philosophy. As such, this essay will introduce some of the important contributions of Edmund Husserl, Martin (...) Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Karl-Otto Apel, all of whom use transcendental reasoning as a key part of their analyses of intersubjectivity, and we also consider the work of Peter Strawson who does likewise in the analytic tradition. (shrink)

Over four decades, Habermas has put to paper many critical remarks on Husserl’s work as occasion has demanded. These scattered critical engagements nonetheless do add up to a coherent (if contestable) position regarding the project of transcendental phenomenology. This essay provides a comprehensive reconstruction of the arguments Habermas makes and offers a critical assessment of them. With an eye in particular to the theme of intersubjectivity (a theme of fundamental interest to both thinkers), it is argued that Habermas’s arguments do (...) indeed show up deficiencies in Husserlian phenomenology and yet that they do not succeed in proving that we must abandon the methods and tasks of phenomenological research. On the contrary, it is argued that phenomenological methods may well be needed in order to investigate certain philosophical questions that Habermas’s theory of communication has thus far only partially addressed. (shrink)

This article discusses Habermas’s project of reformulating Critical Theory through a pragmatic philosophy of communication, while defending post-metaphysical reason and commitment to grounded critique. Habermas’s use of pragmatics is contrasted with Rorty, who argues for a non-foundational pragmatism that eschews the idea of science as the only site of reason and social progress. The argument moves through three stages. First, it outlines Habermas’s project of recovering critical activity with particular attention to his debt to pragmatic philosophy and the departures from (...) earlier Critical Theory that this entailed. Second, it examines his theory of communicative action and identifies some key areas of contestation with sceptical approaches. Finally, it identifies some of the problems and limitations in Habermas’s pragmatic turn, suggesting that his quasi-transcendental critique is developed at the expense of a pragmatic commitment to grounding in embodied agency-in-the-world. It concludes that the spirit of pragmatism, rather than its detail, might help Critical Theory focus on political analysis and resistances to domination. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to investigate possibilities for conceptions of critical thinking beyond the established educational framework that emphasizes skills. Distancing ourselves from the older rationalist framework, we explain that what we think wrong with the skills perspective is, amongst other things, its absolutization of performativity and outcomes. In reviewing the relevant discourse, we accept that it is possible for the skills paradigm to be change‐friendly and context‐sensitive but we argue that it is oblivious to other, non‐purposive kinds (...) of rationality that are indispensable to critical thought. Our suggestion is that there is an aporetic element in critical thought that is missing from contemporary educational positions. We consider some other efforts to redeem the surplus of criticality that performativity fails to take into account and conclude that the aporetic element that we highlight accommodates better than other theories do the significance of thematizing the taken‐for‐granted instead of focusing on problem solving. (shrink)

The introduction claims that there might exist an evolutionary bridge from possible genres in nature to human cultural genres. A sub-hypothesis is that basic life-conditions, partly common for animals and humans, in the long run can generate so-called life-genres. To investigate such hypotheses a framework of interrelated key communicational concepts is outlined in the second, main part. Four levels are suggested. Signs are seen as elements in utterances. Further, sufficiently similar utterances can be perceived as kinds of utterances or genres. (...) Genres are kinds of communication in a species' life-world. Utterance and genre are the framework’s key concepts. Both are seen as products and processes and as constituted by five reciprocal aspects: form, content, act, time, and space, the necessary elements to initiate and interpret communication. A model illustrates this integrative principle. Part three dwells with the idea of life-genres, and part four exemplifies and problematises how a chimpanzee’s ‘begging’ for meat, a fish’s nest-making, and kinds of birdsongs, could be seen as possible life-genres. The last, short part gives a brief summary, highlights challenges, and reflects over the framework’s relevance for biosemiotics. (shrink)

In this contribution, I refer to a discussion between Jürgen Habermas and Robert Brandom on the latter’s normative pragmatics as advanced in Making it Explicit. Parting with Habermas, I intend to show that though both normative pragmatics and formal pragmatics postulate similar discursive ideals, the former, as compared with the latter, is not a particularly well-calibrated critical tool. I argue that whereas Brandom focuses on making conceptual norms explicit, and takes mutual recognition among participants to a linguistic practice for granted, (...) Habermas proposes a universal frame of reference, which delineates what should be taken as a paradigm case of perception and action, and thus a normative standard according to which all kinds of human endeavors can be judged. Thus construed, the formal frame of reference points to possible perceptual distortions along any of the three dimensions: the subjective, social, and objective worlds. (shrink)

This paper presents a critical analysis of the four dimensions of critical literacy, a framework widely known among the scholars and practitioners in the field of critical literacy....

This article explores the connection between critical reading and Jurgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action. It proposes that Habermas’s criteria used for evaluating validity claims in communicative action can be applied in reading texts critically. Analyses of different types of texts are presented to show how critical reading is done in a Habermasian way. This article ends with a discussion of the application of Habermas’s theory in addressing educational issues.

In this paper I analyze the tension between realism and antirealism at the basis of Kantian constructivism. This tension generates a conflictive account of the source of the validity of social norms. On the one hand, the claim to moral objectivity characteristic of Kantian moral theories makes the validity of norms depend on realist assumptions concerning the existence of shared fundamental interests among all rational human beings. I illustrate this claim through a comparison of the approaches of Rawls, Habermas and (...) Scanlon. On the other hand, however, objections to moral realism motivate many Kantian constructivists to endorse the antirealist claim that reasonable agreement is the source of the validity of social norms. After analyzing the difficulties in the latter strategy, I try to show how a balance between the realist and antirealist elements of Kantian constructivism can be reached by drawing a sharper distinction between the justice and the legitimacy of social norms. (shrink)

This article criticizes the attempts by Bas van Fraassen and Michael Friedman to address the challenge to rationality posed by the Kuhnian analysis of scientific revolutions. In the paper, I argue that van Fraassen's solution, which invokes a Sartrean theory of emotions to account for radical change, does not amount to justifying rationally the advancement of science but, rather, despite his protestations to the contrary, is an explanation of how change is effected. Friedman's approach, which appeals to philosophical developments at (...) a meta-theoretical level, does not really address the problem of rationality as posed by Kuhn's work. Instead of showing how, despite revolutions, scientific development is, indeed, rational, he gives a transcendental account of rational scientific progress. (shrink)

Despite clear parallels between Jürgen Habermas’s discourse ethics and recent scholarship in feminist ethics, feminists are often suspicious of discourse ethics and have kept themselves mostly separate from the field. By developing a sustained application of Habermas’s discourse ethics to friendship, Keller demonstrates that feminist misgivings of discourse ethics are largely misplaced and that Habermas’s theory can be used to develop a compelling moral phenomenology of interpersonal relations.

This paper seeks to apply some of the tools of analytic philosophy to a text written by a 'continental' philosopher, in order to evaluate the quality of its arguments. In 'On Forgiveness', Jacques Derrida seems to be making two different claims about forgiveness. First, he claims that an act of forgiveness is only truly meaningful as forgiveness when one is forgiving the unforgivable. Second, he is also recommending that we change our understanding of the concept of forgiveness for ethical reasons. (...) I examine three lines of argument used in the essay to support the first claim. I find each of these lines of argument problematic. Since these arguments are unconvincing, I argue that this leaves only the second claim for Derrida to defend. (shrink)

Poststructuralist discourse theory is enjoying increasing recognition for its potential to contribute to the study of institutional change and continuity. Yet the most fruitful approach to realizing this potential has hitherto not been found. The main proposition so far has been to operationalize DT’s insights and concepts by adopting them into the framework of discursive institutionalism. However, an ongoing debate about the compatibility of the ontologies underlying DT and DI has cast doubts over whether such a combination is theoretically feasible. (...) The critical literature review in the first part of this article indeed finds insurmountable ontological differences between the discourse-theoretical and the discursive-institutionalist traditions, as their clashing notions of what is understood as a ‘discourse’ result in diverging views on power, agency, and subjectivity. Instead of merging DT into DI, I suggest to empower the former as a self-sufficient paradigm for institutional analysis. To achieve this, the second part of this article re-articulates the ‘logics framework’ proposed by Jason Glynos and David Howarth into a middle-range theory for the study of institutionalization and politicization in a discourse-theoretical fashion. The purpose of this re-articulation is to dispel various arguments against the viability of an autonomous poststructuralist approach to institutions. (shrink)

It is widely believed that democracies require knowledgeable citizens to function well. But the most politically knowledgeable individuals also tend to be the most partisan, and the strength of partisan identity tends to corrupt political thinking. This creates a conundrum. On the one hand, an informed citizenry is allegedly necessary for a democracy to flourish. On the other hand, the most knowledgeable and passionate voters are also the most likely to think in corrupted, biased ways. What to do? This paper (...) examines this tension and draws out several lessons. First, it is not obvious that more knowledgeable voters will make better political decisions. Second, attempts to remedy voter ignorance are problematic because partisans tend to become more polarized when they acquire more information. Third, solutions to citizen incompetence must focus on the intellectual virtue of objectivity. Fourth, some forms of epistocracy are troubling, in part, because they would increase the political power of the most dogmatic and biased individuals. Fifth, a highly restrictive form of epistocracy may escape the problem of political dogmatism, but epistocrats may face a steeper tradeoff between inclusivity and epistemic virtue than many would like. (shrink)

In this paper we seek to uncover and analyse unitarist ideology within the field of HRM, with particular emphasis on the manner in which what we call ‘new unitarism’ is ideologically performative in HRM scholarship. Originally conceived of as a way of understanding employer ideology with regard to the employment relationship, unitarist frames of reference conceive a workplace that is characterised by shared interests and a single source of authority. This frame has continuously evolved and persistently formed thinking about HRM; (...) however, this influence has been largely covert and unexamined. Using an epistemic analysis informed by theories of knowledge, we examine new unitarism against three types of validity claims—descriptive, normative, and instrumental—in order to understand how it has been ideologically constitutive of HRM scholarship. We consider the implications of this analysis for HRM research and practice and contend that an alternative frame, namely ‘new pluralism’, has potential to offer a more valid account of the employment relationship, to provide a framework for assessing how power affects the pursuit of employee interests, and to allow space for taking up deeply ethical questions related to employment. (shrink)

The modern corporation offers significant potential to contribute to the human rights project, in part because it is free from the challenges posed by national sovereignty. That promise has begun to be realized in businesses practicing corporate due diligence with regard to the human rights of persons involved in or affected by those enterprises. Yet due diligence preserves the self-seeking orientation of the conventional corporation and seeks only to protect itself from committing human rights abuses. This approach, typified by the (...) UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, does not address background conditions for and root causes of vulnerability to human rights abuses. My alternative, the human rights corporation, takes an other-regarding orientation that advances human rights within the corporation and in its human, social, economic, and natural environments. It moves beyond the due diligence carrot-and-stick model to a model in which the corporation produces not only goods and services but also human rights consciousness and practice as well. (shrink)

We critically assess integrative social contracts theory (ISCT) and show that the concept particularly lacks of moral justification of substantive hypernorms. By drawing on Habermasian philosophy, in particular discourse ethics and its recent application in the theory of deliberative democracy , we further advance ISCT and show that social contracting in business ethics requires a well-justified procedural rather than a substantive focus for managing stakeholder relations. We also replace the monological concept of hypothetical thought experiments in ISCT by a concept (...) of practical discourse to better govern business activities on the macro-level of organizational actors such as firms, governments, and NGOs. (shrink)

The article lays down the broad strokes of an interpretive approach to social criticism. In developing this approach, the author stresses the importance of both a pluralistic notion of social justice and a rich ideal of personal growth. While objecting to one-dimensional conceptions of social justice centering on legal equality, the author develops the idea of there being multiple "spheres of justice", including the spheres of "care" and "merit". Each of these spheres, he argues, is subject to historical interpretation. He (...) furthers this view by arguing that the social basis for these different spheres is best understood against the canvas of an ideal of self-fulfillment and individuality. Based on the elaboration of these two sets of premises—a pluralistic conception of social justice and a collective ideal of personal self-fulfillment—the article outlines the basis for and challenges inherent to the practice of interpretive social criticism. (shrink)

This paper argues that Derrida’s aporetic conclusions regarding moral and political concepts, from hospitality to democracy, can only be understood and accepted if the notion of différance and similar infrastructures are taken into account. This is because it is the infrastructures that expose and commit moral and political practices to a double and conflictual (thus aporetic) future: the conditional future that projects horizonal limits and conditions upon the relation to others, and the unconditional future without horizons of anticipation. The argument (...) thus turns against two kinds of interpretation: The first accepts normative unconditionality in ethics but misses its support by the infrastructures. The second rejects unconditionality as a normative commitment precisely because the infrastructural support for unconditionality seems to rule out that it is normatively required. In conclusion, the article thus reconsiders the relation between a quasi-transcendental argument and its normative implications, suggesting that Derrida avoids the naturalistic fallacy. (shrink)

Joseph Heath's Communicative Action and Rational Choice may be read as a critical commentary upon Habermas's critical social theory, but it may also be read as merely using the latter as “scaffolding” for the presentation of Heath's own version of critical theory. In what follows, I will focus on the second option and thus largely ignore the exegetical question to what extent Heath provides a fair reading of Habermas. This does not mean, however, that I will not make comparative judgements. (...) On the contrary, my overall claim will be that Heath's new critical theory is more functionalist, and. partly as a result, less critical than Habermas's. Since lack of space does not permit me to argue this in accordance with the standards of detail that Heath's own book generally observes, my procedure may be justified by the attempt to provoke a clarificatory response from Heath. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against Jürgen Habermas’s theoretical dualism between ethics and morality. I do this by showing how his account of normativity is vitiated by an unnecessary superposition of a social-evolutionary and a theoretical-linguistic account of normativity, and that this brings about theoretical problems that in the end cannot be overcome. I also show that Rainer Forst’s attempt at salvaging Habermas’s distinction is equally doomed to failure, but that his attempt nevertheless invites new and more fruitful avenues for (...) normative theory that are worth exploring. The conclusion of this paper is that traditional notions of ethics and morality can be preserved provided we heavily redefine their meanings and release them from some of the theoretical work they have been expected to accomplish, but that to complete this transition we also need to supersede Forst’s pluralization of normative contexts toward a theory of normative practices that in the end makes the distinction between ethics and morality workable but useless. I begin by first locating the debate about ethics and morality within the context of recent normative theory, and proceed to examine the two main strategies through which Habermas has elaborated his idea of a sharp dualism between ethics and morality. I then introduce a theoretical distinction between what I call a horizontal and a vertical integration of ethics and morality and contend that whilst only the horizontal is viable, Habermas decidedly prefers the idea of a vertical integration. With this work done, I proceed to complete my critique of Habermas’s argument and show how, by recovering the pragmatist roots of his thought, an alternative solution based on a functionalist understanding of morality could be envisaged. I then conclude by examining Rainer Forst’s attempt at salvaging Habermas’s account, and show that the failure of Forst’s attempts opens the way for new and more fruitful approaches to normative theory which are more likely to recover the pragmatist roots of Habermas’s thought. (shrink)

Several authors, such as William J. Morgan, John S. Russell and R. Scott Kretchmar, have claimed that the limits between the diverse normative theories of sport need to be revisited. Most of these works are philosophically grounded in Anglo-American philosophical approaches. For instance, William J. Morgan’s proposal is mainly based on Richard Rorty’s philosophy. But he also discusses with some European philosophers like Jürgen Habermas. However, Habermas’ central ideas are rejected by Morgan. The purpose of this paper is to analyse (...) Morgan’s rejection of Habermas’ thought and show that a more appropriate normative of sport that explains better our current sporting world can be achieved by drawing on the German philosopher’s ideas. The plan of this paper is the following. It shall analyse the limits of the distinction between broad internalism and externalism by taking Morgan’s work as its starting point. To do so, firstly, the conventionalist way in which Morgan criticises the limits of interpretivism sha.. (shrink)

The ambiguous material identity of nanotechnology is a minor mystery of the history of contemporary science. This paper argues that nanotechnology functioned primarily in discourses of social, not physical or biological science, the problematic knowledge at stake concerning the economic value of state-supported basic science. The politics of taxonomy in the United States Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences in the 1990s reveals how scientists invoked the term as one of several competing and equally valid candidates for reframing (...) materials sciences in ways believed consonant with the political tenor of the time. The resulting loss of conceptual clarity in the sociology of science traces ultimately to the struggle to bridge the disjunction between the promissory economy of federal basic science and the industrial economy, manifested in attempts to reconcile the precepts of linearity and interdisciplinarity in changing socio-economic conditions over a half century. (shrink)

The papers that make up this special issue do not take idealized abstractions of context as their point of departure but rather start with the actual phenomena under study and later generalize. We agree that, more often than not, giving a formal model and providing a theory of a loaded notion – such as context – can lead to important insights. Thus, precise models of context and accompanying theories are useful. However, given the widely different fields, methodologies and worldviews within (...) which people study, an approach that starts with the root phenomena/problems and only attempts normalization and generalization post hoc might be a more productive way to proceed. (shrink)

My thesis situates itself within the field of the Philosophy of Worldviews. Specifically, it aims to address the normative question of what the task should be of such a philosophy when faced with the problem of conflicting beliefs between religious worldviews. To answer this question, I turn to the procedure of aporetical analysis, in short, aporetics. Firstly, aporetics offers a distinct method of consistency restoration within inconsistent sets on the basis of thesis rejection and thesis modification. Secondly, aporetics leads to (...) an understanding of the availability of aporetic exits on the basis of epistemic criteria. On the one hand, this leads us to opt for an orientational monism/pluralism, which steers the middle course between the epistemic stances of exclusivism and pluralism. On the other hand, it allows us to identify epistemic criteria for worldview acquisition on the basis of three distinct superclasses. These superclasses can be derived from Jürgen Habermas' validity claims, and applied to the self-understanding of contemporary theories of religion. (shrink)

One of the central critiques of the bourgeois conception of public holds that, in its implicit claim to universality, it fails to account for the material particularities of social groups and for the variety of possible rationalities. Some theorists have aimed to solve this problem by describing particular publics and particular rationalities based on racial, ethnic, gender, or political identities. While particularist public models represent difference in protest of the totalizing and counterfactual valence of a bourgeois conceptualization of public, they (...) fail to acknowledge that glossing difference is fundamental to the function of and the authorizing power of public, as it is marshalled by speakers. By analogizing Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's universal audience with public, this paper (a) introduces the public metonym, a rhetorically productive counterfactual totality that glosses the material particularities of social groups, (b) critiques the particularist approach to the paradox of public, (c) introduces the resistance metonym as a rhetorically-minded alternative, and (d) clarifies distinctions among projects that claim to address a common object called pUblic. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Habermas’s genealogical approach to modern reason and methodological agnosticism can lead us to a better understanding of the role of religion in our societies. I underline the relevance of Habermas’s awareness that ‘something is missing’ when we take faith out of modernity and consider the truths of philosophical reason to be infallible. Habermas succeeds in highlighting the complexity of the modern relationship between the religious and the secular domains, a relationship that is not merely (...) epistemic, but also embodied in various practical relationships between religious and secular citizens. On this basis, and in the light of Habermas’s idea of modernity as an unfinished project, I argue that religion can be interpreted as a dimension allied to political modernity and democracy as well. (shrink)

Our technologies have enabled us to change both the world and our perceptions of the world, as well as to change ourselves and to find new ways to fulfil the human desire for improvement and for having new capacities. The debate around using technology for human enhancement has already raised many ethical concerns, however little research has been done in how human enhancement can affect human communication. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether some human enhancements could change (...) our shared lifeworld so radically that human communication as we know it would not be possible any longer. After exploring the kinds of communication problems we are concerned with as well as mentioning some possible enhancement interventions that could bring about such problems, we will address some of the ethical implications that follow from these potential communication problems. We argue that because of the role that communication plays in human society, this issue deserves attention. (shrink)

(2002). Normativity as the Key to Objectivity: An Exploration of Robert Brandom's Articulating Reasons. Inquiry: Vol. 45, No. 3, pp. 373-391.

This paper deals with some of the issues raised about the use of context in language, that is,the pragmatic side of the problem; morespecifically it aims to stress the significanceand complexity of context. In real life context is exploited both in production and in comprehension.I will deal here mainly with comprehension:after briefly referring to cognitive contextsand their interaction with knowledge andcomprehension, and touching on the relationbetween language and context, I will analyzethe uses of an indexical pronoun, we,which may both include (...) and exclude speaker/sand/or interlocutor/s, and cannot beinterpreted without referring to an`integrated'' view of context. (shrink)

Re-working the Gramscian idea of the ‘organic’ intellectual from the cultural-political sphere to Higher Education (HE), suggests the need to develop critical and questioning ‘counter hegemonic’ ideas and behaviour in community education students. Connecting this reworking to the Habermasian theory of communicative action, suggests that these students also need to learn how to be constructive in developing such knowledge. Working towards critical and constructive capacities is particularly relevant for students who learn through acting in practice settings where general principles and (...) purposes acquired in the academy need to be interpreted in response to the unique demands of specific situations. From a Gramscian perspective, enabling students to develop the qualities of organic intellectuals means that lecturers have a duty to teach critical knowledges which the student will be unfamiliar with and unlikely to possess. If teaching is not to become simply didactic, however, there is also a need to acknowledge Habermas’s contention that all knowledge is contingent. This does not mean that knowledge is merely relative, subjective, or essentially interest serving, as some postmodernists would have it. In Habermasian terms, knowledge is developed through a rigorous process of contesting validity claims according to procedures appropriate to discipline areas. In these procedures, contestation occurs to the point where there is general agreement about the best current understanding, until such time as this is overtaken by ideas with a better claim. The danger is that over commitment to contestation in the classroom undermines subject knowledge and ultimately the authority of the educator. Speaking Habermas to Gramsci, and vice versa, helps socially and politically committed educators to construct a space in which didactic and discursive moments purposefully alternate. (shrink)

This paper examines the central place of the list and the associated concept of an identifier within the scaffolding of contemporary institutional order. These terms are deliberately chosen to make strange and help unpack the constitutive capacity of information systems and information technology within and between contemporary organisations. We draw upon the substantial body of work by John Searle to help understand the place of lists in the constitution of order. To enable us to ground our discussion of the potentiality (...) and problematic associated with lists we describe a significant and modern instance of list-making, situated around the issue of digital identity management. The theoretical framework discussed allows us to better explain breakdowns in the institutional order characteristic of this domain. (shrink)

In traditional linguistic accounts of context, one thinks of the immediate features of a speech situation, that is, a situation in which an expression is uttered. Thus, features such as time, location, speaker, hearer and preceding discourse are all parts of context. But context is a wider and more transcendental notion than what these accounts imply. For one thing, context is a relational concept relating social actions and their surroundings, relating social actions, relating individual actors and their surroundings, and relating (...) the set of individual actors and their social actions to their surroundings. (shrink)