Winner of the 1975 National Book Award, this brilliant and widely acclaimed book is a powerful philosophical challenge to the most widely held political and social positions of our age--liberal, socialist, and conservative.

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition.

This chapter contains section titled: Decent Peoples The Idea of Toleration The Cosmopolitan Critique Intervention and Cosmopolitanism Acknowledgments Notes.

This chapter contains section titled: Justice as Fairness Rawls and the Cosmopolitan Egalitarians The Puzzle of Rawls's Rejection of Global Egalitarianism Rawls's Fundamental Norm of Legitimacy Why Rawls is not a Cosmopolitan Why Rawls is not a Global Egalitarian The Impossibility of Pure Cosmopolitanism Conclusion Notes.

The article offers a critical assessment of an article on “Corporate Legitimacy as Deliberation” by Guido Palazzo and Andreas Scherer in this journal. We share the concern about the precarious legitimacy of globally active corporations, infringing on the legitimacy of democracy at large. There is no quarrel with Palazzo/Scherer’s diagnosis, which focuses on the consequences of globalization and ensuing challenges for corporate social responsibilities. However, we disagree with the “solutions” offered by them. In a first step we refute the idea (...) of a legitimacy of morals, maintaining that morality is a premodern mode of creating legitimacy. Even worse, moral is becoming a dangerous commodity under conditions of fundamental global disagreements and antagonisms. We secondly refute the concept of the “politicized corporation”, maintaining that Palazzo/Scherer disregard the consequences of functional differentiation of modern societies and, in particular, disregard the wisdom of political restraint and constitutional guarantees for the autonomy of different spheres of society. Finally, we refute a seemingly romantic notion of deliberation, maintaining that deliberation and deliberative democracy is a worthy idea, which, however, has no place in the real world of globalized contexts. On the other hand, we also find enough common ground and common concern with Palazzo/Scherer to validate a fruitful discourse. (shrink)

The article offers a critical assessment of an article on "Corporate Legitimacy as Deliberation" by Guido Palazzo and Andreas Scherer in this journal. We share the concern about the precarious legitimacy of globally active corporations, infringing on the legitimacy of democracy at large. There is no quarrel with Palazzo/Scherer's diagnosis, which focuses on the consequences of globalization and ensuing challenges for corporate social responsibilities. However, we disagree with the "solutions" offered by them. In a first step we refute the idea (...) of a legitimacy of morals, maintaining that morality is a premodern mode of creating legitimacy. Even worse, moral is becoming a dangerous commodity under conditions of fundamental global disagreements and antagonisms. We secondly refute the concept of the "politicized corporation", maintaining that Palazzo/Scherer disregard the consequences of functional differentiation of modern societies and, in particular, disregard the wisdom of political restraint and constitutional guarantees for the autonomy of different spheres of society. Finally, we refute a seemingly romantic notion of deliberation, maintaining that deliberation and deliberative democracy is a worthy idea, which, however, has no place in the real world of globalized contexts. On the other hand, we also find enough common ground and common concern with Palazzo/Scherer to validate a fruitful discourse. (shrink)

This article contextualises current debates over human rights and transnational corporations. More specifically, we begin by first providing the background to John Ruggie's appointment as 'Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises'. Second, we provide a brief discussion of the rise of transnational corporations, and of their growing importance in terms of global governance. Third, we introduce the notion of human rights, and note some difficulties associated therewith. Fourth, we (...) refer to Ruggie's scholarly work on 'embedded liberalism', the 'global public domain' and 'social constructivism'. Following this, we refer to the other five papers contained in this "Journal of Business Ethics" special issue, 'Spheres of Influence/Spheres of Responsibility: Multinational Corporations and Human Rights', and consider some of the potential obstacles to Ruggie's recent suggestion that a 'new consensus' has formed, or is forming, around his 'Protect, Respect and Remedy' framework. We conclude by raising questions regarding the processes of consensus-building around, and the operationalisation of, Ruggie's 'Protect, Respect and Remedy' framework. (shrink)

This article assesses the proliferation of international accountability standards (IAS) in the recent past. We provide a comprehensive overview about the different types of standards and discuss their role as part of a new institutional infrastructure for corporate responsibility. Based on this, it is argued that IAS can advance corporate responsibility on a global level because they contribute to the closure of some omnipresent governance gaps. IAS also improve the preparedness of an organization to give an explanation and a justification (...) to relevant stakeholders for its judgments, intentions, acts and omissions when appropriately called upon to do so. However, IAS also face a variety of problems impeding their potential to help address social and environmental issues. The contribution of the four articles in this special section is discussed in the context of standards’ problems and opportunities. The article closes by outlining a research agenda to further develop and extend the scholarly debate around IAS. (shrink)

Although the critical reconceptualization of Corporate Citizenship (CC) proposed by Néron and Norman appropriately focuses on connotations that enable us to distinguish between CC and the all-inclusive notion of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), I argue that they fail to properly account for the misguiding potential of the features of political citizenship they propose to develop further in CC theorizing. It is concluded that the notion of CC is better dispensed with altogether, and that a reorientation on concepts that can truly (...) transcend the boundaries of economic and political organization would benefit the field of business and society. (shrink)

This article assesses some of the implications of globalization for the scholarly debate on business ethics, CSR and related concepts. The argument is based, among other things, on the declining capacity of nation state institutions to regulate socially desirable corporate behavior as well as the growing corporate exposure to heterogeneous social, cultural and political values in societies globally. It is argued that these changes are shifting the corporate role towards a sphere of societal governance hitherto dominated by traditional political actors. (...) This leads to a discussion of the ambivalent results of such a process for a responsible corporate role in a globalized world. While assessing the current reception these changes have received in the management literature, the contributions of the four articles in this Special Issue are framed and evaluated. The argument closes by highlighting avenues of future research on this new challenge. (shrink)

This article assesses some of the implications of globalization for the scholarly debate on business ethics, CSR and related concepts. The argument is based, among other things, on the declining capacity of nation state institutions to regulate socially desirable corporate behavior as well as the growing corporate exposure to heterogeneous social, cultural and political values in societies globally. It is argued that these changes are shifting the corporate role towards a sphere of societal governance hitherto dominated by traditional political actors. (...) This leads to a discussion of the ambivalent results of such a process for a responsible corporate role in a globalized world. While assessing the current reception these changes have received in the management literature, the contributions of the four articles in this Special Issue are framed and evaluated. The argument closes by highlighting avenues of future research on this new challenge. (shrink)

: We discuss the role that transnational corporations should play in developing global governance, creating a framework of rules and regulations for the global economy. The central issue is whether TNCs should provide global rules and guarantee individual citizenship rights, or instead focus on maximizing profits. First, we describe the problems arising from the globalization process that affect the relationship between public rules and private firms. Next we consider the position of economic and management theories in relation to the social (...) responsibility of the firm. We argue that instrumental stakeholder theory and business and society research can only partially solve the global governance issue, and that more recent concepts of corporate citizenship and republican business ethics deliver theoretically and practically helpful, fresh insights. However, even these need further development, especially with regard to the legitimacy of corporate political activity. (shrink)

We discuss the role that transnational corporations (TNCs) should play in developing global governance, creating a frameworkof rules and regulations for the global economy. The central issue is whether TNCs should provide global rules and guarantee individual citizenship rights, or instead focus on maximizing profits. First, we describe the problems arising from the globalization process that affect the relationship between public rules and private firms. Next we consider the position of economic and management theories in relation to the social responsibility (...) of the firm. We argue that instrumental stakeholder theory and business and society research can only partially solve the global governance issue, and that more recent concepts of corporate citizenship and republican business ethics deliver theoretically and practically helpful, fresh insights. However, even these need further development, especially with regard to the legitimacy of corporate political activity. (shrink)

The Law of Peoples, with “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”. john rawls. William James and the Metaphysics of Experience. david c. lamberth.

This long-awaited book sets out the implications of Habermas's theory of communicative action for moral theory. "Discourse ethics" attempts to reconstruct a moral point of view from which normative claims can be impartially judged. The theory of justice it develops replaces Kant's categorical imperative with a procedure of justification based on reasoned agreement among participants in practical discourse.Habermas connects communicative ethics to the theory of social action via an examination of research in the social psychology of moral and interpersonal development. (...) He aims to show that our basic moral intuitions spring from something deeper and more universal than contingent features of our tradition, namely from normative presuppositions of social interaction that belong to the repertoire of competent agents in any society. Jürgen Habermas is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Frankfurt. (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)

Two centuries after they were published, Kant's ethical writings are as much admired and imitated as they have ever been, yet serious and long-standing accusations of internal incoherence remain unresolved. Onora O'Neill traces the alleged incoherences to attempts to assimilate Kant's ethical writings to modern conceptions of rationality, action and rights. When the temptation to assimilate is resisted, a strikingly different and more cohesive account of reason and morality emerges. Kant offers a "constructivist" vindication of reason and a moral vision (...) in which obligations are prior to rights and in which justice and virtue are linked. O'Neill begins by reconsidering Kant's conceptions of philosophical method, reason, freedom, autonomy and action. She then moves on to the more familiar terrain of interpretation of the Categorical Imperative, while in the last section she emphasizes differences between Kant's ethics and recent "Kantian" ethics, including the work of John Rawls and other contemporary liberal political philosophers. (shrink)

Accounts of international or global justice often focus primarily on the rights or goods to be enjoyed by all human beings, rather than on the obligations that will realise and secure those rights and goods, or on the agents and agencies for whose action obligations of justice are to be prescriptive. In the background of these approaches to international or global justice there are often implicit assumptions that the primary agents of justice are states, and that all other agents and (...) agencies are secondary agents of justice, whose main contribution to justice will be achieved by conforming to the just requirements of states. This background picture runs into difficulties when states are either unjust or weak. The problems posed by unjust states have been widely noted, but the distinctive problems weak states create are less commonly discussed. In this paper I shall consider some reasons for and against viewing states as primary agents of justice, and will focus in particular on the importance of recognising the contribution to justice that other agents and agencies can make when states are weak. (shrink)

Are there any advantages to thinking and speaking about ethical business in the language of citizenship? We will address this question in part by looking at the possible relevance of a vast literature on individual citizenship that has been produced by political philosophers over the last fifteen years. Some of the central elements of citizenship do not seem to apply straightforwardly to corporations. E.g., “citizenship” typically implies membership in a state and an identity akinto national identity; but this connotation of (...) citizenship is obviously problematic for multinational corporations. However, the language of citizenship does help to focus our attention on various legal and political virtues (or vices) for corporations—topics that have been largely neglected by discussions under other rubrics, such as CSR or sustainability. We finish with an evaluation of the potential benefits and costs of conceptualizing and talking about ethical business practices in thelanguage of citizenship.“Citizen” and “Citizenship” are powerful words. They speak of respect, of rights, of dignity. . . . We find no perjorative uses. It is a weighty, monumental, humanist word.—Fraser and Gordon 1994: 90[The rhetorical appeal to citizenship often] seems to have no purpose other than to add normative weight to a policy, institution or practice that could just asaptly be described without reference to citizenship.—Weinstock 2002: 244. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper investigates whether, in theoretical terms, corporations can be citizens. The argument is based on the observation that the debate on “corporate citizenship” (CC) has only paid limited attention to the actual notion of citizenship. Where it has been discussed, authors have either largely left the concept of CC unquestioned, or applied rather unidimensional and decontextualized notions of citizenship to the corporate sphere. The paper opens with a critical discussion of a major contribution to the CC literature, the work (...) of Logsdon and Wood (Wood and Logsdon 2001; Logsdon and Wood 2002). It continues with a consideration of the nature and role of metaphors for business and of the contestable nature of the political concept of citizenship. It evaluates corporations as citizens through a four-dimensional framework of democratic citizenship offered by Stokes (2002). The analysis suggests that corporations do not easily fit the “liberal minimalist” model of citizenship. It finds, however some possibilities for fit with the three more participatory models. The paper concludes by cautioning against basing corporate citizenship on legal and administrative status or identity, and mapping out specific criteria by which we might determine whether corporations could be considered as citizens by virtue of their participation in processes of governance. (shrink)

Critics attack normative ethical stakeholder theory for failing to recognize the special moral status of shareholders that justifiesthe fiduciary duties owed to them at law by managers. Stakeholder theorists reply that there is nothing morally significant about shareholders that can underwrite those fiduciary duties. I advance an argument that seeks to demonstrate both the special moral status of shareholders in a firm and the concomitant moral inadequacy of stakeholder theory. I argue that (i) if some relations morally requirefiduciary duties, and (...) (ii) the shareholder-manager relation possesses the features that make fiduciary duties morally necessary to thoserelations, then (iii) stakeholder theory is morally lacking. (shrink)

Can we achieve greater fairness by reforming the corporation? Some recent progressive critics of the corporation arguethat we can achieve greater social justice both inside and outside the corporation by simply rewriting or reinterpreting corporate rulesto favor non-stockholders over stockholders. But the progressive program for reforming the corporation rests on a critical assumption,which I challenge in this essay, namely that the rules of the corporation matter, so that changing them can effect a lasting redistribution of wealth from stockholders to non-stockholders. (...) This essay uses a critique of the progressive reform program to argue that the rules ofthe corporation are distributively neutral. The corporation isn't rigged against non-stockholders, and changing its rules will not improve the bargaining power of non-stockholders. However, while the rules may be epiphenomenal from the standpoint of distributive justice, they can have substantial impacts on the corporation's efficiency. As a result, the proposed reforms may hurt the corporation's capacity to generate benefits for all the parties concerned. (shrink)

In this paper, I specifically consider the issue of corporate governance and normative stakeholder theory. In doing so, I arguethat stakeholder theory and responsibilities to non-shareholder constituencies can be made more intelligible by reference to Kant’sconception of perfect and imperfect duties. I draw upon Onora O’Neill’s (1996) work, Towards Justice and Virtue: A Constructivist Account of Practical Reasoning. In her text O’Neill underlines a number of relevant issues including: the integration of particularist and universalist accounts of morality; the priority of (...) obligations over rights; the importance of the distinction between imperfect and perfect duties; and the relation between the virtues and imperfect duties. On the basis of the foregoing analysis, the paper argues that business ethicists should avoid recommending the institutionalising of stakeholder responsibilities in terms of legally defined sets of stakeholder rights. Instead, we should regard stakeholder responsibilities as uniformalised imperfect duties. Conceiving responsibilities to all stakeholder groups in this manner, allows the firm the freedom to perfect these duties in ways appropriate to cultural and societal setting, and in accordance with the capacity to do so. (shrink)

Transnational corporations have become actors with significant political power and authority which should entail responsibility and liability, specifically direct liability for complicity in human rights violations. Holding TNCs liable for human rights violations is complicated by the discontinuity between the fragmented legal/political structure of the TNC and its integrated strategic reality and the international state system which privileges sovereignty and non-intervention over the protection of individual rights. However, the post-Westphalian transition—the emergence of multiple authorities, increasing ambiguity of borders and jurisdiction (...) and blurring of the line between the public and private spheres—should facilitate imposing direct responsibility on transnational firms. Mechanisms for imposing direct responsibility on TNCs are considered including voluntary agreements and international law. However, I conclude that a hybrid public-private regime which relies onnon-hierarchical compliance mechanisms is likely to be both more effective and consistent with the structure of the emerging transnational order. (shrink)

Drawing upon John Rawls’s framework in The Law of Peoples, this paper argues that MNEs have a responsibility to promote well-ordered social and political institutions in host countries that lack them. This responsibility is grounded in a negative duty not to cause harm. In addition to addressing the objection that promoting well-ordered institutions represents unjustified interference by MNEs, the paper provides guidance for managers of MNEs operating in host countries that lack just institutions. The paper argues for understanding corporate responsibility (...) in relation to the specific institutional environment in which MNEs operate. (shrink)

This paper raises a challenge for those who assume that corporate social responsibility and good corporate governance naturally go hand-in-hand. The recent spate of corporate scandals in the United States and elsewhere has dramatized, once again, the severity of the agency problems that may arise between managers and shareholders. These scandals remind us that even if we adopt an extremely narrow concept of managerial responsibility – such that we recognize no social responsibility beyond the obligation to maximize shareholder value – (...) there may still be very serious difficulties associated with the effective institutionalization of this obligation. It also suggests that if we broaden managerial responsibility, in order to include extensive responsibilities to various other stakeholder groups, we may seriously exacerbate these agency problems, making it even more difficult to impose effective discipline upon managers. Hence, our central question: is a strong commitment to corporate social responsibility institutionally feasible? In searching for an answer, we revisit the history of public management, and in particular, the experience of social-democratic governments during the 1960s and 1970s, and their attempts to impose social responsibility upon the managers of nationalized industries. The results of this inquiry are less than encouraging for proponents of corporate social responsibility. In fact, the history of public-sector management presents a number of stark warnings, which we would do well to heed if we wish to reconcile robust social responsibility with effective corporate governance. (shrink)

This article assesses the proliferation of international accountability standards (IAS) in the recent past. We provide a comprehensive overview about the different types of standards and discuss their role as part of a new institutional infrastructure for corporate responsibility. Based on this, it is argued that IAS can advance corporate responsibility on a global level because they contribute to the closure of some omnipresent governance gaps. IAS also improve the preparedness of an organization to give an explanation and a justification (...) to relevant stakeholders for its judgments, intentions, acts and omissions when appropriately called upon to do so. However, IAS also face a variety of problems impeding their potential to help address social and environmental issues. The contribution of the four articles in this special section is discussed in the context of standards’ problems and opportunities. The article closes by outlining a research agenda to further develop and extend the scholarly debate around IAS. (shrink)

Globalization has increased the economic power of the multinational corporation (MNC), engendering calls for greater corporate social responsibility (CSR) from these companies. However, the current mechanisms of global governance are inadequate to codify and enforce recognized CSR standards. One method by which companies can impact positively on global governance is through the mechanism of Global Public Policy Networks (GPPN). These networks build on the individual strength of MNCs, domestic governments, and non-governmental organizations to create expected standards of behaviour in such (...) areas as labour rights, environmental standards, and working conditions. This article models GPPN in the issue area of CSR. The potential benefits of GPPN include better overall coordination among industry and government in establishing what social expectations the modern MNC will be expected to fill. (shrink)

Are there any coherent and defensible alternatives to liberal democracy? The author examines the possibility that a reformed democratic centralism-the principle around which China's current polity is officially organized-might be legitimate, according to both an inside and an outside perspective. The inside perspective builds on contemporary Chinese political theory; the outside perspective critically deploys Rawls's notion ofa "decent society " as its standard. Along the way, the author pays particular attention to the kinds and degree of pluralism a decent society (...) can countenance, and to the specific institutions in China that might enable the realization of a genuine and/or decent democratic centralism. The author argues that by considering both inside and outside perspectives, and the degrees to which they inter-penetrate and critically inform one another, we can engage in a global philosophy that neither pre-judges alternative political traditions nor falls prey to false conceptual barriers. (shrink)

In Between Facts and Norms Jürgen Habermas works out the legal and political implications of his Theory of Communicative Action, bringing to fruition the project announced with his publication of The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere in 1962. This new work is a major contribution to recent debates on the rule of law and the possibilities of democracy in postindustrial societies, but it is much more.The introduction by William Rehg succinctly captures the special nature of the work, noting that (...) it offers a sweeping, sociologically informed conceptualization of law and basic rights, a normative account of the rule of law and the constitutional state, an attempt to bridge normative and empirical approaches to democracy, and an account of the social context required for democracy. Finally, the work frames and caps these arguments with a bold proposal for a new paradigm of law that goes beyond the dichotomies that have afflicted modern political theory from its inception and that still underlie current controversies between so- called liberals and civic republicans.The book includes a postscript written in 1994, which restates the argument in light of its initial reception, and two appendixes, which cover key developments that preceded the book.Habermas himself was actively involved in the translation, adapting the text as necessary to make it more accessible to English-speaking readers. (shrink)

Two centuries after they were published, Kant's ethical writings are as much admired and imitated as they have ever been, yet serious and long-standing accusations of internal incoherence remain unresolved. Onora O'Neill traces the alleged incoherences to attempt to assimilate Kant's ethical writings to modern conceptions of rationality, action and rights. When the temptation to assimilate is resisted, a strikingly different and more cohesive account of reason and morality emerges. Kant offers a `constructivist' vindication of reason and a moral vision (...) in which obligations are prior to rights and in which justice and virtue are linked. O'Neill begins by reconsidering Kant's conceptions of philosophical method, reason, freedom, automony and action. She then moves on to the more familiar terrain of interpretation of the Categorical Imperative, while in the last section she emphasises differences between Kant's ethics and recent 'Kantian' ethics, including the work of John Rawls and other contemporary liberal political philosophers. This reassessment will add significantly to the understanding of Kantian practical philosophy. (shrink)

In this collection of essays Onora O'Neill explores and argues for an account of justice that is fundamentally cosmopolitan rather than civic, yet takes serious account of institutions and boundaries, and of human diversity and vulnerability. Starting from conceptions that are central to any account of justice - those of reason, action, judgement, coercion, obligations and rights - she discusses whether and how culturally or politically specific concepts and views, which limit the claims and scope of justice, can be avoided. (...) She then examines the demands and scope of just institutions, arguing that there are good reasons for taking the claims of distant strangers seriously, but that doing so points not to a world without boundaries but to one of porous boundaries and dispersed power. Bounds of Justice will be of interest to a wide range of readers in philosophy, politics and international relations. (shrink)

This is Jürgen Habermas's most concrete historical-sociological book and one of the key contributions to political thought in the postwar period. It will be a revelation to those who have known Habermas only through his theoretical writing to find his later interests in problems of legitimation and communication foreshadowed in this lucid study of the origins, nature, and evolution of public opinion in democratic societies.

The future of Europe and the role it will play in the 21st century are among the most important political questions of our time. The optimism of a decade ago has now faded but the stakes are higher than ever. The way these questions are answered will have enormous implications not only for all Europeans but also for the citizens of Europe's closest and oldest ally - the USA. In this new book, one of Europe's leading intellectuals examines the political (...) alternatives facing Europe today and outlines a course of action for the future. Habermas advocates a policy of gradual integration of Europe in which key decisions about Europe's future are put in the hands of its peoples, and a “bipolar commonality” of the West in which a more unified Europe is able to work closely with the United States to build a more stable and equitable international order. This book includes Habermas's portraits of three long-time philosophical companions, Richard Rorty, Jacques Derrida and Ronald Dworkin. It also includes several important new texts by Habermas on the impact of the media on the public sphere, on the enduring importance religion in "post-secular" societies, and on the design of a democratic constitutional order for the emergent world society. (shrink)

This major work retraces the emergence and development of the Bourgeois public sphere - that is, a sphere which was distinct from the state and in which citizens could discuss issues of general interest. In analysing the historical transformations of this sphere, Habermas recovers a concept which is of crucial significance for current debates in social and political theory. Habermas focuses on the liberal notion of the bourgeois public sphere as it emerged in Europe in the early modern period. He (...) examines both the writings of political theorists, including Marx, Mill and de Tocqueville, and the specific institutions and social forms in which the public sphere was realized. This brilliant and influential work has been widely recognized for many years as a classic of contemporary social and political thought, of interest to students and scholars throughout the social sciences and humanities. (shrink)

Richard Rorty's collected papers, written during the 1980s and now published in two volumes, take up some of the issues which divide Anglo-Saxon analytic philosophers and contemporary French and German philosophers and offer something of a compromise - agreeing with the latter in their criticisms of traditional notions of truth and objectivity, but disagreeing with them over the political implications they draw from dropping traditional philosophical doctrines. In this volume Rorty offers a Deweyan account of objectivity as intersubjectivity, one that (...) drops claims about universal validity and instead focuses on utility for the purposes of a community. The sense in which the natural sciences are exemplary for inquiry is explicated in terms of the moral virtues of scientific communities rather than in terms of a special scientific method. The volume concludes with reflections on the relation of social democratic politics to philosophy. (shrink)

In this book Joseph Heath brings Jürgen Habermas's theory of communicative action into dialogue with the most sophisticated articulation of the instrumental conception of practical rationality-modern rational choice theory. Heath begins with an overview of Habermas's action theory and his critique of decision and game theory. He then offers an alternative to Habermas's use of speech act theory to explain social order and outlines a multidimensional theory of rational action that includes norm-governed action as a specific type.In the second part (...) of the book Heath discusses the more philosophical dimension of Habermas's conception of practical rationality. He criticizes Habermas's attempt to introduce a universalization principle governing moral discourse, as well as his criteria for distinguishing between moral and ethical problems. Heath offers an alternative account of the level of convergence exhibited by moral argumentation, drawing on game-theoretic models to specify the burden of proof that the theory of communicative action and discourse must assume. (shrink)