The Iranian government is a theocracy—the only one in the world today. The clergy control all three branches of government. The supreme leader or velayat-e-faqu’ih is also a cleric. In such a political system all legislation and policy making are conducted in accordance with the leaders’ interpretation of Islamic law or Shari’a. In this paper I will examine the extent to which these laws and policies allow the government to intrude into the private sphere of life and intervene (...) in the privacy of individual citizens. I will use specific examples to illustrate my point that since citizens have no control over their government and cannot impact the interpretation of Shari’a, their private sphere is always threatened by government action. (shrink)

The present debate on constitutional rights aims to protect the individual against the intrusive power of the state. Analysing the precarious relationship between art and money, the authors argue that constitutional rights need to be extended into the regimes of private governance. This requires four fundamental changes. (1) Constitutional rights can no longer be limited to the protection of individual actors. Instead, they need to be extended to guarantees of freedom of discourses. (2) The new experience of the twentieth (...) century is that totalizing tendencies have their origin not only in politics, but also in other fields of action, especially in technology, science, and the economy. Thus, a discursive concept of constitutional rights should be directed against any social system with totalizing tendencies. (3) Instead of concentrating on centres of economic and social power, constitutional rights in the private sphere should focus on the specific communicative medium of the expansionist social system involved. (4) This excludes the direct analogy of a ‘right’ as a quasispatial exclusion zone. More significant guarantees of discursive autonomy could be found in a ‘proceduralization’ of constitutional rights. (shrink)

The radical Islamist regime of the Taliban affords an extensive view of the logic of Muslim fundamentalism regarding the public and private spheres. I argue that the Taliban de-privatized several life-spheres, "publicizing" religion and the body. The Taliban performed power as public spectacle, employing public executions, amputations and whippings. Religion, too, was to be completely public, as Habermas argues it was in Europe before the 18th century. As soon as they took Kabul, the Taliban insisted that all residents had (...) to say their five daily prayers, the men in mosques. Likewise, men were given six weeks to grow out their beards to a hand's length and to trim their moustaches in accordance with a literal reading of sayings about the Prophet Muhammad's appearance. The young female memoirist of life in Taliban Kabul, Latifa, reported that her middle class father complied with the new rule, but insisted, "My beard belongs to the Taliban, not to me!" The rendering public of religion made public property of every religious act. His body had a choice, of being conformed to the movements and shaping of religion, or of being tortured because of lack of compliance. This publicization of the believer's body resulted in an alienation from individuals of parts of themselves. Likewise, the gendered character of the public and private spheres, with women being confined to the private, is as visible in Taliban thinking as it is in Hegel. The expansion of the public realm of religion and morality by the Taliban had the effect of shrinking the private sphere and so constraining women further. Girls' schools were shuttered and many war widows were reduced to begging and risking sanctions for being in the street without a male guardian. Posters of Bollywood actresses were forbidden, and Kate Winslet was condemned to death in absentia for portraying a fornicator in The Titanic. It is argued that the goal of perfectly privatizing the female body lay behind these Draconian measures. (shrink)

Abstract Tibor Scitovsky's The Joyless Economy distinguished the pleasure of moving from discomfort to comfort and the pleasure of replacing boredom with stimulation. I have argued that there are also pleasures distinctive to participating in public life. A third form of pleasure berlongs to both the private and the public domain: the common meal leads to individual satiation and, as a result of commensality, has important social and public effects. A good example is the banquet in ancient Greece, closely (...) connected to the lottery?the basic mechanism of Athenian democracy. But the common meal can also lead to the degradation of human relations and political life. (shrink)

A radical critique of modernity crystallized in the German Bildungsburgertum at the end of the last century. A broad cross-section of this stratum equated "mass democracy" with anarchy, foresaw a future populated only by "atomized modern men," and disdained the "vulgarity" of industrial capitalism. The origin and expansion of the intense and persistent configuration of cultural values that constituted German Kulturpessimismus deserves exploratory theoretical examination. The sociology of knowledge analysis suggested here is based on a Weberian framework that examines the (...) cultural values indigenous to several sectors of the public sphere in pre-industrial and nineteenth century Germany and the particular dynamic of interaction between these values and those indigenous to the private sphere in early twentieth century Germany. Comparisons to the American public sphere and its relationship to the American private sphere are noted in order to isolate clearly the German situation. This case study offers an illustration of the manner in which heterogenous cultural values may persist over extended periods of time despite fundamental structural transformation. (shrink)

Madeleine de Scudery played a previously unrecognized part in the development of modern ideas of married friendship, and the eighteenth-century version of the distinction between the public and private spheres, through the influence of her novels on the political views of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Her development of the notions of tender friendship and tender love between the sexes helped change the way in which married love was conceptualized. She transformed the chivalric idea that women rule men through love, by making (...) it compatible with marriage, and her ideas concerning the appropriate relationship between husband and wife were adapted by Rousseau, without acknowledgement, in his account of the relationship between Emile and Sophie. (shrink)

In international literature of the last decade, few genres have been as widely read or as intensely discussed as autofiction. Writers of autofiction use a variety of literary means to do what the novel has always done: to illuminate the private sphere. Yet, as this article argues, the idea of the private sphere underlying autofiction structurally differs from that of the fictional novel. Starting from a reading of Sheila Heti’s 2018 novel Motherhood and an analysis of (...) its reception in various YouTube formats, this article shows that the private sphere to which autofiction grants access is no longer framed as a refuge for the individual from the public. Instead, autofiction stages and reflects a model of privacy in which intense self-observation directly serves the creation of new social ties. Autofiction aesthetically reflects on interpersonal networking. Moreover, in dramatizing the crossing of boundaries between the fictional and non-fictional, and in breaking »the fourth wall,« it aesthetically recreates the forging of new network connections. The continued success of contemporary autofiction therefore needs to be understood against the backdrop of the structural transformation of the private sphere within the network society. (shrink)

This article reports on an EU-funded project conducted in Greece, Portugal, England and Wales. Data were collected from male and female student teachers using surveys, interviews and focus groups. The project investigated their understanding of citizenship and the role of men and women in public and private life. Pateman's concept of a sexual contractwas used to discover how student teachers understood changing relations between men and women. Young professionals in each country had relatively similar representations of the public (...) class='Hi'>sphere, which was seen as a distant sphere in which masculine power was unchallenged. The tension between power and femininity was articulated differently by men and women. Cross-national comparisons revealed how women in different European countries struggle over gender relations in family life and in everyday social contexts. Although gender relations are changing, the primary context for female citizenship is still predominantly the family. The sexual contract remains therefore a key theme to be considered in relation to the education of citizens. (shrink)

The one sphere of life where a claimed right to privacy is most sympathetically received is in the inner realm of the mind. I will look briefly at Joseph Tussman’s claim that a government is not only entitled but morally required to be concerned with and involved in the minds of the nation’s citizens. I then further explore reasons why the realm of the mind matters not only morally but politically. There are consequentialist reasons, but more interestingly there are (...) non-consequentialist reasons on the basis of which I introduce the concept of “authentic social justice.” In particular, there are relevant insights to be gainedby reflecting on forms of oppression that are subtle but serious in nature, forms that involve neither violence nor the use of law. (shrink)

Cet article, qui porte sur la RDA, analyse d’une part l’impact des conditions sociales et des relations de genre sur les décisions des femmes en matière de famille, éducation et emploi, d’autre part l’interaction dynamique entre ces décisions et les politiques du parti au pouvoir (SED). En 1970, les femmes sont au centre des nombreux dilemmes économiques qu’affronte ce dernier. Entrées massivement sur le marché du travail dans les années 1960, les femmes ont fait moins d’enfants et pris des temps (...) partiels. Dans une RDA en manque de bras, ces comportements ont inquiété le SED et l’ont conduit à une révision majeure de la politique sociale et économique dans un sens favorable aux mères. Mais plutôt que de résoudre les problèmes économiques et démographiques, ces politiques maternalistes ont accéléré la privatisation et l’individualisation des subjectivités, spécialement chez les femmes éduquées, de plus en plus nombreuses. (shrink)

This article challenges the false opposition between public and private spheres that is often imposed upon our historical understanding in the Old Regime in France. An analysis of the work of Jürgen Habermas, Reinhart Koselleck, Philippe Ariès, and Roger Chartier shows that the "authentic public sphere" articulated by Habermas was constructed in the private realm, and the "new culture" of private life identified by Ariès was constitutive of Habermas's new public sphere. Institutions of sociability were (...) the common ground upon which public and private met in the unstable world of eighteenth-century France. Having superimposed the "maps" of public and private spheres drawn by Habermas and Ariès upon one another, the article then goes on to examine recent studies by Joan Landes and Roger Chartier to show the implications of drawing or avoiding the false opposition between public and private spheres for our understanding of the political culture of the Old Regime and Revolution. (shrink)

The public sphere has been seen by conservatives as an arena for safeguarding private relations. Private power relations could be threatened by newly recognized social groups that make claims on the state for justice and equality. Therefore, conservatives have been concerned about who can speak and exist in public and who can thereby make demands on the state. In the debates over transgender rights in Canada, social conservatives and neoliberal forces have merged in complex and impactful ways. (...) Analyzing House of Commons and Senate debates and committee proceedings for Bill C-279 and Bill C-16, I examine three conservative arguments that illustrate attempts to maintain private power relations and hierarchal gendered divisions by ensuring that transgender and gender nonconforming people are not allowed to exist, speak or make claims in public: first, the assertion that gender identity and gender expression are not definable identity categories for claims-making because transgender people are deceptive and can change their gender based on their feelings; second, the targeting of public facilities, and particularly public bathrooms, as sites of contention, danger and necessary gender segregation; and third, the attempt to delegitimize rights claims by criminalizing transgender people in relation to cisgender women and children. (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 on non-hierarchical compliance mechanisms is likely to be both more effective and consistent with the structure of the emerging transnational order. (shrink)

RESUMEN Este trabajo analiza la noción de privacidad relacionada con un público, o subjetividad orientada a un público, acuñada por Jürgen Habermas en su análisis de la esfera pública. Se propone una reconstrucción de dicha noción para esclarecer su alcance y potencial explicativo, y además se realiza una proyección hacia la esfera pública digital. El artículo propone que esta privacidad orientada a un público se puede postular teóricamente como un rasgo común relevante entre la esfera pública "original" y la esfera (...) pública digital, y en ese sentido, constituye una herramienta conceptual que puede echar luz sobre esta última. ABSTRACT In this paper I analyze the notion of publikumsbezogene Privatheit (public-related privacy, or public-oriented subjectivity), coined by Jürgen Habermas in his analysis of the public sphere. I propose a reconstruction of the notion to clarify its scope and explanatory potential, and I make a projection towards the digital public sphere. I propose that this public-oriented privacy can theoretically be postulated as a relevant common feature between the "original" public sphere and the digital public sphere, and in that sense, constitutes a conceptual tool that can shed light on the latter. (shrink)

Many people recognize that governments can play salutary roles in relation to markets by “overseeing” market behavior from “above,” or supplying foundational “rules of the game” from “below.” It is probably no accident that these widely recognized roles also sit comfortably with traditional conceptions of government and market, pursuant to which people tend categorically to distinguish between “public” and “private” spheres of activity. There is a third form of government action that receives less attention than forms and, however, possibly (...) owing in part to its straddling the traditional public/private divide. We call it the “government as market actor” form, whereby government instrumentalities pursue traditionally “public” ends through traditionally “private” means. Inattention to this pervasive form of government action might signal a theoretical blind spot attending the public/private distinction itself. At least as importantly, however, this inattention also denies us a practical opportunity: it prevents our more fully exploiting the government role in question. This Article, part of a larger project, aims to encourage fuller theoretical appreciation and wider practical use of the role we identify. It first offers a provisional taxonomy of recurrent forms that the government market actor role appears to take, affording a wealth of illustrative case studies in so doing. It then envisions additional good that governments might do, simply by extending their market acting roles to spheres in which they have yet to be fully utilized. The Article concludes by suggesting next steps in both theorizing and employing the government market actor role. (shrink)

Changing human behavior is critical to mitigating the increasingly severe environmental harm. Although numerous studies focus on private-sphere or generalized pro-environmental behavior, relatively little research examines explicitly public-sphere PEB from a collective action perspective. This study incorporates trust and identity into the Attitude-Behavior-Context theory to investigate Chinese residents’ participation in public-sphere PEB. Primary data collected from 648 residents in China tested the model empirically. The results indicate that social trust, environmentalist self-identity, and politicized identity positively predict (...) public-sphere PEB and that institutional trust positively impacts non-activist behaviors but negatively relates to environmental activism. There is also evidence that trust and identity are moderators of attitude and public-sphere PEB. Specifically, social trust and environmentalist self-identity strengthen the effect of attitude on public-sphere PEB. Politicized identity increases the impact of attitude on environmental activism but not on non-activist behaviors, and there is no significant moderating effect of institutional trust. The findings deepen the understanding of public-sphere PEB and make more targeted policies accordingly. (shrink)

This paper examines the political significance of discursive activity in the private sphere in the thought of Hannah Arendt, Václav Havel, and Victor Klemperer. Against criticisms of Arendt which claim that she pays too much attention to the public sphere and consequently misses the importance of the private sphere in her analysis of political action, this paper highlights important insights in Arendt’s writing on family and friendship and the ability of these relationships to act as (...) havens where discourse can thrive. What emerges from the analysis is a rich agonistic discourse ethics. The paper employs the respective thought of Havel and Klemperer to highlight Arendt’s work on the political significance of private virtues for promoting an awareness of responsibility. This position is then defended against the criticisms of discourse ethics offered by Chantal Mouffe. (shrink)

Troubling patterns of suppressed speech have emerged on the corporate internet. A large platform may marginalize potential connections between audiences and speakers. Consumer protection concerns arise, for platforms may be marketing themselves as open, comprehensive, and unbiased, when they are in fact closed, partial, and self-serving. Responding to protests, the accused platform either asserts a right to craft the information environment it desires, or abjures responsibility, claiming to merely reflect the desires and preferences of its user base. Such responses betray (...) an opportunistic commercialism at odds with the platforms’ touted social missions. Large platforms should be developing more ambitious standards for promoting expression online, rather than warring against privacy, competition, and consumer protection laws. These regulations enable a more vibrant public sphere. They also defuse the twin specters of monopolization and total surveillance, which are grave threats to freedom of expression. (shrink)

What I suggest we can see in this brief overview of the literature is an extensive interpenetration on both sides of these debates between scientific, political, and social values. Important shifts in political and social values were of course occurring over the same period, some of them in parallel with, and perhaps even contributing to, these transitions I have been speaking of in evolutionary discourse. The developments that I think of as at least suggestive of possible parallels include the progressive (...) encroachment of public values into the private domain of post-World War II American life, the cold war, the rise of consumerism, and the flowering of what Christopher Lasch calls a “narcissistic individualism.”35 In popular language, the 1960s gave birth to the “me” generation. Perhaps the most tantalizing analogue is suggested by Barbara Ehrenreich's argument for the emergence of a new meaning of masculinity — an ideal of masculinity measured not by commitment, responsibility, or success as family provider, but precisely by the strength of a man's autonomy in the private sphere, his resistance to the demands of a hampering female.36 It is tempting to speculate about possible connections between changes in scientific discourse and developments in the social and political spheres, but such connections, however suggestive, would clearly have to be demonstrated.For now, however, I want to focus on another kind of change —a transformation not so much in the social or political sphere as in the scientific sphere. I make this turn, or return, in support of a more complex account of scientific change that incorporates reverberations within the scientific communty along with social and political changes.In the 1960s, all of biology was undergoing a major transformation in direct response to the dramatic successes of molecular biology. These successes seemed to completely vindicate the values on which the molecular revolution was premised — namely, simplicity and mechanism. Following the victory of Watson and Crick, and of others after them, the fever of that endeavor swept through biology leaving in its wake a new standard of science, and of scientific discourse — one predicated on clarity, simplicity, and analyzability; on the definition of legitimate questions as those capable of clear and unambiguous answers. Every biological discipline felt it — even evolutionary biology, which in some respects was at the furthest pole. Perhaps precisely because it seemed conceptually so remote, evolutionary biology may have felt it most of all. Lewontin inadvertently provides us with some direct support for this view. Indeed, he begins his introduction to Population Biology and Evolution with the following remarks: The twenty years since World War II have seen a vindication in biology of our faith in the Cartesian method as a way of doing science. Some of the most fundamental and interesting problems of biology have been solved or are very nearly solved by an analytic technique that is now loosely called “molecular biology.” But it is not specifically the “molecular” aspect of biology of the last twenty years that has led to its success. It is, rather, the analytic aspect, the belief that by breaking systems down into their component parts, by simplifying them or using simpler organisms, one can learn about more complex systems. As it happens, the problems that were attacked and are being attacked by this method lead to answers in terms of molecules and cell organelles.... There is a host of problems in biology, however, that has been much neglected in these twenty exciting years, because the answers to them cannot be meaningfully framed in molecular and cellular terms.37Lewontin is referring, of course, to problems in evolution. The remainder of his remarks is devoted to an argument for the applicability of the method, if not the content, of molecular biology to these problems. He writes, “It is not the case that molecular biology is Cartesian and analytic while population biology is holistic. Population biology is properly analytic and operates, within the framework of its own problems, by the process of simplification, analysis, and resynthesis.”38 With these remarks, he leads into the criticism of the “holists” who have “held up progress.”This new ethic of simplicity, clarity, and mechanism — embodying the very virtues lauded by Williams — was explicitly carried into evolutionary biology in the name of scientific progress. As it happened, the values implied also fit conveniently well with other values — each set of values providing crucial support for the other.However substantive the scientific gains may have been in some respects, the net effect of this ethic has also been a systematic “perceptual bias” — a bias with profound practical consequences for the entire program of methodological individualism in evolutionary biology, if not elsewhere as well. It may well be that the whole is equivalent to the reconstituted aggregate of its parts, if, in the process of aggregation or summation, all possible interactions among the parts are included. But if certain kinds of interactions are systematically excluded, our confidence in that program necessarily founders. My claim here is that such systematic exclusion does occur, and that it occurs on a number of different levels. To briefly review the interlocking kinds of “bias” that I see occurring in practice, I suggest the following schematic listing:On the most general level: The ethic of simplicity — the privileging of certain values, even certain methodologies, as having an a priori superior claim to scientific credibility.Only slightly less general, and crucially related, is the equation of “scientific” with “tractible”: Given the techniques of analysis available, the equation of science with what we can do inevitably leads to a systematic technical bias favoring simplicity. That is, because we don't know how to model complex dynamics, nonlinear interactions are systematically biased against because of the limitations of our technical know-how. The consequences of this equation of the scientific with the tractible are greatly compounded by the additional equation between what we can do and what is — that is, by our temptation to confuse tractibility with reality.Finally, and also closely related, a further kind of elision occurs even within the confines of tractibility. This kind of elision — taking the form almost of inferring tractibility from one's prior assumptions of what is real — is exemplified by the history of a mathematical ecology of mutualism. Even when mutualism can be introduced into the same technical machinery, it is still not pursued. The basic assumption is that competition is what is real, not because it is easier to model, but because it is what we expect. When the actual difficulties of modeling competition are then in turn suppressed, as in the Robert May story, what we have, given the temptation to equate the tractible with the real, is the possibility of a truly self-fulfilling prophecy. (shrink)

This paper discusses the hazards of regulating controversial biomedical research in light of the emergence of powerful, multi-national biotechnology corporations. Prohibitions on the use of government funds can simply force controversial research into the private sphere, and unilateral or multilateral research bans can simply encourage multi-national companies to conduct research in countries that lack restrictive laws. Thus, a net effect of government regulation is that research migrates from the public to the private sphere. Because private (...) research receives less oversight and external scrutiny than public research, it can threaten the welfare and rights of human subjects, scientific progress and openness, and the quality of the approval process for new biomedical technologies. In order to avoid the harmful effects of government regulation of biotechnology, society should promote meaningful discussion and dialogue among scientists, industry leaders, and the public before resorting to regulatory solutions. Legislative or executive initiatives should be applied with great discretion and care, and should be crafted in such a way that they protect public health and safety, promote scientific progress, and avoid the hazards of privatized research and polarized debates. (shrink)

The “private” dimension of social life is problematic, posing conceptual, political, and ecological challenges. Some of these problems arise from the very nature of private property as it is enshrined in social life, which demands special privileges be granted to “private” matters on the grounds that these are private, because the predominant representation of the involved rights is that they reflect claims of the holders, rather than legitimate claims of society as a whole in allocating responsibilities, (...) benefits, and duties. The claim to the rationality of allocations of property rights, this article argues, must be questioned in light of the kind of commonality that is revealed in a striking manner by environmental issues (although it is not restricted to environmental matters). This questioning makes sense in relation to an analysis of social interactions, beyond the problematic opposition between the private sphere and public life. (shrink)

In a debate between tolerance and intolerance one is disinclined to side with intolerance. Nevertheless that, in a sense, is what I want to do in this paper. The particular debate I have in mind is the old one between H.L.A. Hart and Patrick Devlin about the legal enforcement of moral values. It should be noted, though, that the issue has by no means been settled in the minds of many people. The proposed repeal of the British law prohibiting the (...) promotion of homosexuality (a law known as Section 28) “could destroy Scottish society,” according to Mazhar Malik of Glasgow’s Ethnic Community Resource Centre, echoing Devlin’s concern from the 1960s. In what follows I will first sketch and defend, partially, what I take to be Devlin’s communitarian argument and then attempt to explain what is wrong with it and how this should affect our estimation of the proper relation between law and morals. I will argue that at least some private ‘immorality’ can be defended without recourse to the liberal belief in a morally private sphere. In part I I look at the kind of communitarianism that can be found in Devlin’s work, in part II I support this reading of Devlin and expand on it by looking at some important passages from his work, and in part III I consider the reasons why his argument does not support legislation against gay sex, and, in fact, could be used to defend gay rights. (shrink)

Democratic legitimacy is rarely associated with private governance. After all, private actors are not legitimized through elections by a demos. Instead of abandoning democratic principles when entering the private sphere of governance, however, this article argues in favour of employing alternative criteria of democracy in assessments. Specifically, this article uses the criteria of participation, transparency and accountability to evaluate the democratic legitimacy of private food retail governance institutions. It pursues this evaluation of the democratic legitimacy (...) of these institutions against the background of their ambivalent impact on the sustainability of the global agrifood system. The paper refers to a range of cases of private retail standards with different governance structures and substantial foci to illustrate its argument. (shrink)

Axel Honneth distinguishes between recognitive practices according to the social domain in which they occur and this allows him to theorise the relationship between power and recognition. 'Love-based recognition', which suggests the centrality of recognition to the relationships that nurture us in the first instance, is located in the family. Honneth argues that relationships encompassed by this category are pre-political, thereby repeating the distinction between the public and the private common to much political theory. This article explores the structure (...) of this delineation in his thinking. I argue that Honneth's analysis marginalises feminist concerns with how power functions through recognition in the private sphere. Honneth also robs himself of a rejoinder to recognition sceptics, who suggest that the desire for recognition is a condition of subordination. The article argues for an alternative approach to the analysis of 'love' within recognitive theory. © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. (shrink)

This article attempts to critically challenge Richard Rorty's view that the work of Jacques Derrida has no political utility. For Rorty, Derrida is a ‘private ironist’ whose quest for personal perfection renders him ineffectual as a ‘public liberal’. This view, I contend, is the consequence of looking at Derrida from the perspective of critics, such as Simon Critchley, who suggest that there is a strong ethico‐political strain in deconstruction on the basis of its Levinasian import. But to ally Derrida (...) too closely with Levinas, I maintain, runs the risk of obfuscating the rich and powerful insights regarding the nature of justice and democracy which Derrida has been developing for some time now. By showing how the theme of justice in Derrida differs from that encountered in Levinas, it becomes possible for us to show how Derrida's political intuitions bear remarkable and surprising similarity to those forged by Rorty. Derrida, on this reading, appears as a Utopian liberal in the pragmatic mode, one for whom progress in the political sphere is engendered by attending to the suffering of those about us and not (pace Marx, Althusser, and Foucault) by way of large‐scale revolution. The notion that solidarity is ultimately founded on our mutual susceptibility to suffering, I argue finally, is what serves to link Rorty's idea of a ‘liberal utopia’ to Derrida's ‘new international’, a comparison which significantly undermines the contention that the latter is useful for exclusively private purposes. (shrink)

In this article we propose to return to the notions of public and universality in the so-called Critical Theory, in order to rethink the relation between politics, affects and women. For these purposes, we will analyze the famous The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere of J. Habermas, the first systematization of the notion of public sphere, understood as the scope of rational and universal debate which excludes the private-affective. Later, we will focus on the criticism of (...) this study made by the feminist revisionism of the eighties. These authors found a connection between the theoretical exclusion of the affects and the political expulsion of women. We will see that Habermas’ own Theory of Communicative Action opens the possibility of thinking the rationality present in the expression of affections, desires and feelings. The main aim of this work is to start a tradition of reflections for a truly universal public sphere theory. (shrink)

Many of the interests protected by public law are regularly violated by powerful private actors. Analysing the application of public law rights to the private sphere, this book develops a theoretical framework for the application of human and constitutional rights in relations between private parties.