When we reframe design through a discourse, designing on a meta level, we are actually designing design, as we are giving design a different meaning, changing frame to include or exclude what we do or don't consider as a part of the field. Therefore we need to frame at first what we understand in speaking about design. And it is far more complex to speak about media design, since it triggers the idea of designing media. Marshall McLuhan's thoughts on media (...) will help to explore what a media designer actually does; what he designs. However, if the digital media comes into place, the new medium, the digital medium, suddenly is the major carrier of all of society's messages. How does it change the designer's work, and does it require a different designer. (shrink)

Modernity's Consciousness of Time and Its Need for Self- Reassurance In his famous introduction to the collection of his studies on the sociology of ...

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)

In this important volume Habermas outlines the views which form the basis of his critical theory of modern societies. The volume comprises five interlocking essays, which together define the contours of his theory of communication and of his substantive account of social change. ′What is Universal Pragmatics?′ is the best available statement of Habermas′s programme for a theoryof communication based on the analysis of speech acts. In the following two essays Habermas draws on the work of Kohlberg and others to (...) develop a distinctive account of moral consciousness and normative structures. ′Toward a Reconstruction of historical Materialsim′ takes these issues further, offering a wide–ranging reconstruction of Marx′s historical materialsim understood as a theory of social evolution. The final essay focuses on the question of legitimacy and on the legitimation problems faced by modern states. This book is essential reading for anyone concerned with the key questions of social and political theory today. (shrink)

This article contains reflections on the further structural transformation of the public sphere, building on the author’s widely-discussed social-historical study, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, which originally appeared in German in 1962 (English translation 1989). The first three sections contain preliminary theoretical reflections on the relationship between normative and empirical theory, the deliberative understanding of democracy, and the demanding preconditions of the stability of democratic societies under conditions of capitalism. The fourth section turns to the implications of digitalisation (...) for the account of the role of the media in the public sphere developed in the original work, specifically to how it is leading to the expansion and fragmentation of the public sphere and is turning all participants into potential authors. The following section presents empirical data from German studies which shows that the rapid expansion of digital media is leading to a marked diminution of the role of the classical print media. The article concludes with observations on the threats that these developments pose for the traditional role of the public sphere in discursive opinion and will formation in democracies. (shrink)

Abstract: Human rights developed in response to specific violations of human dignity, and can therefore be conceived as specifications of human dignity, their moral source. This internal relationship explains the moral content and moreover the distinguishing feature of human rights: they are designed for an effective implementation of the core moral values of an egalitarian universalism in terms of coercive law. This essay is an attempt to explain this moral-legal Janus face of human rights through the mediating role of the (...) concept of human dignity. This concept is due to a remarkable generalization of the particularistic meanings of those "dignities" that once were attached to specific honorific functions and memberships. In spite of its abstract meaning, "human dignity" still retains from its particularistic precursor concepts the connotation of depending on the social recognition of a status—in this case, the status of democratic citizenship. Only membership in a constitutional political community can protect, by granting equal rights, the equal human dignity of everybody. (shrink)

In this wide-ranging work, now available in paperback, Habermas presents his views on the nature of the social sciences and their distinctive methodology and concerns. He examines, among other things, the traditional division between the natural sciences and the social sciences; the characteristics of social action and the implications of theories of language for social enquiry; and the nature, tasks and limitations of hermeneutics. Habermas' analysis of these and other themes is, as always, rigorous, perceptive and constructive. This brilliant study (...) succeeds in highlighting the distinctive characteristics of the social sciences and in outlining the nature of, and prospects for, critical theory today. (shrink)

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)

Essays discuss denial of Germany's Nazi past, the rise of the neoconservative movement in Europe and America, and the welfare state.

Habermas's 1971 Gauss Lectures, plus two additional essays, outlining an intersubjective approach to social theory.

Religious toleration first became legally enshrined in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Religious toleration led to the practice of more general inter-subjective recognition of members of democratic states which took precedence over differences of conviction and practice. After considering the extent to which a democracy may defend itself against the enemies of democracy and to which it should be prepared to tolerate civil disobedience, the article analyses the contemporary dialectic between the notion of civil inclusion and multiculturalism. Religious (...) toleration is seen as the pacemaker for modern multiculturalism, in which the claims of minorities to civic inclusion are recognized so long as members of all groups understand themselves to be citizens of one and the same political community. Footnotes1 Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture, 2003. (shrink)

In this essay, I address the question of whether the indisputable progress being made by the neurosciences poses a genuine threat to the language game of responsible agency. I begin by situating free will as an ineliminable component of our practices of attributing responsibility and holding one another accountable, illustrating this via a discussion of legal discourse regarding the attribution of responsibility for criminal acts. I then turn to the practical limits on agents' scientific self-objectivation, limits that turn out to (...) be mirrored philosophically in the conceptual problems that plague reductionist strategies. Having shown that free will is rooted in unavoidable performative presuppositions belonging to agents' participant perspective, I then take up the difficult issue of how to reconcile an epistemic dualism of participant and observer perspectives with the assumption of ontological monism. I critically review a range of proposed physicalist solutions, including non-reductionist and (standard) compatibilist approaches. An underlying problem with scientistic, physicalist approaches is the methodological fiction of an exclusive ?view from nowhere? which relies on the problematic move of disengaging the objectivating perspective of the scientific observer from the investigators' participant perspective of those engaged in scientific practice. Since there is no way of getting around the requisite complementarity of both the observer's encounter with the objective world and the participant's involvement in shared lifeworld practices, the remaining option is to take an epistemological turn. But even the recognition that science is ultimately constituted from within the lifeworld still leaves us with the question as to how the human mind can understand itself as the product of natural evolution. I conclude with some tentative suggestions as to how this difficult question might be addressed. (shrink)

The chances of the project of a “cosmopolitan order” being successful are not worse now than they were in 1945 or in 1989–1990.This does not mean that the chances are good, but we should not lose sight of the scale of things. The Kantian project first became part of the political agenda with the League of Nations, in other words after more than 200 years; and the idea of a cosmopolitan order first received a lasting embodiment with the foundation of (...) the United Nations. This process points toward a continuation of the Kantian project. We can still take our cue from Kant’s idea of a cosmopolitan condition if we simply construe it in sufficiently abstract terms. I wish to show first of all why I consider the Kantian alternative between a world of republic and a league of nations to be incomplete and will then go on to outline how we can reconceptualize the Kantian project under contemporary conditions.And I shall close by addressing an actual challenge to which that project might well offer the most promising response. Due to the author was not reachable, this journal has composed thewith Editor-in-Chief’s instruction. (shrink)

The “global success” of nation states is currently brought into play by the new requirements of multicultural differentiation and globalization. After commenting on the common concepts of “state” and “nation” and discussing the formation of nation states, the author explains the particular achievement of the national state and the tension between republicanism and nationalism built into it. The challenges that arise from the multicultural differentiation of civil society and from trends towards globalization throw light on the limitations of this historical (...) type. (shrink)

The chances of the project of a “cosmopolitan order” being successful are not worse now than they were in 1945 or in 1989–1990. This does not mean that the chances are good, but we should not lose sight of the scale of things. The Kantian project first became part of the political agenda with the League of Nations, in other words after more than 200 years; and the idea of a cosmopolitan order first received a lasting embodiment with the foundation (...) of the United Nations (UN). This process points toward a continuation of the Kantian project. We can still take our cue from Kant's idea of a cosmopolitan condition if we simply construe it in sufficiently abstract terms. I wish to show first of all why I consider the Kantian alternative between a world of republic and a league of nations to be incomplete (section I) and will then go on to outline how we can reconceptualize the Kantian project under contemporary conditions (section II). And I shall close by addressing an actual challenge to which that project might well offer the most promising response (section III). (shrink)

European Journal of Philosophy, Volume 29, Issue 3, Page 543-551, September 2021.

This paper argues that the normative source of modern basic rights consists in the idea of human dignity. It is this idea through which rights derive a universalistic content of morality. Due to their being rights, human rights can serve to protect human dignity, which in turn owes its connotations of self-respect and social recognition to the intramundane status of democratic citizenship. This is associated with a realistic utopia whose aim at realizing social justice is intrinsic to the very institutions (...) of democratic constitutional states. (shrink)