Although the continental philosophers Jürgen Habermas and Emmanuel Levinas are both inescapably important to an array of debates in contemporary moral theory, they are rarely assessed in relation to each other. Not only are their basic agendas different—whereas Habermas's discourse ethics are framed within a general concern for democratic political theory, Levinas's work is largely indifferent, if not hostile, to political concerns—but their philosophical styles dramatically contrast as well. Steven Hendley's study is based on the conviction that beneath the surface (...) there is in fact a remarkable degree of convergence in the two philosophers' work that is usually overlooked. Hendley discovers and explains the complementarity of Levinas's conception of discourse as relation to the Other to Habermas's theory of communication as the basis for recognition of universal moral norms; and he presents a clear defense and validation of Levinas's position on the construction of political theory. From Communicative Action to the Face of the Other is a unique endeavor that achieves new and important connections in the contemporary scholarship in philosophy and political theory. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ : Dans cet article, je démontre que les objections de John McDowell au naturalisme éthique de Phillipa Foot ne justifient pas le rejet de ses opinions, mais ne font qu’éclaircir ce que nous pouvons défendre dans sa position. En outre, les commentaires de McDowell présentent une manière suivant laquelle le naturalisme de Foot peut aider à affermir le réalisme que McDowell défend dans sa propre œuvre. En notant comment le naturalisme de Foot est en mesure de défendre la réalité (...) des raisons éthiques, nous pouvons comprendre comment McDowell soit invoquer quelque chose comme le naturalisme de Foot pour satisfaire à ses propres aspirations réalistes en éthique. (shrink)

Deals with the issue of relativism in the context of Jean Paul Sartre's later philosophy, and with the contemporary debates about the social-historical character of reason as they emerge in the works of Foucault, Habermas, and other ...

Robert Brandom and John McDowell pursue similar, yet strikingly different approaches to a shared problem: that of how we can be answerable to the world in our beliefs about it in the wake of Sellars' critique of the myth of the given. While McDowell attempts to rehabilitate the idea that experience is capable of providing justifications for our beliefs, Brandom constructs a sophisticated social-pragmatist account of the objectivity of our conceptual commitments in which experience is, as he says, not one (...) of his words. In this article, I argue that McDowell is right in stressing the indispensability of the idea of experience, but that he is wrong in believing that Brandom lacks the resources for making sense of the idea of being answerable to the world in experience. Especially when we expand Brandom's account of discursive practice to include its relation to what he has called practical intentionality, his work provides the resources for an answer to McDowell's concerns, but only if it is understood not as an attempt to simply deny McDowell's claims about experience, but as an attempt to explain what we must be capable of doing in order for experience, in McDowell's sense, to be possible. (shrink)

Habermas and Brandom remain divided on a key point in their theories of language concerning the priority of a participant vs. a third-person, observational perspective onto language. I examine this dispute as it has played out in a recent exchange between them, attempting to explicate and defend a qualified version of Habermas’s claim in the light of his more developed treatment of this issue elsewhere. Once the defensible content of Habermas’s claim is clarified, I argue that Habermas’s critique of Brandom (...) highlights an important way in which Brandom fails to follow through adquately in the development of his own understanding of language as a distinctively social practice. The value in Habermas’s criticism of Brandom’s work lies not in exposing an unbridgeable gulf between their two positions, but in helping us to work out more consistently the social perspective onto language that informs both their work. (shrink)

Habermas and Brandom remain divided on a key point in their theories of language concerning the priority of a participant vs. a third-person, observational perspective onto language. I examine this dispute as it has played out in a recent exchange between them, attempting to explicate and defend a qualified version of Habermas’s claim in the light of his more developed treatment of this issue elsewhere. Once the defensible content of Habermas’s claim is clarified, I argue that Habermas’s critique of Brandom (...) highlights an important way in which Brandom fails to follow through adquately in the development of his own understanding of language as a distinctively social practice. The value in Habermas’s criticism of Brandom’s work lies not in exposing an unbridgeable gulf between their two positions, but in helping us to work out more consistently the social perspective onto language that informs both their work. (shrink)

Habermas's recent work in epistemology has been marked by a decisive rejection of his earlier epistemic conception of truth in which he understood truth as 'what may be accepted as rational under ideal conditions'. Arguing that no 'idealization of justificatory conditions' can do justice to both human fallibility and the unconditional nature of truth, he has attempted to develop a realistic conception of truth that severs any conceptual link between truth and justification while respecting the epistemic relevance of justification for (...) ascertaining the truth. But realizing this second goal has proved elusive for Habermas because he veers too close to a form of metaphysical realism in his epistemology. By contrast, Hilary Putnam's recent turn to what he calls 'natural realism' is more successful in articulating a form of realism that, in taking its leave of an epistemic conception of truth, still manages to keep its distance from metaphysical realism. (shrink)

Philippa Foot 's version of ethical naturalism, centered on the idea of “natural goodness,” has received a good deal of critical scrutiny. One pervasive criticism contends that less than virtuous modes of conduct may be described as naturally good or, at least, not naturally defective on her account. If true, this contradicts the most ambitious aspect of Foot 's naturalistic approach to ethics: to show that judgments of moral goodness are a subclass of judgments of natural goodness. But even if (...) one finds this line of criticism convincing, there is a less ambitious aspect of Foot 's project which remains, at least in a qualified way, defensible: her conception of moral reasoning as a legitimate form of practical rationality. This more modest claim turns not on the view that moral judgments are a subclass of judgments of natural goodness but merely on the idea that moral reasoning itself is naturally good for us. (shrink)

For Habermas, a moral point of view is based in the procedural requirements of our linguistic competence. For Levinas, it is the way in which we find ourselves related in speech to the face of the other that we find ourselves obliged to the other. But these differing conceptions of the moral significance of language need not be seen as opposed to each other. Rather, they can be conceptualized as complimentary accounts of the ways in which a moral point of (...) view onto life is inextricably bound up for us with our capacities as linguistic creatures. While Habermas enables us to see the importance of language as a rule-governed social practice for the constitution of a moral point of view, Levinas draws our attention to the way in which the moral significance of language so conceived lies in a form of sensibility, a sensible “exposure” or “vulnerability” to the other person, older than language itself. Appropriately coordinated, these two perspectives give us a more adequate understanding than either can on its own of the central place of language in our lives as moral agents. (shrink)