From substantive to negative universalism Lefort and Habermas on legitimacy in democratic societies (original) (raw)
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The Universal Right to Democracy, 2021
This is a 99% complete long book manuscript. It defends the thesis that democracy in a robust (deliberative democratic) sense is a basic human right. In the process, it defends a theory of human rights in general that seeks to bridge the moral - political divide, which has been a key issue in recent years. The book draws together sources from analytic moral philosophy along with Habermasian critical theory / discourse ethics. It also features a chapter on democratic theory, and discussions of revolution and secession (with thinkers such as Allan Buchanan, Michael Walzer, and Abraham Lincoln). One unusual feature of this work is the detailed chapter on the nature of culture and the contrast between two basic cultural paradigms. This involves a new version of the Axial transition idea, different than either Jaspers' or Habermas's versions.
The normative underpinnings of democracy and the balance between morality and legitimacy
International Journal of Philosophical Studies
Jürgen Habermas’s political philosophy incorporates the view that legitimacy is immanent to law, even though it makes morality a central component of democratic legitimacy. Taking this as a starting point, the article examines one criticism that applies to Habermas’s political theory, insofar as he puts morality at the centre of his reconstruction of the concept of legitimacy. Habermas claims that the moral point of view justifies only those norms that embody universalizable interests and rules out those that embody particular interests. Therefore, the objection is that particular citizens will have no reason to endorse these norms and act according to them, because these norms do not incorporate their interests. The article goes on to show that Habermas can successfully answer this objection by means of the principle of discourse. The principle performs this function, inasmuch as it has a post-Kantian nature. On the one hand, it incorporates Kantian autonomy. And on the other, the Hegelian insight that autonomy has to be actualized through modern institutions and practices.
Anti-Foundationalism, Deliberative Democracy and Universal Human Rights
Center for Human Rights Studies, 2010
The paper argues that an approach to democracy that combines an anti-foundationalist epistemology and a deliberative political and moral stance will enable us to solve the increasing tensions between the universalistic claims of human rights and the particularistic claims to autonomy coming from different cultural groups. The anti-foundationalist conception of normative authority I put forth is centered on the distinction between universal grounds for and universal scope of normativity. It maintains that the universalistic normative force of our norms and practices remains uncompromised by the acknowledgment of the ultimate circularity of our justifications, thus eschewing the pitfalls of both foundationalism and relativism. My main contention is that only by ensuring inclusive and self-reflexive practices of collective decision-making we will be able to address the tensions between universalism and cultural relativism, and produce more flexible models of democratic governance, citizenship and cultural membership suitable to face the challenges of the global processes of integration and differentiation.
Three faces of the legitimacy crisis of liberal democracy : identity, rationality and universality
2001
Cataloged from PDF version of article.The thesis investigates the question of legitimacy crisis of liberal democracy as manifested by the processes, debates, concepts, popular demands and emerging new identities and forms of politics along the globalization phenomenon. It argues that this crisis is situated in three principal sites of the liberal theoretical and normative conceptualization: identity, rationality and universality. Then a dialogical and thematic reading is carried out among various theoretical positions in order to find out whether the current legitimacy crisis is an ephemeral or conjunctural development or rather it is a crisis which is exacerbated by the basic assumptions, modalities and configurations provided by the liberal democratic discourse. These positions are classical liberalism, the Rawlsian perspective and the communitarians, Habermas and the theory of deliberative democracy, and finally radical democracy and agonistic democracy approach within it. All th...
Thesis work at the Università Degli Studi di Pavia, Dipartimento di Scienze Politiche, 2020
The aim of this work is to challenge the concept of radical, agonistic democracy brought forward by Chantal Mouffe and to show why her positions, while being of high original value, are for the most part not compatible with the demands that an egalitarian and liberal democracy places on its citizens. It is argued that, while Mouffe’s warnings about a potential depoliticisation of society in favour of neo-liberal policies and the rise of right-populism which she attributes to the political parties’ failing in generating meaningful political identities are justified, she does not pay sufficient attention to democracy’s need for responsible human individuality and some of the limitations to how democracy can and must be understood. By showing just how much Mouffe draws on the ideas of Carl Schmitt and Sigmund Freud, the incompatibility of her theory with a contemporary understanding of the individual as one whose value in society is recognised by his dignity and his ability to come to terms with his individual character in a democratic setting. The highly influential work of Carl Schmitt on the political, with a focus on its critique of liberalism, as well as Ulrich Beck’s theory of cosmopolitanism are explored in an attempt to fathom their attempts to explain conflict in society and to make sense of the anti-liberal mind set which dominates much of the political discourse today. Democracy, as it is shown, cannot function on grounds of hegemonic struggle since its fundamental ethos rests on the assumption that citizens can feel responsible for their actions and build towards establishing a common framework of values, norms and goals. Establishing contingency as the central democratic feature cannot substitute for the need for deliberative decision making processes. Collective choice theory has provided the insight that egalitarian liberal democracy, which relies on reason to arrive at collective decisions, can only work if citizens do not act as rational individuals pursuing their own interests but instead accept the validity of the notion of some common good. The key task for democracy is therefore that to guarantee for freely accessible institutions which provide the foundation for open debate and decision making processes which are based on giving reasons. Furthermore, the conceptual distinction between separability and separateness shows why society is still struggling to find the right balance between allowing enough space for character development and establishing firm collective identities. If one wants to challenge the populist rise in Western democracies one needs to foster once again the role of the individual in such way that he knows what democracy can and cannot be and will be able to deeply care about it. Populism, as we will see, thrives on discord, fear and appeals to an imaginary ‘will of the people’ which should be confronted with the insight that democracy is based on character formation, individual sacrifice and responsibility and the belief in something larger than decision by majority rule. Therefore, the question is raised how democracy shall be understood if it is to preserve its commitment to individual responsibility, personal development and a notion of the common good but nevertheless addresses the serious and highly topical problems that neo-liberalism, globalism, and post-structuralism pose for society on a socio-political level.
No Democracy for Devils: Democratic Authority and Political Obligation
2017
Like any doctoral journey, mine has been one full of ups and downs. Now that its excitement and bewilderment are over, and that new excitements and bewilderments lie ahead, I am happy to thank all those that have made my journey more cheerful, fascinating and insightful than it would have otherwise been. I am solely responsible for this work, but the result would have been even more flawed without their help. First and foremost, I am grateful to Antonella Besussi, for believing in me and saving my passion for political philosophy. She has always encouraged and urged me to think autonomously and to look after what I thought. For this, I owe her immensely. I wish to thank the whole Political Theory Project and the NASP Graduate School in Social and Political Sciences for illuminating discussions, endless classes, much debated reading groups and helpful conversations, covering far more things than simply my dissertation. I am indebted to all my professors, colleagues and friends who shared this journey with me and made more than three years pass by unnoticed. A special thank must go to Giulia Bistagnino and Francesca Pasquali, for patiently discussing my ideas time and again, especially when I felt I was going astray, but did not know how to get back. They carefully read my work and gave me advice and encouragement when I most needed it. I am also grateful to the Department of Philosophy at the University of Arizona, which welcomed me as one of their PhD students for one term and provided me with first-hand experience of political philosophy as a collective enterprise. In particular, I wish to thank Tom Christiano, David Schmidtz for discussing my and their work with me and for always taking seriously what I had to say. During my PhD I had the chance to discuss the ideas of this dissertation at some conferences and seminars, among which the Summer School in Equality and Citizenship at the University of Rijeka, the ASPP conferences in Amsterdam and London, the workshop on discursive dilemma in Turin, the conference on democracy at the University of Iceland, the colloquium and meeting in moral and political philosophy at the University of Minho and the graduate conference in Pavia. I am grateful to the organizers and participants of these events for their comments, criticisms and suggestions on my work. I am also much indebted to those who generously read all or part of my dissertation and gave me indispensable food for thoughts. In particular, I
Habermas’s Decentered View of Society and the Problem of Democratic Legitimacy
Symposium, 1997
One of the most interesting features of Jiirgen Habermas 's latest work on democracy is his attempt to acknowledge the problem of social complexity while remaining faithfol to the core idea of the Rousseauian conception of democratic legitimacy: the idea that legitimacy is grounded on citizens' participation in processes of opinion-and will-formation which ensure the reasonableness of collective decisions. The challenge for Habermas is to show how it is possible to conciliate the consequences of social complexity with this understanding of legitimacy and popular sovereignty. Does Habermas's attempt succeed? This is the question examined in the present article.
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 2015
These comments take issue with two aspects of the treatment of Rawls in On The People's Terms. First, I criticize the characterization of Rawls as downplaying political liberties and focusing instead on social justice. Second, I take issue with the claim that Pettit provides a more robust conception of legitimacy than Rawls. The basis for this claim is that Rawls, along with others in the Kantian tradition, downplays the question of legitimacy by 'going hypothetical.' Yet in common with Rawls, Pettit's Republican conception of legitimacy imposes a stringent test of legitimacy that many democratic regimes would not pass. This leads him to propose a weaker standard of 'legitimizability' that appears to involve the same kind of counterfactual judgment for which Rawls is criticized.