Citizenship and political judgment: Between discourse ethics and phronesis

Res Publica

Volumn 6, Issue 2, 2000, Pages 179-198

  Blaug, Ricardo ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Deliberation; Democracy; Discourse ethics; Habermas; Justification; Kant; Neo aristotelianism; Political judgment; Reflective judgment; Wittgenstein

Indexed keywords

EID: 20444462423     PISSN: 13564765     EISSN: 15728692     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1009613924261     Document Type: Article

References (88)

1. Elements of which include feminism: A Phillips, Engendering Democracy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991); multi-cultural accounts of citizenship: A. Gutmann, ed., Multiculturalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994); and radical democratic theory: A Melucci, "Social Movements and the Democratization of Everday Life", in J. Keane, ed., Civil Society and the State (London: Verso, 1988), 245-60, p. 258.
2. An overview of current theorising about judgment is presented in P. Steinberger, The Concept of Political Judgment (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). The topic is also receiving discussion in the area of political disagreement, for which see A. Gutmann, D. Thompson, Democracy and Disagreement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996) and A. Mason, Explaining Political Disagreement (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
3. S. Toulmin, An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 64.
4. S. Benhabib, Situating the Self (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), 50.
5. J-R Lyotard, J.-L. Thebaud, Just Gaming (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), 25-6.
6. A. Maclntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981);
7. H. Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Seabury Press, 1975).
8. M. Passerin d'Entrèves, "Aristotle or Burke? Some Comments on H. Shnaedelbach's 'What is Neo-Aristotelianism?' ", Praxis International, 1988, 7 3/4, 238-45.
9. J. Habermas, "Three Models of Democracy", Constellations, 1994, 1/1, 1-10, p. 4.
10. J. Habermas, "What is Universal Pragmatics?", in Communication and the Evolution of Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), 1-69.
11. J. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).
12. Ibid., 89.
13. J. Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Vol. 1 (Cambridge, MA: Beacon Press, 1984), 42.
14. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, op. cit., 92;
15. J. Habermas, Justification and Application (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 54-5;
16. A. Ferrara, "A Critique of Habermas' Diskursethik", Telos, 1985, 64, 45-74, p. 63;
17. J. Forester, "Introduction: The Applied Turn in Contemporary Critical Theory", in J. Forester, ed., Critical Theory and Public Life (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1985), ix-xix.
18. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, op. cit., 103.
19. Ibid., 122.
20. F. Jameson, "Foreword" to J-F. Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), x; but see Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, op. cit., 99.
21. S. Benhabib, Situating the Self, op. cit., 158-9.
22. A. Wellmer, The Persistence of Modernity: Aesthetics, Ethics and Postmodernism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 196.
23. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, op. cit. 104, 108.
24. C. Taylor, "The Motivation Behind a Procedural Ethics", in R. Beiner and W.J. Booth, eds, Kant & Political Philosophy: The Contemporary Legacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 337-59, p. 342;
25. Wellmer, The Persistence of Modernity, op. cit., 155.
26. G.W.R Hegel, Philosophy of Right (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 75-104;
27. G.W.R Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 252-61;
28. S. Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 70-84.
29. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, op. cit., 195-215.
30. Wellmer, The Persistence of Modernity, op. cit., 206.
31. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action op. cit., 104, 179, 206;
32. Habermas, Justification and Application op. cit., 13, 36;
33. K. Gunther, The Sense of Appropriateness: Application Discourses in Morality and Law (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 229-46.
34. Habermas, Justification and Application, op, cit., 39;
35. D. Ingram. "The Limits and Possibilities of Communicative Ethics for Democratic Theory", Political Theory, 1993, 21/2, 294-321.
36. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, op. cit., 86;
37. Habermas, Justification and Application, op. cit., 39;
38. J. Habermas, "Struggles for Recognition in Constitutional States", European Journal of Philosophy, 1993, 1/2, 128-55, pp. 139, 144.
39. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, op. cit., 181-2, 206-7;
40. Habermas, Justification and Application, op. cit., 10, 14, 17;
41. Gunther, The Sense of Appropriateness, op. cit., 11.
42. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, op. cit.
43. R. Beiner, Political Judgment (London: Methuen, 1983), 37;
44. Habermas, Justification and Application, op. cit., 63.
45. I. Kant, Critique of Judgment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), Section IV.
46. A. Ferrara, "Authenticity and the Project of Modernity", European Journal of Philosophy, 1994, 2/3, 241-73, p. 255.
47. While Habermas explicitly denies that his account of expert judgment is one of moral rigourism, he is in fact addressing criticisms that he has paid insufficient attention to the role of emotional dispositions in applicatory judgment: see Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, op. cit., 182 and Gunther, The Sense of Appropriateness, op. cit., 161-5. But the problem with Habermas's account of mature judgment is not that it completely ignores emotions, relationships and ethical questions. Though, within his scheme, these aspects enter as conditions and components of solidarity (J. Habermas, "Justice and Solidarity: On the Discussion Concerning 'Stage 6' ", in M. Kelly, ed., Hermeneutics and Critical Theory in Ethics and Politics (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), 32-52, p. 47), they still appear as secondary to the intellectual aspects, owing mostly to the strongly normative orientation of his position. The charge here is not so much moral rigourism, but more a kind of cerebralism; for on his account, all human capacities, emotional and intellectual, are seen to be oriented, in the act of judgment, to assessing the quantity of the ideal contained in each particular.
48. Benhabib, Situating the Self, op. cit., 148-77.
49. C. Gilligan, In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982).
50. Wellmer, The Persistence of Modernity, op. cit., 155.
51. Benhabib, Situating the Self, op. cit.;
52. T. McCarthy, "Practical Discourse: On the Relation of Morality to Politics", in Ideals and Illusions (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991), 181-99;
53. A. Ferrara, "Postmodern Eudaimonia", Praxis International, 1992, 11/4, 387-411;
54. A. Ferrara, Justice and Judgement (London: Sage, 1999).
55. Kant, Critique of Judgment, op. cit., 141.
56. R. Makkreel, "Kant and the Interpretation of Nature and History", in M. Kelly, ed., Hermeneutics and Critical Theory in Ethics and Politics, op. cit., 169-81.
57. H. Arendt, Between Past and Future (London: Penguin, 1961), 219;
58. H. Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy (R. Beiner, ed.) (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982), 7-78.
59. M. Passerin d'Entrèves, The Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt (London: Routledge, 1994), 114.
60. Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, op. cit., 76.
61. Habermas, Justification and Application, op. cit., 54-5;
62. the logical structure of an invalid "approximation assumption" is fully examined in A. Margalit, "Ideals and Second Bests", in S. Fox, ed., Philosophy for Education (Jerusalem: Van Leer Foundation, 1983), 77-90.
63. A. Wellmer, "Reason, Utopia, and the Dialectic of Enlightenment", in R. J. Bernstein, ed., Habermas and Modernity (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1985), 35-66, p. 61.
64. A. Maclntyre, "Does Applied Ethics Rest on a Mistake?", The Monist, 1984, 67, 498-513.
65. H.L. Dreyfus and S.E. Dreyfus, "What is Morality? A Phenomenological Account of the Development of Ethical Expertise", in D. Rasmussen, ed., Universalism vs. Communitarianism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 237-64, p. 239.
66. Ibid., 238.
67. Wellmer, The Persistence of Modernity, op. cit., 227.
68. R. Bambrough, "Universals and Family Resemblances", Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 1961, 61, 207-22, p. 207.
69. E. Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), 17-18.
70. Ibid., 18.
71. L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (New York: Macmillan, 1969), paras. 66, 67.
72. Bambrough, "Universals and Family Resemblances", op. cit., 211.
73. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, op. cit., para. 66.
74. R. Beiner, "Do We Need a Philosophical Ethics? Theory, Prudence, and the Primacy of Ethos", The Philosophical Forum, 1989, 20/3, 230-43.
75. Dreyfus and Dreyfus, "What is Morality?", op. cit., 243.
76. A.J. Vetlesen, Perception, Empathy, and Judgment: An Inquiry into the Preconditions of Moral Performance (Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994);
77. C. Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
78. Habermas, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, op. cit., 182.
79. See Habermas's charge that Hubert Dreyfus is "undermining Western Society" with his account of judgment, and the latter's gleeful acceptance of the charge, in B. Flyvbjerg, "Sustaining Non-Rationalized Practices: Body-Mind, Power and stuational Ethics. An Interview with Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus", Praxis International, 1991, 1/11, 93-113, p. 93.
80. Benhabib, Situating the Self, op. cit., 36;
81. A. Heller, "The Discourse Ethics of Habermas: Critique and Appraisal", Thesis Eleven, 1984, 10/11, 5-17, p. 7.
82. Benhabib, Situating the Self, op. cit., 38.
83. C.R. Sunstein, Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech (New York: Free Press, 1993);
84. F.I. Michelman, "Can Constitutional Democrats be Legal Positivists?", Constellations, 1996, 2/3, 293-308.
85. R. Blaug, Democracy, Real and Ideal: Discourse Ethics and Radical Politics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 125-6.
86. J. Ober, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 161.
87. Vetlesen, Perception, Empathy, and Judgment, op. cit., 106.
88. J. Tully, "Wittgenstein and Political Philosophy: Understanding Practices of Critical Reflection", Political Theory, 1989, 17/2, 172-204.