David M. Rasmussen

Defending reasonability The centrality of reasonability in the later Rawls

Against arguments that suggest that Rawls’s notion of reasonability is ‘obscure’ and ‘unclear’ I argue in this essay that the idea of reasonability in the later Rawls can be defended in three ways. First, it can be shown that reasonability is fundamental to the architectonic of the later work. Reasonability, and the subordination of reason to reasonability, is fundamental to the later (post-1980) writings. Second, it can be shown that reasonability is not necessarily a vague term as many have claimed. Third, it can be shown that reasonability is fundamental to what Rawls calls the three major new ideas of Political Liberalism: overlapping consensus; the reconception of the priority of the right over the good; and the idea of public reason.

Between Autonomy and Sociality

When Alfred Schutz published Der si1l1lhafte Aufbau der Sozialen Weltl in the year 1932 a distinct and marked transition was made from the phenomenology of perception, synthesis and temporality which had been stressed heretofore by the somewhat extraordinary labors of Edmund Husserl to a phenomenology which attempted to account for sociality and action. Schutz used the insights of transcendental phenomenology both

Moral consciousness and communicative action

Introduction by Thomas McCarthy. Philosophy as Stand--In and Interpreter. Reconstruction and Interpretation in the Social Sciences. Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Morality and Ethical Life: Does Hegela s Critique of Kant Apply to Discourse Ethics?. Index.

Legitimacy, sovereignty, solidarity and cosmopolitanism On the recent work of Jürgen Habermas

I read this paper, ‘A Plea for the Constitutionalization of International Law’, as an extension of the problematic taken up in Zur Verfassung Europas: Ein Essay (2011), translated as The Crisis of the European Union: A Response, the lecture, ‘Democracy, Solidarity, and the European Crisis’ (2013) and the essay ‘A Political Constitution for a Pluralist World Society’ (2008). This paper on the constitutionalization of international law builds on ideas taken from these quite recent works and it achieves an elegant level of generalization that goes beyond them. The general context for the constitutionalization of international law has been the ‘juridification of international relations’ which began after the Second World War leading to a fundamental change in our understanding of state power, suggesting a potential transnationalization of democracy. What is new in Habermas’ position regarding both the problems of the European Union and the concept of world citizenship is the special use of the concept of mixed constituent power, pouvoir constituant mixte. Although this idea is as old as Emmanuel Sieyes and James Madison, Habermas gives it a new meaning. The idea is that the development of constitutional law within the EU represents the potential for a new stage in international law viewed from the perspective of an historical reconstruction, which was originally framed by Kant. In contrast to the Euro skeptics Habermas constructs ‘a convincing new narrative’ which will characterize the potential development of the EU as a new stage in the process of the constitutionalization of international law as we move from the national to the transnational or supranational level of democratic development.

The Emerging Domain of the Political

This essay deals with two conceptions of the political, one that entails a clash of civilizations associated with a Schmittian critique of liberalism and a second which envisions the political as an emerging domain. The latter idea can be associated with the later work of John Rawls which separates the comprehensive from the political. I argue that it is this idea, when reconstructed in relationship to a theory of multiple modernities, that can be appropriated for an emerging notion of global justice. Hence, it is in the domain of the political that we should look for a global concept of justice.

Explorations of the Lebenswelt: Reflections on Schutz and Habermas

No one doubts Schutz’s contribution to the development of social theory and social philosophy. He was, indeed, a thinker of unique character and ability. My concern here is not to test the validity of Schutz’s theory; history after all has made its judgment. Rather, my purpose will be to consider the extent to which that which Alfred Schutz began in social theory can be carried on. For purposes of analysis and comparison I shall characterize Schutz’s contribution as threefold: first, his usage and development of phenomenological theory adapted from Husserl to account for the constitution of the social world; second, Schutz’s account of the construction of the social world on the basis of face-to-face relations; and third, Schutz’s critique of Weber. I should add that when I turn to a consideration of Habermas I shall reverse the order of analysis.

Symbol and interpretation

I: Symbol and Language.- On Multiple Realities.- Potentiality, Givenness, Heritage, Memory.- Actualization and Meaning.- Multiple Realities.- Language and the Symbol.- Language and Consciousness.- Language as Isomorphic to Consciousness.- Conclusion.- II: Mircea Eliade: Structural Hermeneutics and Philosophy.- The Symbol as a Dimension of Consciousness.- The Method for Establishing the Symbol as a Valid Form.- Conclusion.- III: Paul Ricoeur: The Anthropological Necessity of a Special Language.- The Question.- Philosophy of the Will.- Freedom and Nature.- Fallible Man.- The Symbolism of Evil.- An Answer.- Conclusion.- IV: Myth, Structure and Interpretation.- From Evolution to Structure.- Structural Hermeneutics.- Archaic Ontology.- Conclusion.- V: Toward a Theoretical Foundation for a Correlation Between Literary and Religious Discourse.- Background.- Theory of Language: The Possibility of a Phenomenological Model.- Hermeneutics: the Interpretation of Special Languages.- Conclusion.- VI: Socio-Political Symbolism and the Transformation of Consciousness.- The Conflict of Rationality: Operational and Dialectical.- Utopian Symbolism.- Symbol, Seriality, and the Group Resolve.- Symbol, Structure and Philosophical Anthropology.- Conclusion.

Mircea Eliade: Structural Hermeneutics and Philosophy

In some ways the theoretical issue, the problem of the last chapter, cannot be solved without moving toward the concrete task of interpretation. if it can be established that the symbol is a distinctive linguistic phenomenon with its own rubrics and properties, the next task will be the encounter with concrete symbols, the problem of interpretation. Mircea Eliade’s contribution to the development of a theory of interpretation is the development of a hermeneutic which incorporates phenomenological and structural motifs. In this discussion the issue which will in some sense dominate the rest of the book is presented, namely, the issue of the meaning of symbols as authentic representations and articulations of human experience. Here specifically the problem of the religious symbol is discussed; later other types of symbols will be considered. The theoretical framework of the last chapter provides the foundation for the development of this hermeneutic orientation.

Mutual recognition: No justification without legitimation

I want to start with a proposition about the relationship between justification and legitimation that has its origin neither in the earlier nor the later Rawls, which Sebastiano Maffettone’s fine book on Rawls seeks to link through the presentation of a certain version of the continuity thesis. The modern association between justification and legitimation can be found in Kant’s attempt to overcome the problem of coercion that was the conundrum (those who disagree with the General Will must be forced to be free) implicit in Rousseau’s argument for the General Will. Kant’s resolution of that dilemma was to place coercion within the definition of freedom (my freedom is simultaneous with the freedom of everyone else). Hence, and this is Kant’s proposition, the justification of freedom, according to Kant, would include a public legitimation of coercion. I know from certain prior writings of Sebastiano’s that he was suspicious of the attempt to identify justification with legitimation, finding the philosopher’s attempt at justification to be quite different from the more public notion of legitimation that requires – let us face it – the right to coerce. In a paper written some years ago he gave a powerful example of the dissociation between justification and legitimation from an Italian film, Una giornata particolare (‘A Special Day’, 1977) in which the characters played by Marcello Mastroianni and Sophia Loren appear isolated and alone in a room, believing in the truth of democracy (justification). Meanwhile a crowd outside celebrates the experience of fascism, actually the first meeting of Hitler and Mussolini, as a manifestation of public consensus (legitimation). With this vivid image in mind it came as no surprise that the topics justification and legitmation would play such a central role in Sebastiano’s book on Rawls. What was surprising, however, was to see the thesis that ‘justification and legitimation must be seen as complementary’. Given his relative uneasiness with regard to this thesis illustrated in his reference to fascism (‘a country can legitimate a dictator through consent’) but also with regard to religion in the context of the discussion of

Hermeneutics and public deliberation

In recent years much has been made of the use of hermeneutics as a tool for the interpretation and the analysis of public deliberation. In particular, it has been Gadamer’s formidable reconstruction and rehabilitation of that term that has been central to the debate over the use of hermeneutics for purposes of public deliberation and, for that matter, for the ‘public use of reason’. In the following I want to consider some of the pros and cons of the issue, i.e. of the potential relationship between hermeneutics and public deliberation. In the first section of the paper I want to consider an aspect of Gadamer’s presentation of hermeneutics in Truth and Method. In the second section I will consider an important criticism of Gadamer’s characterization of hermeneutics. In the third section I want to examine some positive interpretations of that presentation from the point of view of public deliberation. Finally, I will draw some conclusions regarding the potential of hermeneutics as a philosophical foundation for an examination of public deliberation. To anticipate my conclusions, I find that the intersubjective reconstruction of Heidegger’s concept of mitwelt to be informative, based as it is on the paradigmatic I–Thou relationship performed by Gadamer, although I am somewhat disappointed by a certain normative deficit implicit in that characterization.