Max Pensky

Method and time

Its not that what is past casts its light on what is present, or what is present its light on the past; rather, image is that wherein what has been comes together in a flash with the now to form a constellation. In other words, image is dialectics at a standstill. For while the relation of the present to the past is a purely temporal, continuous one, the relation of what-has-been to the now is dialectical: is not progression but image, suddenly emergent. – Only dialectical images are genuine images (that is, not archaic); and the place where one encounters them is language. “Awakening” ( Arcades , 462; n2a, 3) Reading this well-known entry from the “N” convolute of Benjamins Arcades Project , even the most seasoned Benjamin expert might be forgiven a feeling of helplessness in the face of such a powerful and enigmatic array of claims. The breathtaking evocation of an alternative temporality that this quote contains in characteristically elliptical and compacted form, the glimpse at an entirely new conception of historiography that breaks with previous categories of interpretation, the notion of an image-based historical sensibility as the genuine mode of historical interpretation – these are as fascinating and compelling as any moment in modern philosophy. But, at the same time, one cannot avoid the feeling that this quote, and others like it in Benjamins Arcades Project , is a theoretical promissory note that would prove difficult if not impossible to redeem. What possible philosophy of history could explicate the difference between the past and “what-has-been,” between the present and the “now”?

Cosmopolitanism and the Solidarity Problem: Habermas on National and Cultural Identities

This paper argues that some implications of globalization, and of cosmopolitanism understood as a considered political response to globalization, have rendered the distinction between national identity and cultural identity deeply problematic. Cosmopolitan projects that do not aim at the creation of a world state but rather at a “mid-level” set of institutional and procedural measures toward a global democratic order, such as that of Jürgen Habermas, depend upon a reasonably robust normative distinction between national identity as a primary disabling condition for cosmopolitan democracy and cosmopolitan forms of solidarity generally, on one side, and cultural identity as an enabling condition for subjects accommodating themselves to democratic procedures in multicultural states on the other. The argument will trace the relation between national and cultural identities in Habermas’s position, and will show how this relation grows problematic. My closing remarks will suggest that the cosmopolitan project, rather than trying to find a way around this problem, should confront it squarely, and acknowledge that it is precisely the loss of cultural identities in the face of globalization processes that can serve as the basis for a substantive cosmopolitan global ethics. Habermas has defended a rather temperate version of the project of cosmopolitan democracy. He explicitly rejects the ambition of a world democratic state, and has instead called for measures to provide new institutional foundations, or strengthen existing ones, that can support popular sovereignty, democratic procedures, and legal protections beyond the framework of the nation-state. Habermas’s position is, at heart, a legal cosmopolitanism that serves to advance a moral argument against the specific ethical substance of the modern nation-state. Specifically, Habermasian cosmopolitanism is the claim that the inherent contradiction between the particularism of national identity and the universalism of subjective rights can only effectively be compensated if the legal institutions and processes that recognize and enforce basic rights are removed from the level of the sovereign nation state to an as-yet unrealized institutionalization of coercive cosmopolitan law.1 Habermas recognizes, of course, that such a project would require a considerable change in the political self-understanding of global political actors. Such a change can be reasonably expected only on the basis of a form of cosmopolitan solidarity beyond national borders on the part of citizens, a solidarity that can serve as a resource of social integration and political motivation beyond traditional nation-states.2

Natural History: the Life and Afterlife of a Concept in Adorno

Abstract Theodor Adornos concept of ‘natural history’ [Naturgeschichte] was central for a number of Adornos theoretical projects, but remains elusive. In this essay, analyse different dimensions of the concept of natural history, distinguishing amongst (a) a reflection on the normative and methodological bases of philosophical anthropology and critical social science; (b) a conception of critical memory oriented toward the preservation of the memory of historical suffering; and (c) the notion of ‘mindfulness of nature in the subject’ provocatively asserted in Max Horkheimer and Adornos Dialectic of Enlightenment. These strands are united by the notion of transience and goal of developing a critical theory sensitive to the transient in history. The essay concludes by suggesting some implications of an expanded concept of natural history for issues in the discourse theory of Jürgen Habermas.

on the use and abuse of memory: habermas, "anamnestic solidarity," and the historikerstreit

The book of German history, remarkable for its absence of blank pages, is now being opened and scrutinized once again. Predictably, this reopening of the book of the German past has lead to a great deal of discord and contradiction; the Historikerstrelt, which arose primarily as a result of attempts to read this awful book selectively, also has reopened a series of unresolved questions concerning the nature of history, memory, and the relation between the present and the recent past.

Beyond the Message in a Bottle: The Other Critical Theory

Book reviewed in this article: Alex Demirovic, Der nonkonformistische Intellektuelle. Die Entwicklung der Kritischen Theorie zur Frankfurter Schule

The amnesty controversy in international law

Amnesty provisions offered by states as components of peacemaking or of longer term transitional processes are surely among the most controversial aspects of contemporary transitional justice. The offer of immunity from criminal prosecution to perpetrators of the most heinous of crimes is undeniably at odds with the demand for retribution, an affront to victims and survivors, and potentially a blow to the longer term prospects of establishing and strengthening legal institutions and the rule of law in transitional states. And yet amnesties have also undeniably proven themselves important components of negotiations that have resolved protracted conflicts or restored democracy after periods of authoritarian rule. Arguments for and against domestic amnesties for serious crimes under international law are many and complex, in keeping with the remarkable number and diversity of amnesty policies and measures that have emerged in transitional contexts around the world over the past several decades. However, since the 1990s at least, an anti-impunity position has taken hold across a wide spectrum of international legal and political bodies such as the United Nations Secretariat and the IACHR, as well as international NGOs and academics. According to this position, as Kathryn Sikkink discusses in her chapter in this volume, individual criminal accountability for serious crimes under international law is a cornerstone of a global human rights community. Domestic amnesties that waive prosecution of individuals for designated acts are thus at odds with the basic values of such a community, and for this reason should be interpreted as contrary to states’ commitments under international law. The position, in other words, entails the project of removing amnesties, especially in relation to international crimes such as genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity, from the political and legal tool kits of transitional states.

Memory, catastrophe, destruction

For some time now, urban theorists have looked for inspiration to the pioneering metropolitan works of Walter Benjamin, the German Jewish literary critic who tragically took his own life in 1940 while attempting to flee Nazi‐occupied France. In this essay, philosopher Max Pensky examines some of the key components of Benjamins description of modern, urban life. Specifically, he contrasts Benjamins understanding of the modern capitalist city as a locus of both myth making and breaking with Sigmund Freuds attempt to equate the urban experience with psychic development itself. While both Freud and Benjamin suggest that the modern city is a site of collective memory, Pensky argues that Benjamins dialectical approach is, in the end, more capable of capturing the redemptive, or utopian, potential of the urban environment. Despite surface similarities, Freud and Benjamins analysis of urban psychic life are actually quite distinct and lead to very different conceptions of the citys relation to both individual and collective psychic experience.

Two cheers for the impunity norm

International criminal law (ICL) is dedicated to the battle against impunity. However, the concept of impunity lacks clarity. Providing that clarity also reveals challenges for the current state and future prospects of the project of ICL, which this article frames in cosmopolitan terms. The ‘impunity norm’ of ICL is generally presented in a deontic form. It holds that impunity for perpetrators of international crimes is a wrong so profound that states and international bodies have a pro tanto duty to prosecute and punish perpetrators, a duty that cannot be overridden by considerations of cost, including the costs of infringing on the traditionally understood legal sovereignty of states. This deontic reading of the impunity norm is difficult to justify, a fact linked to the waning fortunes of ICL over the past several years. If ICL is to reverse this trend, the impunity norm’s strongly deontic reading should be replaced by a version derived from deliberative principles.

Solidarity as fact or norm?: Social integration between system and lifeworld

The second chapter of Hauke Brunkhorst’s book, entitled ‘Social Integration without Solidarity’, identifies the two syndromes of social exclusion characteristic of modern societies: marginalization and pauperization. The chapter serves as a hinge connecting the thick conceptual-historical reconstruction of solidarity in the first section, and the diagnosis and prognosis of post-national and global solidarities of nascent strong publics in the book’s concluding section. The diagnosis of the twin syndromes of marginalization and pauperization is therefore at the core of Brunkhorst’s presentation, and warrants a separate treatment. The diagnosis of social pathology initially conforms to a model familiar from the social theory tradition stretching from Weber to Habermas and Luhmann. In both cases of marginalization and pauperization (or empoverishment), the diagnosis of social exclusion follows as a consequence of a loss of solidarity. The loss of solidarity, in turn, arises as undemocratic (or non-discursive) social subsystems of bureaucratic administration or market economies assume a disproportionate and eventually hegemonic role in the work of social integration. For this reason, Brunkhorst confirms the late-functionalist thesis that ‘successful’ functional systems begin to generate profoundly dysfunctional results for complex societies at the moment when the forces of social solidarity lose the competition for the primary mechanism of social integration:

Truth and Interest: On Habermas’s Postscript to Nietzsche’s Theory of Knowledge

For anyone familiar with Jurgen Habermas’s views on Nietzsche only through the scathing, global critique of Nietzsche’s irrationalism and its consequences in the Philosophical Discourse of Modernity,1 the reading of Nietzsche on offer in Habermas’s earlier “Postscript”2 to Nietzsche’s theory of knowledge will come as a surprise. While certainly no less critical of Nietzsche’s rejection of epistemology in favor of perspectivalism, Habermas’s reading of the second Untimely Meditation and the essay “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense” exhibits an intense interest in, and indeed a proximity to his subject that is virtually absent in the later work: in 1968, Habermas clearly recognizes something important at stake in one moment of the inner development of Nietzsche’s post-epistemological thinking, rather than merely the philosophical-political consequences of Nietzsche’ s thought taken as a totality.