Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory - Hardcover

Cronin; De Greiff; Habermas

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0745621554 ISBN 13: 9780745621555

Publisher: Polity Press, 1998

Synopsis

The Inclusion of the Other contains Habermas′s most recent work in political theory and political philosophy. Here Habermas picks up some of the central themes of Between Facts and Norms and elaborates them in relation to current political debates. One of the distinctive features of Habermas′s work has been its approach to the problem of political legitimacy through a sustained reflection on the dual legitimating and regulating function of modern legal systems. Extending his discourse theory of normative validity to the legal–political domain, Habermas has defended a proceduralist conception of deliberative democracy in which the burden of legitimating state power is borne by informal and legally institutionalized processes of political deliberation. Its guiding intuition is the radical democratic idea that there is an internal relation between the rule of law and popular sovereignty. In these essays he brings this discursive and proceduralist analysis of political legitimacy to bear on such urgent contemporary issues as the enduring legacy of the welfare state, the future of the nation state, and the prospects of a global politics of human rights. This book will be essential reading for students and academics in sociology and social theory, politics and political theory, philosophy and the social sciences generally.

About this title

Review:

Jürgen Habermas has been awarded the prestigious ′Friedenspreis des deutschen Buchhandels′ prize for 2001

From the Publisher:

An engaging look at Habermas's theory of democracy
Since its appearance in English translation in 1996, Jurgen Habermas's BETWEEN FACTS AND NORMS has become the focus of a productive dialogue between German and Anglo-American legal and political theorists. The present volume contains ten essays that provide an overview of Habermas's political thought since the original appearance of BETWEEN FACTS AND NORMS in 1992 and extend his model of deliberative democracy in novel ways to issues untreated in the earlier work.

Habermas's theory of democracy has at least three features that set it apart from competing positions. First, it combines a concern with questions of normative justification with an empirical analysis of the social conditions necessary for the realization of democratic institutions. Second, at the heart of his model is the assertion of an internal relationship between liberalism and democracy. On this account, the rights of the individual that are central to liberalism can be guaranteed only within a constitutional framework that at the same time fosters democratic rights of political participation through the public sphere. Finally, Habermas calls for legal and political institutions that faciliate the cultivation of cultural and religious identities within pluralistic societies.

These essays demonstrate the extraordinary power of Habermas's theory of democracy through a further engagement with Rawls's political liberalism and through original contributions to current debates on nationalism, multiculturalism, and the viability of supranational political institutions.

Jürgen Habermas is Professor of Philosphy Emeritus at the University of Frankfurt.

Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought

About this edition

• Publisher: Polity Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0745621554
• ISBN 13: 9780745621555
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352