The radical ethics of critical theory, from Marx to Habermas, proposes principles through which ethical deliberations might be pursued. The radical nature of Habermas’s ethics involves a recognition of “the other” as worthy and valid in their own right. Such radical openness to others has the potential of transforming us toward what is better. When an individual’s conception of the good life necessitates an awareness and orientation toward what is good for “others,” ethics converges with the moral point of view through what is just: the good life as synonymous with just living. The chapter begins with a compelling story of a Ugandan peaceworker through which the authors draw out critical ethical principles. Then, the authors apply the radical ethics of Habermas’s critical theory to the contemporary US policy discourse around trans athletes’ participation in school sports. That discourse is analyzed according the principles introduced through the story at the beginning of the chapter.

The first chapter of the book develops a normative theory of court organisation and decision-making. It provides the normative framework to assess the development and state of the ECJ’s procedural and organisational law. The chapter argues that the procedure and organisation of a court should depend on its role in a political system. To develop this argument, it presents three ideal models of court decision-making: a liberal model, a rule of law model and a democratic model. The liberal model is associated with the theoretical work of Christoph Möllers. He sees the role of courts as protecting individual liberty. The litigants need to be at the centre of the judicial process. The rule of law model, which I associate with Niklas Luhmann’s theory of the judicial process, sees the role of courts not so much in the service of the individual; rather it sees the judicial process as instrumental for creating normative stability by inducing acceptance for court decisions as authoritative interpretations of the law. Finally, the democratic model, that I associate with the theory of adjudication by Jürgen Habermas, conceptualizes courts as democratic organs of a political community. They need to connect to the will of a political community and aim for a procedure that embeds a court’s work in the public sphere.

Chapter 2 critiques two prominent approaches to the question of difference and disagreement. Engaging with John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas’s accounts of “deliberative democracy,” the chapter first argues that discursive approaches to democracy “aim too high.” They overestimate the degree to which a basic “liberal public culture” is secure, and do not provide convincing accounts of how citizens can become (and continue to be) steadfast liberal democrats who will do what it takes to sustain liberal democracy. The chapter then probes “realist” approaches to democracy. Focusing on William Connolly and Chantal Mouffe’s accounts of “democratic agonism,” the chapter argues that realist approaches “aim too low.” They overestimate the ability of sound institutions to channel difference and disagreement, and do not adequately acknowledge the need for a sense of unity to prevent difference and disagreement from spiralling out of control. This chapter concludes that liberal democracy must be supported by a sense of unity that is oriented toward the preservation of liberal democracy and that does not unduly suppress difference and disagreement.

The growth of consumption in the eighteenth century helped produce new cultural practices associated with the Enlightenment. Books were a special sort of consumer good. Their proliferation and variety encouraged multiple modes of reading that changed the relationship not only between reader and text but between self and society. While novels invited “intensive reading” and encouraged the belief in an inner emotional world, books, newspapers, and ephemeral literature stimulated “extensive reading” and the formation of a vibrant public sphere. Although the public sphere was not as bourgeois, rational, and oppositional as Jürgen Habermas claimed, the circulation of print did broaden and intensify public discussion of reformist projects. Consumption also shaped Enlightenment sociability. The material environments of Enlightenment sites of sociability facilitated socio-intellectual interaction. Men and women ate meals at salons, sipped coffee at cafés, and sported new fashions in public gardens, giving rise to robust conversational publics. Such polite sociability softened social hierarchies insofar as it created a broad cultural elite among the nobility and certain professional groups, but it also created new forms of exclusion on the basis of wealth and property. Although plebeian sociability sometimes intersected with that of elites, it often unfolded in the separate arenas of the tavern, street, and marketplace. Gender, too, remained a vector of exclusion, though wealthier women devised ways to participate in salons and attend public gatherings.

Within the Frankfurt School tradition of critical social theory Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth propose intersubjectivist conceptions of freedom, in which the freedom of individual human subjects develops adequately only in relationship with other human subjects. Their conceptions incorporate intuitions central to conceptions of negative as well as positive liberty, while moving beyond either of these traditions of thinking about freedom.In Part One of my contribution to this volume I argue that Habermas’ and Honneth’s conceptions of freedom should be viewed as a “paradigm shift” in the Western modern tradition of thinking about freedom. Their decisive move is to conceive of individual freedom as constitutively intersubjective – as a mode of human being in the world that comes into existence and develops only in certain kinds of relationship with other humans. With this, they destabilize once and for all the polarity between negative and positive freedom. I see this as an important and valuable move. However, in Part Two I argue that the constitutively intersubjective accounts of freedom offered respectively by Habermas and Honneth are, in different ways, unsatisfactory. In Part Three I propose an alternative constitutively intersubjective account of freedom.

This chapter is concerned with the concepts of compromise and deliberative democracy. When compromise takes place between two or more parties, reciprocity must be present; that is, the concessions are mutual. It is argued that compromise and deliberative democracy are important in facilitating a healthy discourse between the majority and minorities about group rights and the extent of state interference in minority affairs. With proponents of discourse ethics, public reason and deliberative democracy, such as Jürgen Habermas, Joshua Cohen, Seyla Benhabib, John Dryzek, Amy Gutmann and Dennis F. Thompson, it is argued that this is a desirable approach to negotiating and resolving conflicts. The chapter agrees with Monique Deveaux that deliberative democracy is an invaluable resource for thinking about how liberal democracies and minority cultural groups might mediate conflicts of culture.

The main purpose of this chapter is to provide a summary of the main intellectual contributions that the German sociologist and philosopher Jürgen Habermas has made to contemporary social theory. To this end, the chapter provides an overview of his life and career; principal areas of research; conception of critical theory; interpretation of relevant intellectual traditions; and his plea for a paradigm shift, commonly known as the “linguistic turn.” The final section grapples with the main limitations and shortcomings of Habermas’s oeuvre, notably with regard to his theory of communicative action.

Simon Susen is Professor of Sociology at City, University of London. He is an Associate Member of the Bauman Institute and, together with Bryan S. Turner, editor of the Journal of Classical Sociology.

This chapter reconstructs JŸrgen Habermas's critical theory of domination and uses it to examine the relationship between welfare institutions and democratic social movements. While most scholars approach Habermas as a normative theorist who identifies the moral basis for political critique and democracy in the universal features of human communication, the chapter focuses on another aspect of Habermas's thought: his analysis of the practices through which domination is sustained as well as overcome. The chapter develops two concepts from Habermas's early thought: the causality of fate and the dialectic of moral life. The first term refers to the peculiar manner in which individuals who exist within a structure of domination come to understand themselves as participants in that structure; while the second refers to the political dynamic through which that recognition propels the potential transformation of that structure. The chapter then turns to the critique of gender domination in the Sweden to show how Habermas's categories can help illuminate concrete struggles in the welfare state.

At Environmental Studies at the University of Oslo, students began their semester by taking a weeklong hike over the scenic Hardangervidda mountain plateau. It was designed to take the students away from the capitalist and industrial setting of the city and deep into the periphery of a picturesque nature. Empowered by the mountains they could enter the valleys of industrialism and shallow ecological thinking with a do-gooding gaze of knowing what’s right from wrong. The institution was the intellectual think tank for the Deep Ecologists who were under attack from both Marxists, who saw them as counter-revolutionary, and supporters of the European Community, who thought they were unable to appreciate international cooperation empowered by capitalism. These tensions would energize and radicalize Environmental Studies scholars towards an ideological vision of a future world in ecological equilibrium. Environmental Studies was to point out an alternative direction for the nation other than communism and consumer capitalism. As the vanguard of social change, the scholars associated with Environmental Studies saw themselves as harboring an environmental vision for Norway that could inspire the world.