Normativity, history, and critique in Seyla Benhabib and Rainer Forst
Keywords:
Discourse ethics, normativity, historicity, practical philosophy, critical theoryAbstract
The goal of this paper is to delineate the tension between normativity and history in the philosophical justification of normative standards in critical theory. It aims at analyzing how Seyla Benhabib and Rainer Forst articulate such a tension, particularly in their respective reformulations of discourse ethics. Whereas Benhabib argues for a “historically self-conscious” justification and refers the formulation of normative criteria to the normative hermeneutic horizon of modernity, Forst, although not rejecting a historical strategy of justification, maintains a freestanding and autonomous, recursively grounded principle of justification. The paper also sketches an evaluation of the controversy in relation to the: (i) the conception and the role of history (or historicity); (ii) the kind of guarantee required to the principles; (iii) the perspective of observer/participant in philosophical justification.
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