Critical Encounters with Habermas's Political and Legal Theory

Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-74403-5
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 336, 326 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm

Reihe: Studies in Critical Social Sciences

With over a dozen contributions from scholars across a range of disciplines, this book revisits Jürgen Habermas’s defining text on legal and political theory, Between Facts and Norms (1992). The contributors interrogate the prospects for Habermas’s optimistic defense of liberal democracy in our current age of straining global capitalism and menacing authoritarian populisms. The authors arrive at different conclusions, with some contributors engaging directly with his theory while others assessing it through the prisms of political economy, the media, policing, employment discrimination law, international relations theory, social movements, democratic institutions and the historical context of Between Facts and Norms.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Abromeit, John

Dimick, Matthew

Linden-Retek, Paul

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Wirtschaftspolitik, politische Ökonomie
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Rechtsphilosophie, Rechtsethik
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Systeme Demokratie
• Rechtswissenschaften Recht, Rechtswissenschaft Allgemein Rechtsphilosophie, Rechtsethik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Editors

1 Introduction: the Pasts and Futures of Between Facts and Norms – a Critical Exchange John Abromeit, Matthew Dimick and Paul Linden-Retek

Part 1: BFN and the Challenge of Neoliberalism and Political Economy

2 Historicizing Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms: a Critique from the Perspective of Early Frankfurt School Critical Theory John Abromeit

3 Between Facts and Norms at 30: Habermas, Neoliberalism and Radical Democracy Brian Caterino and Phillip Hansen

4 What’s Left? Democratic Theory in Between Facts and Norms after Three Decades William E. Scheuerman

5 How the Legal Form Distorts Public and Private Autonomy Matthew Dimick

6 Why Proceduralism Is Not Enough: Reading Habermas in an Age of Democratic Decline Michael J. Thompson

Part 2: BFN and Political (and Legal) Theory

7 Democratic Theory’s Existential Crisis: between Discourse and Partisan Empowerment David Ingram

8 Is Democratic Legitimacy Purely Procedural? An Institutional Account of the Legitimacy of Democratic Decision-Making Cristina Lafont

9 In Search of Counter-Tendencies: on the Heuristic Potential of the Public Sphere in Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms Rúrion Melo

10 Between Facts and Norms Facing Pseudo-Democracy Isabelle Aubert

11 Policing the Public Sphere Erin R. Pineda

12 A Great Misrecognition: How Between Facts and Norms Was Conflated with (but Resists) the Cosmopolitan Moment in 1990s International Relations Theory Matthew Specter

13 Afterword: the Specter of Popular Sovereignty in Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms After Three Decades Seyla Benhabib

Index

Über Autor(innen)

John Abromeit (Professor of History at SUNY, Buffalo State) is the author of Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and the co-editor of several volumes, including: Siegfried Kracauer: Selected Writings on Media, Propaganda and Political Communication (Columbia University Press, 2022).

Matthew Dimick (Professor of Law and Director of the Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy at the University at Buffalo School of Law) is the author of Ending Income Inequality (Cambridge University Press, 2025). His research addresses the law and political economy of income inequality, capitalism and the administrative state, and the historical epistemology of race and employment discrimination law.

Paul Linden-Retek (Associate Professor of Law, University at Buffalo School of Law) writes and teaches in the areas of constitutional law, international human rights, and critical legal theory, with an emphasis on comparative law, European Union law, and refugee law.