Defending Reason

Beyond Reason ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 52-84
Author(s):  
Sanjay Seth
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Jurgen Habermas ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Modern Knowledge ◽  
Way Of Knowing

This chapter provides a postcolonial critique of those defenders of a universal and singular Reason who, forced to acknowledge that modern knowledge has been shaped by its historical and cultural contexts, nonetheless seek to provide reasons why the presuppositions undergirding the social sciences have a claim to transhistorical and transcultural validity. Engaging in detail with the defenses of Reason mounted by Jürgen Habermas, Karl-Otto Apel, and John Rawls, it argues that these are not persuasive because they presuppose that which they seek to validate or “ground.” It concludes that modern knowledge is a historically and culturally specific way of knowing and being in the world, that there are good reasons to doubt that it transcends these particularities, and that while modern Western knowledge has become global, that does not validate the claim that it is universal.

scholarly journals Understanding the geographies of religion and secularity: on the potentials of a broader exchange between geography and the (post-) secularity debate

2018 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 285-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Glasze ◽  
Thomas M. Schmitt
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cultural Geography ◽  
Second Step ◽  
Social Significance ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
Peter Berger ◽  
Jurgen Habermas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Context Dependent

Abstract. For a long time, the mainstream of social and cultural geography seems to have implicitly accepted that religion is becoming obsolete and is of little social significance. However, since the 1990s, religion has aroused new interest in the social sciences in general, and to some extent also in social and cultural geography. Against this backdrop, a controversial discussion has started in geography on the relevance of theories of secularisation and the notion of post-secularity, as well as on possible contributions to these debates. The paper introduces the interdisciplinary debate on revisions of theories of secularisation and the promotion of post-secular perspectives, referring, among others, to Jürgen Habermas, Peter Berger, José Casanova, and Talal Asad. In a second step, we argue that an understanding of post-secularity that focuses on the contingency and context-dependent delimitation of the secular and the religious promises to be fruitful for social and cultural geography and can help us to understand the geographies of religion and secularity.

scholarly journals A “We” Problem for Bioethics and the Social Sciences

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bob Simpson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Informed Consent ◽  
South Asian ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
Ethical Life ◽  
Culturally Specific ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

In her article “The ‘We’ in the Me: Solidarity in the Era of Personalized Medicine,” Barbara Prainsack develops an earlier interest in the relationship between solidarity and autonomy and the way that these notions operate once passed through the lens of bioethical thought and practice. In his response to this article, Simpson introduces the perspective of two South Asian physicians on these issues. The piece highlights issues of personhood upon which the informed consent transaction is based and draws attention to the culturally specific versions of how people conceive of relationality, duty, care, and the obligations they feel they owe to others. The piece highlights the pronomial shifts between the “we” and the “me” and the way that these dispositions emerge in sociopolitically configured spaces. By paying careful attention to the settings and situations in which the movements between different positions actually take place, the ways in which the fabric of ethical life is made rather than simply given is revealed. Ethnographic inquiry is seen as crucial in understanding this process because it points to disjunctions between the categories that we are provided to apprehend the world and what it is actually like to live in that world.

scholarly journals A RECEPÇÃO COMO "PRAGMÁTICA ARGUMENTATIVA" UMA VISITA AO CONCEITO PELO OLHAR HABERMASIANO

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (103) ◽  
pp. 337
Author(s):  
Sérgio Ricardo Coutinho
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Communicative Action ◽  
Local Churches ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
Jurgen Habermas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Theoretical Proposal ◽  
The Church ◽  
Theological Concept

O artigo tem por objetivo verificar a viabilidade e aplicabilidade do conceito teológico de recepção na realidade concreta da vida social e eclesial, ou seja, no mundo da vida da Igreja. O texto faz uma releitura do conceito, ampliando-o e trazendo-o para o campo das Ciências Sociais, por meio da proposta teórica de Jürgen Habermas na Teoria da Ação Comunicativa. Para isso, verificaremos tal processo de recepção nas Igrejas locais do Estado do Maranhão.ABSTRACT: The purpose of the present article is to verify the viability and applicability of the theological concept of reception in the reality of the social and eclesial life, in other words, in the lifeworld of the Church. The text revisits the concept, extending it and applying it to the field of Social Sciences, through the theoretical proposal of Jürgen Habermas in his Theory of Communicative Action. We will thus verify the process of reception in the local Churches of the State of Maranhão (Brazil).

DESOBEDIÊNCIA CIVIL E DEMOCRACIACIVIL DISOBEDIENCE AND DEMOCRACY

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sílvia Alves (Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal)
Keyword(s):  
John Rawls ◽  
Hannah Arendt ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
Jurgen Habermas

Este artigo tem como objetivo analisar a relação entre a desobediência civil e a democracia no pensamento político contemporâneo, através das obras de Hannah Arendt, Norberto Bobbio, John Rawls e Jürgen Habermas. A indissociabilidade entre democracia e desobediência civil emerge num ambiente favorável mas antinómico e pleno de tensão.

Defending the Difference

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Natural Entities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Methodological Difference ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

Dreyfus argues that there is a basic methodological difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a difference that derives from the different goals and practices of each. He goes on to argue that being a realist about natural entities is compatible with pluralism or, as he calls it, “plural realism.” If intelligibility is always grounded in our practices, Dreyfus points out, then there is no point of view from which one can ask about or provide an answer to the one true nature of ultimate reality. But that is consistent with believing that the natural sciences can still reveal the way the world is independent of our theories and practices.

Benson and Miller in Perspective

1979 ◽  
Vol 3 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 242-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Kuklick
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Applied Science ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Knowledge ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
The One ◽  
Stock Of Knowledge

Despite differences in coloration Miller and Benson are birds of a feather. Although he is no Pollyanna, Miller believes that there has been a modest and decent series of advances in the social sciences and that the most conscientious, diligent, and intelligent researchers will continue to add to this stock of knowledge. Benson is much more pessimistic about the achievements of yesterday and today but, in turn, offers us the hope of a far brighter tomorrow. Miller explains Benson’s hyperbolic views about the past and future by distinguishing between pure and applied science and by pointing out Benson’s naivete about politics: the itch to understand the world is different from the one to make it better; and, Miller says, because Benson sees that we have not made things better, he should not assume we do not know more about them; Benson ought to realize, Miller adds, that the way politicians translate basic social knowledge into social policy need not bring about rational or desirable results. On the other side, Benson sees more clearly than Miller that the development of science has always been intimately intertwined with the control of the environment and the amelioration of the human estate.

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