Publicness and human development

2020 ◽  
pp. 393-416
Author(s):  
Flavio Comim
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Human Development ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Reasoning ◽  
Political Emotions ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Development Perspective ◽  
Different Levels

Publicness is far from being a consecrated concept in the human development or capability literature. Instead, it is common to find references to other expressions about ‘public’ such as ‘public reason’ or ‘public reasoning’, ‘public values’, and ‘public goods’. It is important to examine the key concept of ‘public reason’ in Rawls and how it has been discussed by Sen and Nussbaum. However, a concrete concern of this chapter is how to think more broadly in terms of publicness from a human development perspective. In order to make this discussion more concrete, the chapter considers the context of BRICS in terms of the provision of public goods, defining three different levels of publicness. By doing so, it dialogues with what Nussbaum called ‘the institutional side of political emotions’ in societies that have been going through key economic and societal transformations. The public sphere of human development is easier to theorize than to see reflected in concrete indicators.

What Scope for Ethics in the Public Sphere? Principled Autonomy and the Antinomy of Practical Reason

2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-498
Author(s):  
Maureen Junker-Kenny
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
The Public ◽  
Jurgen Habermas ◽  
The Public Sphere

Concepts of ‘public reason’ vary according to the underlying understandings of theoretical and practical reason; they make a difference to what can be argued for in the public sphere as justified expectations to oneself and fellow-citizens. What is the significance for the scope of ethics when two neo-Kantian theorists of public reason, John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, propose a reduced reading of the ‘antinomy’ highlighted in Kant’s analysis of practical reason? The desire for meaning, unrelinquishable for humans, is frustrated when moral initiatives are met with hostility. Kant resolves the antinomy between morality and happiness by invoking the concept of a creator God whose concern that our anticipatory moral actions should not fail encourages the hope on which human agency relies. Defining the scope of ethics by the unconditional character of reason ( Vernunft) rules out the minimisation of ethics to what can safely be expected to be delivered.

scholarly journals Feminism and the Public Sphere in Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

1998 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel K. Carnell
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Century Model ◽  
Separate Spheres ◽  
The Public ◽  
Cultural Power ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Different Levels

The bipartite narrative structure of Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848) has been interpreted recently as an attempt to subvert the traditional Victorian rubric of separate spheres. Reconsidering this novel in terms of Jürgen Habermas's concept of the eighteenth-century public sphere broadens the historical context for the way we understand the separate spheres. Within Brontë's critique of Victorian gender roles, we may identify a reluctance to address the Chartist-influenced class challenges to an older version of the public good. In hearkening back to an eighteenth-century model of the public sphere, Brontë espouses not so much a twentieth-century-style challenge to the Victorian model of separate spheres as a nineteenth-century-style nostalgia for the classical liberal model of bourgeois public debate. At the same time, the awkward rupture in Brontë's narrative represents the inherent contradictions between the different levels of discourse-literary, political, and scientific-within the public sphere itself and the complex ways in which these contradictions are both accorded and denied cultural power.

Religious Reasons in the Public Sphere

2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-143
Author(s):  
Joshua Duclos ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Religious Reasons

Habermas argues that religious reasons can enter the public sphere so long as they undergo a translation that meets the standards of public reason. I argue that such a translation may be either unnecessary or impossible. Habermas does not sufficiently consider the possibility that religious reasons are already publicly accessible such that there no translation is required. Moreover, Habermas entirely fails to consider the possibility that, if he is right about religious reasons not being publicly accessible, these reasons may be of a kind such that they cannot be translated into a publicly accessible idiom as he supposes they can be.

scholarly journals In Defense of Moderate Inclusivism: Revisiting Rawls and Habermas on Religion in the Public Sphere

2018 ◽  
pp. 143-157
Author(s):  
Jonas Jakobsen ◽  
Kjersti Fjørtoft
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Religious Reasons ◽  
Do So

The paper discusses Rawls’ and Habermas’ theories of deliberative democracy, focusing on the question of religious reasons in political discourse. Whereas Rawls as well as Habermas defend a fully inclusivist position on the use of religious reasons in the ‘background culture’ (Rawls) or ‘informal public sphere’ (Habermas), we defend a moderately inclusivist position. Moderate inclusivism welcomes religiously inspired contributions to public debate, but it also makes normative demands on public argumentation beyond the ‘public forum’ (Rawls) or ‘formal public sphere’ (Habermas). In particular, moderate inclusivism implies what we call a ‘conversational translation proviso’ according to which citizens have a duty to supplement religious with proper political arguments if – but only if – they are asked to do so by their co-discussants. This position, we argue, is more in line with the deeper intuitions behind Rawls’ political liberalism and Habermas’ deliberative model than is the fully inclusivist alternative. Keywords: conversational translation proviso, deliberative democracy, ethics of citizenship, Habermas, moderate inclusivism, public reason, Rawls

scholarly journals Understanding Race: The Case for Political Constructionism in Public Discourse

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 492-504
Author(s):  
David Ludwig
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
The Public ◽  
Public Reasoning ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Philosophical Debates

AbstractThe aim of this article is to develop an understanding-based argument for an explicitly political specification of the concept of race. It is argued that a specification of race in terms of hierarchical social positions is best equipped to guide causal reasoning about racial inequality in the public sphere. Furthermore, the article provides evidence that biological and cultural specifications of race mislead public reasoning by encouraging confusions between correlates and causes of racial inequality. The article concludes with a more general case for incorporating empirical evidence about public reasoning into philosophical debates about competing specifications of the concept of race.

Sanctuary and the Limits of Public Reason: A Deweyan Corrective

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 498-521
Author(s):  
Alicia Steinmetz
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Real World ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Activism ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Status ◽  
Central Case ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Modes Of Engagement

AbstractThis article contributes to the debate over the appropriate place of religion in public reason by showing the limits of this framework for understanding and evaluating the real-world religious political activism of social movements. Using the 1980s Sanctuary Movement as a central case study, I show how public reason fails to appreciate the complex religious dynamics of this movement, the reasons actors employ religious reasoning, and, as a result, the very meaning of these acts. In response, I argue that a Deweyan perspective on the tasks and challenges of the democratic public offers a richer, more contextualized approach to evaluating the status of religion in the public sphere as well as other emerging publics whose modes of engagement defy prevailing notions of reasonableness and civility.

Religion in the Public Sphere—with Dietrich Bonhoeffer towards a Renewed Understanding of ‘the Two Kingdoms’

2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 269-288
Author(s):  
Torbjörn Johansson
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Religion And Politics ◽  
Dietrich Bonhoeffer ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Two Kingdoms ◽  
The Church

In this article Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s critical reception of the Lutheran doctrine of the two kingdoms is related to the discussion about religion and politics in liberal democracies. Bonhoeffer experienced not only how the church isolated itself from the political sphere—by a ‘pseudo-Lutheran’ doctrine of the two kingdoms—but also how the church was politicized and abused by Deutsche Christen. His theological thinking is therefore a helpful starting point to formulate a theology which is politically relevant without being transformed into politics. Against the background of Bonhoeffer’s theology an argument is advanced that a renewed understanding of the two kingdoms assists the church in being focused on the Gospel, at the same time as it can also give the church instruments to be present in the public sphere with well-defined pretensions, which clarifies whether the assertions of the church are based on revelation or on public reason.

scholarly journals Sources of “Public Reason” in Europe: Perspectives from Theological Ethics

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-164
Author(s):  
Maureen Junker-Kenny
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Theological Ethics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Crises ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Philosophical Frameworks

Abstract Welcoming the turn toward including normative conceptions of the human into the remit of economics, this paper compares philosophical frameworks that guide principles such as dignity and justice as one source of theological ethics. Recent political crises show the importance of analyzing the public sphere with which Christian ethics in its various approaches interacts. The place given to religions in Rawls’s and Habermas’s concepts of “public reason” is compared with Ricoeur’s understanding of religions as cofounding traditions. They can contribute to a necessary exchange of memories, also of conflict and conquest, inspired by the undelivered hopes of their own founding memories, precluding triumphalism and fostering “intellectual solidarity” (Hollenbach).

Political Liberalism, Deliberative Democracy, and the Public Sphere

1998 ◽  
Vol 92 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evan Charney
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
John Rawls ◽  
Public Reason ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Associational Life ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liberal Conception ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Domain I

Theorists of democracy emphasize the importance of a public sphere, distinct from the apparatus of the state, where citizens can freely associate, deliberate, and engage in collective will formation. Discourse ethicists and deliberative democrats locate the public sphere within civil society and the manifold associations that comprise it. For Seyla Benhabib, the public sphere is constituted by the anonymous “public conversation” of civil society. By contrast, John Rawls has a much more limited conception of the public sphere. For Rawls, public reason, which establishes norms for democratic discourse, applies to a limited domain. I defend Rawls's view against the charge that it depends upon an untenable distinction between the public and nonpublic spheres. I argue that Rawls's more limited “liberal” conception better guarantees the heterogeneity of associational life in civil society. I then argue that Rawls violates his own principles by partially collapsing the public-nonpublic distinction with potentially illiberal consequences.

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