Religion, respect and public reason

Do the constraints of public reason unfairly exclude religious citizens? Two ways of framing the charge of exclusivity are examined: the burden of translation objection and the integrity objection. The first, it is argued, rests on a misapplication of the ‘distributive paradigm’ and fails to provide a convincing account of religious citizens’ relationship to their beliefs. The ‘integrity’ objection, it is argued, relies on a theologically questionable account of ‘wholeness’ and drastically overestimates the threat to personal integrity posed by the duty of civility. It is argued here that it is a mistake to interpret the ideal of public reason as inimical to recognising religious citizens as co-deliberators and that, on the contrary, only a public-reason-centred account of democratic citizenship can ensure that religious citizens will be appropriately recognised. A rival, convergence, account of public reason, which seeks to relax the constraint of public reason and eliminate the duty of civility is rejected on the grounds that it fails to underwrite the appropriate recognition of citizens. </jats:p

Jennifer Todd, Identity Change after Conflict: Ethnicity, Boundaries and Belonging in the Two Irelands

Ireland, North and South, has undergone significant social and political change in recent decades. Jennifer Todd seeks to understand the impact of these changes on collective identities and, specifically, how individuals have responded to these challenges. Todd, perhaps surprisingly, notes that her Northern respondents reported significantly higher levels of identity innovation than her Southern respondents (p. 3). This provides the primary focus of the book: the attempt to understand how ord..

Context and social criticism: The problem of context in the history of political thought and political theory.

Context' presents a challenge to political theory per se. In the history of political thought contextualism has severed historical from political and theoretical questions. In Marxism contextualism is thought of as a means to criticise ideas and institutions, but also as providing grounds for rejecting political theory itself as ideological. Communitarians have argued that contextual considerations are compatible with those of morality, but that they count against the sort of abstraction from our concrete, culturally constituted, selves which liberal impartiality requires. This thesis will, firstly, determine in what sense we may be said to be 'situated' in particular contexts, i.e. cultures and traditions, and then work out what implications 'situation' might have for politics and political theory. Secondly, what role might socio-historical contextualisation play as social criticism. I argue that existing conceptions of situation and of contextual social criticism are prey to socio-historical reductionism and/or a social solipsism, and are incompatible with impartiality and deliberative politics. A more appropriate conception of situation is one based on a conceptual pluralism that maintains the idea of an irreducible plurality of standpoints which we may adopt with respect to the world and our place in it. We need not choose once and for all between a socio-historical view of ourselves and the more abstract view required by impartialist morality. I argue that this novel view of situation and context can deepen our understanding of deliberative politics by showing how public reason must be conceived in terms of providing justifications acceptable to citizens who are differently situated with respect to one another. Socio-historical contextualisation can then play a role in deliberative politics without the risk of communitarian parochialism

Honneth, Butler and the Ambivalent Effects of Recognition

This paper examines the ambivalent effects of recognition by critically examining Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition. I argue that his underlying perfectionist account and his focus on the psychic effects of recognition cause him to misrepresent or overlook significant connections between recognition and power. These claims are substantiated by (1) drawing from Butler’s theory of gender performativity, power and recognition; and (2) exploring issues arising from the socio-institutional recognition of trans identities. I conclude by suggesting that certain problems with Butler’s own position can corrected by drawing more from the Foucauldian aspects of her work. I claim that this is the most promising way to conceptualise recognition and its complex, ambivalent effects