The twilight of the Liberal Social Contract? On the Reception of Rawlsian Political Liberalism

This chapter discusses the Rawlsian project of public reason, or public justification-based 'political' liberalism, and its reception. After a brief philosophical rather than philological reconstruction of the project, the chapter revolves around a distinction between idealist and realist responses to it. Focusing on political liberalism’s critical reception illuminates an overarching question: was Rawls’s revival of a contractualist approach to liberal legitimacy a fruitful move for liberalism and/or the social contract tradition? The last section contains a largely negative answer to that question. Nonetheless the chapter's conclusion shows that the research programme of political liberalism provided and continues to provide illuminating insights into the limitations of liberal contractualism, especially under conditions of persistent and radical diversity. The programme is, however, less receptive to challenges to do with the relative decline of the power of modern states

Constitutivism

A brief explanation and overview of constitutivism

Die Rezeption Karl Barths und der dialektischen Theologie in der russischen Religionsphilosophie

akzeptierte Manuskriptversio

Philosophy of action

The philosophical study of human action begins with Plato and Aristotle. Their influence in late antiquity and the Middle Ages yielded sophisticated theories of action and motivation, notably in the works of Augustine and Aquinas.1 But the ideas that were dominant in 1945 have their roots in the early modern period, when advances in physics and mathematics reshaped philosophy

Politische Religion, Civic Religion oder ein neuer Glaube - Walther Rathenaus Vision einer anderen Moderne

This chapter uses Walther Rathenau to discuss the limitations of the popular, but controversial concepts 'political religion' and 'civic religion'. Rathenau promoted a vaguely religious dimension to politics, but his vision cannot be described with either of these terms. He was neither an unreserved supporter of parliamentary democracy, pluralism and a capitalist market economy nor did he tend towards totalitarianism. He was opposed to the Right, but his concept of a communal economy (Gemeinwirtschaft) strongly influenced the idea of a community of the people (Volksgemeinschaft) so central for Nazism. Rathenau is part of a wider tradition that sought to give the German nation a new communal faith. He was not a Nazi, but the desire he expressed came to play a crucial role in the fatal attraction of National Socialism. The concept of a single communal faith can show the connection between this long tradition and the rise of Nazism