Omnivore - A Reconfiguration of Critical Theory

From Bookforum's Omnivore blog, here is another interesting and informative collection of links, this time on critical theory and, by extension, philosophy.

One of the more interesting articles is an energetic attack on Jurgen Habermas, one of the pet theorists of Wilberian integral theory. The abstract is posted below.

A reconfiguration of critical theory

Mar 20 2014
9:00AM

• Sarah Snyder (St. John’s): The Task of the Critic: An Introduction to the Literary Project of the Frankfurt School. 
• Alexei Procyshyn (Macau): The Origins of Walter Benjamin's Concept of Philosophical Critique. 
• Nicolai Krejberg Knudsen (Aarhus): Redemptive Revolutions: The Political Hermeneutics of Walter Benjamin. 
• Isobel Roele (Cardiff): The Vicious Circles of Habermas' Cosmopolitics. 
• Michael J. Thompson (William Paterson): The Base-Superstructure Hypothesis and the Foundations of Critical Theory; and Axel Honneth and the Neo-Idealist Turn in Critical Theory. 
• Rutger Claassen (Utrecht): Social Freedom and the Demands of Justice: A Study of Axel Honneth's Recht der Freiheit. 
• Jensen Suther interviews Axel Honneth, author of Reification: A New Look at an Old Idea. 
• Idealism and critical theory: Fred Rush interviewed by Richard Marshall. 
• Philosophy’s unworkable poles: Tom Hastings reviews Adorno and the Ends of Philosophy by Andrew Bowie. 
• From Ceasefire, Andrew Robinson on Walter Benjamin: Culture and revolution; and Walter Benjamin: Politics of everyday life. 
• The name of the critic: Ben Mauk reviews Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings. 
• Walter Benjamin’s Afterlife: Eric Banks on how Harvard University Press editor Lindsay Waters helped bring a German man of letters to prominence. 
• Through reflections on Occupy’s politics, Heathwood Press has been at the forefront of a reconfiguration of critical theory for revolutionary practice. 
• You can download Realizing Philosophy: Marx, Lukacs and the Frankfurt School by Andrew Feenberg (2014).

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The Vicious Circles of Habermas' Cosmopolitics

Isobel Roele
Cardiff University
October 1, 2013

Law & Critique (2014, Forthcoming)
Abstract:

Habermas' cosmopolitan project seeks to transform global politics into an emancipatory activity in order to compensate for the disempowering effects of globalization. The project is traced through three vicious circles which stem from Habermas' commitment to intersubjectivity. Normative politics always raises a vicious circle because politics is only needed to the extent that an issue has become problematized through want of intersubjective agreement. At the domestic level Habermas solves this problem by constitutionalizing transcendental presuppositions political participants cannot avoid making. This fix will not work at the global level because it is pre-political as between human individuals. Habermas therefore premises cosmopolitics on the transformation of nation-states into sites of participatory politics, engagement in which will eventually ignite a global cosmopolitan consciousness. This transformation depends on the constitutionalization of existing UN structures and their enforcement of an undefined and (therefore) 'uncontroversial' core of human rights. Unable to ground this project in social practice, Habermas eventually disregards his own lodestar of intersubjectivity based in social practice by relying on the prediscursive concept of human dignity. This move is not merely philosophically inconsistent, it also opens the door to the moralization of politics and the imposition of human rights down the barrel of a gun.

Download the PDF.