The Scandal of Reason: A Critical Theory of Political Judgment
The Scandal of Reason: A Critical Theory of Political Judgment
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Abstract
Theories of justice are haunted by a paradox: the more ambitious the theory of justice, the less applicable and useful the model is to political practice; yet the more politically realistic the theory, the weaker its moral ambition, rendering it unsound and equally useless. Brokering a resolution to this “judgment paradox,” the book advances a “critical consensus model” of judgment that serves the normative ideals of a just society without the help of ideal theory. Tracing the evolution of two major traditions in political philosophy—critical theory and philosophical liberalism—and the way they confront the judgment paradox, the book critiques prevailing models of deliberative democracy and their preference for ideal theory over political applicability. Instead, it replaces the reliance on normative models of democracy with an account of the dynamics of reasoned judgment produced in democratic practices of open dialogues. Combining Hannah Arendt's study of judgment with Pierre Bourdieu's social critique of power relations, and incorporating elements of political epistemology from Kant, Wittgenstein, H. L. A. Hart, Max Weber, and American philosophical pragmatism, the book centers its inquiry on the way participants in moral conflicts attribute meaning to their grievances of injustice. It then demonstrates the emancipatory potential of the model of critical deliberative judgment it forges and its capacity to guide policy making.
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Front Matter
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Introduction: The Scandal of Reason and the Paradox of Judgment
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1
Political Judgment and the Vocation of Critical Theory
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2
Critical Theory: Political Judgment as Ideologiekritik
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3
Philosophical Liberalism: Reasonable Judgment
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4
Philosophical Liberalism and Critical Theory in Dispute
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5
Judgment Unbound: Arendt
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6
From Critique of Power to a Critical Theory of Judgment
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7
The Political Epistemology of Judgment
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8
The Critical Consensus Model
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9
Judgment, Criticism, Innovation
- Conclusion: Letting Go of Ideal Theory
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End Matter
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