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2017 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

What’s Critical About a Critical Theory of Justice?

Author : Rainer Forst

Published in: Feminism, Capitalism, and Critique

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

In this article, Forst presents a critical theory of justice in dialogue with Nancy Fraser. Using the concept of justification as the connection between theory and practice allows us to de-reify concepts like justice, democracy, power or alienation – aiming to identify and overcome domination in various contexts of social life.

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previous chapter Crisis, Contradiction, and the Task of a Critical Theory

next chapter Beyond Kant Versus Hegel: An Alternative Strategy for Grounding the Normativity of Critique

See my critique of the status quo bias of practice-dependent theories in Forst (2013a) and my sketch of critical realism in Forst (2014a).

See most recently Forst (2013b, 2014b, 2015a, 2015b, 2016).

For the difference between my view and that of Philip Pettit, see Forst (2015d).

I discuss my approach in a comparison with the sociology of justification developed by Boltanski and Thévenot in my Introduction to Normativity and Power (Forst 2016).

See Forst (2012, part I). Generally speaking, I employ a more substantive normative concept of reason than does Habermas, especially in the context of morality and justice.

In what follows, I draw upon my reply in Forst (2015b). These questions concerning justification are also the focus of my discussion with Stephen White (2015); see my reply in Forst (2015a); see also Allen (2014), Sangiovanni (2014), Laden (2014), and my reply in Forst (2014b).

Here a range of cases should be distinguished, in particular, directly participating in or contributing to injustice; indirectly participating in injustice by profiting from it but without actively contributing to relations of exploitation; finally, the “natural” duty to put an end to unjust relations, even if one does not profit from them but is in a position to put an end to them. I cannot go into these distinctions further here.

I discuss this as a “dialectics of morality” in Forst (2012, ch. 11). See also the following quote by Immanuel Kant: “Having the resources to practice such beneficence as depends on the goods of fortune is, for the most part, a result of certain human beings being favored through the injustice of the government, which introduces an inequality of wealth that makes others need their beneficence. Under such circumstances, does a rich man’s help to the needy, on which he so readily prides himself as something meritorious, really deserve to be called beneficence at all?” (Kant 1996, p. 573, A:454)

Rawls (1999, p. 5) also argues that the concept of justice is opposed to arbitrariness: “Those who hold different conceptions of justice can, then, still agree that institutions are just when no arbitrary distinctions are made between persons in the assigning of basic rights and duties and when the rules determine a proper balance between competing claims to the advantages of social life.”

For a historical account of struggles against injustice, see Moore (1978).

I develop the notion of power relevant here in Forst (2015c).

This concerns a set of rights as well as institutional and social preconditions I cannot elaborate on here. See Forst (2012: part II).

Allen, A 2014, “The power of justification” in Justice, Democracy and the Right to Justification: Rainer Forst in Dialogue, (ed.) R Forst, 65–86. Bloomsbury, London.

Benhabib, S 2015, “The uses and abuses of Kantian rigorism. On Rainer Forst’s moral and political philosophy.” Political Theory 43(6): 777–790.

Cohen, GA 2011, ““Afterword to chapters one and two,” in On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice and Other Essays in Political Philosophy, (ed.) M Otsuka, 61–72. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.

Forst, R 2007, “First things first. Redistribution, recognition and justification.” European Journal of Political Theory 6(3): 291–304, also in Forst (2013b), ch. 5.

Forst, R 2012, The Right to Justification: Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice, (trans.) J Flynn, Columbia University Press, New York.

Forst, R 2013a, “Transnational justice and democracy: overcoming three dogmas of political theory,” in Political Equality in Transnational Democracy, (eds.) S Näsström and E Erman, 41–60. Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

Forst, R 2013b, Justification and Critique: Towards a Critical Theory of Politics, (trans.) C Cronin, Polity Press, Cambridge.

Forst, R 2013c, Toleration in Conflict: Past and Present, (trans.) C Cronin, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

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Forst, R 2014b, “Justifying justification: reply to my critics,” in Justice, Democracy and the Right to Justification, (ed.) R Forst, 169–216. Bloomsbury, London.

Forst, R 2015a, “A critical theory of politics: grounds, method and aims. Reply to Simone Chambers, Stephen White and Lea Ypi.” Philosophy & Social Criticism 41(3): 225–34.

Forst, R 2015b, “The right to justification: moral and political, transcendental and historical. Reply to Seyla Benhabib, Jeff Flynn and Matthias Fritsch.” Political Theory 43(6): 822–37.

Forst, R 2015c, “Noumenal power.” Journal of Political Philosophy 23(2): 111–127.

Forst, R 2015d, “Transnational justice and non-domination. a discourse-theoretical approach,” in Domination Across Borders, (eds.) B Buckinx, J Trejo-Mathys, and T Waligore, 88–110. Routledge, London.

Forst, R 2016, Normativity and Power, (trans.) C Cronin, Oxford University Press, Oxford, InPress.

Forst, R, and Günther, K 2011. “Die Herausbildung normativer Ordnungen. Zur Idee eines interdisziplinären Forschungsprogramms.” In Die Herausbildung normativer Ordnungen, (eds.) R Forst and K Günther, 11–30. Frankfurt Am Main Campus.

Fraser, N 1987, “What’s critical about critical theory? The case of Habermas and gender.” In Feminism as Critique, (eds.) S Benhabib and D Cornell, 31–55. University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota.

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Title: What’s Critical About a Critical Theory of Justice?
Author: Rainer Forst
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Feminism, Capitalism, and Critique
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-52385-9

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-52386-6

Copyright Year: 2017
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52386-6_13