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THE OF JÜRGEN HABERMAS GOVT/ GERM 6765

Fall 2013. Department of Government. Cornell University.

Instructor: Prof. Alexander Livingston Meeting Time: Wednesday 4:30-6:30 Email: [email protected] Meeting Room: White Hall B06 Office Hours: Mondays 3-5 Office: White Hall 215

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This seminar is an intensive study of the most influential of the critical theorist Jürgen Habermas. At once a social theorist, a of language, and a scholar of legal and political theory, Habermas has made a lasting impact on our understanding of rationality, legitimacy, the public sphere, and democracy over the course of his fifty-year career. Beginning with his 1962 Structural Transformations of the Public Sphere, this seminar will focus on three distinct periods of Habermas’s thought. The first three weeks will be dedicated to understanding his early theory of the public sphere and the critical reactions it provoked. The second module will be devoted to a close study of his two most important works, The Theory of (1981) and Between Facts and Norms (1992). The third module will conclude with a study of contemporary debates in Habermasian political thought, and the development of his theory of communicative action in the areas of international law, democratic theory, and religion. *Although this course is cross-listed with German Studies, the seminar will be conducted in English.

OBJECTIVES:

At the end of this seminar students are expected to (a) be able to evaluate arguments from contemporary texts in political theory, (b) construct persuasive interpretations and applications of ideas and concepts discussed, (c) develop skills in synthesizing complex ideas for group and class presentation, (d) make substantial progress towards the breadth and depth requirements necessary for completing a field examination in political theory, (e) produce original works of scholarship of suitable sophistication and originality to be presented at a professional meeting and possibly further development into dissertation chapters or articles for publication.

REQUIRED TEXTS:

All required texts are available for purchase at the Cornell Store. marked with an asterisk (*) are available as e-readings on the course Blackboard site.

• Jürgen Habermas. Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1991. • Jürgen Habermas. The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. 1985.

1 • Jürgen Habermas. The Theory of Communicative Action. Volume 2: Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. 1985. • Jürgen Habermas. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1990. • Jürgen Habermas. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1996.

COURSE ASSESSMENT:

Grades: Your final grade will be calculated on the basis of your aggregate scores in participation, responses, and a final essay.

Participation 15% Reading Responses 15% (x 3 = 45%) Final Essay 40%

Participation: This is a seminar class. There will be no lectures and students are responsible for generating comments and questions to guide discussion. It is therefore expected that all students come prepared with questions related to the session’s readings, as well as a careful engagement with their fellow student’s reading responses, and have a point of view that demonstrates a strong command of, and sophisticated engagement with, the assigned texts. Merely being present in the classroom does not count towards this portion of your final grade. This means that while attendance is a necessary condition for participation, it is not a sufficient one.

Reading Reponses: In the spirit of communicative action, each week two students will be responsible for raising validity claims concerning the assigned readings through a critical reading response they share with the group. Your response should offer a critical overview of the week’s readings and suggest points of discussion for the seminar. Each student will be responsible to discuss both the required readings and one of the supplemental readings for the week. Readings responses will be circulated electronically to the entire seminar on the Tuesday before we meet. • Each student is responsible for three reading responses over the course of the semester • Responses should be between 500-1000 words • Please circulate your response by email to the seminar email list no later than 11:59pm on the Tuesday before seminar. • After circulating your response, come to class prepared to speak for no more than five minutes about what you took to be the central problem/insight/criticism you dealt with in your entry and explain why. Do not simply read your reading response out loud to the class. A sign-up sheet will be circulated on the first day of seminar.

Final Paper: A final paper on a topic of your choosing is due one week after the final day of class. This essay should be double spaced, 12pt font, with a length of approximately 7000-9000 words. Be sure to include page numbers on your essay. It is highly

2 recommended that students make an appointment to meet with me to discuss your paper topic sometime during the semester before sitting down to write it. Please submit a hardcopy of your paper in my mailbox in 214 White Hall.

COURSE RULES AND POLICIES

Auditors: Those who wish to ‘audit’ the class are most welcome. But they should be warned up front that ‘auditing’ mean ‘taking the class on a non-credit basis.’ It does not mean ‘sitting in,’ ‘listening,’ or ‘observing.’ There will be nothing to ‘observe’ in this class, and only active engaged seminar members may attend. If you want to audit the class, the requirements are simple: you must read both the assigned readings and the materials posted on the blog, participate in class discussions, and, at a minimum, take responsibility to post two blog entries over the course of the semester.

Incompletes: Please do not ask for an incomplete. It is in your interest to finish this course in a timely manner.

Late assignments: Because the course is organized on the premise that reading responses will be available to discuss in seminar, it is crucial that they be submitted in a timely manner. Late assignments will be penalized one-third of a letter grade per day late. This means that if your paper had been submitted on time and received a grade of A-, it will become a B+ after one day, a B after two, and so on. If you do not expect to be able to submit your work on the expected day, please get in touch with me before the deadline and we will discuss alternative arrangements.

Blackboard.com: All course documents will be made available on Blackboard (blackboard.cornell.edu). If you are unfamiliar with how to access Blackboard please consult the Cornell Technology help website (bbhelp.cit.cornell.edu). Because important messages and updates concerning the course will be posted regularly on Blackboard, it is imperative that you enable your account to receive posted messages directly to your @cornell.edu email address.

Office Hours and : Office hours are Mondays from 3-5pm. I would much prefer if students contacting me in person rather than by email. If you must get in touch with me via email I will do my best to respond to you within 24 hours. Please know that I will not respond to emails after 6pm on evenings before class. A sign-up sheet will be posted on my door at 215 White Hall

Plagiarism and Academic Ethics: Students should review Cornell University’s policy concerning plagiarism and violations of academic ethics (plagiarism.arts.cornell.edu). The strength of the university depends on academic and personal integrity. Ethical violations include cheating on exams, plagiarism, reuse of assignments, improper use of the Internet and electronic devices, unauthorized collaboration, alteration of graded assignments, forgery, falsification, lying, facilitation of academic dishonesty, and unfair competition. I have a zero tolerance policy towards plagiarism. All suspected cases of plagiarism will be passed on to the Academic Integrity liaison for disciplinary review. If

3 you are in doubt about whether you are committing plagiarism, feel free to ask me and I will be happy to help; but a good rule of thumb is that if you are wondering about this, you should cite a source.

Accessibility Needs: If you have a condition that affects your ability to participate fully in class or to meet all course requirements, please speak with me after the first day of class so that we can work together to arrange appropriate accommodations. This syllabus and course materials can be made available in alternate formats. Any student with a disability who may need accommodations in this class must obtain an accommodation letter from Student Disability Services, 420 CCC, Garden Ave Ext (sds.cornell.edu).

COURSE SCHEDULE

Week 1: Introduction (8/28) • Max Horkheimer, “Traditional and Critical Theory,” in Critical Theory: Selected Essays. London: Continuum Press. 1975. 188-243* • Habermas, “Public Space and Political Public Sphere – The Biographical Roots of Two Motifs in my Thought,” in Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays. Malden, MA: Polity. 2008. 11-23*

Week 2: The Rise of the Public Sphere (9/4) • Habermas, Structural Transformations, Chapters 1-4

Supplemental: • Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere. Craig Calhoun, ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1992. 109-142*

Week 3: The Eclipse of the Public Sphere (9/11) • Habermas, Structural Transformations, Chapters 5-7

Supplemental: • Habermas, “Further Reflections on the Public Sphere,” in Habermas and the Public Sphere*

Week 4. What is Modern Rationality? (9/18) • TCA 1, Preface & Chapter 1

Supplemental • Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno, of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Edmund Jephcott, tr. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2002. 1-34*

Week 5: Act Theory and the Telos of Language (9/25) • TCA 1, Chapters 3, 4

4 Supplemental: • Margaret Kohn, “Language, Power, and Persuasion: Toward a Critique of Deliberative Democracy,” Constellations 7, no. 3. 2000: 408-429* • Arash Abizadeh, “On the / Binaries. Or, is Habermasian Discourse Motivationally Impotent?” Philosophy and Social Criticism 33, no. 4. 2007: 445-472*

Week 6. Systems Theory and the Lifeworld (10/2) • TCA 2, Chapter 6

Supplemental • Thomas McCarthy, “Complexity and Democracy: or the Seductions of Systems Theory,” in Ideals and Illusions: On Reconstruction and in Contemporary Critical Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1991. 152- 180*

Week 7. Rethinking the Project of Critical Theory (10/9) • TCA 2, Chapter 8

Supplemental • , The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1991. 278-305*

Week 8: Discourse Ethics (10/16) • MCCA, “Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification”; “Morality and Ethical Life: Does Hegel’s Critique of Kant Apply to Discourse Ethics?” • Habermas, “On the Pragmatic, the Ethical, and the Moral Employments of Practical Reason,” in Justification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics. Cioraon Cronin, tr. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1994. 1-18*

Supplemental: • Richard Bernstein, “The Retrieval of the Democratic Ethos,” in Habermas on Law and Democracy: Critical Exchanges, Michael Rosenfeld and Andrew Arato, eds. Berkeley: University of Press. 1998. 287-308* • James Gordon Finlayson, “The Persistence of Normative Questions in Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action,” Constellations (online advance 2013)*

Week 9: Law and Legitimacy (10/23) • BFN, Chapters 1-2

Supplemental • Patchen Markell, “Making Affect Safe for Democracy? On ‘Constitutional Patriotism’” Political Theory 28, no. 1 (2000): 38-63*

5 Week 10: Democracy and Constitutionalism: The Co-Originality Thesis (10/30) • BFN, Chapter 3-4

Supplemental • Bonnie Honig, “Between Decision and Deliberation: Political Paradox in Democratic Theory” American Political Science Review 101, no. 1 (2007): 1-17*

Week 11: The Return of the Public Sphere (11/06) • BFN Chapter 7-8; Appendix I

Supplemental: • William Scheuerman, “Between Radicalism and Resignation: Democratic Theory in Habermas’s Between Facts and Norms” in Habermas: A Critical Reader. Peter Dews, ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. 1999. 153- 177*

Week 12: Democracy Beyond the Nation-State (11/13) • Habermas, Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 1998. “On the Relation between the Nation, the Rule of Law, and Democracy” and “Does Europe Need a Constitutions? Response to Dieter Grimm”* • Habermas, “Does the Constitutionalization of International Law Still have a Chance?” in The Divided West. Malden, MA: Polity. 2006: 113-193* • Nancy Fraser, “Transnationalizing the Public Sphere: On the Legitiamcy and Efficacy of Public Opinion in a Post-Westphalian World’, Theory, Culture & Society 24, no. 4 (2007): 7-30*

Supplement • James Tully, “On the Global Multiplicity of Public Spheres: The Democratic Transformation of the Public Sphere?” in Beyond Habermas: Democracy, Knowledge, and the Public Sphere. Christian Emden and David Midgley, eds. New York: Berhahn Books. 2013. 169-204*

Weeks 13. Civil Disobedience (11/20) • Iris Marion Young, “Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy” Political Theory 29, no. 5 (2001): 670-690* • Archon Fung, “Deliberation Before the Revolution: Towards an Ethics of Deliberative Democracy in an Unjust World” Political Theory 33, no. 2 (2005): 397-419* • Habermas, “Civil Disobedience: Litmus Test for the Democratic Constitutional State,” Berkeley Journal of 30 (1985): 95-116* • Lasse Thomassen, “Within the Limits of Deliberative Reason Alone: Habermas, Civil Disobedience and Constitutional Democracy,” European Journal of Political Theory 6, no. 2 (1007): 200-218* • Stephen White and Evan Farr, “‘No-Saying’ in Habermas,” Political Theory 40,

6 no. 1 (2012): 32-57* • Lasse Thomassen, “Communicative Reason, Deconstruction, and Foundationalism: Reply to White and Farr” Political Theory 41, no. 3 (2013): 482-488* • Stephen White and Evan Farr, “Reply to Thomassen,” Political Theory 41, no. 3 (2013): 489-491*

Week 14: Thanksgiving (11/27)

• No Class

Week 15: Secularism and Religion in the Public Sphere (12/4)

• Habermas, “Faith and Knowledge,” in The Future of Human Nature. Malden, MA: Polity. 2003. 101-115* • Habermas, “Religion and the Public Sphere: Cognitive Pressuppositions for the ‘Public Use of Reason,’ and ‘Religious Tolerance as Pacemaker for Cultural Rights’ in Between Naturalism and Religion. 114-148; 251-270* • Habermas, An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Secular Age (London: Polity), pp. 15-23* • Habermas, “A Hypothesis Concerning the Evolutionary of Rites”*

Supplemental: • Simone Chambers, “How Religion Speaks to the Agnostic: Habermas on the Persistent Value of Religion,” Constellations 14, no.2 (2007): 210-223* • Darren Walhof, “Habermas, Same-Sex Marriage and the Problem of Religion in Public Life,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 29 (2013): 1-18*

Final Paper: December 11th

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