David Ingram

Bio: David Ingram is an academic researcher from Loyola University Chicago. The author has contributed to research in topics: Human rights & Democracy. The author has an hindex of 10, co-authored 32 publications receiving 540 citations.

Of sweatshops and subsistence: Habermas on human rights

Abstract: In this paper I argue that the discourse theoretic account of human rights defended by Jurgen Habermas contains a fruitful tension that is obscured by its dominant tendency to identify rights with legal claims. This weakness in Habermas’s account becomes manifest when we examine how sweatshops diminish the secure enjoyment of subsistence, which Habermas himself (in recognition of the UDHR) recognizes as a human right. Discourse theories of human rights are unique in tying the legitimacy of human rights to democratic deliberation and consensus. So construed, their specific meaning and force is the outcome of historical political struggle. However, unlike other legal rights, they possess universal moral validity. In this paper I argue that this tension between the legal and moral aspects of human rights can be resolved if and only if human rights are conceived as moral aspirations and not simply as legal claims. In particular, I shall argue that there are two reasons why human rights must be understood as moral aspirations that function non-juridically: First, the basic human goods to which human rights provide secure access are determinable only in relation to basic human capabilities that are progressively revealed in the course of an indefinite (fully inclusive and universal) process of collective learning; second, the institutional impediments to enjoying human rights are cultural in nature and cannot be remedied by means of legal coercion.

Habermas: Introduction and Analysis

Abstract: 1: A Public Intellectual Committed to Reason Habermas's Life From the Critique of Ideology to the Dialectic of Enlightenment Outline of Chapters2: Habermas's Defense of Psychoanalytic Social Science The Positivism Debate in German Social Science Modern Nihilism: The Crisis of Science and the Theory/ Practice Problem Knowledge and Human Interests A Critique of Knowledge and Human Interests3: The Linguistic Turn TCA and the Dialectic of Enlightenment Situating Habermas's Philosophy of Language Transcendental Philosophy of Language as Rational Reconstruction Universal Pragmatics and Formal Semantics Formal Pragmatics and Speech Act Theory Discourse Communicative and Strategic Speech Acts A Critique of Universal Pragmatics4: Knowledge and Truth Revisited Subject-Object Paradigms of Knowledge Internal Realism Reference and Meaning Knowledge and Evolution Moral Realism Is Formal Pragmatism a Defensible Alternative to Realism and Contextualism?5: Discourse Ethics Practical Reason: Delimiting the Domain of the Moral The Priority of the Right over the Good Modernity and Moral Development Deontological Moral Theory and Universalizability: Kant and Rawls Moral Cognitivism versus Moral Skepticism Moral Argumentation as Discourse Neo-Aristotelian Objections and the Abortion Controversy Justification and Application Discourse Ethics Applied: Genetic Testing and the Future of Human Nature Problems and Paradoxes Habermas's Ideal of Argumentation: A Final Assessment6: Law and Democracy: Part I: The Foundational Rights Modern Law and Morality: A Paradoxical Wedding of Facts and Norms Situating Habermas's Theory of Law and Democracy: Some Contemporary Debates The Sociological Genesis of Modern Law The System of Rights Negative and Positive Rights (Duties) Constitutional Foundations Human Rights: Subsistence as a Test Case for a Juridical Conception of Rights Final Thoughts on the Procedural Ideal of Deliberative Democracy7: Law and Democracy: Part II: Power and the Clash of Paradigms Democracy and the Powers of Government The Separation of Powers The Transmission of Communicative Power: From Public Sphere to Government Administration Discourse and Adjudication The Proceduralist Paradigm of Law and Democracy A Concluding Assessment8: Law and Democracy: Part III: Applying the Proceduralist Paradigm Separation of Church and State: The Public/ Private Distinction Gender Difference and the Law Multiculturalism Immigration9: Law and Democracy: Part IV: Social Complexity and a Critical Assessment Questioning the Proceduralist Paradigm Substantive Economic Justice and Workplace Democracy The Technological Dimension of Democracy Revolution and Democracy10: Crisis and Pathology: The Future of Democracy in a Global Age Capitalism and the Crisis of Democracy Social Pathologies and the Colonization of the Lifeworld Globalization: The New Challenge Cosmopolitan Democracy and Global Politics as a Response to Global Crisis Politics and the Rule of Law in International Relations The Constitutionalization of International Relations The Limits of Democratization: A Critical Assessment11: Postsecular Postscript: Modernity and Its Discontents Marx on the Evolution of Modern Society Weber on Modernization and the Problem of Meaning Secularization and the Rationalization of the Lifeworld Between Past and Future: Art, Religion, and the Dialectic of Enlightenment RevisitedAppendix A: Explaining Action Appendix B: Understanding Action Appendix C: Habermas and Brandom Appendix D: Developmental Psychology Appendix E: Rational Choice Theory Appendix F: Systems TheoryIndex

Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature

Abstract: Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature brings to light the deep sense of crisis within the profession of academic philosophy which is similar to the paralyzing pluralism in contemporary theology and the inveterate indeterminacy of literary criticism. Richard Rorty's provocative and profound meditations impel philosophers to examine the problematic status of their discipline— only to discover that modern European philosophy has come to an end. Rorty strikes a deathblow to modern European philosophy by telling a story about the emergence, development and decline of its primary props: the correspondence theory of truth, the notion of privileged representations and the idea of a self-reflective transcendental subject. Rorty's fascinating tale—his-story —is regulated by three fundamental shifts which he delineates in detail and promotes in principle: the move toward anti-realism or conventionalism in ontology, the move toward the demythologizing of the Myth of the Given or anti-foundationalism in epistemology, and the move toward detranscendentalizing the subject or dismissing the mind as a sphere of inquiry. The chief importance of Rorty's book is that it brings together in an original and intelligible narrative the major insights of the patriarchs of postmodern American philosophy—W. V. Quine, Wilfred Sellars, and Nelson Goodman— and persuasively presents the radical consequences of their views for contemporary philosophy. Rorty credits Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Dewey for having "brought us into a period of 'revolutionary' philosophy" by undermining the prevailing Cartesian and Kantian paradigms and advancing new conceptions of philosophy. And these monumental figures surely inspire Rorty. Yet, Rorty's philosophical debts—the actual sources of his particular anti-Cartesian and antiKantian arguments—are Quine's holism, Sellars' anti-foundationalism, and Goodman's pluralism. In short, despite his adamant attack on analytical philosophy—the last stage of modern European philosophy—Rorty feels most comfortable with the analytical form of philosophical argumentation (shunned by Wittgenstein and Heidegger). From the disparate figures of Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey, Rorty gets a historicist directive: to eschew the quest for certainty and the search for foundations.