Rainer Forst

Bio: Rainer Forst is an academic researcher from Goethe University Frankfurt. The author has contributed to research in topics: Economic Justice & Toleration. The author has an hindex of 25, co-authored 77 publications receiving 2505 citations.

The Basic Right to Justification: Towards a Constructivist Conception of Human Rights

Abstract: In contemporary debates on the concept of human rights, one frequently encounters the critique that this is not only a specifically Western concept, but also a tool which Western, capitalist states use to politically and culturally dominate other societies. The first thesis concerns the historical genesis and normative validity of human rights, while the second touches on political issues of their interpretation and application. Concerning the second thesis, one needs to take a closer look at the critique, especially at who raises it and against which policy or institution it is directed. It may turn out that such accusations are justified and that, at times, the rhetoric of human rights does serve to veil the political or economic aims of states or international parties who wish to achieve or maintain influence and dominance. But it is just as possible that this critique is unjustified and that the accusation of “neocolonialism” is employed ideologically, in order to conceal governments’ attempts to defend their own political power. Demands that particular values and traditions be observed and corresponding demands that cultural and political autonomy be respected may be pretexts for unimpededly dominating and oppressing segments of one’s own populace or neighboring states. In light of this situation, it is important to see that one walks into a trap if one believes that one must decide the matter generally and unequivocally in favor of one or the other position. For, in any given case, one or the other or even both critiques may be sound. And in the event that both critiques are appropriate, the dichotomous perception of reality characteristic of the postcolonial era threatens to deny the interests of those who raise the demand for human rights against those who hold power in their own state, without sharing the interests or political and economic ideas of Western states. In any case, one makes the situation too easy if one regards a priori every single critique of human rights as a disguised attempt to claim freedom to oppress instead of freedom from oppression. And, regardless of whether it is justified in a given situation, the discussion of political strategies and rhetoric hardly affects the first, more fundamental thesis, which states that human rights are a culturally specific, Western invention and ipso facto cannot be globally valid. Now, it is clearly indisputable that the concept of individual rights human beings have as human beings arose in the context of the secularization and modernization of European culture.3 Hence it is neither very difficult nor unjustified to draw attention to and emphasize

The Right to Justification: Elements of a Constructivist Theory of Justice

Abstract: PrefaceTranslator's NoteIntroduction: The Foundation of JusticePart 1: Foundations: Practical Reason, Morality, and Justice1. Practical Reason and Justifying Reasons: On the Foundation of Morality2. Moral Autonomy and the Autonomy of Morality: Toward a Theory of Normativity After Kant3. Ethics and Morality4. The Justification of Justice: Rawls's Political Liberalism and Habermas's Discourse Theory in DialoguePart 2: Political and Social Justice5. Political Liberty: Integrating Five Conceptions of Autonomy6. A Critical Theory of Multicultural Toleration7. The Rule of Reasons: Three Models of Deliberative Democracy8. Social Justice, Justification, and PowerPart 3: Human Rights and Transnational Justice9. The Basic Right to Justification: Toward a Constructivist Conception of Human Rights10. Constructions of Transnational Justice: Comparing John Rawls's The Law of Peoples and Otfried H ffe's Democracy in an Age of Globalisation11. Justice, Morality, and Power in the Global Context12. Toward a Critical Theory of Transnational JusticeNotesBibliography

Towards a Critical Theory of Transnational Justice

Abstract: This paper argues for a conception of transnational justice that provides an alternative to globalist and statist views. In light of an analysis of the transnational context of justice, a critical theory is suggested that addresses the multiple relations of injustice and domination to be found in this context. Based on a universal, individual right to reciprocal and general justification, this theory argues for justifiable social and political relations both within and between states. In both of these contexts, it distinguishes between minimal and maximal justice and stresses the interdependence of domestic and transnational justice. On both levels, minimal justice calls for a discursive structure of justification, whereas maximal justice implies a fully justified basic social structure.

Power and reason, justice and domination: a conversation

Abstract: Through an email conversation between Allen, Forst and Haugaard, this article explores the relationship between the dyads power and reason, justice and domination. In much of the literature reason is considered either a mode of emancipation from power (Lukes) or, conversely, a subtle ruse of domination (Foucault). Here it is argued that reasoning is intrinsic to political power, with both the potential for power as justice (Arendt), and for power as domination (Foucault and Lukes). With power and reason as normatively neutral, with both/either normatively desirable and undesirable potentials, this raises the fundamental question of how to distinguish between justice and domination. These issues are explored, taking account of processes of subject formation and systems of thought.

The Justification of Human Rights and the Basic Right to Justification. A Reflexive Approach

Abstract: Human Rights are a complex phenomenon, comprising an array of different aspects. They have a moral life, expressing urgent human concerns and claims that must not be violated or ignored; they also have a legal life, being enshrined in national constitutions and in international declarations; and they have a political life, expressing standards of basic political legitimacy. For a comprehensive philosophical account of human rights, all of these aspects are essential and need to be integrated. Yet when doing so one must not overlook the central social-political aspect of human rights, namely that when and where they have been claimed, it has been because the individuals concerned suffered from and protested against forms of oppression and/or exploitation that they believed disregarded their dignity as human beings. Human rights are first and foremost weapons in combating certain evils that human beings inflict upon one another; they emphasize standards of treatment that no human being could justifiably deny to others. My thesis in what follows is that if this is correct, it implies – reflexively speaking – that one claim underlies all human rights, namely human beings’ claim to be respected as agents who have the right not to be subjected to certain actions or institutional norms that cannot be adequately justified to them. In other words, human rights have a common ground in one basic moral right, the right to justification.

Two Treatises of Government.

Abstract: All these premises having, as I think, been clearly made out, it is impossible that the rulers now on earth should make any benefit, or derive any the least shadow of authority from that, which is held to be the fountain of all power, Adam's private dominion and paternal jurisdiction; so that he that will not give just occasion to think that all government in the world is the product only of force and violence, and that men live together by no other rules but that of beasts, where the strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for perpetual disorder and mischief, tumult, sedition and rebellion, (things that the followers of that hypothesis so loudly cry out against) must of necessity find out another rise of government, another original of political power, and another way of designing and knowing the persons that have it, than what Sir Robert Filmer hath taught us.

The rights of others : aliens, residents, and citizens

Abstract: Introduction 1. On hospitality: rereading Kant's cosmopolitan doctrine 2. 'The right to have rights': Hannah Arendt and the contradictions of the nation-state 3. The law of peoples, distributive justice and migrations 4. Transformations of citizenship: the case of the European Union 5. Democratic iterations: the local, the national and the global Conclusion References Index.

The Law of Peoples

Abstract: The Law of Peoples John Rawls Harvard 1999 John Rawls, the great political philosopher, has turned his reflections to questions of international justice, much as his philosophical ancestor Kant did toward the end of his career. Indeed, Kant's conception of a "pacific federation" of states in Perpetual Peace is Rawls's acknowledged model for the "realistic utopia" sketched in The Law of Peoples, which expands upon his 1993 essay by the same title (without, however, revising its basic argument). Despite differing philosophical constraints and geopolitical conditions, both Kant and Rawls aim to develop an ideal normative framework for international law that accommodates a measure of realism and rejects the idea of a world-state. Unfortunately, in its uncritical acceptance of so-called "decent hierarchical societies" even at the level of ideal theory, the normative claim of Rawls's Law of Peoples is undermined. This philosophical appeasement, meant to secure perpetual peace in our time through a moderately demanding Law of Peoples that liberal and "decent" hierarchical societies alike can endorse, departs fundamentally from Kant's cosmopolitanism. For Kant, the "First Definitive Article of a Perpetual Peace-as opposed to a temporary interruption of hostilities-is that each member state of the foedus pacif cum must have a republican form of government, which is partly founded upon "the principle of legal equality for everyone (as citizens)." By contrast, Rawls weakens his ideal of international justice to buy the assent of hierarchical societies, which by definition lack equality among citizens, at the price of sacrificing a theoretical basis for justifying reforms of the practices and institutions of these hierarchical societies above a minimal level of decency. Rawls's complex argument begins by extending the original position, in which principles of justice for the basic structure of society are chosen under epistemic constraints that ensure fairness, from a single liberal society to what he calls the Society of Liberal Peoples. In a second step, though still within ideal theory, he argues that the substantive principles comprising the Law of Peoples are also acceptable to decent hierarchical societies, which possess decent consultation hierarchies and common good conceptions of justice. Despite being inegalitarian, decent hierarchical societies do respect basic human rights, allow some dissent, and at least consult with representatives of groups whose members are denied full citizenship rights. …