The concept of toleration plays a central role in pluralistic societies. It designates a stance which permits conflicts over beliefs and practices to persist while at the same time defusing them, because it is based on reasons for coexistence in conflict - that is, in continuing dissension. A critical examination of the concept makes clear, however, that its content and evaluation are profoundly contested matters and thus that the concept itself stands in conflict. For some, toleration was...

Rainer Forst develops a critical theory capable of deciphering the deficits and potentials inherent in contemporary political reality. This calls for a perspective which is immanent to social and political practices and at the same time transcends them. Forst regards society as a whole as an ‘order of justification’ comprising complexes of different norms referring to institutions and corresponding practices of justification. The task of a ‘critique of relations of justification’, therefor...

Humans are justificatory beingsthey offer, demand, and require justifications. The rules and institutions they follow rest on justification narratives that have evolved over time and, taken together, constitute a dynamic and tension-laden normative order. In this collection of essays, the first translation into English of the ground-breaking Normativität und Macht (Suhrkamp 2015), Rainer Forst presents a new approach to critical theory. Each essay reflects on the basic principles ...

Gli esseri umani sono esseri giustificanti: offrono, chiedono ed esigono giustificazioni. Le norme e le istituzioni che seguono si basano su narrazioni di giustificazione storicamente date che, nel loro insieme, costituiscono un ordine normativo, dinamico e ricco di tensioni. Superando l’alternativa tra teorie “ideali” e teorie “realiste”, Rainer Forst dimostra in questo libro come i concetti di normatività e potere siano strettamente correlati: il potere si basa, infatti, sulla capacità d...

Menschen sind rechtfertigende Wesen; sie orientieren sich an Gründen. Die Regeln und Institutionen, denen sie sich fügen, beruhen auf historisch ausgebildeten Rechtfertigungsnarrativen und bilden insgesamt eine – spannungsreiche und dynamische – normative Ordnung. Jenseits der überkommenen Alternative von »idealen« und »realistischen« Theorien zeigt Rainer Forst in diesem Buch, wie eng die Begriffe der Normativität und der Macht zusammenhängen: Macht beruht auf dem Vermögen, den Raum der R...

Alle Menschen werden mit gleicher Würde und gleichen Rechten geboren. Diese Aussage erscheint normativ ebenso unumstößlich wie empirisch unzutreffend; die Realität widerlegt sie mit jedem Tag aufs Neue – und bestätigt damit ihre Bedeutung. Die Wahrheit dieses Prinzips ist philosophisch im Rückgang auf Kants Idee einer »noumenalen Republik« aufzuklären, in der jede Person dem allgemeinen Gesetz unterworfen ist, das sie zugleich als Gesetzgeber mitkonstruiert. Inwiefern die Wirklichkeit dem ...

Rainer Forst entwirft eine kritische Theorie, die unsere politische Wirklichkeit auf ihre Defizite und ihre Potenziale hin zu entschlüsseln vermag. Dazu bedarf es einer Perspektive, die sozialen und politischen Praktiken immanent ist und sie zugleich transzendiert. Forst betrachtet die Gesellschaft insgesamt als »Rechtfertigungsordnung«, die aus Komplexen verschiedener auf Institutionen bezogener Normen und entsprechender Rechtfertigungspraktiken besteht. Eine »Kritik der Rechtfertigungsve...

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.Over the past 15 years, Rainer Forst has developed a fundamental research programme within the tradition of Frankfurt School Critical Theory. The core of this programme is a moral account of the basic right of justification that humans owe to one another as rational beings. This account is put to work by Forst in articulating - both historically and p...

All human beings are born with equal dignity and possess equal rights. This statement appears normatively just as irrefutable as it is empirically refuted every day. But what are the grounds of this principle, and how should we think about its realization? Its philosophical truth can best be explained by going back to (and beyond) Kant’s notion of a ‘noumenal republic’ in which every person is an equal co-author of the laws that bind all. At the same time, a critical analysis of society an...

Contemporary philosophical pluralism recognizes the inevitability and legitimacy of multiple ethical perspectives and values, making it difficult to isolate the higher-order principles on which to base a theory of justice. Rising up to meet this challenge, Rainer Forst, a leading member of the Frankfurt School's newest generation of philosophers, conceives of an "autonomous" construction of justice founded on what he calls the basic moral right to justification.Forst begins by iden...

Em Justificação e crítica, Rainer Forst discute sua teoria da justificação. Com base em seus trabalhos mais recentes, debruça-se sobre conceitos fundamentais da filosofia política e examina o entrelaçamento com uma teoria crítica da política e os possíveis limites de um pensamento voltado à justiça discursiva.

The collapse of communism, the rise of identity politics, and struggles over global governance have combined to create new challenges for the Left: How to do justice to legitimate claims for multiculturalism and democratization without abandoning the Left's historic-and still indispensable-commitment to economic equality? How to broaden the understanding of injustice by adding cultural and political insult to economic injury?Adding Insult to Injury tracks the debate sparke...