The Divided West E-Book

Jürgen Habermas

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 340

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Make no mistake, the normative authority of the United States of America lies in ruins. Such is the judgment of the most influential thinker in Europe today reflecting on the political repercussions of the war in Iraq. The decision to go to war in Iraq, without the explicit backing of a Security Council Resolution, opened up a deep fissure in the West which continues to divide erstwhile allies and to hinder the attempt to develop a coordinated response to the new threats posed by international terrorism. In this timely and important volume, Jürgen Habermas responds to the dramatic political events of the period since September 11, 2001, and maps out a way to move the political agenda forward, beyond the acrimonious debates that have pitched opponents of the war against the Bush Administration and its coalition of the willing. What is fundamentally at stake, argues Habermas, is the Kantian project of overcoming the state of nature between states through the constitutionalization of international law. Habermas develops a detailed multidimensional model of transnational and supranational governance inspired by Kantian cosmopolitanism, situates it in the context of the evolution of international law toward a cosmopolitan constitutional order during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and defends it against the new challenge posed by the hegemonic liberal vision underlying the aggressive unilateralism of the current US administration. The Divided West is a major intervention by one of the most highly regarded political thinkers of our time. It will be essential reading for students of sociology, politics, international relations, and international law, and it will be of great interest to anyone concerned with the current and future course of European and international politics.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title page

Copyright page

Editor's Preface

I

II

III

Notes

Author's Foreword

Note on the Translation

I: After September 11

1: Fundamentalism and Terror

Notes

2: Interpreting the Fall of a Monument

Note

II: The Voice of Europe in the Clamor of its Nations

3: February 15, or: What Binds Europeans

The Vagaries of a European Identity

Historical Roots of a Political Profile

Notes

4: Core Europe as Counterpower? Follow-up Questions

Notes

5: The State of German–Polish Relations

Notes

6: Is the Development of a European Identity Necessary, and Is It Possible?

I

II

III

Notes

III: Views on a Chaotic World

7: An Interview on War and Peace

Notes

IV: The Kantian Project and the Divided West

8: Does the Constitutionalization of International Law Still Have a Chance?

Introduction

Politically Constituted World Society vs. World Republic

Constitutionalization of International Law or Liberal Ethics of the Superpower

Alternative Visions of a New Global Order

Notes

Index

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Start Reading

Preface

CHAPTER 1

Index

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First published in German as Der gespaltene Westen by Jürgen Habermas © Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 2004. Chapter 1 first appeared in Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida © The University of Chicago Press, 2003. Chapter 2 first appeared in a translation by Max Pensky in German Law Journal 4/7 (2003): 701–8 and in Constellations 10/3 (2003): 364–70. Chapter 7 appeared under the title “America and the World: A Conversation with Jürgen Habermas,” translated by Jeffrey Craig Miller, Logos 3/3 (Summer 2004).

This English translation © Polity Press Ltd, 2006

Polity Press

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Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK

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All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-10: 0-7456-3518-0

ISBN-13: 978-07456-3518-0

ISBN-10: 0-7456-3519-9 (pb)

ISBN-13: 978-07456-3519-9 (pb)

ISBN-13: 978-07456-9458-0 (epub)

ISBN-13: 978-07456-9365-1 (mobi)

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: www.polity.co.uk

The publication of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut

Chapter 2, first published in the German Law Journal, Vol. 04. No. 07, Pages 701–708, used with permission of the editors.

Chapter 7, this interview originally appeared in Logos: A Journal of Modern Society and Culture 3.3, Summer 2004. http://www.logosjournal.com/issue3.3habermasinterview.htm

Editor's Preface

The writings collected in this volume document the responses of one of the major social and political thinkers of our time to what are likely to be regarded by future generations as important events in world history. Since the early 1990s, when the end of the Cold War inaugurated dramatic changes in the international political landscape, Jürgen Habermas has produced important theoretical writings and numerous essays, and conducted interviews, devoted to global political issues. The underlying themes and concerns of these writings have remained consistent, even as Habermas has refined his ideas concerning law and politics above the national level and has responded to new political developments. His central theoretical preoccupation has been the articulation of a model of democratic politics beyond the nation-state that is capable of meeting the challenges of the “postnational constellation.” In this connection, he has repeatedly discussed the process of European unification as a potential model for the transition from international law to cosmopolitan society which he advocates.

Habermas presents his approach to international law and politics as a critical appropriation of Kant's idea of a “cosmopolitan condition,” to which the closing essay of this volume represents a further major contribution. This essay was also written as a direct response to the events – in particular, the policies pursued by the US government since September 11, 2001 – which have led to a damaging split within the West over the future direction and goals of global political governance. The remaining essays and interviews document Habermas's responses to these events as they occurred and thus set the political stage for the theoretical project developed systematically in the closing essay.

In what follows, I will offer some remarks on the theoretical and practical motivations of Habermas's cosmopolitan project as set forth in the closing essay. I will then show how they are reflected in some of the principal themes of the remaining essays and interviews and conclude with some observations on the role of the public intellectual as exemplified by the writings in this volume.

I

In the essay “Does the Constitutionalization of International Law Still Have a Chance?” Habermas argues that the continuation of the Kantian cosmopolitan project under current global conditions should take the form of a constitutionalization of international law. Kant's idea of a “cosmopolitan condition” must be freed from the historical and – as Habermas here emphasizes – ballast with which it is weighed down in Kant's own writings. Kant envisaged the creation of a cosmopolitan political order that would ultimately unite all human beings into a republican state of world citizens. He argued that this future “cosmopolitan condition” was a necessary complement to the republican national states then in their infancy and to the established international system of sovereign states if an enduring condition of world peace was to be achieved in an increasingly interconnected world. Although Habermas embraces the normative thrust of Kant's cosmopolitan vision – and, in particular, the central role it accords law – he now argues that its major weakness, and the reason for the apparent inconsistencies in Kant's treatment, is a conceptual one. Kant failed to conceptualize the cosmopolitan condition in sufficiently abstract terms because he took the French Revolution as his model for understanding what was required to pacify international and global relations. Applying the social contract idea directly to relations between states, Kant concluded that the transition from an international to a cosmopolitan condition would require the creation of a single world republic enjoying a monopoly of coercive state authority.