Habermas-Rawls Debate

Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are influential figures in social and political philosophy. In the 1990s, they had a famous exchange in the Journal of Philosophy, revealing how great thinkers working in different traditions read and misread each other's work. James Gordon Finlayson examines the debate in context and considers its wider implications, discussing Rawls's Political Liberalism and Habermass Between Facts and Norms. He assesses the strengths and weaknesses of their approaches to political theory, democracy, individual rights, and the normative authority of law and reflects on the ongoing significance of the debate.

\n Format: Paperback / softback
\n Length: 312 pages
\n Publication date: 14 May 2019
\n Publisher: Columbia University Press
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Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls are two of the most renowned and influential figures in social and political philosophy of the second half of the twentieth century. In the 1990s, they engaged in a famous exchange in the Journal of Philosophy, quarreling over the merits of each other's accounts of the shape and meaning of democracy and legitimacy in a contemporary society. This book, written by James Gordon Finlayson, examines the Habermas-Rawls debate in context and considers its wider implications. Finlayson traces the dispute from its inception in their earliest works to the 1995 exchange and its aftermath, as well as its legacy in contemporary debates.

Finlayson discusses Rawls's Political Liberalism and Habermass Between Facts and Norms, considering them as the essential background to the dispute and using them to lay out their different conceptions of justice, politics, democratic legitimacy, individual rights, and the normative authority of law. He provides a detailed analysis and assessment of their contributions, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of their different approaches to political theory, conceptions of democracy, and accounts of religion and public reason. Finlayson also reflects on the ongoing significance of the debate.

The Habermas-Rawls Debate is an authoritative account of the crucial intersection of two major political theorists and an explication of why their dispute continues to matter. It sheds light on the complexities of political theory, democracy, and the role of philosophy in shaping our understanding of these important issues. This book is a valuable resource for scholars, students, and anyone interested in the study of social and political philosophy.

\n Weight: 408g\n
Dimension: 155 x 228 x 15 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9780231164115\n \n