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Situating the Self: Gender, Community, and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics
This book is an attempt to defend the tradition of universalism in the face of a triple-pronged critique by engaging with the claims of feminism, communitarianism, and postmodernism and by learning from them. It situates reason and the moral self more decisively in contexts of gender and community.
276 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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About the author
Seyla Benhabib
68 books80 followersSeyla Benhabib is a Turkish Jewish professor of political science and philosophy at Yale, and director of the program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics, and a well-known contemporary philosopher. She previously taught in the departments of philosophy at Boston University, SUNY Stony Brook, the New School for Social Research, and the Department of Government at Harvard University.
She is the author of several books, most notably about the philosophers Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas. She has also worked with many important philosophers and scholars, including Herbert Marcuse. Benhabib is well known for combining critical theory with feminist theory.
She is the author of several books, most notably about the philosophers Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas. She has also worked with many important philosophers and scholars, including Herbert Marcuse. Benhabib is well known for combining critical theory with feminist theory.
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July 23, 2022
This volume compiles several essays from philosopher and critical theorist Seyla Benhabib that explore how to conceptualize a universalist moral point of view compatible with the pluralism, value differentiation, and cultural particularity characteristic of modernity. For Benhabib, to whatever extent the project of modernity is deeply flawed (and she concedes that in several respects it is), it “can only be reformed from within the intellectual, moral and political resources made possible and available to us by the development of modernity . . . since the sixteenth century” (2). That is, while Benhabib is sympathetic to the claims made by critics of modernity, she nevertheless thinks that we cannot afford to jettison the modern project and its philosophical presuppositions entirely. To this end, she aims to defend the “tradition of universalism” in view of critiques made by feminists, communitarians, and postmodern theorists, albeit with major modifications to this tradition as interpreted by thinkers such as Kant, Rawls, and Habermas. One need not, she stresses, commit oneself to the metaphysical illusions of a self-transparent reason, or a disembedded and disembodied noumenal subject, or that we have epistemic access to a neutral, Archimedean standpoint beyond time and history, in order to defend a universalist ethic. For Benhabib, ethics—specifically, her theory of communicative or discourse ethics—can be postmetaphysical and universalist at the same time.
Benhabib describes her theory of communicative ethics as a “postmetaphysical, interactive universalism” with three core premises: first, it is rooted in a discursive and communicative, rather than a substantialist, concept of rationality; second, it posits an embodied and embedded human self whose identity is constituted narratively, within a human community, as opposed to a disembodied noumenal self that exists prior to its ends; and third, it reformulates the “moral point of view” as the achievement of an interactive rationality and not an Archimedean center from which the philosopher pretends to move the world (4-6). These premises “form a broad conception of reason, self and society” that situates Benhabib within the modern tradition of universalism yet at the same time allows her to transcend its discredited metaphysics (6). They also help her articulate an emancipatory feminism unencumbered by the contradictions that result from the ostensible alliance between postmodernism and feminist theory.
At the core of the position Benhabib defends across these essays is her theory of communicative or discourse ethics, adapted from Habermas with several important modifications. Communicative ethics, she explains, “is a theory of moral justification” that draws on the moral authority lent to norms approved by various participants in a fair-minded conversation with certain formal constraints (73). To describe the kind of scenario in which the norms or principles consented to in a moral conversation could be justified, communicative ethics posits what Habermas calls an “ideal speech situation” characterized by the principle of moral respect—i.e. the entitlement that all those capable of speech and action have to be participants in a moral conversation—and the principle of reciprocity—i.e. that within a moral conversation each participant has the same entitlements to various speech acts, to initiate new topics, to ask for reflection about the presuppositions of the conversation, etc (29). The idea behind this portrait of the ideal speech situation is that, like the hypothetical contractual situation defended by Rawls, it substitutes for the autonomous, solitary, and ahistorical will in Kantian ethics determined solely by the universalizable principles that comprise the moral law. It is, in effect, a universalizability test whose basic premise is “that only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all concerned in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse” (37). Importantly, for Benhabib, the moral importance of the ideal speech situation of communicative ethics is not so much the unanimous consent in which it results as the fact that we are ready to describe as reasonable and fair the procedure by which widespread approval is reached. Indeed, Benhabib views universalizability not only as a formal justificatory procedure but also as “the utopian projection of a way of life” in which respect and reciprocity are dominant norms. From this perspective, the emphasis in communicative ethics is less on rational consensus and more on “those normative practices and moral relationships” within which a reasonable and fair moral conversation “as a way of life can flourish and continue” (38).
As a universalizability test, the ideal speech situation of communicative ethics is meant to substantively limit our intuitions or conventional moral norms. In this sense, communicative ethics is an example of what Benhabib calls “postconventional morality.” For Benhabib, a “conventional moral system” is one in which “a distinction between social acceptance and hypothetical validity has become articulable,” even if one possible justification of norms posited by a conventional morality may be that they are morally desirable because “they reflect our way of life, which is superior to others.” Conversely, as a system of postconventional morality, communicative ethics maintains that the validity of normative practices cannot be assumed “if one cannot demonstrate with reasons to others who are not members of [a certain] way of life . . . why these practices are more just and fair than another” (42). In other words, in a postconventional moral system, the fact that a certain set of norms reflect our way of life does not supply a sufficient reason for why those norms are justified, since this is not a reason that those who do not share our way of life, who are nevertheless part of our broader moral conversation, would accept. Another important difference between postconventional and conventional morality is that the former, unlike the latter, is comprehensively reflexive in that it can “radically question all procedures of justification,” even its own. That is, communicative ethics has the ability to confront and question its own presuppositions, even the metanorms of moral respect and reciprocity that formally constrain the ideal speech situation, since these, too, can become the subject of the moral conversation. As Benhabib explains, this comprehensive reflexivity is how communicative ethics avoids the accusation of circularity. The racist or sexist interlocutor is permitted to question the principles of respect and reciprocity within the moral conversation, but if she hopes to establish that her position is morally justified, she must persuade her fellow interlocutors that this is so. And because her attempt is doomed to fail unless she resorts to violence, coercion, or suppression—i.e. the wholesale violation of the principles themselves—the metanorms of respect and reciprocity are vindicated. Thus, for a postconventional moral system like communicative ethics, comprehensive reflexivity and universalizability are necessarily related.
We see from this description of communicative ethics how Benhabib understands rationality as discursive and communicative. Reason does not occupy a timeless metaphysical plane distinct from history (Plato), nor is it the unique faculty of a certain sort of creature who exists in both the noumenal and phenomenal realms (Kant). It is, rather, the achievement of a collective body of interlocutors capable of speech and action. Yet who, exactly, are these interlocutors, and what kind of selves do they have? For some universalist moral theorists, such as Rawls for example, the rational consensus required by universalism presupposes the need to posit abstract, nonindividuated selves who only know about their motives and identities what is required to prompt the rational deliberation of the moral conversation (within the hypothetical contractual situation of the original position). To allow them to know more than this, from a Rawlsian perspective, is to let empirical factors muddle their deliberative efforts in such a way that threatens the possibility of consensus. Conversely, Benhabib thinks that the interlocutors of the ideal speech situation should and must be embodied individuals embedded in particular ways of life. This is because Benhabib claims that the universalism of communicative ethics presupposes, as we have seen, moral reciprocity, and reciprocity involves the capacity to take the standpoint of the other. Yet if the other whose standpoint I seek to occupy is an abstract, nonindividuated other of the sort that Rawls posits, then I cannot, in truth, put myself in their place, since they are, as far as I can tell, no different than me. And if I cannot put myself in their place, then “no coherent universalizability test can be carried out,” since I, in effect, reason by myself, not unlike the Kantian self whose will is determined solely by the moral law (164). In the contractual situation as Rawls describes it, which in its justificatory function is akin to the ideal speech situation of communicative ethics, there are no actual others whose perspective I must take into account because there are no individuated selves; the others with whom I contract in the original position are simply other versions of me, and in such a situation there can be no moral reciprocity.
For this reason, Benhabib contends that the others with whom one partakes in a moral conversation structured by the principles of respect and reciprocity must be concrete others, each of whom is “an individual with a concrete history, identity and affective-emotional constitution” (159). Only in relation to the concrete other can one participate in the reversibility of perspectives required by a universalist ethic. Moreover, once we see the need for the presence of the concrete other, we must concede that no epistemic restrictions can be placed on the moral disputation that takes place within the ideal speech situation. The parties are free not only to deliberate about the principles of justice, but also about what goods are desirable (and not just those primary goods they are assumed to want whatever else they want, as Rawls would have it), and even, as we saw earlier, about the conditions and constraints under which their conversation takes place (i.e. the principles of respect and reciprocity). On one level, the open-ended nature of this model of communicative ethics is simply desirable, since, Benhabib asserts, it makes the deliberations of the moral conversation more rational: practical rationality involves epistemic rationality, and the more interlocutors know the more informed their conclusions will be. On another level, it means those “private” moral domains associated with the domestic-familial sphere and formerly deemed unfit for the public moral conversation insofar as they implicate conceptions of the good are now appropriate subjects for moral deliberation. In short, the communicative ethics model advanced by Benhabib forces us “to reconsider, revise, and perhaps reject the dichotomies between justice versus the good life, interests versus needs, [and] norms versus values upon which” universalist moral theories like Rawls’s and Habermas’s rest (170).
With her theory of communicative ethics, Benhabib seeks to settle the “debate over whether a universalist moral standpoint must be formalistic, a prioristic and context insensitive or whether moral universalism can be reconciled with contextual sensitivity” (134). Her defense of the need for the concrete other in the ideal speech situation clearly shows that she opts for the latter conclusion. And, as we have seen, the inclusion of the concrete other in the moral conversation opens up “the possibility of reasonable and open-ended ethical conversation about matters of justice as well as those of the good life,” some of which have traditionally been associated with the “private” sphere, i.e. the sphere of care and intimacy, which has historically intersected with the lives of women (209). Communicative ethics therefore serves to rebut the privatization of women’s experience and the exclusion of its consideration from a moral point of view; it is, or at least it tries to be, a universalist feminist ethic. This, to some readers, will seem like a contradiction in terms: is not universalism conceptually opposed to feminism and the latter’s opposition to the metaphysical assumptions of universalist moral theories that so often serve to reinforce or justify patriarchy? To this, Benhabib would respond, first, that her theory of communicative ethics is postmetaphysical and does not for this reason presume, for example, the existence of an essential human nature defined by attributes historically associated with men’s roles. Second, she would point out that her theory does not presuppose a conception of the self that reflects aspects of male experience; the other in communicative ethics is not a man, or a cipher with a handful of male-coded attributes, but rather a concrete other with a particular identity and history. And finally, in a critical move, Benhabib would note that feminism cannot afford to so quickly jettison the modern project of universalism. The postmodern turn toward particularity does not, she insists, make for an easy alliance with feminism.
In defense of this last claim, Benhabib draws on the work of Jean-François Lyotard to characterize what she takes to be the central tenets of the diverse and multifaceted philosophical (literary, and artistic) movement known as postmodernism. The dawn of the postmodern marks the “end of the episteme of representation,” which was defined by an attempt, whether rationalist or empiricist, to account for and build an adequate representation of the world outside the mind. In Rorty’s terms, mind had to “mirror” nature. With the end of this episteme comes, for Lyotard at least, the irreconcilability and incommensurability of conceptual vocabularies in different cultural and social contexts, concomitant with “the acceptance that only local and context-specific criteria of validity can be formulated” (209). Universalism, in other words, is a non-option, cast away with the rest of the modern project. For several reasons, the advent of postmodernism is understandably attractive to feminists. The end of meta-narratives characteristic of the episteme of representation—the death of Man, History, and Metaphysics, as feminist theorist Jane Flax puts it—entails the demystification of the male subject of reason, the fracture of historical narratives that buttressed cultural imperialism, and skepticism toward the dubious propositions of essentialist metaphysics (212-13). Yet despite the “elective affinity” between feminism and postmodernism, Benhabib claims, certain (popular) interpretations of these postmodern tenets “place in question the very emancipatory ideals of the women’s movements” (213).
In particular, Benhabib takes aim at the death of the subject and metaphysics. While, to be sure, she thinks that a historicized interpretation of the subject as situated within various discursive practices is compatible with an emancipatory feminism, the complete rejection of subjectivity, and with it the denial of individual agency, does not cohere with the philosophical and political aims of feminism. Benhabib specifically criticizes Judith Butler on this point. She finds it plausible to concur with Butler that “the narrative codes of a culture . . . define the content with which [the pronoun ‘I’] will be invested, the appropriate instances when it can be invoked, by whom and how,” yet she stresses that this idea does not entail, as Butler implies, that an individual is “a blank slate upon whom are inscribed the codes of a culture.” Butler insists, in her own words, “that to be constituted by discourse is [not] to be determined by discourse, where determination forecloses the possibility of agency,” but for Benhabib, it is unclear what basis agency could have on a Butlerian portrait of the subject (217). Without some viable concept of agency, which Butler ostensibly lacks, the project of female emancipation is unthinkable (214).
Benhabib is similarly critical of a certain version of the death of metaphysics thesis. The end of metaphysics seems to foreclose the project of universalism, in place of which are “local narratives” or “les petits récits” that constitute our everyday social practices and conceptual vocabularies, which postmodern theorists claim to be sufficiently reflexive and self-critical for the purposes of normative social criticism (225). Benhabib, however, articulates two main objections to the idea that culturally relative “situated criticism” can stand on its own. First, she observes that there is no one set of criteria particular to a society or culture to which social critics can appeal in their characterization and criticism of complex social practices. Put differently, the situated critic draws a contrast between the norms constitutive of a culture and unjust practices in that culture, but she cannot assume, Benhabib insists, that she will find a set of criteria on which there is such universal consensus that she can simply point to widely shared norms, then point to practices incommensurate with those norms, and claim to have accomplished the task of criticism. Because the narratives of a culture are not univocal and uncontroversial, social criticism needs philosophy to interpret, order, and derive normative principles from conflictual narratives. Benhabib’s second objection is that situated criticism tends to assume that the constitutive norms of a culture, society, or tradition “will be sufficient to enable one to exercise criticism in the name of a desirable future” (226). Here, her point is that not every social context is constituted by norms that will assist the social critic in her task. It is at this juncture, however, that Benhabib’s communicative ethics model is so valuable. For if one widens the moral conversation to include concrete others from other social contexts—if one aims, in other words, for an interactive universalism—then other criteria and norms become available to the social critic, and her criticism becomes, ideally, all the more potent.
Benhabib describes her theory of communicative ethics as a “postmetaphysical, interactive universalism” with three core premises: first, it is rooted in a discursive and communicative, rather than a substantialist, concept of rationality; second, it posits an embodied and embedded human self whose identity is constituted narratively, within a human community, as opposed to a disembodied noumenal self that exists prior to its ends; and third, it reformulates the “moral point of view” as the achievement of an interactive rationality and not an Archimedean center from which the philosopher pretends to move the world (4-6). These premises “form a broad conception of reason, self and society” that situates Benhabib within the modern tradition of universalism yet at the same time allows her to transcend its discredited metaphysics (6). They also help her articulate an emancipatory feminism unencumbered by the contradictions that result from the ostensible alliance between postmodernism and feminist theory.
At the core of the position Benhabib defends across these essays is her theory of communicative or discourse ethics, adapted from Habermas with several important modifications. Communicative ethics, she explains, “is a theory of moral justification” that draws on the moral authority lent to norms approved by various participants in a fair-minded conversation with certain formal constraints (73). To describe the kind of scenario in which the norms or principles consented to in a moral conversation could be justified, communicative ethics posits what Habermas calls an “ideal speech situation” characterized by the principle of moral respect—i.e. the entitlement that all those capable of speech and action have to be participants in a moral conversation—and the principle of reciprocity—i.e. that within a moral conversation each participant has the same entitlements to various speech acts, to initiate new topics, to ask for reflection about the presuppositions of the conversation, etc (29). The idea behind this portrait of the ideal speech situation is that, like the hypothetical contractual situation defended by Rawls, it substitutes for the autonomous, solitary, and ahistorical will in Kantian ethics determined solely by the universalizable principles that comprise the moral law. It is, in effect, a universalizability test whose basic premise is “that only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all concerned in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse” (37). Importantly, for Benhabib, the moral importance of the ideal speech situation of communicative ethics is not so much the unanimous consent in which it results as the fact that we are ready to describe as reasonable and fair the procedure by which widespread approval is reached. Indeed, Benhabib views universalizability not only as a formal justificatory procedure but also as “the utopian projection of a way of life” in which respect and reciprocity are dominant norms. From this perspective, the emphasis in communicative ethics is less on rational consensus and more on “those normative practices and moral relationships” within which a reasonable and fair moral conversation “as a way of life can flourish and continue” (38).
As a universalizability test, the ideal speech situation of communicative ethics is meant to substantively limit our intuitions or conventional moral norms. In this sense, communicative ethics is an example of what Benhabib calls “postconventional morality.” For Benhabib, a “conventional moral system” is one in which “a distinction between social acceptance and hypothetical validity has become articulable,” even if one possible justification of norms posited by a conventional morality may be that they are morally desirable because “they reflect our way of life, which is superior to others.” Conversely, as a system of postconventional morality, communicative ethics maintains that the validity of normative practices cannot be assumed “if one cannot demonstrate with reasons to others who are not members of [a certain] way of life . . . why these practices are more just and fair than another” (42). In other words, in a postconventional moral system, the fact that a certain set of norms reflect our way of life does not supply a sufficient reason for why those norms are justified, since this is not a reason that those who do not share our way of life, who are nevertheless part of our broader moral conversation, would accept. Another important difference between postconventional and conventional morality is that the former, unlike the latter, is comprehensively reflexive in that it can “radically question all procedures of justification,” even its own. That is, communicative ethics has the ability to confront and question its own presuppositions, even the metanorms of moral respect and reciprocity that formally constrain the ideal speech situation, since these, too, can become the subject of the moral conversation. As Benhabib explains, this comprehensive reflexivity is how communicative ethics avoids the accusation of circularity. The racist or sexist interlocutor is permitted to question the principles of respect and reciprocity within the moral conversation, but if she hopes to establish that her position is morally justified, she must persuade her fellow interlocutors that this is so. And because her attempt is doomed to fail unless she resorts to violence, coercion, or suppression—i.e. the wholesale violation of the principles themselves—the metanorms of respect and reciprocity are vindicated. Thus, for a postconventional moral system like communicative ethics, comprehensive reflexivity and universalizability are necessarily related.
We see from this description of communicative ethics how Benhabib understands rationality as discursive and communicative. Reason does not occupy a timeless metaphysical plane distinct from history (Plato), nor is it the unique faculty of a certain sort of creature who exists in both the noumenal and phenomenal realms (Kant). It is, rather, the achievement of a collective body of interlocutors capable of speech and action. Yet who, exactly, are these interlocutors, and what kind of selves do they have? For some universalist moral theorists, such as Rawls for example, the rational consensus required by universalism presupposes the need to posit abstract, nonindividuated selves who only know about their motives and identities what is required to prompt the rational deliberation of the moral conversation (within the hypothetical contractual situation of the original position). To allow them to know more than this, from a Rawlsian perspective, is to let empirical factors muddle their deliberative efforts in such a way that threatens the possibility of consensus. Conversely, Benhabib thinks that the interlocutors of the ideal speech situation should and must be embodied individuals embedded in particular ways of life. This is because Benhabib claims that the universalism of communicative ethics presupposes, as we have seen, moral reciprocity, and reciprocity involves the capacity to take the standpoint of the other. Yet if the other whose standpoint I seek to occupy is an abstract, nonindividuated other of the sort that Rawls posits, then I cannot, in truth, put myself in their place, since they are, as far as I can tell, no different than me. And if I cannot put myself in their place, then “no coherent universalizability test can be carried out,” since I, in effect, reason by myself, not unlike the Kantian self whose will is determined solely by the moral law (164). In the contractual situation as Rawls describes it, which in its justificatory function is akin to the ideal speech situation of communicative ethics, there are no actual others whose perspective I must take into account because there are no individuated selves; the others with whom I contract in the original position are simply other versions of me, and in such a situation there can be no moral reciprocity.
For this reason, Benhabib contends that the others with whom one partakes in a moral conversation structured by the principles of respect and reciprocity must be concrete others, each of whom is “an individual with a concrete history, identity and affective-emotional constitution” (159). Only in relation to the concrete other can one participate in the reversibility of perspectives required by a universalist ethic. Moreover, once we see the need for the presence of the concrete other, we must concede that no epistemic restrictions can be placed on the moral disputation that takes place within the ideal speech situation. The parties are free not only to deliberate about the principles of justice, but also about what goods are desirable (and not just those primary goods they are assumed to want whatever else they want, as Rawls would have it), and even, as we saw earlier, about the conditions and constraints under which their conversation takes place (i.e. the principles of respect and reciprocity). On one level, the open-ended nature of this model of communicative ethics is simply desirable, since, Benhabib asserts, it makes the deliberations of the moral conversation more rational: practical rationality involves epistemic rationality, and the more interlocutors know the more informed their conclusions will be. On another level, it means those “private” moral domains associated with the domestic-familial sphere and formerly deemed unfit for the public moral conversation insofar as they implicate conceptions of the good are now appropriate subjects for moral deliberation. In short, the communicative ethics model advanced by Benhabib forces us “to reconsider, revise, and perhaps reject the dichotomies between justice versus the good life, interests versus needs, [and] norms versus values upon which” universalist moral theories like Rawls’s and Habermas’s rest (170).
With her theory of communicative ethics, Benhabib seeks to settle the “debate over whether a universalist moral standpoint must be formalistic, a prioristic and context insensitive or whether moral universalism can be reconciled with contextual sensitivity” (134). Her defense of the need for the concrete other in the ideal speech situation clearly shows that she opts for the latter conclusion. And, as we have seen, the inclusion of the concrete other in the moral conversation opens up “the possibility of reasonable and open-ended ethical conversation about matters of justice as well as those of the good life,” some of which have traditionally been associated with the “private” sphere, i.e. the sphere of care and intimacy, which has historically intersected with the lives of women (209). Communicative ethics therefore serves to rebut the privatization of women’s experience and the exclusion of its consideration from a moral point of view; it is, or at least it tries to be, a universalist feminist ethic. This, to some readers, will seem like a contradiction in terms: is not universalism conceptually opposed to feminism and the latter’s opposition to the metaphysical assumptions of universalist moral theories that so often serve to reinforce or justify patriarchy? To this, Benhabib would respond, first, that her theory of communicative ethics is postmetaphysical and does not for this reason presume, for example, the existence of an essential human nature defined by attributes historically associated with men’s roles. Second, she would point out that her theory does not presuppose a conception of the self that reflects aspects of male experience; the other in communicative ethics is not a man, or a cipher with a handful of male-coded attributes, but rather a concrete other with a particular identity and history. And finally, in a critical move, Benhabib would note that feminism cannot afford to so quickly jettison the modern project of universalism. The postmodern turn toward particularity does not, she insists, make for an easy alliance with feminism.
In defense of this last claim, Benhabib draws on the work of Jean-François Lyotard to characterize what she takes to be the central tenets of the diverse and multifaceted philosophical (literary, and artistic) movement known as postmodernism. The dawn of the postmodern marks the “end of the episteme of representation,” which was defined by an attempt, whether rationalist or empiricist, to account for and build an adequate representation of the world outside the mind. In Rorty’s terms, mind had to “mirror” nature. With the end of this episteme comes, for Lyotard at least, the irreconcilability and incommensurability of conceptual vocabularies in different cultural and social contexts, concomitant with “the acceptance that only local and context-specific criteria of validity can be formulated” (209). Universalism, in other words, is a non-option, cast away with the rest of the modern project. For several reasons, the advent of postmodernism is understandably attractive to feminists. The end of meta-narratives characteristic of the episteme of representation—the death of Man, History, and Metaphysics, as feminist theorist Jane Flax puts it—entails the demystification of the male subject of reason, the fracture of historical narratives that buttressed cultural imperialism, and skepticism toward the dubious propositions of essentialist metaphysics (212-13). Yet despite the “elective affinity” between feminism and postmodernism, Benhabib claims, certain (popular) interpretations of these postmodern tenets “place in question the very emancipatory ideals of the women’s movements” (213).
In particular, Benhabib takes aim at the death of the subject and metaphysics. While, to be sure, she thinks that a historicized interpretation of the subject as situated within various discursive practices is compatible with an emancipatory feminism, the complete rejection of subjectivity, and with it the denial of individual agency, does not cohere with the philosophical and political aims of feminism. Benhabib specifically criticizes Judith Butler on this point. She finds it plausible to concur with Butler that “the narrative codes of a culture . . . define the content with which [the pronoun ‘I’] will be invested, the appropriate instances when it can be invoked, by whom and how,” yet she stresses that this idea does not entail, as Butler implies, that an individual is “a blank slate upon whom are inscribed the codes of a culture.” Butler insists, in her own words, “that to be constituted by discourse is [not] to be determined by discourse, where determination forecloses the possibility of agency,” but for Benhabib, it is unclear what basis agency could have on a Butlerian portrait of the subject (217). Without some viable concept of agency, which Butler ostensibly lacks, the project of female emancipation is unthinkable (214).
Benhabib is similarly critical of a certain version of the death of metaphysics thesis. The end of metaphysics seems to foreclose the project of universalism, in place of which are “local narratives” or “les petits récits” that constitute our everyday social practices and conceptual vocabularies, which postmodern theorists claim to be sufficiently reflexive and self-critical for the purposes of normative social criticism (225). Benhabib, however, articulates two main objections to the idea that culturally relative “situated criticism” can stand on its own. First, she observes that there is no one set of criteria particular to a society or culture to which social critics can appeal in their characterization and criticism of complex social practices. Put differently, the situated critic draws a contrast between the norms constitutive of a culture and unjust practices in that culture, but she cannot assume, Benhabib insists, that she will find a set of criteria on which there is such universal consensus that she can simply point to widely shared norms, then point to practices incommensurate with those norms, and claim to have accomplished the task of criticism. Because the narratives of a culture are not univocal and uncontroversial, social criticism needs philosophy to interpret, order, and derive normative principles from conflictual narratives. Benhabib’s second objection is that situated criticism tends to assume that the constitutive norms of a culture, society, or tradition “will be sufficient to enable one to exercise criticism in the name of a desirable future” (226). Here, her point is that not every social context is constituted by norms that will assist the social critic in her task. It is at this juncture, however, that Benhabib’s communicative ethics model is so valuable. For if one widens the moral conversation to include concrete others from other social contexts—if one aims, in other words, for an interactive universalism—then other criteria and norms become available to the social critic, and her criticism becomes, ideally, all the more potent.
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October 8, 2007Contained within is strong critique of elements of Hannah Arendt's thought as it develops in relation to responses engendered by early expression of it.
March 10, 2016
It's not a review exactly, but some thoughts inspired by this book can be found here: https://sweettalkconversation.com/201...
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