PHI 295-02 - Special Topic: Intersubjectivity: Communication and Recognition

4 credits (Spring)

Where do our notions of the right and the just come from? Can they be defended when criticized? How are they rearticulated, reformulated, or renewed in the course of time? In this course we will study Jurgen Habermas’ and Axel Honneth’s answers to these questions. Habermas, Frankfurt school author of many books including The Theory of Communicative Action, analyzes the structure of human communication and develops a theory of justice, and Honneth, building on Habermas’s work, develops a theory of social recognition. Together they offer theoretical resources that can be helpful when thinking about complex national and trans-national questions about social justice, equality and difference. In this course we will study the fundamentals of their theories. Readings will include a range of Habermas’ and Honneth’s books including The Theory of Communicative Ethics, Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, The Unfinished Project of Modernity, The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in Critical Social Theory, The Struggle for Recognition, The We in the I, and Freedom’s Right.

Prerequisite: PHI 111, PHI 264, or POL 264.
Instructor: Meehan