Habermas Discourse and Cultural Diversity哈贝马斯的话语与文化多样性.pdfVIP

POLITICAL STUDIES: 2003 VOL 51, 740–758 Habermas: Discourse and Cultural Diversity Andrea T. Baumeister University of Stirling Habermas’s vision of discourse ethics can be reconciled with many of the concerns of proponents of diversity whose demands for recognition are rooted in liberal values. However, his account underestimates the challenge that diversity poses to collective identity and the fundamental nature of value conflict. If discursive approaches to justice are to accommodate such claims, they must abandon the Habermasian search for consensus in favour of a vision of liberalism which acknowl- edges the plurality and incommensurability of fundamental values and which consequently accepts the pervasiveness of value conflict. Whereas Habermas fears that such a perspective will reduce political disputes to purely strategic struggles for power, such worries can be addressed through innovative forms of joint governance. Jürgen Habermas’s long-standing concern with questions of social cohesion and legitimacy has led him recently to address the challenge posed to traditional liberal conceptions of citizenship by demands for the recognition of particular cultures and identities. In his response, he aims to show that his vision of discourse ethics can be reconciled with the struggle for recognition on the part of many groups histori- cally marginalised in liberal democracies and that, properly understood, a liberal theory of rights is not blind to cultural difference. Indeed, his sophisticated account of the distinction between the public and the private and the relationship between the right and the good ensures that his approach is sensitive to many of the con- cerns expressed by those proponents of diversity whose demands for recognition are rooted in liberal values and a desire to enable citizens to participate in the public realm on