Critical Theory

Journal of Business Ethics, 2016

This article offers a perspective on the critical theory of justice by presenting a structural and processual reconstruction of Rainer Forst’s intriguing yet somewhat opaque concept of a basic structure of justification which is central to his proposed critique of justificatory relations. It shows from a cognitive-sociological perspective what a cooperative relation between a philosophical theory of justice and a social scientific approach could mean for critical theory. A basic structure of justification is revealed to be a cognitively available reflexive order above the order of substantive social and political relations that allows the identification, explanation and transformative critique of reflexivity deficits induced by hegemonic, ideological, repressive or obfuscating means. Far from being exclusively a theoretical and methodological tool, however, it is in principle accessible to those involved and affected on whose experience, suffering and critique critical theory vitally depends.

European Journal of Philosophy, 2020

in: Philosophy and Social Criticism 39:10 – Fernando Suárez Müller, 2013

The position developed by Forst oscillates between two irreconcilable points

Netherlands Journal of Legal Philosophy, 2016

Political Studies Review, 2013

Post-9/11 literature and research have focused increasingly on styles of governance that are attuned not towards the present but to the future. Systems of knowledge play an integral role in enacting new governmental practices which are justified by indications of risk and danger. In Politics of Catastrophe: Genealogies of the Unknown, the authors apply the practice of this anticipatory governance to events whose potentiality distinguishes them from what we may understand as 'risk', 'danger' or 'crisis'.

Constitutionalism Justified: Rainer Forst in Discourse, 2019

2014

E. Herlin-Karnell & M. Klatt, eds, Constitutionalism Justified, Oxford University Press, 2019

In this essay we criticise Rainer Forst's attempt to draw a connection between power and justification, and thus ground his normative theory of a right to justification. Forst draws this connection primarily conceptually, though we will also consider whether a normative connection may be drawn within his framework. Forst's key insight is that if we understand power as operating by furnishing those subjected to it with reasons, then we create a space for the normative contestation of any exercise of power. He calls this the noumenal understanding of power. Against the conceptual connection between power and justification, we argue that (i) on most plausible accounts of political freedom, some freedom-restrictions commonly attributed to the successful exercise of power would perplexingly count as failures of power on Forst's view, and that (ii) on the most plausible account of reason-recognition, namely an appropriateness of response account, a justification relation is only a sufficient but not necessary condition for recognition. Against the normative connection, we argue that (iii) Forst can establish the existence of a right to justification only if he reconsiders the transcendental aspirations of his theory.