Social Criticism and the Exclusion of Ethics

Dados Bibliográficos

ID11308031
AutoresRussell Keat (autor correspondente)
Ano2008
Volume30
Fascículo1
Páginas291-315
Data de publicação2008-05-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAnalyse & Kritik (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0171-5860 • E-ISSN: 2365-9858
EditoraWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/auk-2008-0117
OpenAlexW1528993049
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas3
Referências citadas19

As Axel Honneth has recently noted, the critical concerns of social philosophers during the past three decades have been focused primarily on questions of justice, with ethical issues about the human good being largely excluded. In the first section I briefly explore this exclusion in both ‘Anglo-American’ political philosophy and ‘German’ critical theory. I then argue, in the main sections, that despite this commitment to their exclusion, distinctively ethical concepts and ideals can be identified both in Rawls’s Theory of Justice and in Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action, taking these as exemplary, representative texts for each theoretical school. These ethical elements, and their implications for the critical evaluation of economic institutions, have gone largely unnoticed. In the final section I indicate the kinds of debates that might be generated, were these to be given the attention they arguably deserve. I focus especially on the significance of empirical issues, and hence on the role of social science in social criticism

Critical theory · Criticism · Economic Justice · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Ethical theory · German · Political philosophy · Political science · Politics · Social criticism · Social exclusion · Social science · Social theory · Sociology · Critical Realism in Sociology · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Political Economy and Marxism