Reconstructing Political Thought

An old dualism in Political Th eory is currently reoccurring in some of the methodological debates among post-positivist academic political theorists.It is the battle between those who, in the name of Reconstructive Political Th eory, claim they have reached a new level of a sound scientifi c political theory and those who still want to sharpen the merits of Political Th ought -a term which epitomizes the program of this journal, which is why we chose it as one of the three subtitles of "Redescriptions."Th ose in the camp of Reconstructive Political Th eory claim to represent a sounder scientifi c approach.Th ey do not, however, suggest the usual positivist's toolbox of empirical and analytical methods.Th ey are post-positivists too, and they have entered the stage of the new methodological debate in political theory from the humanities.Th ey too make use of hermeneutics, critical language philosophy, the history of political ideas, conceptual analyses, and even Begriff sgeschichte.Today, the most prominent representative of Reconstructive Political Th eory is Jürgen Habermas. 1 His version of Reconstructive Political Th eory integrates theoretical insights from very diverse sources, the most important being Marxism's evolutionary perspective, John Dewey's pragmatism, the Critical Th eory of the early Frankfurt School, Niklas Luhmann's systems theory, and certain strands of feminism.Habermas represents an approach in modern political theory that claims to analyze the necessary social conditions for the emergence of certain political concepts and normative political statements in a systematic way.Th us he tries to explain the emergence and the performativity of political concepts and normative political statements within the framework of a theory of society, which is based on the idea of a systematic process of social evolution. 2Political vocabularies, the defi nitions of political problems, as well as political interventions are understood as integral parts of an evolutionary development to higher cognitive and moral levels.Reconstructive Political Th eorists in the tradition of Habermas such as Hauke Brunkhorst or Rainer Schmalz-Bruns try to connect

Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · History · Law · Political Theory and Influence

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  Open Access•Julian Honkasalo•Redescriptions Political Thought…•2014

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