Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 224
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-0-7425-1260-3 • Hardback • October 2001 • $121.00 • (£93.00)
978-0-7425-1261-0 • Paperback • October 2001 • $46.00 • (£35.00)
James L. Marsh is professor of philosophy at Fordham University in Bronx, New York. He is the author of several books such as Modernity and Its Discontents and Critique, Action, and Liberation.
Chapter 1 Preface
Chapter 2 Toward a Critique of Habermas's Philosophy of Law
Chapter 3 The Tension between Facticity and Validity
Chapter 4 On Mediating Private and Public Autonomy: The Genesis of Rights
Chapter 5 The Genesis of the State
Chapter 6 Law and Jurisprudence
Chapter 7 Deliberative Politics and Administrative Social Power
Chapter 8 The Public Sphere, Civil Society, and the Rule of Capital
Chapter 9 The Different Paradigms of Law and the Difference They Make
Chapter 10 The Achievement and Limits of Habermas's Philosophy of Law
Professor Marsh, a self-styled 'disillusioned Habermasian,' offers a careful, somber 'reality check' to the comparatively favorable vision of contemporary society that Habermas presents in his significant work, Between Facts and Norms. At the sametime, the ultimate, and in fact quite successful, aim of Marsh's analysis is the positive one of reworking Habermas' own best insights back in the direction of a genuinely critical theory of modern society....
— William L. McBride, Purdue University
Marsh has produced an outstanding and accessible text that provides a badly needed left critique of Habermas' philosophy of law.
— Science & Society
Marsh displays an impressive mastery of Habermas's texts that few others have attained. His commentary on Between Facts and Norms is exceptionally clear and jargon-free, not to mention chock full of illuminating examples and references to the real world. Above all, its sympathetic treatment of the basic project of Habermas's masterpiece is judiciously balanced by a critique of Habermas's failure to consistently carry that project through to the end....
— David Ingram, Loyola University, Chicago
Marsh displays an impressive mastery of Habermas's texts that few others have attained. His commentary on Between Facts and Norms is exceptionally clear and jargon-free, not to mention chock full of illuminating examples and references to the real world. Above all, its sympathetic treatment of the basic project of Habermas's masterpiece is judiciously balanced by a critique of Habermas's failureto consistently carry that project through tothe end.
— David Ingram, Loyola University, Chicago
Professor Marsh, a self-styled 'disillusioned Habermasian,' offers a careful, somber 'reality check' to thecomparatively favorable vision of contemporary society that Habermas presents in his significant work, Between Facts and Norms. At the same time, the ultimate, and in fact quite successful, aim of Marsh's analysis is the positive one of reworkingHabermas' own best insights back in the direction of a genuinely critical theory of modern society.
— William L. McBride, Purdue University
Because the book is both an interpretation and critique of Habermas, it can be of great profit to a reader, even if he does not agree fully with my critique. The first four chapters deal with Habermas' conceptual, moral, and legal aspects of his system ofrights as contained in his first four chapters, my next four chapters deal with the social-scientific issues arising in relation to a democratic society based on law in modern, complex societies, and my final chapter is a summary of my argument and a positive reconstruction of his argument.