ISBN Normativity and Power ( Analyzing Social Orders of Justification ) 208 pages English

Humans are justificatory beingsthey offer demand and require justifications. The rules and institutions they follow rest on justification narratives that have evolved over time and taken together constitute a dynamic and tension-laden normative order. In this collection of essays the first translation into English of the ground-breaking Normativität und Macht (Suhrkamp 2015) Rainer Forst presents a new approach to critical theory. Each essay reflects on the basic principles that guide our normative thinking. Forst's argument goes beyond 'ideal' and 'realist' theories and shows how closely the concepts of normativity and power are interrelated and how power rests on the capacity to influence determine and possibly restrict the space of justifications for others. By combining insights from the disciplines of philosophy history and the social sciences Forst re-evaluates theories of justice as well as of power and provides the tools for a critical theory of relations of justification.