(Santa Monica, CA) On Monday, I posted an argument that three traditions of theory and practice provide what we need for a civic theory, which is a theory of what we should do. It is different from a political theory that asks what should be done or how things should be. I can elaborate by suggesting what it would […]
(Rancho Palos Verdes, CA) Back in 2014, I argued: [Elinor] “Ostrom plus [Jürgen] Habermas is nearly all we need.” I define a good citizen as anyone who seriously asks the question “What should we do?” Citizens face a dizzying variety of hard issues, but underlying them are general categories of problems. As of 2014, I thought these […]
(Orlando, FL) Matthew G. Specter’s Habermas: An Intellectual Biography (Cambridge, 2010) is not really a biography of the contemporary German philosopher. It doesn’t say where Habermas was born, whether he has a family, what he did in his various jobs, which countries he has visited, or what he experienced in the Hitler Youth in 1944-5. […]
The late, great Elinor Ostrom is much on my mind. I taught her work in Mexico a couple of weeks ago and will be visiting her Bloomington (IN) Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis next weekend. I’d like to claim that many thinkers have influenced me, and I wouldn’t want to have to do […]
I am co-teaching the Summer Institute of Civic Studies and using this blog to share my notes for roughly half of the 18 topics we cover. Yesterday morning’s discussion focused on Jürgen Habermas. The readings for that module were: Jürgen Habermas, “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article,” New German Critique, 3 (1974), pp. 49-55 James […]