Skip to main content

The Scandal of Reason: A Critical Theory of Political Judgment

Azmanova, Albena (2012) The Scandal of Reason: A Critical Theory of Political Judgment. Columbia University Press, New York, 296 pp. ISBN 978-0-231-15380-5. (The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided) (KAR id:29245)

The full text of this publication is not currently available from this repository. You may be able to access a copy if URLs are provided.
Official URL:
http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-15380-5/the...

Abstract

Theories of justice are haunted by a paradox: the more ambitious the ideal of justice, the less applicable and useful the model is to political practice; yet the more politically realistic the theory, the weaker its moral ambition, rendering it unsound and equally useless. Brokering a resolution to this “judgment paradox,” Albena Azmanova advances a “critical consensus model” of judgment that serves the normative ideals of a just society without the help of ideal theory.

Tracing the evolution of two major traditions in political philosophy—critical theory and philosophical liberalism—and the way they confront the judgment paradox, Azmanova critiques prevailing models of deliberative democracy and their preference for ideal theory over political applicability. Instead, she replaces the reliance on normative models of democracy with an account of the dynamics of reasoned judgment produced in democratic practices of open dialogues. Combining Hannah Arendt’s study of judgment with Pierre Bourdieu’s social critique of power relations, and incorporating elements of political epistemology from Kant, Wittgenstein, H. L. A. Hart, Max Weber, and American philosophical pragmatism, Azmanova centers her inquiry on the way participants in moral conflicts attribute meaning to their grievances of injustice. She then demonstrates the emancipatory potential of the model of critical deliberative judgment she forges and its capacity to guide policy making.

This model’s critical force yields from its capacity to disclose the common structural sources of injustice behind conflicting claims to justice. Moving beyond the conflict between universalist and pluralist positions, Azmanova grounds the question of “what is justice?” in the empirical reality of “who suffers?” in order to discern attainable possibilities for a less unjust world.

Item Type: Book
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > B Philosophy (General)
J Political Science > JC Political theory
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Human and Social Sciences > School of Politics and International Relations
Depositing User: Albena Azmanova
Date Deposited: 02 Apr 2012 23:24 UTC
Last Modified: 16 Nov 2021 10:07 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/29245 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

  • Depositors only (login required):

Total unique views for this document in KAR since July 2020. For more details click on the image.