After the end of the Cold War had signalled for many the demise of political theatre, a re-emergence of British political plays since the turn of the century has become an acknowledged phenomenon. Customary definitions of this cultural practice, however, have become historically and theoretically obsolete. An alternative philosophical framework is needed which breaks with both the unrealistic expectations of the traditional Left and the defeatist limitations of postmodernist positions. This thesis aims to provide a revised definition of political theatre based on the ideas of Jürgen Habermas. The development of his philosophical project is described together with its refinement as the result of interjections by other thinkers from within the neo-Marxist tradition of Critical Theory, in particular feminist contributors. In addition to exploring key concepts such as the reconstruction of historical materialism, the paradigm of discourse ethics and the model of post avant-garde political art, greater focus is placed on the notion of the public sphere, which has special relevance when examining the contemporary dynamics of political theatre.

Jurgen Habermas argues for a paradigm change in critical theory from Theodor W. Adorno's philosophy of consciousness to his own linguistically-turned theory. Habermas claims that Adorno's conception of reason sets up an antagonistic relationship between subject and object that can only be overcome by a non-rational mimesis with nature. This thesis defends Adorno against Habermas, and argues that the linguistic turn is a mistake. Chapter 1 outlines Habermas's critique, and corrects some of his specific misunderstandings of Adorno. Chapter 2 offers a positive defense of Adorno. By means of an expanded notion of nature, Adorno shows how the relation between subject and object need not be the antagonistic one characteristic of so much of modern philosophy. Chapter 3 argues that it is not Adorno's dialectical thought, but Habermas's linguistically-turned critical theory that suffers from an inability properly to articulate the relation between subject and object.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Tesis para optar al grado de Magister en Filosofía, mención Axiología y Filosofía Política / En el año 2001 fui introducido por primera vez a la obra de Jürgen Habermas. Desde entonces he recurrido innumerables veces a él en busca de perspectivas teóricas para comprender el mundo contemporáneo. Durante la redacción de mi tesis de licenciatura realicé el primer intento de sistematización de su pensamiento con resultados dispares. En retrospectiva, esa aproximación inicial no satisface las exigencias intelectuales que plantea un autor como Habermas, aunque no puede desestimarse del todo debido a que la referencia a su obra tenía un carácter más bien secundario. El presente estudio pretende suplir esas falencias y responde a una necesidad personal de sistematizar el pensamiento de un autor que ha sido tan influyente en mis propias reflexiones.

Thesis advisor: David M. Rasmussen / In this dissertation I argue for an approach that conceives human rights as both moral and legal rights. The merit of such an approach is its capacity to understand human rights more in terms of the kind of world free and reasonable beings would like to live in rather than simply in terms of what each individual is legally entitled to. While I acknowledge that every human being has the moral entitlement to be granted living conditions that are conducive to a dignified life, I maintain, at the same time, that the moral and legal aspects of human rights are complementary and should be given equal weight. The legal aspect compensates for the limitations of moral human rights the observance of which depends on the conscience of the individual, and the moral aspect tempers the mechanical and inhumane application of the law. Unlike the traditional or orthodox approach, which conceives human rights as rights that individuals have by virtue of their humanity, and the political or practical approach, which understands human rights as legal rights that are meant to limit the sovereignty of the state, the moral-legal approach reconciles law and morality in human rights discourse and underlines the importance of a legal framework that compensates for the deficiencies in the implementation of moral human rights. It not only challenges the exclusively negative approach to fundamental liberties but also emphasizes the necessity of an enforcement mechanism that helps those who are not morally motivated to refrain from violating the rights of others. Without the legal mechanism of enforcement, the understanding of human rights would be reduced to simply framing moral claims against injustices. Many traditional human rights theorists failed to reconcile the moral and legal aspects of human rights. That is why Jürgen Habermas, whose approach to human rights provides the guiding intuition of this dissertation, has been criticized for approaching human rights from a legal point of view, especially in Between Facts and Norms. Most of Habermas’s critics overlooked his goal in the project of reconstructing law. Habermas addresses the question of the legitimacy of modern law by finding good arguments for a law to be recognized as right and just. For him, modern law has two sources of legitimacy: human rights and popular sovereignty. He affirms their mutual presupposition in a system of rights within a constitutional democracy. In order to grasp Habermas’s moral considerations in his account of human rights, one has to go beyond Between Facts and Norms. That is why the relationship Habermas establishes between law and morality should constitute the starting point in understanding the moral dimension of human rights in his account of human rights. That relationship is clarified in the discussion on the interdependence between human rights and human dignity. Human dignity provides the ground from which human rights are interpreted and justified. Human dignity is the standpoint from which individuals can claim rights from one another on the basis of mutual respect. Because of human dignity, members of a political community can live as free and equal citizens. In order to achieve such a goal, there must be structures that facilitate social integration. Thus, the existence of a strong civil society that can stimulate discussion in the public sphere and promote a vigilant citizenry and respect for human rights becomes very important. The protection of human rights becomes a common and shared responsibility. Such a responsibility goes beyond the boundaries of nation-states and requires the establishment of a cosmopolitan human rights regime based on the conviction that all human beings are members of a community of fate and that they share common values which transcend the limits of their individual states. In a cosmopolitan human rights regime, people are protected as persons and not as citizens of a particular state. The realization of such a regime requires solidarity and the politics of compassion. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

The aim writing this essay is to understand and to explain difficulties with communications during sign language interpreting at the Video Relay Service (VRS). Another aim is also to identify the necessery conditions for communications at the VRS and to investigate why difficulties may arise in lack of these necessary conditions. The questions of this essay are: Which are the vital important difficulties in communication at the VRS and why do these difficulties arise? To answer these questions, four sign language interpreters working with the VRS, have been interviewed. These interviews constitute the empirical data of the essay. The interviews has been analysed from an interpreting perspective as seen from Wadensjö, Chernov and Atwood & Gray. The teoretical base of the essay is also seen from Goffman’s dramaturgical perspective and his model of production formats and also from Habermas’ theory about action types. The conclusions of this essay is that agreement of the service and of the conversations cast assignment, is very important for the conversation to be continued at the VRS, in lack of these difficulties will appear for the interpreters. The interpreters’ possibilities to anticipate are related to the context of the situation. For the conversation to continue the interpreter do have to take an active responsibility and arrange the conditions for the communication, otherwise difficulties will appear.

Submitted by PPG Filosofia (filosofia-pg@pucrs.br) on 2018-05-02T13:54:54Z No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTA??O - ?TALO DA SILVA ALVES.pdf: 922926 bytes, checksum: 37b72dc5a9648c006567e23bf7c504be (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Caroline Xavier (caroline.xavier@pucrs.br) on 2018-05-02T14:16:19Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTA??O - ?TALO DA SILVA ALVES.pdf: 922926 bytes, checksum: 37b72dc5a9648c006567e23bf7c504be (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-05-02T14:18:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 DISSERTA??O - ?TALO DA SILVA ALVES.pdf: 922926 bytes, checksum: 37b72dc5a9648c006567e23bf7c504be (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-03-05 / Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento Cient?fico e Tecnol?gico - CNPq / In this work, I ask what is the normative capacity of dissensus in a theory of social normativity. I investigate the fundamental elements of a deliberative theory of social normativity set forth by J?rgen Habermas and argue that, in a project of deliberative normative justification, not only consensus but also dissensus has normative capacity. I present a minimal formulation of Habermas? normative project, which encompasses the concepts of discourse, consensus and public sphere, and then proceed to distinguish three different realms in a deliberative theory of social normativity ? politics, the political, and the dispute for politicity ? approaching the nature and the role of dissensus in each one. I argue that (a) politics is a realm of the institutions of liberal democracy, where dissensus takes the form of conflict among groups and models of public spheres, having the role of keeping the public sphere multiple and inclusive; (b) the political is the realm of interaction of discourses about the imperative of human coexistence in the world, where dissensus takes the form of adversariness and has the role of maintaining the disagreement necessary for pluralism; and (c) the dispute for politicity is the pre-discursive realm where struggles for the capacity to issue political claims take place, where dissensus has the role of pointing out the unjustified partiality of the discursive genre as the only one capable of conveying social interactions with normative potential. / Neste trabalho, questiono qual ? a capacidade normativa do dissenso em uma teoria da normatividade social. Para tanto, investigo os elementos fundamentais de uma teoria deliberativa da normatividade social estabelecidos por J?rgen Habermas e sustento que, em um projeto deliberativo de justifica??o normativa, n?o apenas o consenso, mas tamb?m o dissenso possui capacidade normativa. Apresento uma formula??o m?nima do projeto normativo de Habermas, que envolve os conceitos de discurso, consenso e esfera p?blica, e fa?o uma distin??o entre tr?s ?mbitos diferentes presentes em uma teoria deliberativa da normatividade social ? a pol?tica, o pol?tico e a disputa pela politicidade ?, abordando a natureza e o papel do dissenso em cada um deles. Defendo que (a) a pol?tica ? um ?mbito das institui??es da democracia liberal, onde o dissenso toma a forma de conflito entre grupos e modelos de esferas p?blicas e tem o papel de manter a esfera p?blica m?ltipla e inclusiva; (b) o pol?tico ? o ?mbito da intera??o de discursos sobre o imperativo da coexist?ncia humana no mundo, onde o dissenso toma a forma de adversariedade e tem o papel de manter o desacordo necess?rio ao pluralismo; e (c) a disputa pela politicidade ? o ?mbito pr?-discursivo onde t?m lugar as reivindica??es pela capacidade de emitir demandas normativas, onde o dissenso tem o papel de apontar a parcialidade injustificada do g?nero discursivo como ?nico capaz de comportar intera??es sociais com potencial normativo.

by Evelyn Leung Wing Sze. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1994. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-120). / Chapter Chapter One --- Introduction: On Remapping the Public Sphere --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter Two --- Living as Inbetweenness An Encounter with Shih-chien Chu --- p.21 / Chapter Chapter Three --- Private Life in the Public Sphere Wo Mei-mei as Metafiction --- p.43 / Chapter Chapter Four --- A Moment in Transgression Intertextuality in Ta Shuo-huang Chia --- p.66 / Chapter Chapter Five --- Conclusion: Understanding as Political Praxis --- p.90 / Works of Chang Ta-chun --- p.109 / Select Bibliography --- p.111

Habermas’s work since the turn of the millennium is characterized by an increased interest in the role of religion in politics. One of the most significant theses of this so-called “religious turn” is captured by Habermas’s institutional translation proviso, which calls on citizens to participate in translating religious contributions to public dialogue into a secular language purportedly accessible to all. The purpose of this thesis is to examine the translation proviso with a view both to the political inclusion of religious citizens and to the renewal of the normative resources required for democratic self-determination. By way of a critical engagement with the work of Immanuel Kant and Charles Taylor, I argue that, despite being limited as a solution to both problems, Habermas’s institutional translation proviso is nonetheless preferable to available alternatives. To that extent, I maintain that it is an indispensable feature of democratic politics in pluralist societies.

The purpose of the essay is to analyze the welfare state from a gender perspective. Further, the paper analyzes and critically examines three different normative solutions provided by Irish Marion Young, Nancy Fraser and Jürgen Habermas for the realization of a welfare state that includes women. Habermas argues that the welfare state has created a situation of dependency and state paternalism which reduces both individual and collective self-determination. Young follows Habermas‟ argument. She argues for a political climate where justice is reduced to the distribution of material goods rather than the elimination of underlying relations of domination and gender specific patterns. Fraser and Young therefore argue that the new client role is female and that the welfare state rests on the heterogeneous nuclear family norm with a male provider which restricts possibilities for women. The Scandinavian welfare model tends to be considered as "women friendly" because of its broad gender debate, well-developed social security that brackens the line between public-private together with a high degree of representation of women in political institutions. What is critical about the Scandinavian model is that it restricts political participation to representation. Rather, what is needed is a model of democracy that gives room for women to discuss in their own voice what their needs are and to use the discussion as a means for broader political debate. For women to be given such a voice in society, we need a model like Habermas‟ deliberative democracy with procedural rights. The strength in Habermas‟ model is that it makes it possible for women to participate in political will-formation through critical rationality. The deliberative rationality makes it possible for women to come together in the public sphere to influence the welfare state, its design and the allocation of resources. Habermas‟ democracy model has certain shortcomings because it overlooks the gender structures which affect women's access to the public sphere. It is therefore important to understand how rational communication can be achieved in a society that is socially stratified. I argue for a welfare state in which recognition, redistribution and political participation are secured and where women can participate as equals in the public sphere. This is achieved by adopting Fraser concepts of society as consisting of a multiplicity of publics rather than by a single public. It is important however, that the public sphere makes room for groups‟ particularity and I therefore argue for Youngs‟ concept of a politics of difference. It also requires an interaction between institutions and political participation through procedural rights. These rights enable women to influence societys‟ institutions and overcome the client role and gender structures in society.