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Semantic Realism And Historicity: Brandom, Habermas And Hegel, Norman Schultz
Semantic Realism And Historicity: Brandom, Habermas And Hegel, Norman Schultz
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
The thesis of this dissertation is that Habermas’ universal pragmatic and the recent neo-pragmatist semantic realism of Brandom, aimed at bridging the divide, are both based on misinterpretations of Hegel. Both approaches misunderstand the central Hegelian idea of historicity, and thus fail to establish a correct connection to Hegel. The aim of the dissertation is to point to and sketch Hegel’s idea of historicity. As part of the discussion, I will defend the controversial thesis that Hegel did not have a system, but rather a historical account of how we develop knowledge under the historical conditions of society. Hegel, unlike …
On Hypothetical Contracts, Karim Barakat
On Hypothetical Contracts, Karim Barakat
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
My dissertation develops a critique of Rawlsian social contract theory by arguing that the normative component of democratic practices must be grounded in nonpolitical reasons. With John Rawls’s rights-based approach, social contract theory has strongly resurfaced by focusing on consent as the basic condition for the formation of a just state. The emphasis on agreement leads Rawls to exclude historical, religious, or philosophical reasons from justifying the ideal conception of justice. Consequently, Rawls completely separates politics from any nonpolitical grounding. I argue, however that Rawls’s project cannot account for its normative commitments unless it makes use of a nonpolitical ground. …