• Social Imaginaries and the Theory of the Normative Utterance

    Author(s):
    Meili Steele (see profile)
    Date:
    2019
    Group(s):
    Frankfurt School Critical Theory, Literary theory, Philosophy, Political Philosophy & Theory
    Subject(s):
    Literature--Philosophy
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    Philosophy and literature
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/m98r-xp55
    Abstract:
    From Charles Taylor to Marcel Gauchet, theorists of the social imaginary have given us new ways to talk about the shared structures of meanings and practices of the West. Theorists of this group have argued against the narrow horizons of meaning that are deployed by deliberative political theories in developing their basic normative concepts and principles, providing an alternative to the oscillation between the constructivism and the realism. Theorists of the imaginary have enabled us to think about normatively charged collective imaginaries as logically prior to the construction of normative principles. What theorists of the imaginary have not done is make specific connections between the ontological background of social imaginaries and the normative utterance. This lacuna has left them vulnerable to the charges of ‘normative deficit’ and vagueness that Habermas and others famously make against philosophies of ‘world disclosure’. This article develops a conception of the normative utterance that enables us to reason through social imaginaries. In such reasoning, claims are not expressed in the propositional form of the Rawlsian or Habermasian justification, but through a complex engagement with the worldhood that informs normative judgments.
    Metadata:
    Published as:
    Journal article    
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    4 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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