Charles Taylor: ‘Is Democracy in Danger?’

Around the Web

• Hope for Reform - Qantara.de →

  "Iran's future President Hassan Rouhani owes his victory to popular displeasure and widespread dismay at economic gloom, political repression and international isolation. By virtue of his persona and career trajectory to date, Rouhani was the only candidate to promise a change for the better. The fact that he triumphed in the first round is a lesson for the conservatives, whose candidates made an embarrassingly poor showing. "Ahmadi, bye-bye" was the chant on the streets of Tehran, where people vented their joy with a concert of car horns. A new chapter can begin – if all goes well."

• Recasting Secularism as One Conception of the Good among Many in a Post-Secular Constitutional Polity, by Michel Rosenfeld :: SSRN →

  "Modern Enlightenment based constitutionalism accords secularism a privileged position: by remaining secular, the public sphere should warrant neutrality among religions and among the latter and non-religious ideologies in order to provide an optimal setting for the realization of freedom of religion as well as of freedom from religion. In recent decades, however, this institutional secularism has come under intense attack from a number of different quarters intent on dislodging it from its constitutional pedestal. These attacks have targeted secularism’s claim to neutrality from religious as well as non-religious perspectives."

• Ronald Dworkin: An Appreciation, by Jeremy Waldron :: SSRN →

  It is a written version of remarks that were presented at the Memorial Service for Professor Dworkin, at St. John's Smith Square, London, on Wednesday, June 5, 2013. The remarks cover his view of adjudication, the right answer thesis, and the obligation that lawyers, scholars and judges have to the whole body of the law. It also covers the view – which I call the artery of Dworkin's jurisprudence – that legal reasoning is a form of moral reasoning. And it relates all this to the unifying ideas about dignity in "Justice for Hedgehogs."

• Political Liberalism, Identity Politics, and the Role of Fear, by Claus Offe | Reset Dialogues on Civilizations →

  Resentment is not so much based upon the diversity of cultural and other identities but often rooted in grievances, complaints, and memories of historical conflicts that groups hold against other groups. Using examples from Central and Eastern Europe, the paper argues that the viability of liberal democratic welfare states in Europe depends upon a minimum of toleration, trust, and solidarity among citizens. It is these cultural underpinnings of democracy which are threatened by historically rooted and (often strategically activated) feelings of resentment.

• Resetdoc Videos: Seyla Benhabib on 'Interactive Universalism and the Rights of the Others' →

  Do universal rights claims need to be contextualized? And how does this happen? At our Istanbul Seminars, we asked Professor Seyla Benhabib from Yale University. How do the voices of the excluded – women, immigrants, minorities – get included into the public sphere? Through a process of democratic iterations and jurisgenerativity – Prof. Benhabib explains – linking the normative, utopian aspect of legal claims and the very process of questioning, confrontation and dialogue. Rights always require interpretation or, to be more precise, iteration in a specific context.

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