Rainer Forst

Agora

Rainer Forst

b. 1964

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

Every person has a basic right to justification: no rule or power over us is legitimate unless it can be justified to us as free and equal.

Placement

Socialism, Anarchism, Marxism & Critical Theory · Western Europe · Politics & Law, Ethics, Society & History

Frankfurt critical theorist: the most basic right is the right to justification – no norm or power is legitimate unless it can be justified to those subject to it as free and equal; power itself is “noumenal”, working in the space of reasons.

Key ideas

Right to justification
Toleration as respect
Noumenal power

Teachers: Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth

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Influence

Influenced by 4

Immanuel Kant

influenced by
Forst grounded his theory of justice in a Kantian, reflexive ‘right to justification’ that each person holds as a moral agent (Das Recht auf Rechtfertigung, 2007). R. Forst, Das Recht auf Rechtfertigung. Elemente einer konstruktivistischen Theorie der Gerechtigkeit (2007)
Evidence: AI draft
Immanuel Kant › 1724–1804
John Rawls

influenced by
Forst, who worked with Rawls at Harvard, drew on Rawls’s political liberalism in his reconstruction of the debate between liberals and communitarians (Kontexte der Gerechtigkeit, 1994). R. Forst, Kontexte der Gerechtigkeit. Politische Philosophie jenseits von Liberalismus und Kommunitarismus (1994); J. Rawls, Political Liberalism (1993)
Evidence: AI draft
John Rawls › 1921–2002
Jürgen Habermas studied with

studied with
Forst took his doctorate under Habermas in Frankfurt in 1993, after working in Habermas’s Leibniz research group on legal theory; the thesis appeared as Kontexte der Gerechtigkeit (1994). Normative Orders (Goethe University Frankfurt), notice on the Festschrift for R. Forst, 15 Aug. 2024; R. Forst, Kontexte der Gerechtigkeit (1994)
Evidence: AI draft
Jürgen Habermas › 1929–2026
Axel Honneth studied with

studied with
Forst was Honneth’s assistant in Frankfurt when he took his Habilitation there in 2003 with Toleranz im Konflikt; his doctorate had been with Habermas. Normative Orders (Goethe University Frankfurt), notice on the Festschrift for R. Forst, 15 Aug. 2024
Evidence: AI draft
Axel Honneth › b. 1949

Position

Forst develops critical theory as a theory of justification. Human beings, he argues, are justifying beings: they live in a space of reasons and can demand reasons for the norms and institutions that bind them. The most basic moral right is therefore the right to justification – the right not to be subjected to norms that cannot be justified to one by reasons that all those affected could reciprocally and generally accept. Justice is accordingly not first of all a matter of distributing goods but of establishing a “basic structure of justification” in which those subject to rules take part in making them. His history of toleration shows that toleration has served both to protect and to discipline minorities, and argues that only a “respect conception”, grounded in the right to justification, can say where its limits lie. Power, finally, is “noumenal”: it consists in the capacity to shape and occupy the space of reasons of others, which is why critique of power begins as critique of relations of justification.

Life & context

Rainer Forst (born 1964 in Wiesbaden) studied philosophy, political science and American studies in Frankfurt, New York and at Harvard, where he also worked with John Rawls. He took his doctorate under Jürgen Habermas in Frankfurt in 1993 and, after years as Axel Honneth’s assistant, qualified as a professor in 2003 with a history and theory of toleration. Since 2004 he has been professor of political theory and philosophy at Goethe University Frankfurt, where he co-directed the research cluster “Normative Orders” and now directs the research centre that succeeded it. He received the Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation in 2012.