Rainer Forst

Stanowisko

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.

Życie i kontekst

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.

Główne dzieła

• Contexts of Justice (1994)
• Toleration in Conflict (2003)
• The Right to Justification (2007)
• Justification and Critique (2011)
• Normativity and Power (2015)
• The Noumenal Republic (2021)

Pojawia się w

• Debata „Demokracja, prawda i polaryzacja”