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The Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: Events
Thursday, 06 June 2024, 11:00Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften, Am Wingertsberg 4, 61348 Bad Homburg
Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften of Goethe University
FKH colloquium
Belén Pueyo-Ibáñez
»Moral Universalism and Pluralism of Values: Remarks on Habermas’s Theory of Discourse Ethics«
Abstract
The concept of universalization is one of the most problematic and controversial among those pertaining to Jürgen Habermas’s theory of discourse ethics.
As some critics have argued, Habermas’s requirement that moral disagreements be resolved through the identification or institution by participants in argumentation of a commonly shared interest on the basis of which to establish a universal agreement on the validity of the normative claims aimed at its satisfaction is unrealistic given the inherently pluralistic conditions in which these disagreements tend to manifest themselves. As some scholars have pointed out, that such a requirement were indeed met could be highly pernicious due to the paternalistic, homogenizing, and even totalitarian attitudes and practices to which something like this could potentially give rise.
The purpose of this paper is to defend Habermas’s moral project against these criticisms. To that end, a detailed analysis of the principle of universalization will be provided, which will require reconstructing parts of Habermas’s argument as well as dispelling its most problematic ambiguities. As will be argued, the exercise of the principle of universalization as Habermas conceives of it is not only compatible with the existence of a pluralism of values but rather presupposes it and is in fact sustained by it.
The speaker
Belén Pueyo-Ibáñez received her PhD in Philosophy at Emory University, Atlanta, in spring 2023 with the dissertation »(Im)possible Communities: The Cooperative Structure of Moral Thinking«. In 2023/24 she is, on the invitation of the Justitia Center for Advanced Studies at Goethe University, a postdoctoral fellow at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften.
Participation
Closed event. Contact: Beate Sutterlüty; email: b.sutterluety@forschungskolleg-humanwissenschaften.de).
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