Constructing a Cosmopolitan Public Sphere

Abstract

Democratic politics might be defined as the agonistic struggle of different parties, groups or individuals over resources, recognition and influence under reciprocal and inclusive conditions. It is based on an unconditional orientation to equality as well as freedom of all those involved to consent to - or dissent from - the norms, policies and practices that are established in the process of public dialogue. This article reconstructs the general agent-based capabilities required for a democratically defined public sphere under conditions of globalization. Making capabilities central is intended to correct a certain over-emphasis regarding institutional macro-structures in the discourse on globalization and cosmopolitanism. After setting the stage with a critical analysis of Martha Nussbaum’s concept of capabilities, the analysis proceeds in two major steps. In the first part, a notion of hermeneutic agency is introduced that avoids a Foucauldian reduction of agency to power structures, while thoroughly situating agency in a symbolically mediated social context. The symbolic mediation of agency is, in the second part, taken as a ground of potentiality for reflexive capabilities that, once actualized and enacted, allow for a normatively satisfying process of public deliberation. The aim of the analysis is to relate a normative model of value-orientation to the linguistically grounded empirical resources of social agents. The core argument lays out as basic capabilities (1) to be able to normatively orient oneself at contextually defined yet universally open postconventional commitments, (2) to be able to engage in an interpretive and dialogical perspective-taking vis-a-vis differently situated agents and backgrounds, and (3) to be able to critically distance oneself from one’s taken-for-granted assumptions and background structures via a power-alert social reflexivity.

On the moral significance of military operations: A response to Hans-Herbert Kögler

“…Kögler challenges this moral argument: ‘What now needs addressing is the assertive position that a peace – or at least an unconditional ceasefire under the existing circumstances – is to be brought about at almost any cost ’ (Kögler, 2023, p. 16). For him, the pacifist argument demands an unreasonable sacrifice from the Ukrainians: ‘Based on the detailed fivefold syndrome of Putin’s biopolitical matrix, we can now clearly see that it demands the acceptance of peace solely in the name of naked life ’ (Kögler, 2023, p. 16). Indeed, ‘the demand of an unconditional peace now amounts to the morally obscene request to accept life under conditions of a biopolitically operating and culturally oppressive regime’.…”

“…Since imperialistic Russian culture, exemplified by the works of Alexander Dugin, essentialises and stigmatises Ukraine, Kögler argues that it is the moral duty of the west, including Germany, to defend Ukrainian independence from Muscovite hegemony: ‘the deniers of effective solidarity with the Ukraine, i.e. those that reject military assistance, are the Western complement to Putin’s own denial of Ukrainian citizenship’ (Kögler, 2023, p. 17).…”

Putin’s Russia: A commentary on Professor Kögler’s perspective

“…Hans-Herbert Kögler raises important questions about the morality of war (Kögler, 2023). In the process, he introduces the work and influence of Aleksandr Gelyevich Dugin and issues relating to bio-politics.…”

Democratic socialism or barbarism: A reply to Hans-Herbert Kögler

“…Kögler (2023, p. 6) observes that the geopolitical perspective adherents and pacifists orient themselves to is a trans-subjective abstraction from the individual to the collective – the states and spheres of interests, which obscures ‘the origin and reality of war’ in an act of ‘devilish deception’. Pacifism, moral distancing and non-resistance in the condition of racist patriarchal and ecocidal capitalist imperialism where the right in all its shades is on the rise are, to my mind, expressions of bourgeois positionality and ideology, an internalised imperialist worldview not unlike that of Putin or Dugin – one can be an anti-imperialist and antifascist or a pacifist, but not both.…”

“…The peace demanded is violence. As Clausewitz stated, war is the continuation of politics by other means or, in the words of Foucault, politics is the continuation of war by other means (Kögler, 2023, p. 2). Indeed, we have seen both in the Russo-Ukrainian relationship since Ukraine’s formal independence.…”