chapter 4
...................................................................................................................................................CRITICAL THEORY
BEYOND
HABERMAS
...................................................................................................................................................william e. scheuerman
Thepresently most inXuential feature of Ju ̈rgen Habermas’ wide-ranging
contributions to political theory is his attempt to formulate a socially
critical as well as empirically plausible conception ofdeliberative democracy.
Both his earliest contribution to political theory,The Structural Transform-
ation of the Public Sphere ( 1989 , published in German in 1962 ), and his
more recentBetween Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory
of Law and Democracy( 1996 ), defend an ambitious deliberative model of
political legitimacy, according to which normatively acceptable decisions
are only those which meet with the agreement of aVected parties in
possession of far-reaching possibilities to subject them to critical debate.
Not surprisingly, Habermas and those inXuenced by him have worked
hard to outline the proper philosophical presuppositions of the basic
intuition that only free-wheeling argumentation can both justify the exer-
cise of coercive state power and contribute to its reasonable character.
- Many thanks to Hauke Brunkhorst, John Dryzek, Bonnie Honig, and Peter Niesen for helpful
comments and suggestions.