Review: [untitled]Author(s): Iris Marion YoungSource: Ethics, Vol. 98, No. 2 (Jan., 1988), pp. 410-411Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381135 .Accessed: 09/05/2011 07:11

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410 Ethics January 1988

Benhabib, Seyla. Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Pp. 455. $35.00 (cloth).

This book is one of the most interesting and carefully wrought books on critical theory in English. It offers an interpretive reconstruction of the writings of Hegel, Marx, Adorno and Horkheimer, and Habermas from the point of view of several themes, including: the meaning of autonomy; changes in the meaning of critique; the relationship between norm, the unfulfilled potentialities of existing society, and utopia; possibilities of creating human happiness that require radical trans- formation in social relations; and conceptualizations of human action and history. For this review I shall trace one of Benhabib's major themes, concerning the definition of action in emancipatory critical theory.

Benhabib argues that a "philosophy of the subject" haunts critical theory from its beginnings in Hegel, which subverts the meaning of "praxis" by modeling all human action on work. In this work model of action, a unitary subject seeks to realize itself in the world by manipulating objects to conform with its intended design. Because it implicitly presupposes a telos which unfolds from the subject, any philosophy that puts the discourse of emancipation in terms of self-realization or self-actualization relies on this model. This model of action images the subject as alone and outside of, manipulating, the objects of action. A social theory would do better to begin from the experience of communication, which recognizes a plurality of subjects situated in interaction that because of its indeterminacy and unintended consequences none of them can direct.

Though Hegel's critique of Kant's formalism relies on a plural understanding of subjects, the dominant strain of his systematic philosophy expresses a work model of the subject. History for Hegel is the self-unfolding of a transsubjective World Spirit, which externalizes itself, realizing itself through a reappropriation of its alienated existence.

In the Marxian story as well history is the unfolding of a collective singular subject. Within capitalist commodity relations humanity is alienated from its own objectified products. Marx's concept of class tends to deny the plurality of social subjects and their different experiences. Like Hegel, Marx conceives a telos to history in the reappropriation of alienated subjectivity through the unitary com- munist society.

Under the historical circumstances of fascism and Stalinism, Adorno and Horkheimer lose faith in the emancipatory possibilities of economic production. Instead, they wage war on the instrumental reason they find dominating the West. While in this sense criticizing the work model of action, they, especially Adorno, retain the model in the utopian vision of a nonrepressive autonomy as a mimetic reconciliation with inner and outer nature. Because they identify the processes of societal rationalization solely with instrumental reason, ignoring the distinct rationalization of processes of communicative action, their philosophy lacks social and political analysis.

Habermas renews the project of providing social analysis with emancipatory intent by combining social theory with normative philosophy from a new starting point. Rethinking the Weberian account of the dominating implications of societal rationalization, Habermas distinguishes two processes of rationalization, through instrumental action and communicative action. Benhabib provides an extraor- dinarily clear account of how this distinction allows Habermas to theorize the

Book Reviews 411

contradictions in contemporary capitalism and the legitimation crisis spawned by the attempt to extend administrative logic to the life world.

Habermas's achievement, according to Benhabib, is to break with the philos- ophy of the subject by developing a theory of communicative action. This theory understands the subject itself as constituted through social processes, and thus not outside them, directing their course. Only a communication model of action can recognize a plurality of subjects.

Habermas falls back into the philosophy of the subject, however, Benhabib argues. He conceives cognitive and moral development as an evolutionary self- unfolding of a general humanity through history. He also tends to deny the plurality of subjects insofar as he distinguishes aesthetic-expressive discourse about needs from normative discourse and emphasizes a standpoint of the "gen- eralized other" as the point of view from which moral reasoning takes place. A more consistent communicative ethics, Benhabib argues, would recognize the significance of needs and their interpretations in the moral realm. It would give as much weight to a standpoint of the "concrete other," whose needs are addressed and sympathized with, as to the standpoint of the generalized other.

Benhabib rightly, and I believe originally, emphasizes the potential of the theory of communicative action to burst open the universalism of Western moral and political thought that has suppressed differences among persons and groups. She rightly criticizes Habermas, moreover, for stopping short of such radical pluralism.

Benhabib's own corrective account, however, remains undeveloped and in- adequate. In her distinction between the standpoint of the generalized other and the standpoint of the concrete other, she retains an opposition between a public ethic of formal rights and a "private" ethic of sympathy and solidarity. In so doing she undermines her criticism of the tradition of modern moral theory. Benhabib's appeal to the plurality of subjects, moreover, remains too abstract. Instead of thematizing the differences of class, race, gender, culture, ethnicity, and other group affiliations that concretely constitute subjects in interaction, she defines plurality only in terms of the unique needs and life history of every individual. The ethic of care and solidarity she promotes as a complement to formal rights, moreover, I think once again tends to collapse the plurality of subjects into unity because it seems to presume a mutual identification among subjects.

In this outstanding contribution to contemporary critical theory, however, Benhabib provides a clear framework for asking the sorts of questions that will generate a more contextualized communicative ethics, as well as criteria for evaluating proposed answers.

IRIS MARION YOUNG

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Held, David. Models of Democracy. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987. Pp. xii+321. $35.00 (cloth); $12.95 (paper).

Held's new Open University textbook on models of democracy is itself a model of its kind-a meticulously edited, easily accessible, and clearly signposted critical