Review: [untitled]

Author(s): Iris Marion Young

Source: Ethics, Vol. 98, No. 2 (Jan., 1988), pp. 410-411
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381135 .
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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 transformation 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 communist 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 extraordinarily 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 philosophy 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 selfunfolding 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 "generalized 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 inadequate. 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

WorcesterPolytechnicInstitute

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