About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

10 Res Publica 1 (2004)

handle is hein.journals/respub10 and id is 1 raw text is: KLAUS-GERD GIESEN THE POST-NATIONAL CONSTELLATION: HABERMAS AND THE SECOND MODERNITY* ABSTRACT. For some years now, Jurgen Habermas, possibly the most influential European philosopher of today, has been producing a growing number of publications on world politics. In the historical context of the collapse of bipolarity and the advent of the triad, along with the punitive wars in the Gulf and Yugoslavia, he is very far from being alone: Jacques Derrida and Noberto Bobbio, Michael Walzer and John Rawls, to name only the most forceful, have also been thinking out loud about the new political configurations beyond the nation-state. The characteristic feature of Habermas's thought is to perceive a radically new historical configuration, which he calls a 'post-national constellation' and which would justify the development of a new political project, as a transition to a new cosmopolitan law. In what follows, I examine the precise modalities that are supposed to transform his philosophical design into political and legal arrangements, attempting to dissect the Habermasian vision of a post-Cold War politics better adapted to the challenges of the new century, and to throw light on the ideology behind it, as a prolegomenon to the larger project Habermas invites us to undertake. KEY WORDS: citizenship, civil society, cosmopolitan law, Habermas, post-nationalism, soft power A COSMOPOLITAN LAW The transition process towards cosmopolitan law, as conceived by Habermas, has as its primary function the limitation of national sover- eignty and the right of peoples to self-determination. In his view, the community of peoples, organized in the form of a federation, must change its legal foundations: the mismatch between current foundations and the world political situation, reflected in the very failure of the United Nations system, cannot continue.1 Already withering away under the blows of * I should like to thank Bob Brecher, Sergio Costa, Jean-Christophe Merle, Marcos Nobre, John Rosenthal, Ricardo Terra and VWronique Zanetti for their valuable comments on an early version of this text. All translations from German and French texts are mine. Res Publica is grateful to the editors of Les Temps Modernes for permission to publish this translation of 'La constellation postnationale', which originally appeared in no. 610, Sept./Oct./Nov. 2000. 1 Jurgen Habermas, Die neue Unabersichtlichheit (Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp, 1985), 116-7. LA Res Publica 10: 1-13, 2004. O © 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most