Critical Theory of Legal Revolutions Evolutionary Perspectives

by Brunkhorst, Hauke

• ISBN13: 9781623564186
• ISBN10: 1623564182
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2014-06-19
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic

Summary

This unique work analyzes the crisis in modern society, building on the ideas of the Frankfurt School thinkers. Emphasizing social evolution and learning processes, it argues that crisis is mediated by social class conflicts and collective learning, the results of which are embodied in constitutional and public law.

First, the work outlines a new categorical framework of critical theory in which it is conceived as a theory of crisis. It shows that the Marxist focus on economy and on class struggle is too narrow to deal with the range of social conflicts within modern society, and posits that a crisis of legitimization is at the core of all crises. It then discusses the dialectic of revolutionary and evolutionary developmental processes of modern society and its legal system.

This volume in the Critical Theory and Contemporary Society by a leading scholar in the field provides a new approach to critical theory that will appeal to anyone studying political sociology, political theory, and law.

Author Biography

Hauke Brunkhorst is Professor of Sociology and Head of the Institute of Sociology at the University of Flensburg, Germany. Previously, he was the Theodor Heuss Professor at the New School for Social Research in New York, USA. A political sociologist, he has authored many books, including Adorno and Critical Theory (1999) and Solidarity: From Civic Friendship to a Global Legal Community (2005).

Table of Contents

Introduction

I: Return of Crisis:
Introduction
Dis-Embeddedness and Expropriation
The Hiding
The Price of Elegance
Pollution and Injustice
Social Class Conflicts in the Differentiated Society
Conclusion

II: The Institutionalization of Freedom and the Co-Evolution of Cosmopolitan and National Statehood
Introduction
An Evolutionary Universal
The First Cosmopolitan State and the Freedom of Corporation:
Freedom of the Individual Human Being
Co-evolution of Universal and National Statehood
Revolutionary Advances
Reluctant Advances
revolution, Collective Learning and 'Progress in the Consciousness of Freedom'

III: An Unfinished Legal Revolution
Introduction
A new idea of freedom: Human dignity and mass democracy
Revolutionary and Evolutionary Constitutionalization
Lost Democracy?
There Will Be Blood: Legitimization-Crisis of World Society

Conclusion