The Habermas-Rorty 1966 debate: considerations on finitude and transcendence

The Habermas-gadamer Debate

ly negated on the basis of a.false c.laim t.. o superiority. ~~ciallife-; the-symmetrkaJ..rc1atioll-betweenpartners in a game is a more apnnooer1 than that ofdoctor~patient.Everyone IS on relatively equal terms in the gallle..in that there are no privileged knowers. There is, however~anlmder­ lying consensus which expresses the ontological primacy of tradition and which is the condition of all ...

The Sense of Finitude and the Finitude of Sense

For Martin Heidegger in Being and Time, human existence (Dasein) is essentially finite in its directedness toward death as a final and unavoidable individuating possibility. In Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, Heidegger further specifies the finitude of Dasein, following Kant, as the capacity to be affected by external objects, which gives rise to the temporal problem of the relationship be...

Relatedness as Transcendence: on the Renewed Debate over the Meaning of Kinship

Introduction This is an article about kinship, and more particularly the meaning of kinship, an issue that has characterized practically the whole history of anthropology from Lewis Henry Morgan’s pioneering studies, including the influential dismissals of kinship as a universal category by both Rodney Needham and David Schneider in the mid-twentieth century and the prominence given to Janet Ca...

Rorty and His Critics

Autonomy, Natality and Freedom: a Liberal Re-examination of Habermas in the Enhancement Debate

Jurgen Habermas has argued that carrying out pre-natal germline enhancements would be inimical to the future child's autonomy. In this article, I suggest that many of the objections that have been made against Habermas' arguments by liberals in the enhancement debate misconstrue his claims. To explain why, I begin by explaining how Habermas' view of personal autonomy confers particular importan...