Habermas and Taylor on Religious Reasoning in a Liberal Democracy

Abstract

This article compares Habermas’s and Taylor’s approach to the role of religious language in a liberal democracy. It shows that the difference in their approach is not simply in their theories of religious language. The contrast lies deeper, in their incompatible moral theories: Habermas’s universal discourse ethics vs Taylor’s communitarian substantive ethics. I also explore William Rehg’s defence of discourse ethics by conceding that it is based on a metavalue of rational consensus. However, I argue that Habermas’s and Rehg’s discourse ethics and translation proviso are untenable. While Taylor rightly argues that there is no reason to exclude religious reason from the formal political sphere, his proposed fusion of horizons to generate a new hybrid framework is also problematic. I suggest that Taylor’s historical hermeneutics should be extended to include the narrative approach to ethical deliberation as conducive to mutual experiential understanding, and hence to achieving a fusion of horizons of the diverse worlds of citizens in a liberal democracy.     

Objectivity and the writing of history

How do historians approach objectivity? This is addressed by Mark Bevir in his book The Logic of the History of Ideas (1999) by his argument for an anthropological epistemology with objectivity in the historical narrative resting on the explanation of human actions/agent intentionality equating with meaning. The criticism of this position is at several levels. As sophisticated constructionists historians do not usually ask ‘Can history be objective?’ Rather, they work from the balance of evidence reflecting the intersubjectivity of truth and they acknowledge the problematic nature of inferring agent intentionality and the difficulties in equating this with ‘what it means’. Why Abraham Lincoln issued the 1863 emancipation proclamation is a case in point. No historian would claim to have located its true meaning objectively in effect doubting Mark Bevir's claim that ‘objective knowledge arises from a human practice in which we criticise and compare rival webs of theories in terms of agreed facts’ (The Logic of the History of Ideas, 1999, p. 98). There are also further challenges to an over-reliance on rational action theory and the problems associated with the selection of evidence. Equally, most historians in practice doubt objectivity emerges from an accurate knowledge of the motives that can be matched to weak authorial intentions and that this leads to action via decisions. Few historians today accept that their narrative mimics past intentionality and that this provides true meaning. The article offers four reasons for rejecting Bevir's position and concludes with a defence of the narrative-linguistic determination of meaning. This suggests that history is subject to the same narrative and imaginative constraints as other forms of realist writing, rather than being privileged by an access to knowable intentionality and that this constitutes objective historical knowledge.     

Cultural identity and political responsibility

Abstract

The Cultural Industries Quarter (CIQ) in Sheffield was set up in 1981 as a local government initiative. At the time this was regarded as an extraordinary, either brave or foolish, use of public money. This paper argues that the development of the CIQ over 20 years has been adversely affected by early decisions made before cultural quarters were commonplace. Left-wing politics focusing on job creation and a climate of reliance of public funding encouraged the CIQ to develop according to a particularly narrow model of cultural regeneration. Later, a lack of leadership among the public funders discouraged diversification from this model, while elsewhere cultural quarters embraced a broader mix of social and economic activity, leaving the Sheffield experiment as something of a dinosaur. The paper seeks to analyse what mistakes were made, their effects, and what now can be done to update and enliven the Sheffield Quarter.     

‘Reassessments of Winston Churchill’: A Reply

LINDA GRANT DE PAUW. Battle Cries and Lullabies: Women in War from Prehistory to the Present. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1998. Pp. xvii, 395. $24.95 (US). Reviewed by Frances Early

JEFFREY D. LERNER. The Impact of Seleucid Decline on the Eastern Iranian Plateau: The Foundations of Arsacid Parthia and Graeco-Bactria. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999. Pp. 139. DM 68.00. Reviewed by Richard Fowle

GOCHA R. TSETSKHLADZE, ed. The Greek Colonisation of the Black Sea Area: Historical Interpretation of Archaeology. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998. Pp. 336. DM 148.00. Reviewed by Vanessa B. Gorman

DANIEL POWER and NAOMI STANDEN, eds. Frontiers in Question: Eurasian Borderlands, 700–1700. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xxiv, 293. $59.95 (US). Reviewed by Peter C. Perdue

JAMES MULDOON. Empire and Order: The Concept of Empire, 800–1800. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. viii, 209. $65.00 (US). Reviewed by John M. Headley

J. H. ELLIOTT and L. W. B. BROCKLISS, eds. The World of the Favourite. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999. Pp. xv,320. $45.00 (US). Reviewed by John C. Rule

PHILIP BENEDICT, GUIDO MARNEF, HENK VAN NIEROP, and MARC VENARD, eds. Reformation, Revolt, and Civil War in France and the Netherlands, 1555–1585. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1999. Pp. vii, 298. NLG 95.00, paper. Reviewed by Mark Konnert

MICHAEL LEROY OBERG. Dominion and Civility: English Imperialism and Native America, 1585–1685. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. Pp. x, 239. $42.50 (US). Reviewed by Ian K. Steele

HERBERT S. KLEIN. The Atlantic Slave Trade. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xxi, 234. $49.95 (US), cloth; $15.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by John Thornton

AGNES LATHAM and JOYCE YOUINGS, eds. The Letters of Sir Walter Ralegh. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1999. Pp. bdii, 403. £45.00. Reviewed by Harry Kelsey

COLIN KIDD. British Identities before Nationalism: Ethnicity and Nationhood in the Atlantic World, 1600–1800. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. viii, 302. $59.95 (US). Reviewed by Arthur Williamson

VICTOR TREADWELL. Buckingham and Ireland, 1616–1628: A Study in Anglo-Irish Politics. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998; dist. Portland: ISBS. Pp. 443. $65.00 (US). Reviewed by Mark A. Kishlansky

DEREK CROXTON. Peacemaking in Early Modern Europe: Cardinal Mazarin and the Congress of Westphalia, 1643–1648. Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1999. Pp. 397. $52.50 (US). Reviewed by Paul M. Sonnino

STUART BANNER. Anglo-American Securities Regulation: Cultural and Political Roots, 1690–1860. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xviii, 318. $69.95 (US). Reviewed by John A. James

EDMOND DZIEMBOWSKI. Un nouveau patriotisme français, 1750–1770: La France face à la puissance anglaise à l'époque de la guerre de Sept Ans. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1999. Pp. vii, 566. £75.00. Reviewed by Lucien Bély

MAX M. MINTZ. Seeds of Empire: The American Revolutionary Conquest of the Iroquois. New York: New York University Press, 1999. Pp. xi, 232. $28.95 (US). Reviewed by Colin G. Calloway

ALEX CALDER, JONATHAN LAMB, and BRIDGET ORR, eds. Voyages and Beaches: Pacific Encounters, 1769–1840. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999. Pp. viii, 344. $45.00 (US). Reviewed by I. C. Campbell

JERZY LUKOWSKI. The Partitions of Poland, 1772, 1793, 1795. London and New York: Longman, 1999. Pp. xv, 232. £42.00, cloth; £13.99, paper. Reviewed by Robert E.Jones

NORMAN HAMPSON. The Perfidy of Albion: French Perceptions of England during the French Revolution. New York: St Martin's Press, 1998. Pp. xiii, 181. $59.95 (US). Reviewed by Michael Duffy

KEN POST. Revolution and the European Experience, 1789–1914. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xi, 227. $65.00 (US). Reviewed by Peter N. Stearns

FREDERICK W. KAGAN. The Military Reforms of Nicholas I: The Origins of the Modern Russian Army. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xii, 337. $49.95 (US). Reviewed by Marc Raeff

T. R. MOREMAN. The Army in India and the Development of Frontier Warfare, 1849–1947. New York: St Martin's Press, 1998. Pp. xxiii, 258. $72.00 (US) Reviewed by David Omissi

JOSE C. MOYA. Cousins and Strangers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires, 1850–1930. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Pp. xviii, 567. $25.00 (US), paper. Reviewed by Monica Quijada

STEFAN LIPPERT. Felix Fiirst m Schwarzenberg: Eine politische Biographic. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998. Pp. 445. DM 168.00. Reviewed by Lawrence Sondhaus

STEPHEN M. HARRIS. British Military Intelligence in the Crimean War, 1854–1856. London and Portland: Frank Cass, 1999. Pp. xxiv, 182. $52.50 (US). Reviewed by Ann Pottinger Saab

KOJI KAWASHIMA. Missionaries and a Hindu State: Travancore, 1858–1936. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. x, 252. $43.50 (CDN). Reviewed by Penelope Carson

DAVID ALAN RICH. The Tsar's Colonels: Professionalism, Strategy, and Subversion in Late Imperial Russia. Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1998. Pp. xiv, 293. $49.95 (US). Reviewed by W. Bruce Lincoln

GREG MARQUIS. In Armageddon's Shadow: The Civil War and Canada's Maritime Provinces. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1998. Pp. xx, 389. $34.95 (CDN). Reviewed by Eric W. Sager

IRVING STONE. The Global Export of Capital from Great Britain, 1865–1914: A Statistical Survey. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xi, 430. $75.00 (US). Reviewed by C. H. Feinstein

GEORGE VON RAUCH. Conflict in the Southern Cone: The Argentine Military and the Boundary Dispute with Chile, 1870–1902. Westport: Praeger, 1999. Pp. xii, 229. $69.50 (US). Reviewed by David Rock

CLAUDIA LINDA REESE. Neuseeland und Deutschland: Handelsabkommen, Aufienhandelspolitik und Handel von 1871 bis 1973. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1998. Pp. xxv, 378. DM 148.00, paper. Reviewed by John A. Moses

GERALD FRIEDMAN. State-Making and Labor Movements: France and the United States, 1876–1914. Idiaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 317. $55.00 (US). Reviewed by Samuel Cohn

ANDREAS ECKERT. Grundhesitz, Landkonflikte und kolonialer Wandeh Douala 1880 bis 1960. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1999. Pp. x, 503. DM 144.00, paper. Reviewed by Dierk Walter

WOLFRAM HARTMANN, JEREMY SILVESTER, and PATRICIA HAYES, eds. The Colonising Camera: Photographs in the Making of Namibian History. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1999. Pp. vii, 220. $29.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Subhash Jaireth

JULIE F. CODELL and DIANNE SACHKO MACLEOD, eds. Orientalism Transposed: The Impact of the Colonies on British Culture. Aldershot and Brookfield: Ashgate, 1998. Pp. xiii, 249. $84.95 (US). Reviewed by John M. MacKenzie

ANGEL SMITH and EMMA DÁVILA-COX, eds. The Crisis of l898: Colonial Redistribution and Nationalist Mobilization. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. ix, 221. $65.00 (US). Reviewed by Jules R. Benjamin

STEPHEN M. MILLER. Lord Methuen and the British Army: Failure and Redemption in South Africa. London and Pordand: Frank Cass, 1999. Pp. 279. $57.50 (US), cloth; $26.50 (US), paper. Reviewed by Ian F. W. Beckett

DAVID A. LAKE. Entangling Relations: American Foreign Policy in Its Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999. Pp. xii, 332. $60.00 (US). Reviewed by Alfred E. Eckes

JONATHAN SCHNEER. London 1900: The Imperial Metropolis. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1999. Pp. ix,336. $29.95(US). Reviewed by Peter Cain

DARSHAN SINGH TATLA. The Sikh Diaspora: The Search for Statehood. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999. Pp. xiv, 327. $22.00 (US), paper. Reviewed by Hugh Johnston

CHRISTOPH JAHR. Gewöhnliche Soldaten: Desertion und Deserteure im deutschen und britischen Heer, 1914–1918. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &; Ruprecht, 1998. Pp. 419. DM 78.00. Reviewed by Jay Winter

JAN HEITMANN. Unter Wasser in die Neue Welt: Handelsunterseeboote und kaiserliche Unterseekreuzer im Spannungsfeld von Politik und Kriegführung. Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 1999. Pp. 365. DM 78.00, paper. Reviewed by Holger H. Herwig

ALEXANDRU CRETZIANU. Relapse into Bondage: Political Memoirs of a Romanian Diplomat, 1918–1947, ed. Sherman David Spector. Ia?i: Center for Romanian Studies, 1998; dist. Portland: ISBS. Pp. 351. $50.00 (US). Reviewed by Dov B. Lungu

INBAL ROSE. Conservatism, and Foreign Policy during the Lloyd George Coalition, 1918–1922. London and Portland: Frank Cass, 1999. Pp. xxix, 289. $54.50 (US). Reviewed by Alan Sharp

PATRICK PASTURE and JOHAN VERBERCKMOES, eds. Working-Class Internationalism and the Appeal of National Identity: Historical Debates and Current Perspectives. Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998. Pp. vii, 263. $65.00 (US). Reviewed by Carl Strikwerda

JOHN E. MOSER. Twisting the Lion's Tail: American Anglophobia between the World Wars. New York: New York University Press, 1999. Pp. x, 263. $45.00 (US). Reviewed by John A. Thompson

DAVID F. SCHMITZ. Thank God They're on Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921–1965. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1999. Pp. xi, 383. $18.95 (US)> paper. Reviewed by Anders Stephanson

MALCOLM ANDERSON and EBERHARD BORT, eds. The Irish Border: History, Politics, Culture. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999; dist. Portland: ISBS. Pp. 286. $21.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by S. J. Connolly

AZAR GAT. Fascist and Liberal Visions of War: Fuller, LiddeU Hart, Douhet, and Other Modernists. New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. viii, 334. $130.50 (CDN); BRIAN HOLDEN REID. Studies in British Military Thought: Debates with Fuller and LiddeU Hart. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. Pp. xviii, 287. $45.00 (US). Reviewed by Robert H. Larson

ALEX DANCHEV. Alchemist of War: The Life of Basil Liddell Hart. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1998. Pp. xiv, 369. £25.00. Reviewed by John P. Campbell

HORST BOOG, JÜRGEN FÖRSTER, JOACHIM HOFFMANN, ERNST KLINK, ROLF-DlETER MÜLLER, and GERD R. UEBERSCHÄR. Germany and the Second World War: IV: The Attack on the Soviet Union, trans. Dean S. McMurray, Ewald Osers, and Louise Wilmott. New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1998. Pp. xxxi, 1,364. $362.50 (CDN). Accompanied by a booklet of maps: Der Angriff auf die Sowjetunion. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1983. Reviewed by Lawrence D. Stokes

NATALIIA S. LEBEDEVA and M. M. NARINSKII, eds. Komintern i vtoraia mirovaia voina: I: 1939–1941. Moscow: Pamiatnikii Istoricheskoi Myslii (PIM), 1994. Pp. 554; II: Posh 22 Iuniia 1941. Moscow: PIM, 1998. Pp. 595. No Price Available. Reviewed by Anna M. Cienciala

PENNY SUMMERFIELD. Reconstructing Women's Wartime Lives: Discourse and Subjectivity in Oral Histories of the Second World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998; dist. New York: St Martin's Press. Pp. xiii, 338. $29.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Nicoletta F. Gullace

DAVID B. WOOLNER, ed. The Second Quebec Conference Revisited: Waging War, Formulating Peace: Canada, Great Britain, and the United States in 1944–1945. New York: St Martin's Press, 1998. Pp. xiii, 210. $49.95 (US). Reviewed by Geoffrey Hayes

NICHOLAS TARLING. Britain, Southeast Asia, and the Onset of the Cold War, 1945–1950. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. x, 488. $64.95 (US). Reviewed by Matthew Jones

ZACHARY KARABELL. Architects of Intervention: The United States, the Third World, and the Cold War, 1946–1962. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999. Pp. 248. $37.50 (US), cloth; $16.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by David S. Painter

IAN MCGIBBON, ed. Unofficial Channels: Letters between Alister Mclntosh and Foss Shanahan, George Laking, and Frank Corner, 1946–1966. Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1999. Pp. 360. $39.95 (NZ), paper. Reviewed by Michael Bassett

SELIG S. HARRISON, PAUL H. KREISBERG, and DENNIS KUX, eds. India and Pakistan: The First Fifty Years. Washington and New York: Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Cambridge University Press, 1999. Pp. xii, 216. $49.95 (US), cloth; $16.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by Anita Inder Singh

NOEL E. FIRTH and JAMES H. NOREN. Soviet Defense Spending: A History of CIA Estimates, 1950–1990. College Station: Texas A &; M University Press, 1998. Pp. xix, 291. $49.95 (US). Reviewed by John P. Hardt

BERT EDSTRÖM. Japan's Evolving Foreign Policy Doctrine: From Yoshida to Miyazawa. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. x, 216. $72.00 (US). Reviewed by Christopher W. Hughes

NICK CULLATHER. Secret History: The CIA's Classified Account of Its Operations in Guatemala, 1952–1954. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Pp. xl, 142. $39.50 (US), cloth; $14.95 (US), paper. Reviewed by STEPHEN G. RABE

MOTTI GOLANI. Israel in Search of a War: The Sinai Campaign, 1955–1956. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 1998. Pp. x, 236. $69.95 (US). Reviewed by Howard J. Dooley

CAMPBELL CRAIG. Destroying the Village: Eisenhower and Thermonuclear War. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. Pp. xiv, 216. $22.50 (US), paper. Reviewed by John Prados

CHRISTIAN BREMEN. Die Eisenhower-Administration und die zweite Berlin-Krise, 1958–1961. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1998. Pp. xi, 625. DM 298.00. Reviewed by Wolfgang Krieger

ELIZABETH COBBS HOFFMAN. All You Need is Love: The Peace Corps and the Spirit of the 1960s. Cambridge, Mass, and London: Harvard University Press, 1998. Pp. viii, 306. $27.95 (US). Reviewed by Jonathan S. Russ

KEN ENDO. The Presidency of the European Commission under Jacques Delors: The Politics of Shared Leadership. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xx, 260. $69.95 (US). Reviewed by G. W. Jones

WILLIAM E. ODOM. The Collapse of the Soviet Military. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998. Pp. xiii, 523. $35.00 (US). Reviewed by Lawrence Freedman

CHRISTOPHER C. JOYNER. Governing the Frozen Commons: The Antarctic Regime and Environmental Protection. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1998; dist. Toronto: Scholarly Book Services. Pp. xvii, 363. $41.25 (CDN), paper. Reviewed by Maarten J. de Wit

JOHN BUCKLEY. Air Power in the Age of Total War. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1999. Pp. ix, 260. $19.95 (US). Reviewed by Michael Sherry     

The Russia of the Tsar and North Norway. "The Russian Danger" Revisited

The fear of Russia in Norway goes back far beyond the Russian Revolution. It played an important role in Norwegian Swedish foreign policies towards Russia from the 1830s and up to 1905 (and in Norwegian conceptions of threat between 1905 and 1917 as well, although the threat seems to have been more down-played in that period) (Nielsen 1994 95). In particular, there has been a fear of a possible attack on North-Norway. Roald Berg, in his recently published work entitled Norsk forsvarshistorie 1814-1905 (The History of the Norwegian Defence 1814 1905) presents evidence that the conception of a Russian danger was an issue in Norwegian military considerations as far back as in the 1820s and 1830s. According to Berg, it is evident that this idea was central in Norwegian military-strategic thought in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century (Berg 2001: 112 115, 307-308). My purpose in this paper is to try to establish whether there was reason for this fear, that is, if there were any plans among the Russian authorities to conquer Norwegian territory in the period between the Eidsvoll Assembly and the storming of the Winter Palace (1814 1917).     

Italian Security Policy after the Cold War

This article analyses the main trends in Italian security policy in the post-Cold War period. After a brief look at changes in the Italian perceptions of threat, it examines Italian policies within the UN, NATO and the EU, paying particular attention to how Italian decision makers conceive the relationship among these three organizations, especially with respect to the management of regional crises. The article then turns to examine and assess the foreign policy of the second Berlusconi government, which has often been accused of having broken with the past, especially with respect to Italy's policy in Europe. It concludes with a reflection on the likelihood that Italian security policy will continue to benefit from the type of bipartisan political support it has enjoyed in the last decade.     

抗战时期民国政府的边疆教育政策

本文从“边疆教育”概念的提出、边疆教育政策的内容、边疆教育政策的施行等三个方面对民国政府的边疆教育政策进了概要探讨。认为“边疆教育”从政策层面上言是在1935年提出的,由此引发了民国政府边疆教育政策的系列变化,并制定了特殊的政策,设置了特殊的管理机构,进而对边疆教育的发展起到了一定促进作用。     

日本"有事法制"议案和新版《防卫白皮书》评析

“有事法制”议案赋予了日本自卫队以“国家军队”的职能,赋予了日本政府使用武力乃至“先发制人”解决可能发生的争端的权力,开辟了日本在海外行使武力的道路;《2003年防卫白皮书》则重新阐述了日本关于战争的认识,重新确立了日本的军事防卫重点,重新确认了日本自卫队的主要任务。这表明日本的“专守防卫”政策发生了重大变化。军国主义思想始终没有彻底清算,社会政治生态右倾化进一步加深,冷战后政治大国欲望的加速膨胀,以及迫于“美日同盟”的压力等,是日本防卫政策变化的主要原因。日本社会政治发展趋势和国家发展方向都将受到防卫政策变化的巨大影响。