The Scandal of Reason, by Albena Azmanova (introduction)

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theory at the University of Kent’s Brussels School of International Studies. Born in Bulgaria and educated in France and the United States, she lives in Belgium. Her writing focuses on political judgment and social justice; the transformation of capitalism and the emergence of new political ideologies; and Eastern Europe’s postcommunist metamorphosis.

Seyla Benhabib,

Yale University

“Ambitious and appealing, The Scandal of Reason offers compelling arguments about the level, type, and validity of ordered reflection most likely to advance good judgment and decent values under vexing conditions.” Ira Katznelson,

Nancy Fraser, New School for Social Research

“Azmanova navigates between abstract, universalist conceptions of justice and legitimacy and situated, particularistic claims that disguise their implicit norms. Her work on judgment solves many problems of existing theories of deliberative democracy without surrendering normative justification. What is especially valuable is that she transforms deliberative theory in a way that will be more usable for both empirical analysis and political orientation.” Andrew Arato, New School for Social Research

columbia University

ISBN: 978-0-231-15380-5

Cover Image: Paulo Veronese, La Dialettica o l’Industria, Palazzo Ducale, Venice

9 780231 153805

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Jacket Design: Noah Arlow

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A Cr i t i ca l T h eor y of Pol i t i ca l Ju dg me n t

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“With this original and incisive book, Albena Azmanova develops a new hermeneutic for reconciling two models of reasoning that have long been opposed to one another: contextually sensitive political judgments and procedurally oriented models of discursive validity. She argues that the more ideal a model of judgment, the less applicable in practice, and the more applicable in practice, the less morally rigorous. She tries to resolve this dilemma by developing a model of critical political judgment sensitive to shared matrices of meaning, as well as hierarchies of reference. A major contribution to theories of judgment written with flair and humor.”

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“Dissatisfied with standard procedural models of public reason, Azmanova proposes a new approach that foregrounds the ways in which power asymmetries prestructure deliberators’ judgments. Combining philosophical rigor with sociological sensitivity, she extends the reach of critique to crucial regions liberals ignore: namely, the sociocultural frames that simultaneously enable and constrain our capacity to perceive injustices. The result is a fascinating and convincing book clarifying reason’s ‘scandalous’ ability to serve both domination and emancipation.”

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theories of justice are haunted by a paradox: the more ambitious the ideal of justice, the less applicable and useful the model is to political practice; yet the more politically realistic the ideal, the weaker its moral ambition is, rendering it unsound and equally useless. Brokering a resolution to this “judgment paradox,” Albena Azmanova advances a “critical consensus model” of judgment that serves the normative ideals of a just society without the help of ideal theory. Tracing the evolution of two major traditions in political philosophy—critical theory and philosophical liberalism—and the way they confront the judgment paradox, Azmanova critiques prevailing models of deliberative democracy and their preference for ideal theory over political applicability. Instead, she replaces the reliance on normative models of democracy with an account of the dynamics of reasoned judgment produced in democratic practices of open dialogues. Combining Hannah Arendt’s study of judgment with Pierre Bourdieu’s social critique of power relations, and incorporating elements of political epistemology from Kant, Wittgenstein, H. L. A. Hart, Max Weber, and American philosophical pragmatism, Azmanova centers her inquiry on the way participants in moral conflicts attribute meaning to their grievances of injustice. She then demonstrates the emancipatory potential of the model of critical deliberative judgment she forges and its capacity to guide policy making. This model’s critical force derives from its ability to reveal the common structural sources of injustice behind conflicting claims to justice. Moving beyond the conflict between universalist and pluralist positions, Azmanova grounds the question of “what is justice?” in the empirical reality of “who suffers?” in order to discern attainable possibilities for a less unjust world.


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The Scandal of Reason, by Albena Azmanova (introduction) by Columbia University Press - Issuu