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Critique, Norm, and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory by Seyla Benhabib
Review by: Allen W. Wood
The Philosophical Review, Vol. 97, No. 1 (Jan., 1988), pp. 107-111
Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of Philosophical Review
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2185103 .
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choices resulting from them, and so forth. I have found this book exceed-
ingly difficult to read. The prose has a stilted, labored quality to it, and too
much space is devoted to elementary exposition and compare-contrast ex-
ercises. As though it were the proverbial broth to which too many cooks
had contributed, the thread of the argument is often so obscured by extra-
neous issues the author feels obliged to address that she herself must reca-
pitulate the main point sometimes two or three times in a section. Ull-
mann-Margalit covers so many topics of interest and significance that one
hopes she will focus her considerable resources on each of them in depth
in future works.
ADRIAN M. S. PIPER
GeorgetownUniversity
107
108
109
110)
And of course it is obviously untrue that those who believe norms are
founded on an objective source rather than on intersubjective consent are
committed (or even prone) to ignoring what others think or want. If I
think that the objective norms in question include the value of individual
autonomy or concern for the desires and preferences of others, then I will
be committed precisely by my belief in the objectivity of these norms to not
ignoring what they think and want.
I suspect that what the superiority of intersubjectivity over "transsubjec-
tivity" is supposed to do for Benhabib is provide some sort of argument
for a certain kind of ethics, represented these days by Rawls and Ha-
bermas, which proposes to derive the validity of norms from some ideal
process of communicative action, collective deliberation and mutual con-
sent. (On pp. 90-95, Hegel's ethical theory in the Philosophyof Right is first
interpreted in such terms, and then criticized because the interpretation
can't be carried through.) But the distinction is too unclear to get such an
argument off the ground. As Benhabib employs it, the distinction also
seems to me to give a misleadingly subjectivistic twist to such ethical theo-
ries, as though they were not committed to the objective truth (indepen-
dently of the perspectives of individuals) of the claims involved in certi-
fying that certain principles meet the test of the ideal deliberative scheme.
The upshot is that "intersubjectivity" often looks disturbingly like the con-
temporary forms of subjectivism and relativism from which Benhabib ex-
plicitly wishes to distance herself (p. 14).
These defects touch some of the philosophical conclusions Benhabib
wants to draw from her reconstruction of the history of critical theory, but
they do not prevent the book from being an excellent and philosophically
informed discussion of that history.
ALLEN W. WOOD
Cornell University
Having Reasons has four main aims. It seeks first to distinguish two com-
peting explanatory theories of choice: theories of rationality and theories
of sociality. The former explain all human choices as rational in this sense:
Whenever a person chooses deliberately he does so because he believes the
option chosen is likeliest to cause outcomes he prefers most. Theories of
sociality hold that many choices are not so motivated; a person may choose
an option simply because another wants or orders him to.
111