Democracy in times of regression. Normative and time-diagnostic considerations

Goethe Lectures Offenbach

Prof. Dr. Rainer Forst (Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy and Director of the Research Centre “Normative Orders” at Goethe University Frankfurt)

In current analyses of the crisis of democracy, the concept of democratic or anti-democratic regression is used in connection with the rise of authoritarian populisms. In his lecture, Rainer Forst discusses the normative preconditions that justify the use of this term, understood as a diagnosis of the ‘rule of unreason’. This clarification makes it possible to avoid some errors in the discussion in this regard: the status quo ante fixation, the reduction of the concept of democracy and the incorrect classification of the critique of democracy. These considerations lead to our own assessment of the causes of anti-democratic regression and the paradoxes of our time.

Rainer Forst is Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy and Director of the “Normative Orders” Research Center at Goethe University Frankfurt. His research interests include questions of justice, democracy and tolerance as well as the further development of critical theory and Kant’s philosophy. In 2012, the German Research Foundation awarded him the Leibniz Prize as the most important political philosopher of his generation. He is a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the British Academy. Most important publications (all published by Suhrkamp and translated into many languages): Contexts of Justice (1994), Tolerance in Conflict (2003), The Right to Justification (2007), Critique of Justificatory Relations (2011), Normativity and Power (2015), The Noumenal Republic (2021).

Admission is free

To the recording: Here…

Organizer:
Research Center “Normative Orders” in cooperation with the Office for Economic Development of the City of Offenbach and the Klingspor Museum