“I only want to say that the evidence of my relation to a theological heritage does not bother me, as long as one recognizes the methodological difference of the discourses: that is, as long as the philosophical discourse conforms to the distinctive demands of justificatory speech. In my view, a philosophy that oversteps the bounds of methodological atheism loses its philosophical seriousness.”
Jürgen Habermas, 2002, Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity, Polity Press.
“Democratic procedure, which establishes a network of pragmatic considerations, compromises, and discourses of self-understanding and of justice, grounds the presumption that reasonable or fair results are obtained insofar as the flow of relevant information and its proper handling have not been obstructed.”
Jürgen Habermas, 1996, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, Polity Press.
“I keep novels and detective stories in my bedroom, so that visitors shan’t be tempted to borrow them; the sitting room houses the higher forms of literature (and my jazz books, a far from exhaustive collection), while the hall I reserve for thoroughly worthy items calculated to speed the parting guest.” Philip Larkin, 1983, Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982, Faber and Faber.
“Acts demolish the alternatives, that is the paradox.”
James Salter, Light Years, 1975, Vintage.
“The history of modern social ideas has misled us into associating piecemeal change with disbelief in institutional reconstruction, and a commitment to such reconstruction with faith in sudden and systematic change.”
Roberto Mangabeira Unger, 2005, What Should the Left Propose?,Verso.
“Lyndon Johnson had grasped in an instant what needed to be done with Kennedy’s men and Kennedy’s legislation: his insight into the crisis and the rapidity of his response to it a glimpse of political genius almost shocking in its acuity and decisiveness.”
Robert Caro, 2012, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Volume 4, The Passage of Power, Bodley Head.
“The constitutive principles of Western liberal democracy, its ideas of limited and accountable government, have more to do with medieval lordship and its claims to autonomous power than with rule by the demos as conceived in ancient Athens.”
Ellen Meiskins Wood, 2008, Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages, Verso.
“Philosophy counts two, speaking of and speaking to, but regardless of what happens in the bosom of the one, they always come back under the regulation of the truth that governs speaking of. […] Austin’s invention consists in counting three.”
Barbara Cassin, 2014, Sophistical Practice: Toward a Consistent Relativism, Fordham University Press.
“Though a debunking doctrine may be a useful tool in scientific analysis, it cannot provide the basis for political action.”
Franz Neumann, 1944, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism 1933-1944, Oxford University Press.
“The indirect rule state was not a weak state. Unlike the preceding era of direct rule, its ambitions were vast: to shape the subjectivities of the colonized population and not simply of their elites.”
Mahmood Mamdami, 2013, Define and Rule: Native as Political Identity, Wits University Press.
Pop Theory 