• The Challenge of Migration: Is Liberalism the Problem? A Critique of Christoph Menke’s Radical Republicanism

    Author(s):
    Karsten Schubert (see profile)
    Date:
    2020
    Group(s):
    Global & Transnational Studies, Political Philosophy & Theory
    Subject(s):
    Liberalism, Republicanism, Liberty
    Item Type:
    Conference paper
    Conf. Title:
    Neuchatel Graduate Conference 2018
    Conf. Org.:
    Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS)
    Conf. Date:
    2018
    Tag(s):
    radical republicanism, christoph menke, Migration, Freedom
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/vx28-mp56
    Abstract:
    I would like to deal with the following questions: What is the reason for the failure of Western states to protect refugees and to welcome migrants? And what is an ad-equate response? One popular hypothesis is that liberalism is the problem. The most elaborate version of this hypothesis comes from Christoph Menke, who employs his radical critique of liberal subjective rights in his widely discussed Kritik der Rechte (2015) to the problem of refugees and migration in a small article in the journal Merkur (2016). In what follows, I first reconstruct Menke’s argument, explaining that the merit of his approach is to problematize subjectification through subjective rights, which produces egoistic subjects and an egoistic society. Secondly, I criticize Menke by pointing out that he dismisses the emancipative function of liberal subjective rights too quickly, which is why I call his philosophy “radical republicanism”. For this reason, in the third step, I propose a new concept of liberal universalism which can address the problem of subjectification while avoiding the pitfalls of radical republicanism, which amounts to a conceptual connection between freedom and critique, short: freedom as critique.
    Metadata:
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    3 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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