What is it about?

I critize Forst’s conceptualization of power as an overly rationalistic view of human agency. For Forst, political power, in both its normatively desirable and its perhaps undesirable dominating aspects, hinges around justification. Forst contends that all ways in which every kind of power takes effect on people is via people's resons. For Forst, reasons are justifiers only. I contend that this ignores reasons’ multiple roles and rational forces other than justification. Conceptually reducing power to noumenal power, as Forst proposes (i.e. what I gloss as the Forstian bargain) loses sight of important ways of exercising power which work by effectively bypassing a subject's "space of reasons" even though they somehow register in that space. - The final section of the paper takes up Forst's framework constructively, I proposes to speak specifically of "fully noumenal power" if and only if not merely the arena where power takes effect is "noumenal" (i.e. governed by the forces which reasons have for reasoners) but where the medium through which power is exercised is itself "noumenal". Argumentative discourse (in the sense of Habermas and Apel) is an ideal case in point.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Power is a ubiquitous phenomenon in social reality. Constructing an analytical framework that does justice to the diversity of forms of power is a theoretical task of utmost importance for the cultural and social sciences.

Perspectives

Power has been neglected in Critical Theory. Rainer Forst’s suggestion to conceive of power as noumenal power, i.e. as plaing out in the reasons that are availabe to actors, is an important attempt to rectify this situation. I want to correct a reductive slant in this conceptualization and thereby to improve it.

Matthias Kettner
Universitat Witten/Herdecke

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: The forstian bargain: overrationalizing the power of reasons, Journal of Political Power, May 2018, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/2158379x.2018.1479039.
You can read the full text:

Read

Contributors

The following have contributed to this page