Noumenal power revisited: reply to critics

ABSTRACT

In this reply to critiques by Albena Azmanova, Pablo Gilabert, Mark Haugaard, Clarissa Rile Hayward, Matthias Kettner, Steven Lukes, and Simon Susen, Rainer Forst explains and expands upon his theory of ‘noumenal power.’ In particular, he stresses the non-normative character of the approach and clarifies how the account of the exercise of power as working through ‘giving’ reasons also includes non-reflexive and non-transparent forms of producing reasons in others. This has implications for aspects of power that relate to the unconscious, the body and for understanding ideological as well as structural power.

KEYWORDS:

• Noumenal power
• domination
• narratives of justification
• structural power
• critical theory

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. In that version, there have been a few slight changes in certain formulations.

2. See especially my Contexts of Justice (2002), The Right to Justification (2012), Toleration in Conflict (2013) and Justification and Critique (2014a) as well as in Justice, Democracy and The Right to Justification (2014b).

3. See, for example, Niesen (2012), Hellmann (2013), Fahrmeir (2013), Lutz-Bachmann (2015), Hofmann and Kadelbach (2016).

4. See, for example, the productive use of the notion of noumenal power made by Nicole Curato, Marit Hammond, and John Min, in their Power in Deliberative Democracy: Norms, Forums, Systems (forthcoming).

5. See Boltanski and Thévenot (2006) and my introduction in Forst (2017b, p. 12f).

6. I develop my view of Kantian constructivism especially in The Right to Justification (2012) and ‘The Justification of Basic Rights: A Discourse-Theoretical Approach’ (2016).

7. In the same vein, I also do not see why Susen, after having reconstructed my distinction between rule and domination and allowing for the notion of legitimate – say, democratic – rule as distinct from domination (i.e., rule without proper justification) thinks that the distinction has no use (Susen 2018, p. 19).

8. See the critique by Allen (2014) and my replies in Allen, Haugaard and Forst (2014) and Forst (2014c).

9. See my discussion of contexts of justification and recognition in Forst (2002, ch. 5). I discuss Honneth and Fraser in Forst (2014a, ch. 5). See also my paper on ‘Noumenal Alienation’ (Forst 2017a).

10. See my remarks in footnote 44 in Forst (2015, p. 124); footnote 48 in Forst (2017b, p. 49).

11. Note that here I am using the term ‘structural power’ as outlined above. So Hayward is mistaken when she says that I only speak of power when it is exercised intentionally by powerful agents (Hayward 2018, p. 62). That is not the case; it only applies to the cases in which I am speaking of the exercise of power. See my response to Lukes on these issues.

12. As Gilabert puts it in his paper: ‘Reason is a continuous source of resistance, resilience and initiative in the face of injustice. So long as their rational capacities are not themselves extinguished, human beings can question and reject unjust orders and imagine and pursue just ones’ (Gilabert 2018, p. 82).

13. See Haugaard (1997, 2003, 2012).

14. See also his more comprehensive discussion in Kettner (1999).

15. Many thanks also to Dorothea Gädeke, Ciaran Cronin and Paul Kindermann for their comments and questions and their help in preparing this text.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rainer Forst

Rainer Forst is Professor of Political Theory and Philosophy and Co-Director of the Research Center ‘Normative Orders’ at Goethe University Frankfurt. His major publications are Contexts of Justice (Univ. of California Press 2002), Toleration in Conflict (Cambridge UP 2013), The Right to Justification (Columbia UP 2012), Justification and Critique (Polity Press 2014) and Normativity and Power (Oxford UP 2017).