Book launch: The Right to Dissent

This event is a book launch for The Right to Dissent. The author will present his book, Hauke Brunkhorst will offer comments, and Craig Calhoun will lead a discussion.

The right to dissent includes the right to free speech as well as the moral obligation to provide justification for any statement made in dissent. The right to dissent is, in practice, the test of the right to free speech. In a modern democratic society the right to dissent is among the most fundamental rights. The right to dissent has to be cultivated and respected in all political discourse and protected by law in any properly functioning democracy.

The right to dissent has implications for the understanding of ethics in modern society. Inherent in the right to dissent, we find the paradoxical character of modern society which gives priority to negative critical assessments over positive substantive evidence of the opposite. The ethics of dissent is developed in this book through a new critical interpretation of Jürgen Habermas’s communicative ethics and political philosophy. Larsen’s perspective is integrated with a broader interpretation of Habermas’s theory of communicative action and related to the classical traditions of political philosophy, represented by Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Rawls.

Larsen further develops this new philosophical perspective by putting it into the context of a sociological discussion of civil society, public spheres, politics, law, civil disobedience and a globalizing society. This is done while also considering its relationship to the classical traditions of sociology represented by Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Bauman, Foucault, and Bourdieu.

Øjvind Larsen is a Professor of Philosophy and Sociology at Copenhagen Business School and is a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University.

Hauke Brunkhorst is a Visiting Professor at The New School and is Head of the Institute of Sociology at the University of Flensburg in Germany.

Craig Calhoun is University Professor of Social Science, Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at New York University, and President of the Social Science Research Council.

Øjvind Larsen: The Right to Dissent.The Critical Principle in Discourse Ethics and Deliberative Democracy