STATEMENT »Beyond Black and White«

Rainer Forst made a statement to the Frankfurter Rundschau on 25 November 2023, on the occasion of the critical response ‘Human Dignity for All’, Guardian online, 22 November, which refers to the statement ‘Principles of Solidarity’ by Nicole Deitelhoff, Klaus Günther, Jürgen Habermas and myself of 13 November 2023 (published on normativeorders.net).

Find the statement in full here:

"Beyond Black and White"

LECTURES »The Nature of Normative Concepts: Dependence vs. Independence«

From October 3-5, 2023, Rainer Forst will be giving the Jerome S. Simon Lectures at the University of Toronto, titled »The Nature of Normative Concepts: Dependence vs. Independence«. In these lectures, he discusses the distinction between normatively dependent and normatively independent concepts. Normatively dependent concepts, such as solidarity and trust, are descriptive in nature and require other normative sources to have normative value. The normatively independent concept of justice, on the other hand, entails a normative content that guides all possible conceptions of justice.

Find more information on the lectures here:

Jerome S. Simon Lectures

RESEARCH PAPER »The rule of unreason. Analyzing (anti-)democratic regression«

A new research paper by Rainer Forst has recently been published in Constellations. It is entitled "The rule of unreason. Analyzing (anti-)democratic regression" and deals with the notion of democratic or anti-democratic regression as part of an analysis of the crisis of democracy. The paper discusses the normative presuppositions that justify the use of this term, understood as a diagnosis of the 'rule of unreason'. This clarification allows to avoid some mistakes in the discussion on this matter: that of the status quo ante fixation, that of the reduction of the concept of democracy, and that of the wrong classification of the critique of democracy. Following these considerations, Forst discusses his own assessment of the causes of democratic regression and the paradoxes of our time.

Find the full research paper here:

• »The rule of unreason. Analyzing (anti-)democratic regression«

WORKING PAPER »The Justification of Trust in Conflict«

As part of the cluster initiative "ConTrust - Trust in Conflict", Rainer Forst has published a working paper entitled "The Justification of Trust in Conflict. Conceptual and Normative Groundwork". In this paper, he argues that trust and conflict should not be understood as opposing terms. Furthermore, he differentiates between a general concept and specific conceptions of trust, and argues that trust is only normatively valuable if it is well justified.

Download the full working paper here:

»The Justification of Trust in Conflict«