Reddit reviews Political Philosophy: What It Is And Why It Matters

I understand the universalizing of interests to mean that citizens should look beyond the "national interest" to create the European-wide public sphere that is necessary for a democracy that is not tied to the confines of individual nation-states.

As for whose interests those are, it should be of those citizens who must formulate in public discourse their substantive critiques and objectives.

Now, I do not know as much about his position regarding modernity. Ronald Beiner's Political Philosophy goes into how Habermas defends modernity and how it is most pronounced in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, and ultimately how it is an imperfect formulation (as with the other major theorists surveyed in the book).

So I cannot really comment on his views on that at this time, but this makes me want to more thoroughly read that section.

By original intentions I referred more to the concrete formulation of the EU constitution and how it failed in the referendum. Surely the roots of the Union are more in the Cold War-onward economic policies of Western Europe, with the political union as an afterthought by the elites.

Most of the political elite desire the existing constitutional states as methods to consolidate power. But the pace of economic adversity that affects the citizens, combined with the nation-state's increasing impotence to alleviate it, will create an impasse.

Economic globalization will force nation-states to choose *between constitutional institutions at the supranational level in order to have coherent political and economic policy with functioning democracy; or the multi-national corporation model, with individual nation-states utterly incapable of holding corporate entities accountable while they employ or economically affect a significant number of the human race.

Democratic theory, which is a study area of political science, comes down to the question, "What is good?"

All our arguments are "normative," we are expressing a value or belief about what is good.

If we define politics as "a relationship of power between two or more individuals," then we can see how fragile all our relationships are, including between a person and their government.

Who do we decide to be? Where were we born? Why did we do something?

Legend of the Galactic Heroes is why I went to law school and why I work in government now.

If you are interested in different political theories, Justice by Michael Sandel and Political Philosophy by Ronald Beiner compare different political theorists or political philosophers, and are great companion pieces to LOGH.