By Bernard E. Harcourt

With Herbert Marcuse pronouncing the “End of Utopia” in his 1967 lecture at the Free University of West Berlin (which we just discussed at Utopia 10/13) and the passing of the first generation of the Frankfurt School and adjacent thinkers (with the untimely death of Theodor Adorno in 1969 and of Ernst Bloch in 1977), the concept of utopia went underground and was, at least momentarily, eclipsed within the critical theory tradition. Jürgen Habermas did not engage the concept in his theory of communicative ethics. There is practically no mention of utopia in his two-volume treatise, The Theory of Communicative Action (1981). The term appears only once in the first volume, a sideways and critical reference to the philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer’s “hermeneutic utopia of universal and unlimited dialogue in a commonly inhabited lifeworld”[1]; to the best of my recollection, Habermas does not mention or develop the concept in the second volume. As Seyla Benhabib observed, “Habermas’ theory marked a shift from utopian to communicative reason in critical theory.”[2] Axel Honneth as well did not mention the concept of utopia, or even use the word itself, in his first book, The Critique of Power (1985), which placed the early Frankfurt School in conversation with Michel Foucault and Habermas.[3] The concept of utopia went dormant.

It was not until the publication in 1986 of Seyla Benhabib’s landmark contribution to critical theory, Critique, Norm, Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory, that the concept of utopia resurfaced and regained footing in critical theory. The very title of her work restituted utopia to its place as a key concept of critical theory. A central argument of the book was, in her own words, “the need to recover part of the utopian legacy of early critical theory.”[4] Benhabib critiqued Habermas’s theory of communicative ethics precisely for failing to incorporate a utopian dimension: “communicative reason can motivate us only if it also contains a utopian potential,” Benhabib emphasized.[5]

In her book, Seyla Benhabib forged a new path for critical theory that incorporated a cautious embrace of utopia from the earlier Frankfurt School, chastened by the practices of new social movements. In the final chapter, Benhabib elaborated on how the transformation of critical theory—from Marx and the early Frankfurt School to an approach based on communicative ethics—and the corresponding demise of a philosophy of the subject, opened up the potential for community, solidarity, and a politics of empowerment based on recognition of our differences. Benhabib spoke of “the moment of communicative utopia.”[6] She proposed a stitching together of universalist and solidaristic principles. Drawing both on enlightenment strands of rights and entitlements, and on critical strands of emancipation, solidarity, community, collectivity, and friendship, while emphasizing the importance of valuing our experiences of difference, Benhabib uplifted the voice of collectivities in struggle and in formation.[7] Habermasian discourse norms were essential, but insufficient without a utopian dimension—alone, they could not serve as a robust critique of the present. “Utopia is not antagonistic to norm,” Benhabib concluded; “it complements it.”[8]

Seyla Benhabib closed her book threading together, in her vision of communicative utopia, the logic of the protection of rights and entitlements with the logic of friendship and solidarity. And she left the reader, in the final passage, with the words of Ernst Bloch, from his 1961 book, Natural Law and Human Dignity, that drew family resemblances between enlightenment theories of natural rights and human dignity on the one hand, and critical theories of social solidarity and emancipation on the other. Benhabib ended her book with Bloch:

It is just as urgent suo modo to raise the problem of a heritage of classical natural law as it was to speak of the heritage of social utopias. Social utopias and natural law had mutually complementary concerns within the same human space; they marched separately but, sadly, did not strike together … Social utopian thought directed its efforts toward human happiness, natural law was directed toward human dignity. Social utopias depicted relations in which toil and burden ceased, natural law constructed relations in which degradation and insult ceased.[9]

Over the course of a rich and ongoing intellectual journey since then, Seyla Benhabib has crafted her original vision of communicative utopia into a far more concrete utopia, what she has called a “utopia of cosmopolitanism,”[10] that has continued to evolve into, more recently, the concept of “cosmopolitanism from below”[11]: an ideal of equal human dignity and respect for all humans, conjoined with equal respect and generosity toward their cultural, religious, gender, and ethnic differences, that finds its generative source from local and transnational grassroots movements seeking to reinvent political community.

In her most recent essay, “Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered” (posted on Utopia 12/13 here), Benhabib articulates all the dimensions of the concept of cosmopolitanism from below, in which, in her words, “the universalist ideals of equality and freedom, community and solidarity find new articulations through local as well as transnational iterations.”[12] It represents a renewed emphasis on the conjunction of the universal with the local, of the transnational with the regional, of the international with the grassroots. Benhabib proposes the idea of cosmopolitanism from below as a reformulation and reconsideration of cosmopolitanism in the wake of criticisms by liberal and postcolonial thinkers, including Martha Nussbaum and Sylvia Wynter whom Benhabib addresses in her essay.

Let me focus, as a preliminary matter, on our shared visions as critical thinkers. Fred Moten reminded us, during the Utopia 7/13 seminar, of the importance of underscoring our solidarities as critical thinkers. It is easy in the academic context to get carried away with theoretical differences over philosophical foundations and anti-foundationalism, over the form of argument and rhetoric—in effect, to focus on our differences and drive wedges between us when in fact we share similar ambitions and goals, at least among critical thinkers and practitioners. So I would like to take the opportunity, first, to set aside our differences and highlight instead the remarkable aspiration for emancipation, solidarity, equality, dignity, respect, and friendship that Seyla Benhabib has consistently advanced in her writings since the very beginning.

Seyla Benhabib has always militated for equal treatment and dignity, and respect for our differences. Her utopian vision has taken different shape over the course of her intellectual trajectory, from an earlier communicative ethics of respect and dignity which she referred to as “communicative utopia” in the 1980s and 1990s, to a more concrete and reflective utopia heavily grounded on international human rights law and norms which she called a “utopia of cosmopolitanism” in the 2000s and 2020s, to a reconsidered “cosmopolitanism from below” embracing as well local and global grassroots movements today. Consistently and throughout, Benhabib has put forth, front and center, at every juncture, an admirable vision and one that, I believe, is shared by critical thinkers across the field. If I had to summarize it, I would return to her 1986 book and highlight this passage, which encapsulates all the values at the heart of Benhabib’s intellectual and praxis journey:

The perspective of the generalized other urges us to respect the equality, dignity and rationality of all humans qua humans, while the perspective of the concrete other enjoins us to respect differences, individual life histories and concrete needs.[13]

I admire this articulation of a utopian vision that respects equality, dignity, solidarity, and difference for all humans qua humans. Today, the category of the human is being challenged, with some critical thinkers, such as my colleague Che Gossett, arguing that it has served the ends of anti-blackness; so we might broaden the vision to the equality and dignity of all animals or perhaps life forms. But Benhabib’s constancy of utopian vision has been utterly admirable.

This is not to elide potential differences or lines of theoretical disagreement. No, there are of course many, and we will explore and discuss some of them at Utopia 12/13 with three brilliant critical thinkers, Robert Gooding-Williams, Karuna Mantena, and Kendall Thomas. I could not think of more brilliant critical interlocutors for this conversation with Seyla Benhabib. There are, of course, many sharp theoretical differences. As Benhabib recognizes in her essay, theories of cosmopolitanism have hit hard times. As she observes, “the last decades have been characterized by a disillusionment with cosmopolitanism.”[14] Within critical circles, the disillusionment had to do, first and foremost, with the postcolonial challenges to its Eurocentric origins and to the historical dark side of universalist thought; it had to do as well with the way in which, at the “end of history,” cosmopolitanism began to feel free-market oriented. So not just liberal in the universalist sense, but liberal in the economic sense as well. I think this is captured well by Benhabib’s acknowledgement that, with the collapse of communism, “the Kantian ideal of uniting diverse countries under the rule of law, respect for human rights and a free market economy seemed to come alive.”[15] The rapprochement of cosmopolitanism with free market economics and globalization were deeply troubling for many critical theorists.

But even if critical thinkers may differ at the theoretical and praxis level, the vision that Benhabib has consistently advanced is nothing less than admirable. And the intellectual trajectory that has led her to “cosmopolitanism from below” is remarkable.

Rereading the three texts that we have before us for the seminar Utopia 12/13—first, the concluding passage of Benhabib’s first book, Critique, Norm, Utopia, published in 1986 by Columbia University Press; second, her 2009 lecture “Utopia and Dystopia in Our Times” delivered as her acceptance speech for the Ernst Bloch prize, at a time when her thinking about utopia had crystallized around the notion of cosmopolitanism; and third, a contemporary essay revised for this seminar, “Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered,” and so dating to the present, April 2023—I notice on the one hand the constant thread consisting of the emancipatory critical theory of equal dignity and autonomy, and on the other hand some fascinating evolutions and transformations along three principal dimensions: law, sovereignty, and Kantianism.

First regarding law, the writings evince an evolution from an earlier skepticism towards the juridical to a later, more solid embrace of the rule of law, international law, and human rights law. In her 1986 book, I discern a greater skepticism toward the legal and juridical realm. There was a certain ambivalence, somewhat muted, but tied to the dark side of the legalistic-juridical approach. Benhabib wrote, for instance, that “One of the central problems of late-capitalist societies lies in their viewing public life from a legalistic-juridical perspective alone, while the vision of a community of needs and solidarity is ignored and rendered irrelevant.”[16] The turn to legalistic and juridical praxis represented a certain impoverishment of the life world that only a communicative ethics could redress. It was not preclusive, but prevalent and threatening. As Benhabib wrote, “the juridification of everyday life can result in an increased demand for participation in self-government, just as it can foster an attitude of dependence, passivity, and clientelism.”[17] It was precisely because of that looming threat that Benhabib argued the community of rights and entitlements had to be conjoined with the community of needs and solidarity.

Thirty years later, my sense is that Seyla Benhabib has greater faith and places greater emphasis on the legal and juridical dimensions. With cosmopolitanism, and now cosmopolitanism from below, law plays a central role, in fact represents one of the three key dimensions of cosmopolitanism. Benhabib lists the third necessary dimension of cosmopolitanism as: “a legal dimension in that it defends that each human being ought to be treated as a person entitled to certain universal rights.”[18] International law and human rights play a greater role in the necessary protections that Benhabib advocates for. This is, in part, due to Benhabib’s encounter and dialogue with Robert Cover’s notion of the jurisgenerative, which Benhabib reformulated as the norm generative importance of international human rights law. Cover’s writings have been formative for Benhabib. It is also due, in part, to the wave of migration crises that have been a central focus of Benhabib’s work and that have drawn her to migration law and theory—now a central focus of her research. The concepts of rights and entitlements were always present, of course, in fact well in evidence in the concluding chapter of Critique, Norm, Utopia. Hannah Arendt’s “right to have rights” has always been at the heart of Benhabib’s philosophical ambition. But the concrete reality of international and human rights law gained greater prominence in the turn from communicative to cosmopolitan utopianism.

Second, Benhabib’s writings also reflect an evolving relationship to sovereignty, the nation-state, and the polis. This is due, in part, to the turn to nationalism that Benhabib identifies in the ongoing critiques of cosmopolitanism. But I nevertheless sense that in her earlier work, she had a more favorable view of the polity, of local law, of the nation-state, as a way to protect vulnerable groups. So, for instance, in her 1986 book, Benhabib writes “It is more correct to speak of a ‘polity’ of rights and entitlements and an ‘association’ of needs and solidarity. By a ‘polity’ I understand a democratic, pluralistic unity, composed of many communities, but held together by a common legal, administrative and political organization. Polities may be nation-states, multi-national states, or a federation of distinct national and ethnic groups.”[19] At the time, I sense more of a need for the protections of the nation-state, of course combined with the community of needs and solidarity.

But as a result of the many critiques of cosmopolitanism, which on her account retreat into a nationalist populism or a liberal nationalism, Benhabib’s view of the nation-state has soured. As she writes now, “the weakness of the liberal nationalist position is that it neglects international law constraints on the sovereignty of the demos by constructing state sovereignty as if it were solely defined by the self-assertion of the demos.”[20] Benhabib now strenuously defends international law and human rights law against the attacks of thinkers like Martha Nussbaum, arguing that they are not weak or inefficacious but rather necessary to the Kantian ideal of cosmopolitanism. “Cosmopolitanism begins with a critique of the polis and the civitas, in the name of the cosmos, of an ordered reality whose rationality transcends the many and conflicting and often unjust, nomoi (laws and customs) of the political world.”[21] To be sure, the notion of local and transnational praxis that forms the dual constituent of “cosmopolitanism from below” means that there are local anchors, and the local can include the nation-state and national civil rights law. So it’s not as if Benhabib is opposed to the nation-state. But her deep opposition to national isolationism and selfishness, which she associates with critics of cosmopolitanism, suggest to me a greater ambivalence today. In effect, Benhabib’s overall evolution has reduced her ambivalence toward international legalism, but increased it toward the nation-state.

Third, and quickly, I also sense a growing attachment to Kantianism from the earlier work to the more recent—a slight drift from Hegel and Marx to Kant, which is something that has marked the work of other critical theorists of the Frankfurt tradition such as Rainer Forst. If anything, cosmopolitanism has brought Seyla Benhabib closer to Kant.

This brings me, finally, to Benhabib’s debate with Sylvia Wynter, which raises important questions that our guests, Bob Gooding-Williams, Karuna Mantena, and Kendall Thomas, are sure to address. After reading the exchange, Benhabib’s discussion leaves me asking myself whether the dark side of universalism—its association with racism, imperialism, and colonialism during past centuries—is inherent to universalist thought or a historical accident. This raises a counterfactual that is, of course, impossible to tranche. It is nevertheless a recurring question, especially when critical thinkers argue that universalism can be stripped of its history of exclusion, domination, and conquest. Is it possible that “cosmopolitanism from below” may be a way to do that, if the “from below” means that it is coming from the people who have been historically brutalized, marginalized, and disadvantaged?

Ultimately, I am not sure whether it is necessary to retain the Kantian framework and constructs. Benhabib recognizes the racist elements of Kant’s anthropology and geography.[22] Maybe we could avoid anchoring our utopian visions of solidarity, even universality, in those tainted theories today. Perhaps we could, in a non-foundational way (and certainly Benhabib is receptive to the idea of non-foundational approaches[23]), embrace the ambition of solidarity, equality, dignity, and friendship—the ideal of treating others as we would our own—without anchoring those values in limping eighteenth-century European thought. This does not mean that we would not read and study it. It does not mean that we would not be in critical conversation with it. But it might mean that we no longer build our utopias on those works or on their basis, on those theoretical constructs. Perhaps we could draw on different sources and use different language, expressions, and names for our critique and praxis. Nietzsche reminds us in The Gay Science of the importance of “naming” things, as I mentioned at Utopia 9/13. Perhaps it is time to heed this call. For sure, there is much to discuss!

Welcome to Utopia 12/13!

Notes

[1] Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action: Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society, trans. Thomas McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), p. 134.

[2] Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 277.

[3] Axel Honneth, The Critique of Power: Reflective Stages in a Critical Social Theory, trans. Kenneth Baynes (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991).

[4] Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, p. 278.

[5] Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, p. 277.

[6] Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, p. 352.

[7] Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, p. 352 (“The community of needs and solidarity is created in the interstices of society by those new social movements, which on the one hand fight to extend the universalist promise of objective spirit—justice and entitlements—and on the other seek to combine the logic of justice with that of friendship.”)

[8] Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, p. 353.

[9] Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, p. 353.

[10] Seyla Benhabib, “Utopia and Dystopia in Our Times,” 184-195, in Dignity and Adversity: Human Rights in Troubled Times (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2011), at p. 193.

[11] Seyla Benhabib, “Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered,” draft for Utopia 12/13, at p. 19.

[12] Benhabib, “Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered,” p. 19.

[13] Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, p. 351.

[14] Benhabib, “Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered,” p. 1.

[15] Benhabib, “Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered,” p. 2-3.

[16] Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, p. 350.

[17] Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, p. 350.

[18] Benhabib, “Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered,” p. 2.

[19] Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, p. 351.

[20] Benhabib, “Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered,” pp. 8-9.

[21] Benhabib, “Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered,” p. 12.

[22] Benhabib, “Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered,” p. 16.

[23] Benhabib, “Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered,” p. 17 (“In various works, I have defended a “cosmopolitanism without illusions” which rejects foundationalism but not the search for justifications through reason-giving in dialogic processes of communicative ethics.”)