Interactive universalism, the concrete other and discourse ethics: A sociological dialogue with Seyla Benhabib’s theories of morality

Abstract

Noting that Benhabib’s ethical theory has seldom been engaged with by sociologists of morality, this article introduces and interrogates Benhabib’s ethical theory from a sociological perspective. It is argued that Benhabib’s critiques of Enlightenment conceptions of morality complement sociological theories of morality. Her concepts of the ‘concrete’ and ‘generalized’ other and ‘interactive universalism’ can potentially inform recurrent debates in the sociology of morality about the extent to which cultural plurality precludes the possibility of sociologists providing normative judgements, and the extent to which certain features of moral experiences can be taken to be universal. However, Benhabib’s argument that discourse ethics can provide a procedural means to judge between competing moral claims leads her to prioritize the perspective of ‘postconventional’ Western modernism as the means to adjudicate between the moral tolerability of cultural beliefs and practices. This leads her to characterize ‘conventional’ moral systems as subordinate, which succumbs to postcolonial critiques of the role of processes of domination in organizing the validity of moral claims.