Seyla Benhabib

Biographical Information

Seyla Benhabib was born in Istanbul, Turkey, where she received her BA in Humanities at the American College for Girls. She then traveled to the United States, where she received her BA in Philosophy at Brandeis University and her MA and PhD in Philosophy at Yale University. Since 1993 Benhabib has been Professor of Government, Department of Government, and Senior Research Fellow, Center for European Studies, at Harvard University. In 1996 she is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Institut fuer die Wissenschaft vom Menschen in Vienna, Austria.

From 1994-1997 Benhabib was Editor-in-Chief (with Andrew Arato) of Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory. Her areas of specialization are 19th and 20th century Continental Social and Political Thought, Feminist theory, and the history of Modern political theory.

Bibliography

BOOKS

The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt. Sage Pub., 1996.

Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical Exchange. (co-authored with Judith Butler, Nancy Fraser and Drucilla Cornel) Routledge, 1996.

Situating the Self. Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics. Polity Press, 1992.

Critique, Norm and Utopia: A Study of the Foundations of Critical Theory. Columbia Univ. Press, 1986.

EDITED BOOKS

The Philosophical Discourses of Modernity. (co-edited with Maurizio Passerin d'Entreves) Polity Press, 1996.

Democracy and Difference: Changing Boundaries of the Political. Princeton Univ. Press, 1996.

On Max Horkheimer. New Perspectives. (co-edited with Wolfgang Bonss and John McCole) MIT Press, 1993.

The Communicative Ethics Controversy. (co-edited with Fred Dallmayr) MIT Press, 1990.

Feminism as Critique: Essays on the Politics of Gender in Late-Capitalist Societies. (co-edited with Drucilla Cornell) Polity Press, 1987.

TRANSLATED BOOKS

Marcuse, Herbert. Hegel's Ontology and the Theory of Historicity. Trans. Seyla Benhabib. MIT Press, 1987.

ARTICLES

[Note: Many of Benhabib's articles have been reprinted in other sources and in several different languages. If you cannot find the reference listed here, please contact the website editor for alternate publications.]

"Multiculturalism and the Intellectual Challenge of Teaching the Canon," in Culturework. Ed. Marjorie Garber. (Routledge, forthcoming).

"Critical Theory," (co-authored with Bill Scheuerman) in The Encyclopedia of Democracy. Ed. Seymour Martin Lipset. (Congressional Quarterly Inc., forthcoming).

"The Critical, The Local, and/or Universal." Constellations 3 ( ): 83-95.

"Cultural Complexity, Moral Interdependence, and the Global Dialogical Community," in Women, Culture and Development. Ed. Martha Nussbaum and Jonathan Glover. (Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 235-259.

"Judith Shklar's Dystopic Liberalism." Social Research 61 (Summ 1994): 477-488.

"From Identity Politics to Social Feminism: A Plea for the Nineties," in Philosophy of Education. (1995), pp. 22-36.

"The Pariah and Her Shadow: On the Invisibility of Women in Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy." Political Theory 23 (Feb 1995): 5-24.

"Deliberative Rationality and Models of Democratic Legitimacy." Constellations 1 (Apr 1994): 25-53.

"Feminist Theory and Hannah Arendt's Concept of the Public Sphere." History of the Human Sciences 6 (May 1993): 97-115.

"Models of Public Space: Hannah Arendt, the Liberal Tradition, and Jürgen Habermas," in Habermas and the Public Sphere. Ed. Craig Calhoun. (MIT Press, 1992).

"Feminism and the Question of Postmodernism." Praxis International 11 (July 1991): 137-150.

"On Hegel, Women and Irony," in Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory. Ed. Molly Shanley and Carole Pateman. (Polity Press, 1991), pp. 129-146.

"Postmoderism and Critical Theory: On the Interplay of Ethics, Aesthetics and Utopia in Critical Theory." Cordozo Law School Review 11 (July-Aug 1990): 1435-1449.

"Liberal Dialogue vs. A Critical Theory of Discursive Legitimation," in Liberalism and the Moral Life. Ed. Nancy Rosenblum. (Harvard Univ. Press, 1989), pp. 143-156.

"In the Shadow of Aristotle and Hegel: Communicative Ethics and Current Controversies in Practical Philosophy." Philosophical Forum 21 (Fall-Wint 1989-90): 1-31.

"Judgment and the Moral Foundations of Politics in Hannah Arendt's Thought." Political Theory 16 (Feb 1988): 29-51.

"The Generalized and the Concrete Other: The Kohlberg-Gilligan Controversy and Feminist Theory." Praxis International (1986): 38-60.

"Philosophy at the Crossroads: Critical Discussion of R.J. Berstein's Beyond Objectivismand Relativism." Praxis International 5 (1985): 350-364.

"The Utopian Dimension in Communicative Ethics." New German Critique No. 35 (1985): 83-96.

"Epistemologies of Postmodernism: A Rejoinder to Jean-François Lyotard." New German Critique No. 22 (1984): 103-126.

"The Marxian Method of Critique: Normative Presuppositions." Praxis International (1984).

"Obligation, Contract and Exchange: The Opening Arguments of Hegel's Philosophy of Right," in Civil Society and the State: Hegel's Political Philosophy. Ed. Z.A. Pelczynski. (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984), pp. 159-177.

"The Development of Marx's Thought and the Hermeneutics of Critique." Thesis Eleven, Australian Journal of Philosophy Nos. 5/6 (1983): 289-297.

"The Logic of Civil Society: A Reconsideration of Hegel and Marx." Philosophy and Social Criticism (1982): 151-166.

"Modernity and the Aporias of Critical Theory." Telos No. 49 (1981): 39-59.

"Rationality and Social Action: Critical Reflections on Max Weber's Methodological Writings." Philosophical Forum 12 (1981): 356-375.

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