Seyla Benhabib (born 1950, Istanbul) is a Turkish professor of political science and philosophy at Yale and director of the program in Ethics, Politics, and Economics, and a well-known contemporary philosopher. She previously taught in the departments of philosophy at Boston University, SUNY Stony Brook, and the New School for Social Research and the Department of Government at Harvard University. She is the author of several books, most notably those concerning the philosophers Hannah Arendt and Jurgen Habermas. She has also worked with many important philosophers and scholars including Herbert Marcuse. Benhabib is well known for combining critical theory with feminist theory. She is married to well-known author and journalist Jim Sleeper, who is currently also a political-science lecturer at Yale University. She also serves on the editorial advisory board for the Ethics & International Affairs Journal. 1950 (MCML) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will take you to calendar). ... Istanbul (Turkish: , Greek: , historically Byzantium and later Constantinople; see other names) is Turkeys most populous city, and its cultural and financial center. ... The Politics series Politics Portal This box:      Political Science is the field concerning the theory and practice of politics and the description and analysis of political systems and political behaviour. ... YALE (Yet Another Learning Environment) is an environment for machine learning experiments and data mining. ... For similarly-named academic institutions, see Boston (disambiguation). ... State University of New York at Stony Brook (SUNYSB), also known as Stony Brook University (SB) [1] , is a public research university located in Stony Brook, New York (on the north side of Long Island, about 65 miles east of Manhattan, New York). ... New School University is an institute of higher learning in New York City. ... Harvard University (incorporated as The President and Fellows of Harvard College) is a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Founded in 1636,[2] Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning still operating in the United States. ... Hannah Arendt (October 14, 1906 – December 4, 1975) was a Jewish-German (later American) political theorist. ... Jürgen Habermas Jürgen Habermas (born June 18, 1929 in Düsseldorf, Germany) is a philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory. ... Herbert Marcuse (July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a prominent German and later American philosopher and sociologist of Jewish descent, and a member of the Frankfurt School. ... In the humanities and social sciences, critical theory has two quite different meanings with different origins and histories, one originating in social theory and the other in literary criticism. ... Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical, ground. ... “Yale” redirects here. ... Ethics & International Affairs Journal is an international relations journal that is published by Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. ...

Democratic theorists

Democratic theorists are happy with discussion within cultures and support changes. Seyla Benhabib is a democratic theorist who doesn’t believe in the purity of cultures; she thinks of them as formed through dialogues with other cultures. Human cultures are, according to Benhabib, the constant change of imaginary boundaries. They influence each other and sometimes radicalise or conform as a reaction on other cultures. Benhabib argues that in democratic theory it is assumed that every single person should be able to determine his own life. She agrees with the fact that pluralism, the existence of fundamentally different cultures, is compatible with cosmopolitanism, but she mentions three conditions that must be fulfilled. These conditions are:
1) Egalitarian reciprocity: Members of minorities must have equal civil, political, economic and cultural rights as the majority
2) Voluntary self-ascription: When a person is born, he must not be automatically be expected to be member of a religion or culture. The state should not let groups define the lives of individuals. Members of a society have the right to express themselves and it is desirable that adult individuals be asked whether they choose for continuing membership of their community.
3) Freedom of exit and association: Every individual must be able to exit their group. When group members marry someone from another group, they have the right to remain member. For intergroup marriages and the children of these people accommodations must be found.
It is a contested issue whether cultural diversity and democratic equality are able to co-exist. Many cultures are not compatible with one or more of the three given conditions. For example, the first condition is violated within several cultures, such as the Kurds in Turkey or the Roma in Eastern Europe. Every nation state has groups which are not accepted by the majority. Some governments do nothing to stop the discrimination of minorities. The second and third condition are also problematic. At this moment, pluralism is not compatible with cosmopolitanism. Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Pluralism Pluralism is, in the general sense, the affirmation and acceptance of diversity. ... Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all of humanity belongs to a single moral community. ... In sociology and in voting theory, a minority is a sub-group that is outnumbered by persons who do not belong to it. ... Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning to cultivate), generally refers to patterns of human activity and the symbolic structures that give such activity significance. ... A community usually refers to a sociological group in a large place or collections of plant or animal organisms sharing an environment. ... The word culture comes from the Latin root colere (to inhabit, to cultivate, or to honor). ... A nation-state is a specific form of state, which exists to provide a sovereign territory for a particular nation, and which derives its legitimacy from that function. ... Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Pluralism Pluralism is, in the general sense, the affirmation and acceptance of diversity. ... Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all of humanity belongs to a single moral community. ...

Borders

Seyla Benhabib prefers a world with porous borders. She argues that political boundaries define some as members, but also lock people out. She has written: ‘’I think it is possible to have an empire without borders; I don’t think it is possible to have a democracy without borders’’. More and more people live in countries which are not their own. State sovereignty is not as strong as in the past. Benhabib argues that somebody who is stateless is seen as an outcast and is in a way rightless. Current policy still sees national borders as a means to keep out strangers. Benhabib's cosmopolitan view is inspired by the famous philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant’s ‘‘Perpetual peace’’ concerns three articles which together are the key to create perpetual peace. In the third article Kant says that the rights of world citizens shall be limited to the right of universal hospitality. In Kant’s view, every single person has the right to go wherever he likes, without being afraid of hostility of the hosts Seyla Benhabib takes this right as a starting point which resulted in her thoughts about migration and refugee problems. Seyla Benhabib goes even further than Kant and says that the human right of hospitality should not apply to a single visit, but in some cases to long-term stays. For example a country shouldn’t send a refugee back when it is not sure whether he or she is safe in the country of origin. Nations should have obligations to exiles and refugees, these obligations are different from the obligations to immigrants. Border stone at Passo San Giacomo between Val Formazza in Italy and Val Bedretto in Switzerland Borders define geographic boundaries of political entities or legal jurisdictions, such as governments, states or subnational administrative divisions. ... Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804), was a German philosopher from Königsberg in East Prussia (now Kaliningrad, Russia). ... Perpetual Peace is one of Immanuel Kants political writings that outline what is needed for prevention of furure wars and injustices. ... This article is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article. ... mtDNA-based chart of large human migrations. ... The Exiles are a group of reality-hopping mutants, created by writer Judd Winick and artist Mike McKone. ... An obligation can be legal or moral. ... Immigration is the act of moving to or settling in another country or region, temporarily or permanently. ...

Seyla Benhabib has written for Constellations. Orion is a remarkable constellation, visible from most places on the globe (but not always the whole year long). ...

Selected Bibliography

• Another Cosmopolitanism (Oxford University Press, 2006)
• The Rights of Others (Cambridge University Press, 2004)
• The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003)
• The Claims of Culture (Princeton University Press, 2002)
• Democracy and Difference (Princeton University Press, 1996)
• Critique, Norm and Utopia
• Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics (Routledge, 1992)

See also

• Judith Butler
• Iris Marion Young
• cosmopolitanism
• Deliberative democracy

Image:J Butler. ... Iris Marion Young is Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, where she specialises in the study of political philosophy and especially Feminist theory. ... Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all of humanity belongs to a single moral community. ... Deliberative democracy, also sometimes called discursive democracy, is a term used by political theorists, e. ...

External links

• Official Yale Site
• Conversation with Seyla Benhabib