Limits to Justification? Forst’s Noumenal Republic and Critical Theory in Context

Rainer Forst is a leader of what is sometimes called the third generation of Frankfurt School critical theory, and The Noumenal Republic in many ways synthesises a career's worth of groundbreaking work.It furthers Forst's signature turn to the theory of justification and his subsequent development of the notion of 'noumenal power' to bolster the case for justification's political relevance and efficacy.I believe it fair to say that the project aims at reclaiming and revitalising a critical agenda combining deep commitments to democratic self-determination and to the transformational power of rational critique.It has long been a core thesis of Forst's that norms matter, that a politics of principle is both possible and urgently needed.The Noumenal Republic continues to build a strong case for this, with which I have a good deal of sympathy.And yet I want to take the opportunity to pose a question about its potential limits: what are the implicit historical or contextual conditions on which the success of a politics of justification depends?This question is urgent today because most of the objections Forst's chapters take pains to answer, like Amy Allen's post-Foucauldian critique of progress, presuppose the social and political efficacyfor good or illof the sort of large-scale ideologies and theoretical narratives constructed and contested by the highly educated segment of society who went to university.This made a good deal of sense in the historical period stretching from the massification of the universities in the 1960sand the rise of new social movements they helped to incubatedown through the 1990s and early 2000s, as the rising political power of the new, university-educated middle classes reshaped political parties across the democratic world.But since around 2016 (2014 in India), new political forces have increasingly seized the initiative and turned the tablesin one important part as voters without university degrees, especially in the countryside and post-industrial regions far from capitals of commerce and culture, have found a new voice and new leaders by organising on social media.This is true not least in the USA, the UK, and in Germany.