James Bohman holds the Danforth I Chair in the Humanities and is Professor of Philosophy and Professor of International Studies. His primary areas of research include political philosophy (deliberative and transnational democracy) and the philosophy of social science (rationality and normativity). He also has done work in German philosophy (Critical Theory and German Idealism). He is director of the Critical Theory Roundtable and co-director of the Philosophy of Social Science Roundtable with Paul Roth and Alison Wylie, both of which meet on a yearly basis.

His recent work explores the possibilities for realizing democratic ideals under current conditions. This includes ongoing work in deliberative democracy, broadly defined as a family of views according to which the public deliberation of free and equal citizens is the core of legitimate political decision-making and self-government. His latest book, Democracy Across Borders, discusses the need not only to think of democracy beyond the boundaries of the nation state, but also how basic democratic concepts and ideals must be transformed in order to understand how this might be feasible. His interests in a broadly pragmatic philosophy of the social sciences are related to this concern with social facts and realizing moral and political ideals. Current discussions of rationality in the cognitive and social sciences both challenge classical conceptions of rationality and help us to think about institutionalizing public reasoning in new ways. Understood practically, the social sciences provide accounts of the various conditions that make public deliberation possible, as well as empirical tests for instrumental justifications of various aspects of the democratic ideal.

Recent publications include:

• Democracy Across Borders: From Demos to Demoi MIT Press, 2007.
• "Constituting Humanity: Universal Political Rights and the Human Community," Canadian Journal of Philosophy (forthcoming).
• "The Republic of Humanity: The Cosmopolitan Imperative of Democratic Non-domination," in Republicanism and Political Theory, Cécile Laborde and J. Maynor, eds. (London: Basil Blackwell, forthcoming).
• "Beyond the Democratic Peace: An Instrumental Argument for Transnational Democracy," Journal of Social Philosophy 37:1 (2006), 127-138).
• "Is Democracy a Means to Global Justice? Human Rights and the Democratic Minimum," Ethics and International Affairs 19:1 (2005) 101-116.

A Research Assistantship for the Danforth chair is available on a yearly basis.

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