DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

Her current research focuses on normative questions in political philosophy concerning democracy and citizen participation, global governance, human rights, religion and politics. She is the author of Democracy without Shortcuts (Oxford University Press, 2020), Global Governance and Human Rights (Spinoza Lecture Series, van Gorcum, 2012), The Linguistic Turn in Hermeneutic Philosophy (MIT Press, 1999), Heidegger, Language, and World-disclosure (Cambridge University Press, 2000), and co-editor of Critical Theory in Critical Times: Transforming the Global Political and Economic Order (Columbia University Press, 2017) and The Habermas Handbook (Columbia University Press, 2017). She has also published numerous articles in contemporary moral and political philosophy. In 2011 she was named to the Spinoza Chair at the University of Amsterdam, and in 2012/13 she was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin. She is the director of the Program in Critical Theory and co-director of the Research Group on Global Capitalism and Law funded by a “Big Ideas” grant of the Buffett Institute at Northwestern University. She is the recipient (with Alex Guerrero) of the 2022 Dr. Martin R. Lebowitz and Eve Lewellis Lebowitz Prize for Philosophical Achievement and Contribution.

Books

• Democracy without Shortcuts. A Participatory Conception of Deliberative Democracy (Oxford University Press, 2020) 
  • Podcast discussions about the book:
  • https://demokratiepodcast.podigee.io/7-der-demokratie-podcast-7
  • http://thepoliticaltheoryreview.com
  • https://soundcloud.com/wccias/global-lunchbox-democracy-without-shortcuts-cristina-lafont
  • https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/andruck.1309.de.html?drbm:date=2021-05-31
  • German edition: Unverkürzte Demokratie, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2021
  • Spanish edition: Democracia sin atajos, Editorial Trotta, 2021.
• Critical Theory in Critical Times: Transforming the Global Political and Economic Order (Columbia University Press, 2017). Co-edited with P. Deutscher
• The Habermas Handbook (Columbia University Press, 2017). Co-edited with H. Brunkhorst and R. Kreide. 
  • German edition: Metzler Verlag, 2010.
  • Chinese edition: Social Sciences Academic Press Beijing, forthcoming
• Global Governance and Human Rights (Spinoza Lectures Series, Amsterdam: van Gorcum, 2012)
• Heidegger, Language and World-Disclosure (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000)
  • German Edition: Sprache und Welterschließung. Zur linguistischen Wende der Hermeneutik Heideggers (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1994).
  • Spanish Edition: Lenguaje y apertura del mundo (Madrid: Alianza Ed., 1997)
• The Linguistic Turn in Hermeneutic Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999)
  • Spanish Edition: La razón como lenguaje (Madrid: Machado Libros, 1993)
  • Chinese Edition: Zhejiang University Press, forthcoming

Selection of Recent Articles

• Remarks of a Young Habermasian on Jürgen Habermas’ Also a history of Philosophy, special issue on Habermas’ Also a History of Philosophy, Constellations 28/1 (2021), 25-32.
• Against Anti-Democratic Shortcuts: A Few Replies to Critics. Journal of Deliberative Democracy, 16/2 (2020), 96–109.
• A Militant Defense of Democracy: A Few Replies to my Critics. Philosophy & Social Criticism (2020), DOI: 10.1177/0191453720974727
• Defending Democratic Participation against Shortcuts: A Few Replies to Thomas Christiano. Jus Cogens, vol. 2 (2020), 205–214.
• Sticking to the Long Road of Participatory Democracy: Replies to my Critics. Krisis 40/1, 144-164. DOI: 10.21827/krisis.40.1.37053.
• Are Human Rights Associative Rights? The Debate between Humanist and Political Conceptions of Human Rights Revisited. Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, (2020) DOI: 10.1080/13698230.2020.1859221 
• NeoliberalGlobalization and the International Protection of Human Rights, Constellations 25/3 (2018), 315-328.    
• Can Democracy be Deliberative and Participatory? The Democratic case for Political Uses of Mini-publics, Daedalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 146/3 (2017), 85-105.
• Should we take the“Human” out of Human Rights? Human Dignity in a Corporate World, Ethics & International Affairs, 30/2 (2016), 233-252.
• Sovereignty and the International Protection of Human Rights, The Journal of Political Philosophy, 24/4 (2016), 427-445.
• Philosophical Foundations of Judicial Review, in D. Dyzenhaus and M. Thornburn, eds., Philosophical Foundations of Constitutional Law, Oxford University Press (2016), 265-282.
• "Human Rights, Sovereignty, and the Responsibility to Protect" in Constellations 21/1 (2015), 68-78.
• “Deliberation, Participation, and Democratic Legitimacy: Should Deliberative Mini-publics Shape Public Policy?” in Journal of Political Philosophy, 23/1 (2015), 40-63.
• "Religious Pluralism in a Deliberative Democracy", in F. Requejo and C. Ungureanu, eds., Democracy, Law and Religious Pluralism in Europe, London: Routledge (2014), 46-60.
• "Agreement and Consent in Kant and Habermas: Can Kantian Constructivism be fruitful for Democratic Theory?" in The Philosophical Forum 43/3 (2012), 277-95.
• "Accountability and global governance: Challenging the state-centric conception of human rights," in Ethics & Global Politics, 3/3 (2010), 193-215. 
• “Religion and the Public Sphere. What are the Deliberative Obligations of Democratic Citizenship?”, in Philosophy & Social Criticism, 35/1-2 (2009), 127-50.