Jürgen Habermas and Nancy Fraser at the intersection of the claims for recognition and redistribution

In Western liberal democracies, new claims for the recognition of collective differences, which rose in the last quarter of the 20th century, have begun to overshadow the old claims for the redistribution of wealth and social resources. These new claims brought the traditional liberalism's understanding of human rights, individual and justice into question. A different liberal attitude which is claiming to respond to new claims and presenting itself as an alternative approach to traditional liberalism's ignorance of collective differences has emerged. However, this liberal approach, called multiculturalism, has gradually moved away from being a suitable alternative due to its problems related to recognition of group identity and its neglect of redistribution claims. In our thesis, we will argue that both liberal approaches cannot provide a suitable discussion ground for both new and old claims due to the problems they contain. On the other hand, we will argue that Jürgen Habermas' theory of democracy based on discourse and Nancy Fraser's theory of democracy based on equal participation provide a suitable discussion ground for both new and old claims and for opening the limits of liberal democracy to critical discussion. Throughout our thesis, we will emphasize the contributions of these two theories, which re-theorize the limits of democracy, both to the contemporary debates on democracy and to the debates on gender equality, which will be our main focus. Keywords: Claims for Recognition, Claims for Redistribution, Deliberative Democracy, Multidimensional Justice, Public Sphere.