Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T00:50:11.737Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Where the Right Gets in: On Rawls’s Criticism of Habermas’s Conception of Legitimacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2016

James Gordon Finlayson
James Gordon Finlayson*
Affiliation:
University of Sussex
*
Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Many commentators have failed to identify the important issues at the heart of the debate between Habermas and Rawls. This is partly because they give undue attention to differences between Rawls’s original position and Habermas’s principle (U), neither of which is germane to the actual dispute. The dispute is at bottom about how best to conceive of democratic legitimacy. Rawls indicates where the dividing issues lie when he objects that Habermas’s account of democratic legitimacy is comprehensive and his is confined to the political. But his argument is vitiated by a threefold ambiguity in what he means by ‘comprehensive doctrine’. Tidying up this ambiguity helps reveal that the dispute turns on the way in which morality relates to political legitimacy. Although Habermas calls his conception of legitimate law ‘morally freestanding’, and as such distinguishes it from Kantian and natural law accounts of legitimacy, it is not as freestanding from morality as he likes to present it. Habermas’s mature theory contains conflicting claims about the relation between morality and democratic legitimacy. So there is at least one important sense in which Rawls’s charge of comprehensiveness is made to stick against Habermas’s conception of democratic legitimacy, and remains unanswered.

Keywords

HabermasRawlsdemocratic legitimacycomprehensive doctrinemorality
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , July 2016 , pp. 161 - 183
Copyright
© Kantian Review 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bankovsky, M. (2012) Perfecting Justice in Rawls, Habermas and Honneth. New York: Continuum Press.Google Scholar
Benhabib, Seyla (1990) ‘Afterword’. In S. Benhabib and F. Dallmayr, The Communicative Ethics Controversy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 330–365.Google Scholar
Benhabib, Seyla (1992) ) Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in Contemporary Ethics. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Calhoun, C., Mendieta, E., and Van Antwerpen, J. (eds) (2013) Habermas and Religion. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Dasgupta, P., Geuss, R., Kuper, A., Lane, M., Laslett, P., O'Neill, O., Runciman, W. G., and Skinner, Q. (2002) ‘Political Philosophy: The View from Cambridge’. Journal of Political Philosophy, 10(1), 1–19.Google Scholar
Dreben, Burton (2003) ‘On Rawls and Political Liberalism’. In S. Freeman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Rawls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 316–346.Google Scholar
Finlayson, J. G., and Freyenhagen, F. (eds) (2011) Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Forst, Rainer (2011) ‘The Justification of Justice: Rawls and Habermas in Dialogue’. In J. G. Finlayson and F. Freyenhagen (eds), Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political (New York: Routledge), 153–180.Google Scholar
Fuller, Lon Luvois (1969 [1964]) The Morality of Law, revised edn. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Gledhill, James (2011) ‘Procedure in Substance and substance in Procedure. Reframing the Rawls Habermas Debate’. In J. G. Finlayson and F. Freyenhagen (eds), Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political (New York: Routledge), 181–200.Google Scholar
Gutmann, Amy, and Thompson, Dennis (1996) Democracy and Disagreement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1989–90) ‘Justice and Solidarity: On the Discussion Concerning Stage 6’. Philosophical Forum, 21 (Fall/Winter), 32–52.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1990 [1983]) Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1992) Faktizität und Geltung. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1993) Justification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1995a) Post-Metaphysical Thinking. Philosophical Essays. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1995b) ‘Reconciliation Through the Public Use of Reason: Remarks on John Rawls’s Political Liberalism’. Journal of Philosophy, 92(3), 109–131.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1996) Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Trans. William Rehg. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (1999) The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory. Ed. Ciaran Cronin and Pablo De Greiff, trans. Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (2005 [1999]) “‘Reasonable” versus “True”: Or the Morality of Worldviews’. In Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory (Cambridge: Polity Press), 75–105.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (2008 [2005]) Between Naturalism and Religion. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen (2011) ‘Reply to My Critics’. In J. G. Finlayson and F. Freyenhagen (eds), Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political (New York: Routledge), 283–304.Google Scholar
Heath, Joseph (2011) ‘Justice: Transcendental Not Metaphysical’. In J. G. Finlayson and F. Freyenhagen (eds), Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political (New York: Routledge), 117–135.Google Scholar
Kohlberg, Lawrence (1981) Essays on Moral Development, vol. 1, The Philosophy of Moral Development: Moral Stages and the Idea of Justice. San Francisco: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Laden, Anthony Simon (2011) ‘The Justice of Justification’. In J. G. Finlayson and F. Freyenhagen (eds), Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political (New York: Routledge), 135–152.Google Scholar
Langvatn, Silje Aambø (2013) The Idea and the Ideal of Public Reason. Dissertation, University of Bergen.Google Scholar
Larmore, Charles (1995) ‘The Foundations of Modern Democracy: Reflections on Jürgen Habermas’. European Journal of Philosophy, 3(1), 55–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lumer, Christoph (1997) ‘Habermas’ Diskursethik’. Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, 51(1), 42–64.Google Scholar
Mahoney, John (2001) ‘Rights without Dignity? Some Critical Reflections on Habermas’s Procedural Model of Law and Democracy’. Philosophy and Social Criticism, 27(3), 21–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCarthy, Thomas (1993) ‘Practical Discourse: On the Relation of Morality to Politics’. In Ideals and Illusions: On Reconstruction and Deconstruction in Contemporary Critical Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 181–199.Google Scholar
McCarthy, Thomas (1994) ‘Kantian Constructivism and Reconstructivism: Rawls and Habermas in Dialogue’. Ethics, 105(1), 44–63.Google Scholar
McMahon, Christopher (2002) ‘Why there is No Issue between Habermas and Rawls’. Journal of Philosophy, 99(2), 111–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moon, J. Donald (1995) ‘Practical Discourse and Communicative Ethics’. In Stephen K. White (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Habermas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 143–167.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha (2003) ‘Rawls and Feminism’. In S. Freeman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Rawls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 488–521.Google Scholar
Ott, Konrad (1996) ‘Wie begründet man ein Diskursprinzip der Moral? Ein neuer Versuch zu >U< und >D<’. In Vom Begründen zum Handeln. Aufsätze zur angewandten Ethik (Tübingen: Attempto Verlag), 12–50.Google Scholar
Puntel, Lorenz B. ‘Post-Metaphysical Thinking: A Critique’. http://www.philosophie.uni-muenchen.de/lehreinheiten/philosophie_1/personen/puntel/download/2013_habermas.pdf (accessed Jan. 2015).Google Scholar
Rawls, John (1972) A Theory of Justice, revised edn. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University.Google Scholar
Rawls, John (1985) ‘Political Not Metaphysical’. Philosophy and Public Affairs, 14(3), 223–251.Google Scholar
Rawls, John (1995) ‘Political Liberalism: Reply to Habermas’. Journal of Philosophy, 92(3), 132–180.Google Scholar
Rawls, John (2005) [1993] Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Sandel, Michael (1982) Liberalism and the Limits of Justice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Scanlon, T. M. (2003) ‘Rawls on Justification’. In S. Freeman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Rawls (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 139–168.Google Scholar
Talisse, Robert B. (2001) On Rawls: A Liberal Theory of Justice and Justification. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.Google Scholar
Wolff, Jonathan (2008) ‘In Front of the Curtain’. Times Literary Supplement, 7 Mar. 2008. http://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25366-2650912_3,00.html (accessed Jan. 2015).Google Scholar
Yates, Melissa (2011) ‘Post-Metaphysical Thinking’. In B. Fultner (ed.), Jürgen Habermas: Key Concepts (Durham: Acumen), 38–44.Google Scholar