Habermas and Rawls on an Epistemic Status of the Principles of Justice

• Authors: Krzysztof Kędziora
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The so-called debate between Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls concentrated mainly on the latter’s political liberalism. It dealt with the many aspects of Rawls’s philosophical project. In this article, I focus only on one of them, namely the epistemic or cognitivistic nature of principles of justice. The first part provides an overview of the debate, while the second part aims to show that Habermas has not misinterpreted Rawls’s position. I argue that Habermas rightly considers Rawls’s conception of justice as a moral one. In the last part, I discuss two key questions raised by Habermas. The first concerns the relation between justification and acceptance of the principles of justice. The second concerns the relation between two validity terms: truth and reasonableness.

Keywords

EN

Habermas; Rawls; principles of justice; justification; validity

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Łódzki. Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego
• Journal: Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Philosophica. Ethica – Aesthetica – Practica
• Year: 2019
• Issue: 34
• Pages: 31-46

Dates

published

2019-12-30

Contributors

author

Krzysztof Kędziora

• University of Lodz, Instutite of Philosophy

• https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4224-9544

References

• Boettcher, James W. “What is Reasonableness?” Philosophy & Social Criticism 30, no. 5–6 (2004): 597–621, https://doi.org/10.1177/0191453704045756
• Finlayson, James Gordon. The Habermas-Rawls Debate. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
• Finlayson, James Gordon, and Fabian Freyenhagen. “Introduction: The Habermas-Rawls Dispute – Analysis and Reevaluation.” In Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political, edited by James Gordon Finlayson and Fabian Freyenhagen, 1–21. New York: Routledge, 2011.
• Forst, Rainer. “Discourse Ethics.” In The Habermas Handbook, ed. Hauke Brunkhorst, Regina Kreide, and Cristina Lafont, 538–540. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.
• Gledhill, James. “Procedure in Substance and Substance in Procedure. Reframing the Rawls-Habermas Debate.” In Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political, edited by James Gordon Finlayson and Fabian Freyenhagen, 181–199. New York: Routledge, 2011.
• Habermas, Jürgen. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Translated by William Rehg. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996.
• Habermas, Jürgen. The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory. Translated by Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1998.
• Habermas, Jürgen. Justification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics. Translated by Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993.
• Habermas, Jürgen. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Translated by Christian Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen. Oxford: Polity Press, 1990.
• Habermas, Jürgen. “Reconciliation Through the Public Use of Reason: Remarks on John Rawls’s Political Liberalism.” The Journal of Philosophy 92, no. 3 (March 1995): 109–131, https://doi.org/10.2307/2940842
• Habermas, Jürgen. “Reply to My Critics.” In Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political, edited by James Gordon Finlayson and Fabian Freyenhagen, 283–304. New York: Routledge, 2011.
• Heat, Joseph. “Justice. Transcendental not Metaphysical.” In Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political, edited by James Gordon Finlayson and Fabian Freyenhagen, 117–134. New York: Routledge, 2011.
• Kant, Immanuel. The Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Mary Gregor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
• Laden, Anthony Simon. “The Justice of Justification.” In Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political, edited by James Gordon Finlayson and Fabian Freyenhagen, 135–152. New York: Routledge, 2011.
• McMahon, Christopher. “Habermas, Rawls and Moral Impartiality”. In Habermas and Rawls: Disputing the Political, edited by James Gordon Finlayson and Fabian Freyenhagen, 200–223. New York: Routledge, 2011.
• Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 1971.
• Rawls, John. “The Idea of an Overlapping Consensus.” In Collected Papers, edited by Samuel Freeman, 421–448. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
• Rawls, John. “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited.” In Political Liberalism: Expanded Edition, 435–490. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
• Rawls, John. Justice as Fairness. A Restatement. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2001.
• Rawls, John. “Political Liberalism: Reply to Habermas.” The Journal of Philosophy 92, no. 3 (March 1995): 132–180, https://doi.org/10.2307/2940843
• Rorty, Richard. “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy.” In Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, 175–196. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
• Weithman, Paul. Why Political Liberalism? On John Rawls’s Political Turn. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
• Wuerth, Julian. Kant on Mind, Action, and Ethics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

Identifiers

DOI

10.18778/0208-6107.34.03