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Kant, Rawls, Habermas and the Metaphysics of Justice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2011

Howard Williams
Howard Williams
Affiliation:
University of Wales, Aberystwyth
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Extract

We can distinguish between those political philosophers who are concerned to carry the original Kantian project further, like Wolfgang Kersting, Otfried Höffe, Ernest Weinrib and Fernando Teson, and those contemporary political philosophers who have given up the original project but seek to draw inspiration from Kant's thinking. Two political philosophers who belong to this latter trend are Habermas and Rawls.

Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 3 , March 1999 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Kantian Review 1999

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References

1 Kersting, W., Recht, Gerechtigkeit und Demokratische Tugend (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1997);Google ScholarHöffe, O., Politische Gerechtigkeit (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1987);Google ScholarWeinrib, E., The Idea of Private Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995);Google ScholarTeson, F. R., A Philosophy of International Law (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998).Google Scholar

2 Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals (New York: Harper &c Row, 1964), p. 77 (Ak. 4:409).

3 Groundwork, p. 79 (Ak. 4: 412).

4 Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, p. 114 (Ak. 4: 365).

5 Prolegomena, p. 114 (Ak. 4: 366).

6 Cf. Williams, H., Kant's Political Philosophy (New York: St Martin's Press, 1986), p.l66.Google Scholar

7 Groundwork, p. 119 (Ak. 4: 452).

8 Groundwork, p. 125 (Ak. 4: 457).

9 The Metaphysics of Morals (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 48 (Ak. 6: 221)Google Scholar.

10 ‘Kantian constructivism in moral theory’, The Journal of Philosophy, 77/9 (Sept. 1980), 519Google Scholar.

11 Baynes, Kenneth, The Normative Grounds of Social Criticism: Kant, Rawls, and Habermas (New York: State University Press, 1991), p. 111.Google Scholar

12 With Habermas, according to Baynes ‘reason no longer stands in sharp opposition to needs and interests; rather reason is defined procedurally in terms of the structure of argumentation and process of communication and the question becomes what interpretations of needs can best withstand discursive vindication’ (ibid., 111).

13 'Kantian constructivism’, 516.

14 Ibid., 517.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 ‘Reply to Habermas’, The Journal of Philosophy, 77/9 (Sept. 1980), 132.

18 Ibid., 134.

19 Ibid., 143.

20 Ibid., 134.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid., 138.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid., 139. Rainer Forst disagrees with this conclusion. He argues that Rawls broadens the scope of metaphysics excessively, encompassing within it even Habermas's socially situated derivation of principles of cooperation. See Forst, R., ‘Die Rechtfertigung der Gerechtigkeit’, in Brunkhorst, H. and Niesen, P. (eds.), Das Recht der Republik (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1999), p. 125.Google Scholar Forst provides a helpful account of the distinction between Habermas's post-metaphysical account of social justice and Rawls's non-metaphysical account.

25 ‘Reply to Habermas’, 140.

26 Ibid., 141.

27 ‘Reconciliation through the public use of reason: remarks on John Rawls's political liberalism’, The Journal of Philosophy (September, 1980), 117. Cf. Kemal, S., ‘Kant, morality and society’, Kantian Review, 2 (1998), 15.Google Scholar

28 Baynes, K., ‘Democracy and the Rechtsstaat: Habermas's Faktizität und Geltung’, in The Cambridge Companion to Habermas, ed. White, S. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Ibid.

30 Post-Metaphysical Thinking (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), p. 13.

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid., 18.

33 Ibid.

34 'Reconciliation’, 127.

35 Ibid., 130.

36 Ibid., 117.

37 Ibid., 124.

38 Ibid., 13.

39 ‘As concerns the sources of metaphysical knowledge, its very concept implies that they cannot be empirical. Its principles (including not only its maxims but its basic notions) must never be derived from experience. It must not be physical but metaphysical knowledge, namely knowledge lying beyond experience, which is the source of physics proper, nor internal, which is the basis of pure reason.’ Prolegomena, p. 13; Ak. 4: 265–6.