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Habermasian Constructivism: An Alternative to the Constitutivist Argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 December 2020

Dafydd Huw Rees
Dafydd Huw Rees*
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
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Abstract

Jürgen Habermas’ discourse theory of morality should be understood, in metaethical terms, as a constructivist theory. All constructivist theories face a Euthyphro-like dilemma arising from how they classify the constraints on their metaethical construction procedures: are they moral or non-moral? Many varieties of Kantian constructivism, such as Christine Korsgaard’s, classify the constraints as moral, albeit constitutive of human reason and agency in general. However, this constitutivist strategy is vulnerable to David Enoch’s ‘shmagency’ objection. The discourse theory of morality, by classifying the constraints on the metaethical construction procedure (principles (D) and (U)) as non-moral, can avoid this problem.

Keywords

KantHabermasconstructivismmetaethicsconstitutivist argumentschmagency
Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 25 , Special Issue 4: Special Issue on Kant and the Frankfurt School , December 2020 , pp. 675 - 698
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Kantian Review

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