Abstract

Kant's liberalism is unique in its attempt to ground principles of justice in a notion of pure practical reason rather than in rational self-interest or a substantive theory of natural rights. The social contract as an idea of practical reason becomes a test for the legitimacy of legislation; but property rights acquire a paradoxical status: they are subject to the unanimous agreement of all in the social contract, yet they also justify the use of force in creating a state . I argue that this results from Kant's two-world metaphysic and his teleological conception of history. ;Rawls continues this contractarian project by offering a "procedural representation" of Kant's notions of autonomy and the categorical imperative in his description of the original position. I develop this interpretation in connection with Rawls' emphasis on "Kantian constructivism" and the model-conception of the person, and criticize his two principles of justice and his notion of reflective equilibrium as a method of justification. I argue that Rawls' "special conception" of justice uncritically reflects the traditional liberal distinction between a public and private sphere. He fails explicity to include non-state institutions of a public sphere within the basic social structure. ;Habermas's theory of communicative action and his ethics of discourse also continue this Kantian project. The basic principle of his ethics is derived from the pragmatic presuppositions of communication and argumentation in general. It yields a procedure for testing the legitimacy of norms generated in the lifeworld: Norms are legitimate if they could be agreed to by all concerned as participants in a practical discourse. Habermas also transforms contractarianism by renouncing the attempt to derive substantive principles of justice from a procedural ethic and explicitly connecting normative criticism with reconstructive sciences and empirical social research. Social criticism becomes a hypothetical and fallible attempt to identify generalizable interests suppressed and distorted through the colonization of the lifeworld by the administrative state and capitalist economy.