Rasprava Habermas-Rawls
On the Habermas-Rawls Interchange

Summary/Abstract: The author reviews the interchange between Jürgen Habermas and John Rawls, published in The Journal of Philosophy, march 1995. Habermas' criticism of Rawls' theory of justice as fairness is constructive and immanent. Habermas raises three objections against Rawls' theory. The first is that Rawls' design of original position is not adequate to clarify and secure the standpoint of impartial judgment of principles of justice. The second is that Rawls should make a sharper distinction between the question of justification and the question of acceptance of a theory of justice. And, the third is that Rawls does not succeed to bring the liberties of moderns into harmony with the liberties of ancients. The first two Habermas' objections reveals the main thought of his criticism of Rawls which is that Rawls' theory of justice as fairness is substantive, not procedural, and therefore is wrong. The third Habermas' objection refers to a consequence of Rawls' theory which is in rigid boundary between political and non-political identities of the citizens. In his reply to Habermas, Rawls emphasizes two main differences between his own and Habermas' theory. The first is that Habermas' theory is “comprehensive”, while his is “political”. And the second is that Habermas uses as means of representation the situation of ideal discourse, which is a part of his theory of communicative action, while he uses the original position. Rawls answers in turn to Habermas' objections and defends his liberal theory of justice as fairness as substantive justice.

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