RAWLS AND HABERMAS ON PUBLIC REASON: Human Rights and Global Justice

Many have argued that Rawls's and Habermas's accounts of public reason have converged in their latest writings, as both support the basic structure of the modern, constitutional, democratic state. But an analysis of their views of global justice reveals deep differences in their views of public reason. For Rawls, public reason is a substantive set of principles to be used to answer fundamental questions, whose content varies with the context in which these questions arise. Habermas, on the other hand, endorses the public use of reason, which provides criteria determining the universal validity of moral norms, though it does not itself ground substantive norms. Ironically, at the global level Rawls's substantive principles of public reason are more inclusive than Habermas's formalist account, which rules out moral and legal systems that Rawls's theory would accommodate.