Bankovsky, Miriam - Perfecting Justice in Rawls, Habermas and Honneth. A Deconstructive Perspective PDF

Perfecting Justice in Rawls, Habermas
and Honneth
Continuum Studies in Political Philosophy
Continuum Studies in Political Philosophy presents cutting-edge scholarship
in the field of political philosophy. Making available the latest high-quality
research from an international range of scholars working on key topics
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is an important and stimulating resource for students and academics work-
ing in the area.
Titles include:
The Concept of Justice, Thomas Patrick Burke
Morality, Leadership, and Public Policy, Eric Thomas Weber
Nozicks Libertarian Project, Mark D. Friedman
Rawls, Dewey, and Constructivism, Eric Thomas Weber
Rousseau and Revolution, edited by Holger Ross Lauritsen and Mikkel
Thorup
Perfecting Justice in Rawls,
Habermas and Honneth
A Deconstructive Perspective
Miriam Bankovsky
Continuum Studies in Political Philosophy

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Miriam Bankovsky 2012
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Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
e-ISBN: 978-1-4411-2696-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bankovsky, Miriam.
Perfecting justice in Rawls, Habermas, and Honneth: a deconstructive perspective/
Miriam Bankovsky.
p. cm. (Continuum studies in political philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references (p. 227) and index.
ISBN 978-1-4411-9541-8 (hardcover)
1. Justice. 2. Rawls, John, 1921-2002--Criticism and interpretation.
3. Habermas, JrgenCriticism and interpretation. 4. Honneth, Axel, 1949
Criticism and interpretation. 5. Deconstruction.
I. Title. II. Series.
JC578.B35 2011
320.01'1--dc23 2011037474
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

Contents
Acknowledgements vi
1. Perfecting Justice: An Art of the Im/Possible 1
Part One: Justice as Fairness: A Project to Pursue

2. Rawls and the Possibility of Ideal Theory 41
3. Rawls and the Undecidability of the Original Position Procedure 72
Part Two: Rational Consensus: Open to Contestation

in Principle
4. Habermas and the Possibility of Popular Sovereignty 101
5. Habermas and the Perfectibility of Deliberative Outcomes 127
Part Three: Perfecting Recognition Relations

6. Honneth and the Possibility of Mutual Recognition 151
7. Honneth and Moral Progress in the Quality of 178
Recognition Relations
8. Im/Possibility and the Cultivation of Deconstructive 203
Civic Attitudes
Notes 221
References 227
Index 241
Acknowledgements
In preparing this work, I have received support and assistance from a

number of friends and colleagues. Instrumental to its completion was the
intellectual and personal generosity of Paul Patton and Catherine Malabou.
I also received constructive criticism, editorial suggestions, linguistic assi-
stance and strategic advice from Alexandra Bourr, Herv Bruneau, Rosalyn
Diprose, Claudia Gutirrez, Marc Jones, Paula Keating, Christian Lazzeri
and the centre SOPHIAPOL, David Owen and Lasse Thomassen. I am also
very grateful to Alexandra Day for her professional editorial, proof-reading
and indexing work, as well as her flexibility. This assistance was supported
by a grant from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe
University. Finally, I thank Continuum for committing to this project.
On a personal level, I warmly thank all of my family and friends, particu-
larly my parents, Barbara and Yanek Bankovsky. I especially thank Sean
Bowden, for his love, friendship and support over the years, in different cities
and countries, and I dedicate my first book to him.
Chapter 1
Perfecting Justice: An Art of the Im/Possible
It is true to say, provided it is rightly understood, that successful politics is always

the art of the possible. It is no less true, however, that the possible is very often
achieved only by reaching out toward the impossible which lies beyond it.
Max Weber, Selections in translation, 1978, p. 89
Framed by a deconstructive approach to justice, this book examines the

theories of justice formulated by John Rawls, Jrgen Habermas and Axel
Honneth. Each theorist sketches the content of an art of the possible, a
conception of justice that is realistic and practicable, the standard against
which public institutions are to be judged. Designed to respond to the
problems that individuals face within their collective lives, each theory
assigns a concrete content to the normative idea of justice, allowing the
needs, interests and claims of distinct individuals to be compared and
assessed through the lens of impartiality.
Drawing on Jacques Derridas account of justices demands, this book
develops two positions. Its primary assertion is that justice requires, but is
not exhausted by, an art of the possible. On the one hand, a practical
commitment to the possibility of constructing justice is necessary, as Rawlss
rhetorical question suggests: If a reasonably just society which subordinates
power to its aims is not possible and people are largely amoral, if not
incurably cynical and self-centred, one might ask with Immanuel Kant
whether it is worthwhile for human beings to live on the earth (Rawls,
1996, p. lxii). Simply put, we cannot pursue the worthwhile ideal of justice
without first assuming its possibility. On the other hand, justice is not
exhausted by the determined content that Rawls, Habermas and Honneth
assign to it. No local determination can ever fully reconcile the conflicting
demands that Derrida believes our historical concept of justice includes
namely, responsibility for the unique person and impartiality among all.
Deconstruction requires the pursuit of the constructive strategies that
Rawls, Habermas and Honneth defend while, conversely, drawing attention
2 Perfecting Justice in Rawls, Habermas and Honneth
to the pragmatic implications of the impossibility of exhausting justices

demands in the form of laws, principles and procedures.
The second position of this book is that justice sustains its critical function
for the present precisely because it is not exhausted by its determination,
however realistic and practicable this might be. As Derrida puts it, this
position should not produce insensitivity towards injustice but rather
responsibility for the concrete effects of determined accounts of justice
(Derrida, 2002a, pp. 228298). Were justice to be determined and achieved
once and for all in a present context, it would no longer play the critical
role we want it to fulfil. The inadequacy of the ideal and the actual effectively
motivates the ongoing effort to seek justice in the present, a fact that is
implicitly recognized by Rawls, Habermas and Honneth alike when
acknowledging the revisable, transformable and perfectible character of
their accounts of justice. Rawls, for example, comes to affirm that outcomes
of the original position procedure are necessarily revisable (Rawls, 2001,
p. 86). To his account of rational consensus, Habermas adds the procedural
condition that participants affirm that their agreement remains open to
contestation in principle (1990a, p. 97). In a similar manner, and to protect
his method of reconstructive internal critique from the problems of value
relativism, Honneth also affirms the existence of a constitutive gap between
historical norms and transhistorical standards, committing to a robust
conception of moral progress (Honneth, 2002, p. 517; 2001, p. 180;
Bankovsky and Honneth, 2012, pp. 3637). From a Derridean point of view,
the non-adequation of the idea of justice with its determined forms is not to
be regretted but rather affirmed as the very condition that allows us to call
on justice to critique the determinations of the present. Consequently,
justice is perfectible, a project to be pursued: the ideal of justice motivates
the critique of its determined forms.
The theories of Rawls, Habermas and Honneth may be loosely referred to
as constructive in orientation, although each theorist understands this
term in different ways.1 Rawls lays stake to it explicitly, explaining the
general features of a constructive approach and the manner in which his
theory satisfies these (Rawls, 1999a, pp. 340358). First, its task is practical:
its principles are framed to meet a particular social problem; namely, value
pluralism within liberal democracies or the existence of reasonable
disagreement between people about the values to regulate their public
lives. Second, the method begins with the standpoint of the persons
implicated by the practical problem, now considered as agents constructing
the solution for themselves. Finally, and a consequence of constructivisms
practical character, its content is coherentist. To respond to its practical task,
Perfecting Justice: An Art of the Im/Possible 3
it must generate an appropriate public basis for justification, both cohering

with and clarifying the considered reflections of real persons about what is
just and unjust.
These general features of the constructive orientation also apply to the
theories of Habermas and Honneth, although each philosopher successively
attempts to complicate Rawlss understanding of the practical problem.
Using the term rational reconstruction to define his method, Habermas
sets out to resolve the practical problem of disagreement about the moral
validity of norms of action in specific contexts (Habermas, 1990a, pp. 94
98). Consequently, his problem is at once broader than Rawlss, applying to
the problem of general disagreement across all contexts and times, while
also narrower in attempting to make sense of specific forms of disagreement
dividing people in those local contexts sporting associations, Churches,
unions and so on that Rawls excludes from consideration (see Chapter 4).
Habermas discovers a solution in the rational presuppositions that allow
interacting agents to lay claim to moral validity, presuppositions by virtue of
which norms are intersubjectively judged to be valid or invalid. For
Habermas, these presuppositions themselves comprise the public basis for
justification, allowing real persons, inall contexts, to submit their particular
moral reasons to the rational judgement of others.
Preferring the term normative reconstruction or reconstructive internal
critique, Honneth deepens Habermass account of the problem still
further, making visible deep-seated normative expectations that are rarely
articulated in Habermass language of rational argumentation or in Rawlsian
public reason (Honneth, 2008a; 2008b; 2010, p. 57; 2000, p. 36 & p. 59; see
also Rssler, 2000, p. 10). The broad practical problem is, on the one hand,
defined as the set of all possible experiences that might prevent people
from realizing healthy forms of subjectivity. On the other hand, the problem
is only visible in specific forms of social pathology, where certain moral
expectations embodied in a particular reality are not satisfied by actual
norms. Take, for example, a sentiment of low social esteem experienced by
public-service parking inspectors whose valuable contributions are often
publicly disrespected. It is with such specific forms of social pathology that
Honneth begins, tak[ing] the idea of eliminating obstacles as our starting
point (Honneth, 2001, p. 188). Again, this reconstructive method begins
with the standpoint of those implicated by the problem. After reconstructing
the norms implied by the duties and rights that are customarily accepted,
one then designates as ethical only those that enjoy a sort of reciprocal
interaction, evidence of the mutual realization of individual freedom in
intersubjective relations (Honneth, 2000, p. 59). The problem is thus
defined using an empirically informed diagnosis of the age, isolating those

denials of particular normative expectations that prevent freedom from
being mutually achieved (Rssler, 2000, p. 10).
In this sense, the constructive orientation, in a loose sense, can be said to
define each theorists approach: a solution to the problem is discovered by
reference to the considered judgements, rational presuppositions or
normative expectations of those real persons implicated by the problem,
making sense of a set of agents own experiences of, and reflections about,
justice. The essential difference between each approach concerns the
conception of the problem and, consequently, of the morally relevant
characteristics of persons who experience such problems, with each
subsequent thinker displaying increasing sensitivity to the particularity of
the context at hand.
Committed to the possibility of constructing a solution that coincides
with and explains the experiences and reflections of agents themselves,
philosophers of constructive justice again loosely defined are often
reluctant to concede the two positions defended in this book; namely, that
justice exceeds its constructed determination, and that this excess is the
condition for its critical function. A constructive philosopher would say that
if the determination does not satisfy its own criteria, then it should be
revised, again assuming that a satisfactory solution can be constructed. In
the course of this book, we will see that it takes a lifetime of work for Rawls,
Habermas and Honneth to come to acknowledge, with some sense of
disappointment, the significance of the difficulties they face. However, this
attitude of regret unfortunately prevents constructive philosophers from
recognizing the conceptual productivity of the deconstructive attentiveness
to failure. Justices imperfect forms can only be corrected by identifying
and responding anew to the problems that theories of justice either leave
unchallenged or reproduce.
The first logical step is to present the dual orientations of a deconstructive
approach to justice, which balances its commitment to the possibility of
justice with an attention to its impossibility. In a second step, I will explain
how these dual orientations inform my analyses of the work of Rawls,
Habermas and Honneth, allowing me to defend the constructive commitment
that facilitates each theory, while qualifying this defence with a critical
attention to the concrete failure of each theory to resolve justices demands.
Next, my own approach will be situated in relation to popular understandings
of the relation between deconstructive and constructive approaches, which
tend to misunderstand deconstruction as anti-normative. Finally, I will take
the risk of defending certain deconstructive civic attitudes that might
contribute to a culture more prepared to take upon itself the responsibility

to alleviate forms of suffering that are inevitably overlooked by its inherited
forms of justice.
Two Deconstructive Perspectives: Justice as Betrayal

and as Negotiation
It is often said, by supporters and critics alike, that deconstruction
emphasizes justices inevitable failure. This interpretation is popular
among a number of broadly liberal political philosophers who dismiss
deconstruction outright as incapable of rationally defending one political
position over another. It is an interpretation equally prevalent among those
sympathetic to deconstruction, who view its attention to failure as an
antidote to normative justice.
I will critique this popular anti-normative interpretation of deconstru-
ction in coming sections. For now, however, I would like to state my view
immediately. This common interpretation, both critical and sympathetic,
is unsatisfactory, overlooking the strong sense in which deconstruction
subscribes to the essential premise of the constructive approach. Derrida, I
suggest, gets the conceptual balance right, attesting not merely to
impossibility but also committing to the possibility of justice.
Given Derridas striking claim that deconstruction is justice (Derrida,
2002a, p. 143) and his denial of a political or ethical turn in his work
(Derrida, 2002a, p. 237 & 235; 2005a, p. 31; 2004, p. 26; 2005b, p. 89),
I could, in principle, use any text, early or late, to explain the two orientations
of a deconstructive approach. However, I choose to do so here by reference
to Derridas critical interpretation of Emmanuel Levinass ethics, in its
relation to Kants practical philosophy. This choice is strategic. Presenting
Levinass non-Kantian interpretation of Kantian ethics will provide a bridge
to the explicitly Kantian vocabulary of Rawls and Habermas, and to the
Hegelian vocabulary of Honneth, developed via supplementing Kantian
freedom with a substantive account of the institutional context of the will.
Moreover, it will facilitate an understanding of Honneth, who claims to
incorporate into his tripartite Hegelian theory both Derridas Levinasian
asymmetrical ethics and Kants symmetrical egalitarianism. Finally, it will
provide some insight into the philosophical reference to Kant driving both
Derridas and Habermass projects, an affinity to which each man refers
when speaking of their later amicable relations. As Habermas says, what
unites me with Derrida is the philosophical reference to an author like
Kant (2009, p. 35), who, as Derrida reiterates, means a great deal to

Habermas and me (2006a, 301).
Impossibility: the betrayal of Levinasian ethics

Derrida takes from Levinas a non-formal account of ethical obligation, best
expressed as responsibility for the fate of a particular person (the Other)
who shares the world with me. This responsibility is not a law that the self
freely gives to itself. Rather, it is the Others directive. Although clearly non-
Kantian, this ethics consistently employs certain Kantian ideas and rejects
others (Levinas, 1996a, p. 10). Levinas discovers, in Kants idea of moral
duty, the fundamental ethical experience of responsibility for the other
person. However, Levinas suggests that by formalizing individual
responsibility in terms of reciprocal obligation applicable to both parties,
Kant ignores the radicality of personal obligation, which remains irreducible
to the formal procedures of the categorical imperative. After presenting
Levinass ethics along with its rejection of liberal-democratic justice as
betrayal, I will explain Derridas affirmative critique, clarifying the sense in
which Derrida moves beyond Levinas, adding a concern for equality to
Levinas asymmetrical ethics.
Levinass notion of ethical obligation is developed by reference to Kants
concept of disinterested reason. For Levinas, this concept contains three
major insights. First, focusing on Kants account of sensibility, Levinas
presents human reason as always interested, material and sensibly affected.
Second, ethical obligation disrupts material self-interest by an encounter
with another person (an Other) who also has interests. Interest being
irreducible, reason is ethical when interested in the Others interests, which
Levinas refers to as disinterested interest or dis-interest (Levinas, 1996a,
pp. 109128). Finally, ethical obligation is particular and cannot be
formalized as an imperative for all wills. I will look at each point in turn, as
this work will allow us to understand Derridas own account of the tension
between justices demands.
Opposing Kants explicit view that experience is always of objects, Levinas
takes one of Kants major insights to be his presentation of the selfs interest
as pre-reflective sensibility, a non-objective affectivity. A divine being is
disinterested, it has no interest at all and is not affected as such. Its will is
always in complete accord with both the laws of nature and the law of
practical reason (Kant, 1996, 5:72, 76 & 79). Human reason, however, is
material and interested (Levinas, 1994a, p. 451). Levinas concludes that
interest plays a privileged role in Kants account of experience. Objective
experience is, in Kant, conditioned and personalized by the human

faculties; that is, by the faculty of sensibility with its pure forms of space and
time, and by the faculty of the understanding with its pure categories.
Experience, in Kant, is always of objects: there is no experience that is not of
objects. However, Levinas discovers, in Kants presentation of sensibility, an
account of material affectivity whose experience is not immediately objective.
As the condition of being-affected, sensibility is first of all non-objective, an
experience of an impersonal existing, the il y a (or there is), which resists
a personal form (Levinas, 1978, p. 52; see also 1987, Part 1; 1969, pp. 135
136).2 This independence of sensibility with regard to representation
equates to a non-objective origin of the objective experience of the Kantian
I think. Sensibility, as material, enjoys or suffers: it enjoys air, food,
warmth, sleep, a breeze without knowing that there are such objects (Levinas,
1969, pp. 110114; see also p. 135). When impersonal existing withdraws
from material enjoyment, sensibility suffers: the rustle of the il y a ... is
horror (Levinas, 1978, p. 55). Traces of experience of impersonal existing
appear in certain judgements about objective experience, such as il pleut (it
is raining), il fait nuit (it is dark) and il fait chaud (it is hot), where the il (it)
refers not to an identifiable subject, but to a particular, non-identical, non-
personal existing what Levinas also calls the impersonal elemental
(Levinas, 1969, p. 135).
For Levinas, then, the condition of the finitude of the I think is the
identification of sensible non-objective affectivity as its own (1978, p. 55).
Only when the Kantian I think lays claims to ownership of sensible
affectivity is it able to determine this non-objective (non-Kantian) experience
as a function of its own finitude.
Although it is fair to say that Levinass analyses are left at a rather
intuitive level, the essential point he makes is that the I think is possessive
in its finitude. It constitutes itself as an I think by an act to possess a
material affectivity (sensibility) that is originally non-objective. Possessing
the non-objective the objectification of non-objective sensible affectivity
as mine constitutes the very nature of the I itself. For Levinas, Kant
needs to be reminded that the Kantian self emerges by objectifying, and
achieving sovereignty over, the non-objective and unpossessed.
The second insight that Levinas credits to Kant is, once again, non-
Kantian. Levinas suggests that Kants moral law is grounded on an
encounter with another person, who Levinas refers to as the Other. This
encounter is a material experience, which disrupts the objectification of
material self-interest, preventing the sovereign achievement. The material
affectivity of the encounter with the Other can no longer be objectified as
simply mine. This encounter signifies that my own pursuits in the world
also affect another person, the Other, to whose material affectivity the il y
a also yields. A social relation already exists for which I am now responsible
by the mere fact that my material self-interest impacts upon the Other.
This Other, by his or her sheer presence in my world, has already welcomed
my own self-interest, risking its effects. The Others welcome, which
precedes my experience of it, renders me accountable for the effects of my
material pursuits upon the Others fate. This is a social obligation before
Kantian choice: a law that I do not freely choose.
Levinas thus distinguishes between the other (autre), which can be
incorporated and personalized as a source of satiation and the Other or
the other person (Autre or its personalized form Autrui), who can never be
incorporated. The former (the other) confirms the finitude of rational
being. While it may initially appear alien to the empirical self, it does not
challenge the latters solitude or possession: the strangeness of the il y a is
no threat to the I but rather its eventual possession. The Other, however,
is utterly resistant to the finitude of the I. The Other threatens the Is very
sovereignty and its supposed possession of the other because it demands
that the I accept responsibility for interests other than its own (Levinas,
1994a, p. 449). If, as we saw Levinas claim, the material interest or exigency
for happiness is the principle of individuation or sovereignty, then
responsibility for the Others fate calls into question the selfs sovereignty,
demanding a world in which the self is also responsible for the Others
material enjoyment (Levinas, 1969, p. 119). If interest cannot be eliminated,
responsibility for the Others fate is equivalent to Kantian disinterest
(Levinas, 1994a, p. 449), now reformulated as dis-interest or interest in
the Others fate (Levinas, 1998a, p. 157). Human reason remains interested,
but its self-interest is now disrupted by responsibility for the fate of the
Others interests (see also Bankovsky, 2004, pp. 119).
Levinass final non-Kantian insight is that ethical obligation is originally
non-formal. It is not equivalent to its formalization by the categorical
imperative. Disrupting the selfs sovereignty, ethical obligation prevents
reason from autonomously giving itself its own laws, as Kant claims. Kant
defines a moral will as a free will, which produces its effects without being
determined by an alien cause. The free will is a rational causality it causes
practical action and must thus act according to some law: the notion of
cause requires the idea of the necessity of the effect; that is, the idea of law.
However, Kant recognizes that if the will is autonomous, no law can be
imposed upon it from outside. Kant concludes that the will must freely
give itself its own law since the external imposition of its law would negate
its own freedom. However, this means that the free will has nothing but itself
from which to derive its law. Thus, Kant argues that the will must be its
own law; that is, the will is to be a law. The only constraint on our choice,
then, is that the choice in question take the form of a law, which means that
it be universalized to all possible wills (Korsgaard, 1996, Chapter 6; 1995,
pp. 11691171; 2003, pp. 113115).
However, ethical responsibility for the Others fate clearly prevents the
autonomy of a sovereign will who gives itself its own principle. Ethical
responsibility is heteronomy not autonomy. For Kant, the moral will
determines its own law namely, that it be a law. Heteronomous causes,
alien to the autonomous will, are to be excluded. However, the dis-interest
that the Levinasian self discovers in the encounter with the Other is
heteronomous: the wills maxim is given to it by a will that is alien and Other
(Levinas, 1998b, pp. 4760). Here, the good will does not consist in the
ability of ones maxim of action to be universalized as law, but rather in the
responsibility for the fate of a particular other person. The good will retains
an incoercible part (Levinas, 1993, p. 122) that cannot be obligated by
the formalism of universality (Levinas, 1998a, p. 157). Since it is the Other,
each time unique, who serves as principle, the obligating imperative is not
equivalent to the rational will as a law unto itself. Consequently, ethical
responsibility, as the disruption of self-interest by the Other, demands non-
reciprocal behaviours such as sacrifice, generosity, charity or, to use
Derridas words, hospitality or gift-giving, visible in asymmetrical expres-
sions of concern in relations of love and friendship (Derrida, 1991; 2000;
1997a; 1997b). And so Levinas turns Kants vocabulary against him,
claiming that it is precisely because I cannot formulate the moral law as a
law which I freely give myself that the moral interest in Kant humiliates,
producing a feeling that can be called pain (Kant, 1996, 5:7374),
provoking in the faculty of desire a moral feeling of respect for persons
which is not originally formal (Levinas, 1998a, p. 157; see also 1999, p. 149;
1989, p. 206). Levinasian ethics partial, non-egalitarian and non-reciprocal
thus appears to rule out the very possibility of defending, with Rawls,
Habermas and Honneth, general public principles of justice.
In Levinass later work, from Otherwise and Being onwards, we discover
two positions on the topic of liberal-democratic justice, both of which
inform Derridas own account of justices demands. On the one hand,
there is the suggestion that general public principles of justice are necessary
when one is ethically responsible for an additional Other, who Levinas
refers to as the Third.3 In such a case, commitment to the equality of
Others is demanded by ethics itself (Levinas, 1998a, p. 104; Bernasconi,
1999, pp. 7687). Pure ethical responsibility for the Other, without
consideration of the Third, is irresponsible because the Third is also
affected by my relation to the Other and has, like the Other, welcomed me.
Responsibility for the fate of the Third requires the comparison of ethical
responsibilities to Others who now exist in the plural. Such comparison
deploys the idea of equity on which the idea of objectivity is based
(Levinas, 1998a, p. 104; see also p. 229; 1996a, p. 168).
The determined content of justice is thereby judged against the sufferings
of the Other in the figure of the Third. In Entre Nous, Levinas remarks that
suffering in the interhuman perspective is meaningful in me, useless in
the Other (Levinas, 1998, p. 100). Suffering is meaningful in me because
it lies at the origin of the possibility of a relation with the Other. The
vulnerability of the self before an Other reveals the capacity to be affected
by a law that is not ones own. Suffering is useless in the Other because its
disappearance is ethically desirable. Liberal-democratic justice, then, is to
be judged in relation to the sufferings that it allows to go unchallenged.
On the other hand, while acknowledging the need for the ideas of
impartiality and equality that liberal-democratic justice implies, Levinas
clearly views such justice as duplicitous. For this reason he locates the ethical
vocation outside the state and beyond justice, emphasizing the need to
compensate for the inevitable ethical violence of liberal democracy, which,
for conceptual reasons, can never uphold the pure ethical relation (Levinas,
1993, p. 123; 2001, p. 194; 1998a, pp. 229230). Liberal democracy must be
perfected against its own harshness (1998a, p. 229). Insisting that effective
avenues for critique cannot take place within the limits of the state, Levinas
effectively renounces the opportunity of using the states own vocabulary to
critique substantive measures. Justices inevitable failure must be
compensated by non-state measures such as charity or challenge by rebellion
(Levinas, 1989, p. 242). The very formalization of the ethical relation is its
violation.4
The privilege accorded by Levinas to justices failure is distinctly
unsatisfying and risks surrendering justices critical potential. The extreme
frustration experienced even by those sympathetic to Levinass project is, in
my view, completely warranted. On the one hand, like the Socratic gadfly
who goads the great and noble steed into action, emphasizing justices
inevitable failure has the potential to provoke a certain vigilance with
respect to justices determined forms. However, when the analysis merely
reveals the inadequacy of justice itself, without distinguishing between
better and worse forms of failure, such vigilance compromises its critical
potential. As Rawls correctly points out, if we do not assume that we can
justify certain principles and procedures over others, we cannot begin to

pursue the worthwhile social ideal of a society that is fair and just for all
Others. As Derridas position reveals, the defence of impossibility is of little
value without assuming the possibility of constructing new and better forms
of justice.
Possibility: negotiating individual and impartial consideration

Derrida does not fall prey to this over-privileging of impossibility, but instead
gets the conceptual balance right, demonstrating that the ethical relation is
facilitated when one risks engaging with state-based justice. Derrida thereby
insists on the undecidable status of justices determination. The non-
negotiable (that is, justices responsibility for the unique Other and for all
Others as equals) must be negotiated for the sake of ethics itself. Moreover,
Derrida also defends the view that there are clearly better and worse
negotiations. I will now explain Derridas own account of justice by reference
to Force of law: the mystical foundation of authority (Derrida, 2002a,
pp. 228298), which deals explicitly with justices im/possibility, revealing
both Derridas debt towards and distance from Levinas (see also Bankovsky,
2005), and indicating Derridas commitment to the broadly constructive
project.
Although sympathetic to Levinass account of ethics, Derrida regrets
Levinass decision to altogether abandon state-based measures. In contrast,
Derrida believes that justice takes place both within and beyond the state
(Derrida, 1991). As an extra-state measure, it provides a critical ideal to
facilitate the perfection of state-based forms, leaving its mark (or its trace)
on the imperfect.
Derrida begins his analysis of our historical concept of justice by
identifying two contradictory requirements the ideal implies, after which
he argues that law, in its determined form, is incapable of fully addressing
both demands. The call of justice, experienced by us as individuals,
involves two demands. Drawing on Levinass ethics, Derrida explains that
the first demand comes from the particular other person who requests
justice. This person requests of us that the law be appropriate to his or her
needs, guaranteeing a place in the world appropriate to his or her
particularity. This first demand is for fairness in the form of individual
consideration. However, a second demand arises as a consequence of the
existence of plural Others. Laws and principles appropriate to the needs
of one person should not prevent all the others from also enjoying a place
in the world appropriate to their own particularity. The second demand is
thus the demand for fairness no longer as individual consideration but as

impartiality. A law of justice subjects all Others to its law, and this means
that it must also treat all equally in accordance with its law.
Derrida then points out that these two demands namely, for both
individual and impartial consideration contradict each other and cannot
be reconciled with one determined law. Either the law responds to the
specific demands of a particular individual (in which case it does not
consider the demands of all Others equally) or the law responds to the
demands of all particular individuals using the ideas of impartiality and
equality (in which case it overlooks the unique demands of the particular
individual). This paradox arises because justice is always a response to the
problems and difficulties of individuals: Justice always addresses itself to
singularity, to the singularity of the other, despite or even because it pretends
to universality (Derrida, 2002a, p. 248).
In a third step, Derrida argues that despite the contradiction between
justices two demands, a decision must be made. Since neither demand is to
be privileged over the other, the decision passes through a moment of
indetermination or undecidability what Derrida calls the mystical
foundation of authority which can be said to characterize the
determination of any decision about the content of laws and principles.
Uniting both the affirmation of possibility with an attention to impossibility,
Derrida can thus be said to depart from Levinas by instead committing to
imperfect justice now for the sake of justice-to-come. In so doing, he
suggests that although determined justice cannot but betray Levinass
ethical relation, the ongoing attempt to perfect and correct determined
justice in effect leaves a trace of this relation within imperfect justice
(Derrida, 1991).
The Art of the Possible and its Ideas
The dual orientations that characterize the deconstructive approach inform

an analysis of the work of Rawls, Habermas and Honneth that is at once
affirmative and critical.
I begin each of the three parts of this book, devoted to Rawls, Habermas
and Honneth, respectively, by applying the first of deconstructions dual
perspectives. That is, I carefully demonstrate the manner in which the
constructive orientation facilitates the determination of justices content,
explaining how Rawls, Habermas and Honneth successively attempt to
reconcile the demands for both individual and impartial consideration.
Wanting to avoid the Levinasian error of over-privileging the failure of such

attempts, Derrida must instead commit to three interrelated ideas that
characterize the constructive project; namely, impartial judgement, an ideal
of moral personhood and the practicability of the conception. These themes
will order the chapters that open Parts 1, 2 and 3.
Impartiality
It is worth pausing a moment to consider exactly what ethical obligation
means for Levinas, so as to consider why Derrida believes that it necessitates
a commitment to impartiality. Ethical obligation might suggest, first,
responsibility for the Others particular interests, which would involve
suspending ones own interests and assisting the Other to pursue those
interests we understand him or her to have. However, ethical obligation
might also suggest responsibility for the Others welfare, well-being or
prosperity. This differs from the first by assisting only those interests that we
believe would contribute to the Others well-being, not simply the interests
that we understand the Other to have. Finally, ethical responsibility might
even describe responsibility for the fate of the Others difference, where
difference means, in John Stuart Mills sense, individuality, even eccentricity.
Here, responsibility would require letting Others pursue their difference in
ways that they see fit (Mill, 1989, pp. 518 & 5674). This latter obligation
may also incorporate responsibility for the demands of cultural pluralism,
where groups of Others lay claim to the right to live according to their own
distinct value systems. These different responsibilities are not equivalent.
Levinas uses the concept of ethical responsibility loosely, subscribing to
any one of these possibilities. At times, he prefers the first; namely,
responsibility for the Others interests whatever these may be. He rejects
responsibility for the Others welfare, because it involves assessment and
evaluation of the Others interests, with reference to our own standard of
well-being, which means that the Others demand is no longer received as a
pure prescription, but is instead reformulated by a subject who arbitrates
between worthy and unworthy. Levinas also rejects responsibility for the
Others individuality, because it involves reducing the pure prescription to
a liberty principle, absolving the self of its substantive responsibility to
actually assist the Others pursuits. Only the first type of responsibility
safeguards the pure obligation, involving the complete suspension of ones
own interests in view of assisting the Other.
However, on other occasions, Levinas appears to support the second
understanding, responsibility for the Others welfare. He writes that those
who want to see the face of God and enjoy his proximity will only see his
face once they have freed their slaves and fed the hungry (Levinas, 1994c,
p. 162). In still other moments, ethics is presented in its third sense,
responsibility for the Others individuality, since obligation entails granting,
to Others, a world mine in which to pursue their own good as they see
fit. Indeed, Levinas never specifies exactly what he means by ethical
responsibility, referring, on separate occasions, to all three possibilities.
This omission is strategic: specifying the precise meaning of ethical
obligation would predetermine the very responsibility whose content must
remain particular.
Inall three cases, ethical obligation for more than one Other necessitates
commitment to a principle of equality and, consequently, impartiality.
When responsibility for the interests, welfare or difference of the Other
becomes plural, responsibilities need to be compared, ordered and
hierachized. Although incomparable, comparison is required because a
response to the demands of every Other is owed to each equally.
However, as indicated earlier, Levinas immediately qualifies his affirmation
of the necessity of impartiality with the insistence on its non-equivalence
with ethics. As Derridas critique reveals, we are well within our rights to ask
whether ethical responsibility is even a meaningful goal if it cannot allow us
to distinguish between certain forms of justice. Ethical responsibility to
plural Others nevertheless requires that we defend certain forms of failure
over others. Doing so requires the principle of the equality of Others and,
consequently, the value of impartiality.
Ethical obligation and impartiality differ, first, in their intention, and
second, in the ideal of the person that they imply. Regarding the first, the
ultimate goal of ethical obligation is responsibility for the fates of different
Others and its content thus depends on the Others that one faces. In
contrast, Rawls and Habermas clearly define the intention of impartiality as
the determination of a public viewpoint that is acceptable to those individuals
who are subject to it. Even Honneth (whose analysis begins with an
immanent diagnosis of the sufferings of others) states that mutual
recognition is concerned with the reciprocal satisfaction of normative
expectations. The goal is not, as Levinas puts it, responsibility before Others
in the particular, but responsibility before other persons in the capacity of
moral agent; that is, to others who are also committed to the impartial or
reciprocal standpoint of fairness. Although Levinasian ethics demands
more than the determination of a viewpoint that is acceptable to persons
who are merely committed to an impartial standpoint, it nonetheless
requires responsibility before other persons where these persons are
represented reciprocally as moral agents and no longer as unique Others.

We would think it unfair to assist the Others interests and pursuits if
these had a negative impact upon the interests and pursuits of other
Others. Hence, the Derridean commitment to possibility suggests that we
require that the Other also take up the position of impartiality in
determining which interests and pursuits he or she should, in fact, uphold.
This commitment to impartiality lies at the heart of the constructive
orientation.
An ideal of moral personhood

The second point of difference between ethical obligation and impartiality
concerns the ideal of the person that each implies. Levinas grants absolute
privilege to the concept of the person as a self infinitely obligated to the
Other in the particular. In contrast, Rawls, Habermas and Honneth define
individuals as moral persons; that is, as the bearers of those capacities that
enable them to commit to the possibility of the impartial standpoint, in the
form of either principles of justice, rational consensus or mutual recognition.
An ideal of moral personhood is necessary for broadly constructive reasons:
if impartiality is possible, then persons must view themselves as capable of
committing to it. As Rawls correctly points out, when a citizen affirms an
institutional context committed to impartiality among persons, then from
that context a duty arises on those citizens to follow the criterion of
reciprocity. This is a duty arising from the idea of [the] reasonableness of
persons (Rawls, 1996, p. 46). I have suggested already that Derrida presents
the challenge in terms of an attempt to determine laws and principles that
can reconcile justices demands, and I suggest that he thereby commits to a
concept of moral personhood that is not equivalent to the selfs relation
with the distinct, unique, Levinasian Other. If Levinas were to concede this
point, he would be able to defend, with Derrida, certain forms of justice
over others, instead of ineffectually insisting that all principles fail.
In Chapters 2, 4 and 6 (the opening chapters in each of the three parts),
I will suggest that if justice is possible, as Derrida believes, then we must
conceptualize ourselves as bearers of those capacities that make justice both
necessary and possible. For Rawls, this means conceptualizing ourselves
reciprocally as the sort of people that bring about the two demands of
justice Derrida identifies, and that allow us to reconcile them. In so doing,
we view ourselves as individuals with a conception of our own good life and
with a sense of justice. Habermas also defines moral personhood in terms
of the capacities that enable persons to participate in consensually oriented,
impartial action across their differences. Honneth likewise presents an ideal

of the person who is not only in need of the recognition of particular,
significant others, but is also willing to offer and abide by mutually sustaining
forms of recognition.
Framed by the perspective of impartiality, the constructive orientation
undercuts the particularity of ethical obligation that Levinass account lays
bare. However, if justice is possible, then responsibility to others must now
mean responsibility to other moral persons, and not only responsibility
before the Other in the particular.
Practicability
The third idea that deconstruction is bound to uphold is the need for
practicability. Since this is not a book about Derridas work, but rather an
analysis that draws on his account of undecidability, I do not wish to devote
too much space to presenting elements of Derridas view in detail.
However, I do need to explain why deconstruction commits, for practical
reasons, to the possibility of normativity, while also insisting that the
content of our norms can only achieve relative, not absolute, stability,
thereby allowing for the essential possibility of miscommunication. I ask
the reader to follow me patiently through the discussion that follows.
Although it might initially appear tangential to the topic at hand, the
discussion will help me explain how Derrida makes sense of the necessity
and possibility of normativity, which plays an important practical role in
our lives.
Derrida goes as far as claiming that words themselves are norms,
around which we structure our interactions. After explaining why words
are normative for Derrida, I will then explain why he agrees that they
fulfil a practical need, clarifying their link to the idea of justices
practicability. Dealing, first, with Derridas account of the practical value
of normativity for our lives, I will turn, second, to his account of the
relative stability of norms, allowing us to grasp, third, his insistence on
the essential possibility of miscomm-unication. Finally, I will explain why
the practical function of the normative maps onto the commitment to
the practicability of justice. My explanations will draw on elements of
Derridas earlier work, which, although dealing indirectly with ethical
and political questions, nonetheless clarify his account of the normative
nature of words.
First, Derrida explains that we cannot engage practically with one another
without certain norms of minimal intelligibility (Derrida, 1988a, p. 147).
A norm, in a general sense, is a standard of social behaviour that is accepted

by, or expected of, a group, and so we can take him to mean that being able
to share an understanding of words, gestures and expressions, within a
particular culture, is the condition for any possible engagement with one
another. This seems fairly straightforward: it is neither possible nor desirable
to rid ourselves of such norms.
However, his second point is that there is nothing necessary about the
particular set of shared understandings that we happen to share. Rather,
those norms that we use (from the level of words, gestures and expressions
right up to the meaning of our values) are neither absolute nor ahistorical
but merely more stable than others (Derrida, 1998a, p. 147). Since it is
clear that cultural values differ with context, Derrida aims to show that a
concept whose meaning appears to be fully determined by its object has, in
actual fact, attained its meaning in play of differences with other concepts,
in a process that prevents the complete stabilization of meaning (or of
value).
Diffrance, or what Derrida also refers to as absence as spacing without
presence is a word that he creates in order to question our understanding
of the function of words. Derrida uses his neologism to explain how the
sign comes to have a meaning in a process that cannot rid itself of
contingency and instability. The sign does not function, as Ferdinand de
Saussure thinks it does, by capturing the lost presence of an object that pre-
exists the sign (Derrida, 1982, p. 9). Rather, it attains meaning thanks to a
play of differences with other signs. This play of difference Derrida refers to
as diffrance, a term that he invents in order to illuminate the manner in
which all signs function (1982, p. 10). Diffrance refers to a difference that
exists between itself and the French word diffrence. A graphic difference
between the a in the invented word and the e in the original word, diffrance
now denotes the difference both between two letters and between two
signs.
The first characteristic of diffrance is that it is inaudible. In French, one
pronounces the nasal sounds en and an in like manner, which means that
the difference between them is inseparable from the written text (1982, p. 4).
Its second characteristic is that its inaudible nature is only possible within
phonetic writing, in which written marks indicate sounds rather than
sounds indicating written marks. Phonetic writing includes non- phonetic
signs to distinguish speech-sounds, which the word diffrance also
makes clear in its capacity to distinguish two sounds that are audibly
indistinguishable. Other non-phonetic signs include punctuation and
spacing that do not represent speech-sounds at all, and they are, once again,
graphic but inaudible (1982, p. 5). As silences, they do not signify meaning
as speech-sounds do, but rather differentiate speech-sounds from one
another. As such, they do not, strictly speaking, function as signs in the
sense in which Saussure understands the term, because they do not signify
meaning as per speech-sounds and their written-marks. Consequently,
Derrida refers to such silences not as signs, but as a play of differences
(1982, p. 11), since they merely differentiate spoken speech-sounds from
one another. This means, however, that diffrance is a sign that seeks to
represent a specific difference, while also resisting the strict sense of sign
by merely differentiating spoken speech-sounds.
The third characteristic of the graphic difference of diffrance is that it
eludes sensibility; that is, it eludes the sensory perceptions of vision and
hearing. The a and e can be visually sensed and they then appear to be
different. However, this difference itself is not sensed but rather constructed
by the mind. Moreover, this difference is not intelligible either, because it
eludes the intellects ability to grasp the nature and meaning of this
difference. Intelligibility requires sensibility, since it needs an object. If the
difference is not of the senses, then it also remains unintelligible. Hence,
Derrida states that this difference between a and e (diffrance) is not of the
same order as other audible, visible and tactile signs. Diffrance is not a word,
in Saussures sense, for a word unites concept and phonic or acoustic
material (1982, p. 11).
This study allows Derrida to conclude that diffrance both allows and
disallows meaning. It allows meaning because it is both temporal and spatial
difference. By temporal difference or deferring, Derrida means that the
difference between two signs allows the sign to represent the object in its
absence (1982, p. 8). For example, the word woman refers to a real woman
in her absence. If we think of diffrance (temporal difference) as itself a sign,
then we must also think of it as secondary and provisional, standing in and
providing for an original diffrance, an original difference between a and e.
However, there is no original, ideal temporal spacing for it to refer to or
capture, since this difference is created with the very introduction of the
word. It cannot be easily included in the order of the sign. Although it
allows the sign to function, it also indicates the failure of the sign to operate
(1982, p. 10). Hence, Derrida argues that the sign communicates not
because it represents an originally present thing in its absence, but rather
because the sign is related in a play of differences to other signs, within a
system of signs (1982, p. 10).
The difference between a and e is also a difference of spacing, which also
allows and disallows meaning. The systematic play of signs produces the
meaning of a particular concept by determining its relation to other

concepts. For example, the meaning of woman is produced not by its
reference to the object of woman in her absence, but rather by the play of
difference between the sign woman and other signs. Woman is related to
and different from man, brother, husband, son, sister, wife, daughter
and so on. For Derrida, it is the signs relation to a whole system of other signs
that produces the signs meaning. Once again, however, the play of differences
as spacing prevents the complete stabilization of the meaning of woman.
First, that which is considered to be external to the meaning of the sign is
its very condition, thereby destabilizing the limits of the meaning of the
sign. Second, produced by a play of differences, meaning is characterized
by a structural openness, in that the entry of a new concept into the system
modifies the signs meaning. Finally, the usual modes of determining the
definite meaning of a sign are faulty: there is no self-present thing that
allows complete determination of meaning (1982, p. 316). By this, Derrida
means that the meaning of the sign cannot be determined by the authors
intentions, or those of the reader. Nor can the sign be determined, once
and for all, by its referent or signified sense.
As we saw at the start of this section, Derrida is not denying that the sign
has meaning; rather, he denies that its meaning is absolute. In the face of
equivocality, the meaning of a sign (or of a statement, a smile, a gesture, a
value and so on) can be stabilized only by its context; that is, by the particular
play of differences that exist between signs in a system. However, context,
too, is never absolutely determinable. Context is boundless in two senses:
there is, in principle, no limit to what might be included within it, and any
attempt to codify one context may always be grafted onto another, yielding
a new context that escapes the previous description (1988a, p. 136 & 137;
1979, p. 81).
Consequently, although shared practice allows us to determine the
context in a way that allows us to communicate, producing a relatively stable
set of meanings, the possibility of miscommunication cannot be ruled out
in advance. If a words meaning is produced by its internal instability as a
cultural and contextual effect, then the essential equivocality of context
leaves the word liable to misfire (Deutscher, 1997, p. 1).
I am presenting Derridas account of the possibility of communication,
here, as a commitment to the practicability of norms. Words, here, are
normative, since their meaning depends largely on a set of shared practices,
including a certain way of determining the elements of a context. Norms,
in this sense, have a practical function, allowing for communication. At the
same time we can see that Derrida also draws attention to the essential
possibility that communication will fail. When it comes to justice, given that
we saw Derrida distinguish himself from Levinas by committing to
impartiality and to an ideal of moral personhood, we can now say that just
norms will be those that aspire to both impartiality and to sensitivity towards
others in their particularity, and that the content of these norms will largely
depend on a shared practice of determining context in particular ways.
Although Rawls, Habermas and Honneth also affirm this view, I will suggest
that they do not supplement the Derridean commitment to the possibility
of just norms of communication with his attention to the essential possibility
of their failure. It is this sensitivity that needs to be included in their
theories.
In Chapter 2, we will see Rawls explicitly refer to his task as the art of the
possible; the construction of a realistic utopia. This art maps onto the
second stage of the construction of political theory, which is concerned
with demonstrating that a political conception can in fact be realized. As
Rawls explains, the constructive task is best presented in two stages. In the
first, a sound and reasonable political conception is presented which provides
content to two of the three ideas discussed above namely, impartiality and
the ideal of moral personhood. These ideas assist in determining principles
responding to the problem in question, thereby accounting for the
considered reflections about justice that persons hold. At a second stage, the
political conception must be shown to be actually practicable, the third idea
discussed above. Justice must fall under the art of the possible (Rawls,
1999a, p. 486; see also 2001, p. 185). If the conception merely condemns the
world and human nature as too corrupt to be moved by its principles, then
it would not serve its practical end. Hence, it must be shown that the political
conception is not utopian in the pejorative sense (Rawls, 2001, p. 185) but
can actually be achieved. As Rawls puts it, political philosophy prob[es] the
limits of practicable political possibility, limits provided by the conditions of
our social world, defined by the fact of reasonable pluralism (Rawls, 2001, p.
13). Given that certain forms of coercion are inconsistent with the idea of
liberty, Rawls attempts to demonstrate that citizens would freely uphold the
public conception themselves rather than being coerced into doing so
(Rawls, 1971, p. 454455/398399 rev.).5
While agreeing with the need for a practicable conception, it will be
shown in Chapters 4 and 6 that Habermas and Honneth object to the
mature Rawlss tendency to identify the content of the possible with only
those public values or constitutional essentials that everyone actually
happens to affirm in common because this prevents Rawls from
acknowledging the moral value of those judgements and sentiments of
minorities that are not also affirmed by the majority. However, the
practicable nature of justice remains an important element of both
Habermass and Honneths alternative constructive theories, since both
agree that justice must be done. For Habermas, justice can be achieved by
institutionalizing public opportunities for citizens to validate their norms
by reference to the judgement of other citizens, allowing democratic will-
formation to regularly take place (Habermas, 1992a, pp. 4478). As for
Honneth, with his Hegelian assumption that in the normal social
circumstances that prevail in modern societies, our norms and values have
become more or less imbued with the rational expectation that they be
reasonable for all parties (1995a, p. 5; 2010, pp. 4041), he is able to suggest
that mutual recognition is regularly achieved: our institutions are able to
correct themselves in response to new cases, so as to satisfy the expectation
that individuals achieve their freedom cooperatively through the freedom
of others.
I aim to show, however, that Rawls, Habermas and Honneth become
increasingly aware of the difficulties involved in resolving justices demands,
leading them to weaken their claims to be able to actually achieve justice in
the present. By tracking the successive concessions each theorist must make
to their strong, constructive claims, I am able, in each Part, to preface the
relevance of Derridas concern with impossibility, insisting on the need to
take responsibility for the concrete ways in which each theory of justice fails
to resolve justices demands. Although Rawls, Habermas and Honneth
come to qualify their strong claims, their acknowledgement of justices
impossibility is largely implicit, which means that their work does not
explicitly recognize the value of attitudes that are markers of deconstructive
citizenship, including openness or the willingness to challenge our inherited
convictions; humility or the awareness of the finitude and frailty of reason;
and resilience or the effort to keep striving in the face of failure.
The Possibility of the Unimaginable: Justice-To-Come
Richard Bernstein is not the first or only commentator to remark that the
attempt to grasp the relation between the constructive and deconstructive
tradition initially appears equivalent to crossing an unbridgeable chasm
(Bernstein, 2006, p. 80).6 The first two reasons for engaging in this
challenging task turn on the limitations of each tradition when considered
in isolation of the other. In the absence of further qualification, the priority
granted to possibility produces a constructive theory that is insufficiently
critical of the problems to which it inevitably gives rise. Conversely, although

Derridas attention to both possibility and impossibility encourages a
deconstructive analysis of constructive justice on its own terms, his own textual
interventions are not grounded in a sufficiently detailed understanding of
the more complex axioms of contemporary liberal-democratic justice.
Beyond constructivism and the limits of the possible

Clearly, Rawls, Habermas and Honneth disagree with one another about
the content of the art of the possible. By defining the very problem of
justice in different ways, the locus of the tension between the value of the
unique Other and the value of impartiality also shifts. Consequently, each
philosopher negotiates the demands in distinctive ways, drawing on different
resources to explain how their account of justice might be realizable. In this
sense, Habermas is correct to describe the debate as a family quarrel
(Habermas, 1998, p. 50) over the type of agreement that it is possible to
generate between subjects of justice (see also Pharo, 1998, pp. 591608).
Where the mature Rawls claims that the only sort of agreement one can
expect and reasonably require is limited to only those common political
values that are already affirmed by persons with different conceptions of
the good life (in a process that Rawls refers to as overlapping consensus),
Habermas thinks that agreement should be able to obtain around every
single norm that regulates our interactions. Habermas believes that Rawls,
by identifying justice with only those norms that are currently the object of
an overlapping consensus, is unable to make sense of our rational
expectation that every norm be subject to the judgement of those subject to
it. Where Rawls thinks that disagreement over certain norms is inevitable,
thereby limiting justice to only those norms on which overlapping agreement
obtains, Habermas believes that such local disagreements can be rationally
resolved around the determination of generalizable interests, thereby
enlarging the range of judgements and objects to which considerations of
justice apply. By defending the provision of institutional opportunities for
debating intersubjective norms, Habermas allows individuals themselves to
negotiate the tension between ethical obligation and impartial consideration
in the process of structuring norms around those generalizable interests
that all individuals share.
While maintaining Habermass description of justice in terms of
communication relations undistorted by domination, Honneth questions
Habermass tendency to identify the art of the possible with the domain of
rational argumentation. Moral injuries that are revealed in experiences of
humiliation, disrespect or social shame are seldom expressed in the public

language of individual and group interests, which means that Habermass
art of the possible needs supplementation by a more nuanced account of
the manner in which rational argument comes to obscure certain forms of
moral injury.
The disagreement between Rawls, Habermas and Honneth over the
nature of the agreement that it is possible to establish is significant for our
purposes, signalling themes developed in the second chapter of each book-
part, which identifies reasons why the theories of Rawls, Habermas and
Honneth fail to properly reconcile justices two demands. It allows us to
recognize that these limits are not given in advance, but rather rely on us
and our own ability to think critically about our social norms, encouraging
others to do likewise. We begin to see that there is nothing necessary about
those norms of justice that we currently affirm, because we can, in fact,
engage with and modify them in pursuit of an ideal that may initially appear
to be beyond our grasp. In other words, the disagreement between Rawls,
Habermas and Honneth over justices content may be interpreted as a
debate over the extent to which justice is bound up with actually affirmed
norms. Although Rawls briefly raises this point himself, he does not go on
to explore it. He writes:
Of course, there is a question about how the limits of the practicable are
discerned and what the conditions of our social world in fact are; the
problem here is that the limits of the possible are not given by the actual,
for we can to a greater or lesser extent change political and social institu-
tions, and much else. (Rawls, 2001, p. 5)
Rawls unfortunately decides not to pursue this deep question (Rawls,

2001, p. 5) concerning the extent to which justices content should be given
by the actual that is, by those stable established values that are affirmed by
everyone in overlapping consensus. However, deconstruction, with its
attentiveness to failure, encourages us to enter into such considerations,
identifying the irreducible difference between actually affirmed norms and
the demands that justice should uphold. By putting this question to one
side, Rawls overemphasizes the need to identify justice with only those basic
public values that can be affirmed by everyone. In the second of the chapters
on Rawls, we will pursue this question ourselves, noticing that Rawlss error
also leads him to limit civil disobedience to only those more obvious
infractions of civil and political liberties. I will suggest, instead, that we
cannot determine, in advance, whether the forms of civil disobedience that
Rawls deems unreasonable would not reap unforeseen rewards, cultivating

citizens who are prepared to go beyond instituted justice to take seriously
other injustices, no less serious, which are unfortunately not yet recognized
by the majority.
Beyond Derridas account of democracys undecidability

I am suggesting that it may be productive to bring to constructive theory
Derridas idea that the negotiation of justices two demands inevitably fails,
usually privileging impartiality among persons over the request for justice
from the particular other person. However, in order to analyze constructive
justice on its own terms, we need to move beyond Derridas own textual
interventions, which deal rarely, if at all, with the complex axioms of
contemporary liberal-democratic theory, and whose clarification of
democracys conceptual limits miss their mark when applied to Rawls,
Habermas and Honneth.
Derrida pursues an analysis of the undecidability of democracy,
identifying both its anti-democratic and democratic tendencies. He does so
through close readings of texts like those of Aristotle, who identifies
democracy with the majority voting principle (Derrida, 2005a, p. 34). As
Paul Patton puts it, Derrida tends to rely on concepts of democracy that are
anachronistic (Patton, 2007a, p.163). Consequently, although nuanced and
detailed, Derridas analyses do not apply to contemporary theories of liberal
democracy, like those of Rawls, Habermas and Honneth, which are not
exhausted by the majority principle, engaging resources that Derrida does
not consider.
Derrida determines democracys success and failure in terms of the
concept of autoimmunity (Derrida, 2002a, pp. 7980; see also 2003,
pp. 85136; 2005a; see also Haddad, 2004, p. 30). Autoimmunity character
izes the axiom Aristotle identifies with democracy, which reconciles the
freedom of each, as distinct individuals, with the freedom of all, as equals, by
means of the principle of numerical equality. Democracy extends, to all
individuals equally, the freedom to think and act as one chooses. By assuming
that no individual choice has more value than another, it equates to the axiom
of equality of number. Each individual is to be counted once, as an equal to
another, and this means that the decision of the majority is final. Aristotle
condemns the axiom of numerical equality because it unfortunately allows
the unworthy (the poorer masses) to arbitrate when they hold a majority.
Unlike Aristotle, Derrida does not reject the principle of majority voting
outright. Rather, he sees it as a procedure promising to uphold the freedom
of each and the equality of all. However, the fulfilment of this promise is not
guaranteed. The axiom of numerical equality has the capacity to destroy
both the freedom of individuals (since it allows, in principle, the possibility
of a majority denying freedom to some) and the freedom of all as equals
(since denying freedom to some would annul the principle of the equality
of all). Consequently, the axiom of numerical equality has the capacity to
destroy itself, allowing a majority to legitimately contest it. Derrida writes:
in the name of one couple, the couple made up of freedom and equality,
one agrees to a law of number or to the law of numbers (equality according
to number) which ends up destroying both couples: both the couple made
up of the two equalities (equality according to worth and equality according
to number) and the couple equality-freedom. (Derrida, 2005a, p. 34)
Without additional protection of the equal worth of individuals, the

principle of majority voting has the capacity to lead to its own destruction
(2005a, p. 34).
In the essays published in Rogues and in his interview on the events of 11
September, Derrida presents this failure as characteristic of democracy
itself, now described as autoimmune and suicidal. He writes: when
assured of a numerical majority, the worst enemies of democratic freedom
can, by a plausible rhetorical simulacrum ... present themselves as staunch
democrats (2005a, p. 34). Among these worst enemies, Derrida includes
the most fanatical Islamists (2005a, p. 34), and the Fascist and Nazi
totalitarianisms [who] came into power or ascended to power through
formally normal and formally democratic electoral processes (2005a, p.
33). In such cases, democracy lawfully permits its own destruction.
Autoimmunity describes a state wherein an organism fails to recognize its
own constituent parts as elements of itself, attacking its very own cells and
tissues. In the aftermath of 11 September, a claim was made that it was
necessary to restrict the very liberties democracy was obliged to protect,
and this, with a view to immunizing democracy against the harm some
individuals could potentially pose to the liberty of others. Restricting the
basic liberties of certain individuals permits democracys survival by
defending its vital organs against attack from internal pathogens. With that
said, it cannot be determined in advance whether the autoimmunity will
harm or protect the organism in question. An organism becomes weakened
when it attacks itself, even if this might be necessary for its protection.
Autoimmune disease is debilitating and ultimately life threatening. In
political terms, the tension between self-protection and self-harm can be
seen in the act of determining the constituents of a demos. Although not

a majority (2005a, p. 33), the Algerian government decided to suspend, in
undemocratic and sovereign manner, the 1992 democratic elections,
fearing that the electoral process would lead democratically, by numerical
majority, to democracys termination. As Derrida says, the value of this
strategy can never be either confirmed or confuted (2005a, p. 33). One
cannot say that suspending democracy for its own protection is more
democratic than democratically risking democracys self-destruction.
Democracy has always been suicidal (2005a, p. 33) because the mechanism
of numerical equality cannot reconcile the freedom of the individual with
the freedom of all as equals.
However, this deconstructive analysis of democracys constitutive failure
clearly does not apply to the models of Rawls, Habermas and Honneth,
which are not restricted to the majority voting principle alone. As Patton
correctly points out, Derrida discusses very few twentieth-century accounts
of democracy, and his over-reliance on a limited textual base produces a
critique of democracy that is both anachronistic and simplistic. Patton
concludes that had Derrida considered more recent theories of liberal
democracy, he would have confronted a more complex axiomatic where
the value of freedom limits, in an absolute sense, the operation of the
majority voting principle (Patton, 2007a, p. 163).
In both Theory and Political Liberalism, Rawls limits the majority voting
principle first, by the basic liberties, removed from majority regulation by a
constitution that protects them, and second, by limits of fairness, which
specify that the inevitable imperfections of a constitutional regime are to be
equitably shared (1971, p. 199/174175 rev.; and p. 355/312 rev.). In a
similar manner, Habermas insists that outcomes of majority voting are
legitimate only when accountable before the very autonomy that grants
deliberative procedure its legitimacy. The institutionalization of discursive
exchange and fair bargaining processes are to ensure that individual
autonomy remains an absolute limit to majority outcomes (Habermas,
1996a, p. 121). Honneth also ascribes an important role to the constitutional
protection of liberties, whose egalitarian distribution serves as the condition
for self-respect. Moreover, only when actual norms achieve the sort of
reciprocity that allows for the mutual realization of the freedom of all can
they be described as ethical, and this should rule out democratic
majoritarian outcomes that do not uphold the ideal of reciprocity (Honneth,
2000, p. 59; 2010, p. 57). The principles and procedures defended by each
theorist offer broad measures of protection against the undemocratic
outcomes of which Derrida believes democracy is capable.
Derrida would not have found this criticism of his limited textual base
surprising. On one occasion, in another context, he explicitly regrets his
inability to engage, on its own terms, with the analytic tradition of the
philosophy of language:
And I feel guilty. Guilty for the length of time it has taken. Guilty because
I did not make the effort that most of you are making, with moving good
will, just to produce the possibility of an argument ... guilty because
I didnt make the effort to read, when I should have read, analytic or
Anglo-Saxon or British philosophy; an effort which could have helped
this discussion, this argument or dialogue ... And I have no justification
for that. Simply: I failed. (Derrida, 2001a, p. 36)
Although this regret should also be extended to include the contemporary

tradition of liberal-democratic justice, whose more complex axioms Derrida
fails to consider, I intend to show that deconstructive intervention in such a
tradition can still produce effects. This would be to take seriously Derridas
definition of the philosopher as a person who:
in the future, reflect[s] in a responsible fashion on these questions and

demand[s] accountability from those in charge of public discourse ...
someone who analyses and draws the practical and effective consequences
of the relationship between our philosophical heritage and the structure
of the still dominant juridico-political system that is so clearly undergoing
mutation. (2003, p. 106)
A philosopher, in our context, would demand accountability for the

concrete forms of injustice that are either produced or maintained by the
constructive orientation towards justices possibility.
Consequently, although Derrida fails to take up his own challenge with
respect to the dominant tradition of liberal-democratic justice, his humble
acknowledgement of his own failure certainly heralds an essential difference
with the thinkers whose work I here consider. Neither Rawls, Habermas nor
Honneth display this sort of humility, which implies a heightened awareness
of the concrete problems and exclusions to which ones own theory gives
rise. Their theories are initially so full of confidence about their own
achievements and so eager to continue their positive constructive task that
there is very little interrogation of the limits of their own projects. And yet,
civic attitudes of openness to the other, humility and resilience in the face of
failure are, in my view, essential to the constructive pursuit itself. In this sense,
the practical intent of Derridas analyses can still be brought to bear on the
more complex theories that these constructive theorists defend. Or so I will
argue in this book.
Revisiting the History of

Constructive-Deconstructive Relations
In addition to considering the above limitations of both traditions, this
study brings a further contribution, encouraging a rethink of the popular
view of the constructive-deconstructive relation. The all-too-familiar
manoeuvre of most political theorists is to dismiss deconstruction outright
as unable to rationally defend one political position over another. A similar
interpretation prevails among deconstructions sympathizers; only this time
Derridas attention to the difficulties of rational defence is instead endorsed
as the complete antithesis to normative justice, to be productively pursued,
it is said, by either a politics of revolution or a practice of adversarial critique.
This popular view, either critical or affirmative, should be rejected for not
acknowledging deconstructions subscription to the essential premise of
the constructive approach, committing to justices possibility. Here I will
situate my work against both the liberal dismissal and the anti-normative
endorsement, instead supporting a growing number of voices who share my
belief that deconstruction can produce positive effects for the constructive,
normative tradition.
Rejecting the liberal critique

Distancing themselves from Derridas early work, prominent liberals such as
Habermas, the early Nancy Fraser, Thomas McCarthy, Seyla Benhabib and
Amy Gutmann, among others, defend the view that deconstruction reduces
every conceptual difference to a contingent play of force,7 denying itself the
resources to engage in the forms of rational argument that politics requires.
Habermas took this line in the 1980s, defending reason from its radical
critique by contemporary French philosophy (Habermas, 1990b, pp. 184
210). Derrida, he claims, reduces the linguistic function to persuasion and
rhetoric, neglecting languages capacity to carry the weight of validity claims
oriented towards mutual understanding (1990b, p. 193 & 205). In a first step,
Habermas supports what he sees as Theodor W. Adornos reluctant or residual
faith in reasons capacity to perform its own self-critique. To critique reason
using reasons own tools is to performatively contradict oneself, thereby
confirming reasons validity. Next, Habermas claims that Derrida does not
share this faith in reasons ability to perform its own critique. To avoid the
performative contradiction involved in critiquing reason with argument,
Derrida chooses an evasive strategy, assessing argument aesthetically,
uncovering the persuasive devices it uses to convince (1990b, p. 188).
Deconstruction hereby levels the distinction between philosophical argument
and literary rhetoric. Habermas concludes that by presenting philosophy as
rhetorical persuasion rather than rational argument, Derrida effectively robs
philosophy of its central duty of solving problems (1990b, p. 210). Denying
the possibility of rational argument and rational consensus cannot, says
Habermas, be at all useful.8
The early Nancy Fraser defends a similar position, situated against the
background of Derridas early unwillingness to deal with the political
implications of deconstruction or with the efforts of others to do so (Fraser,
1984, pp. 127154; 19911992, pp. 13251331).9 Arguing that Derrida
denies himself the resources to defend one viewpoint over another, Fraser
cites his refusal to choose between the two contrasting political orientations
he presents in the concluding sections of The ends of man (Derrida, 1982,
pp. 109136). Where the first is apocalyptic and revolutionary, attempting
a complete overhaul of inherited norms, the second is anti-apocalyptic and
reformative, deploying the normative concepts of a particular tradition with
a view to its reorientation (Derrida, 1982, pp. 134135). Refusing both
strategies, Derrida instead pursues what Fraser refers to as a deeper
Heideggerian project, seeking the very condition of possibility of the
political (le politique), which equates, in Frasers reading of deconstruction,
to a contingent play of force. As Fraser explains, this deeper project does
not debate the opponent on the latters own political terms, at the level of
real politics (la politique).10 To the project of politicizing deconstruction,
Derrida prefers to deconstruct the political (Fraser, 1984, p. 137), which is
unfortunate, says Fraser, because it leaves deconstruction unable to defend
any political position whatsoever. Consequently, there is one sort of
difference which deconstruction cannot tolerate: namely, difference as
dispute, as good, old-fashioned, political fight (1984, p. 142).
Fraser continues the theme, rejecting the usefulness of Derridas first
explicit effort to address the idea of justice in Force of law (Derrida,
2002a). Despite Derridas own statement of commitment to the need for
contesting concrete and empirical forms of violence, Fraser nonetheless
argues that Derridas analysis of the relations between violence and law
privileges quasi-transcendental over political-empirical critique (Fraser,
1991, p. 1325, 1328 & 1331). Political-empirical critique exposes the
ideological nature of law, showing how it operates in the service of essentially

transformable forces. Quasi-transcendental critique instead seeks to
expose the condition of possibility for the laws authority; namely, violence
without ground. Fraser believes that by shifting attention to the irreducible,
quasi-transcendental violence of determined laws, deconstruction leaves
empirical violence unchallenged, thereby retreating from the political
(Fraser, 1991, p. 1328).
Also responding to Derridas early work, McCarthy, Benhabib and
Gutmann add further weight to this liberal critique. For McCarthy,
deconstruction withdraws from the specificity of empirical social research
to a sort of mysticism which is at best an airy abstraction (McCarthy, 1993,
p. 115 & 116). Politics implies a commitment, on the part of its users, to the
values of impartiality and equality, and this reconstructive moment ... is
not in evidence in Derridas work (1993, p. 232). Benhabib likewise suggests
that if philosophers like Derrida and Lyotard really want to defend
communities in which differences are aired, considered and included in
the public sphere, then Habermass deliberative democracy is appropriate.
Lyotard and Derrida instead ignore the normative content of a democratic
tradition that can be used to critique present injustices (Benhabib, 2006,
pp. 145146). Gutmanns view is more blunt: deconstructionists ... view
common standards as masks for the will to political power of dominant
hegemonic groups (Gutmann, 1994, p. 18; see also pp. 1821), which
prevents them from using the standard of impartiality to contest domination
itself. And yet, she states, this standard remains the single most effective
means for such contestation (Gutmann, 1994, p. 19).
This all too common liberal dismissal of deconstruction overlooks the fact
that Derrida explicitly affirms the need to risk determining the content of
justice in response to the suffering of others. A plausible reason for this
oversight is that the liberal critique originally grew out of the context of
Derridas early refusal to deal with deconstructions political implications
(Patton, 2007a, pp.149154). However, Derridas later writings defend clear
positions in response to the most pressing political issues of our day. Clearly,
Derrida does defend certain normative positions over others, arguing against
the death penalty, defending a new future for the Western family and, with
it, new reproductive technologies (Derrida etal., 2004, pp. 3346), critiquing
the distinction between human and animal in the discourse of right (2004,
pp. 6276), and upholding the freedom of individual thought against
censorship and the tyranny of the politically correct (Derrida etal., 2004,
pp. 2032 & 106138). We have seen Derrida defend the right to asylum
(Derrida, 1997c, pp. 1214; Derrida etal., 2001, pp. 100101), voicing the
need for international institutions with effective coercive power (2001,

in particular pp. 7894 & 95107), and affirming, with Habermas, Europes
potential to play a leading role within a new constellation of international
institutions (Derrida & Habermas, 2006; see also Derrida 1992 & 1993). The
liberal dismissal of deconstructions inability to engage in a political critique
of empirical and transformable violence is clearly no longer tenable.
Nor does deconstruction withdraw from the domain of rational
argumentation. As Richard Bernstein writes, with a tone as blunt as
Gutmanns, this is a slander. It is not what [Derrida] is doing when he
analyses the complex interplay of logic and rhetoric (Bernstein2006, p.
90; see also Norris, 1990, pp. 4976). As we will see in Chapters 6 and 7,
Honneth, too, believes that such criticism is misplaced, lamenting the
damaging effect of Habermass early interpretation, which placed the
Franco-German relation under the heading irrationality versus rationality
... a fruitless dualism that brought a certain and still growing
underestimation of the French tradition (Critchley and Honneth, 1998,
p. 34). Invoking reason itself, Derrida analyzes reasons particular
meaning its origin, its goal, [and] its limits (Derrida, 1983, pp. 910)
within precise contexts, identifying the particular nature of undecidability,
determined in precise ways within a certain socio-historical constellation.
Undecidability, Derrida later insists, is not some vague ineffable
indeterminacy or the general idea of the contingency of force, as
McCarthy and Fraser claim. Rather, it is a determinate oscillation between
possibilities, distinct options which are themselves highly determined in
strictly defined situations (Derrida, 1988a, p. 148).
Taking Derridas claim seriously, I will identify, in the coming chapters,
the distinct ways in which Rawls, Habermas and Honneth deal with the
problem of undecidability, arguing that undecidability takes a particular
form in each context. As the constructors and users of public principles, we
are responsible for the systemic effects of determining undecidability, which
entails precisely the commitment to the political and empirical critique
that Fraser, McCarthy, Benhabib and Gutmann defend.
Rejecting the anti-normative endorsement

Defending deconstruction as the antithesis of normativity, the early
deconstructive sympathizers make an error similar to that of the liberal
critique. To insist that normativity is inevitably violent is to surrender the
very standards by which to critique actual norms, overlooking the
constructive moment of Derridas work.
The 1980 Colloque de Crisy took Derridas work as its theme, considering
a number of alternative views of the political implications of deconstruction.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivaks contribution is a defence of the second of the
two strategies Derrida voices in The ends of man, politicizing deconstruction
as a theory of revolution in Marxist spirit. Citing Derrida himself, Spivak
claims that deconstruction produces a radical trembling [that] can come
only from the outside, a change of terrain in an attempt not to exclude
the other term of a polarity (Spivak, 1981, p. 506, my translation). Its
political lesson encourages us to question the very normative character of
the institutions and disciplines in which and by which we live (1981, p. 506,
my translation). This is a revolutionary politics, which, by virtue of the
asymmetry of its intervention and the rejection of inherited normativity, is
capable of overcoming the violent relationship of the whole of the West to
its other (1981, p. 506, my translation) so as to turn towards women, the
non-Western world, and the victims of capitalism (1981, p. 513, my
translation).
Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe also position deconstruc-
tion as the antithesis of normative justice, to be pursued not by Spivaks
revolutionary politics, but rather by a practice of deep, adversarial critique.
Deconstruction pursues deep analysis, uncovering unauthorized force as
the condition of possibility of political authority (Lacoue-Labarthe et al.,
1981a; see also 1981b; 1983). Where Fraser rejects such analysis as fruitless,
Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy believe that it provokes critical vigilance with
respect to the inevitable violence of the political.
However, to defend deconstruction as normativitys antithesis is to simply
endorse what the liberal critique dismisses. Consequently, this sympathetic
defence is unconvincing for the reasons previously discussed. Not only does
it fail to recognize that deconstruction can defend normative and anti-
revolutionary positions, it also surrenders the very critical function that it
wishes to ascribe to deconstruction. If all normativity is inevitably violent,
there remain no standards by virtue of which to critique those norms that
are clearly more violent than others. Once again, the constructive moment
of Derridas work must be emphasized.
A productive relation
Rejecting these popular interpretations, this book instead supports a
growing number of voices who, although rarely agreeing on the precise
nature of deconstructions political relevance, nonetheless unite around
the view that deconstruction can be brought to bear, in productive ways, on
the constructive tradition. Following Drucilla Cornell, Chantal Mouffe and

Iris Marion Young, who remark in the 90s upon the value of Derridas early
work for the normative political tradition, we have also seen increasing
interest in Derridas later ethical and political writings, with Bonnie Honig,
Lasse Thomassen and Paul Patton, among a number of other scholars,
providing new insights into the deconstructive-constructive relation. Here,
I situate my own understanding of the relation against the backdrop of this
interest.
Sympathetic to both the deliberative and deconstructive projects, Young
argues that the worthwhile project of elaborating a communicative ethics
recognizing difference and particularity is impeded when moral respect is
portrayed uniquely as a relation of symmetry between self and other.
Drawing on the work of Lyotard (Young, 1990, p. 5) and Levinas (Young,
1997, p. 340), she argues it is neither possible nor morally desirable for
persons engaged in moral interaction to adopt one anothers standpoint
(1997, p. 340). Although some standard of equality is ultimately necessary,
symmetrical reciprocity cannot alone account for the moment of respect
for the particular, embodied, other person that characterizes deliberative
exchange. This leads Young to argue that the ideal of communication be
enlarged to include different forms of communication, including rhetorical
language, narrative and the activist politics of civil disobedience, with a view
to listening to and learning from the other persons unique experience, so
as to approach an ideal of ever-widening conversation among participants
who seek mutual understanding across their differences.
Although Young makes productive use of deconstruction in her attempt
to perfect deliberative justice, she nonetheless believes, as Thomassen
correctly points out, that the differences initially experienced as asymmetrical
can be included within an enlarged communicative domain (Thomassen,
2008, p. 24). Following Thomassen, the view developed in this book
questions this faith. Although the attempt to enlarge the domain of
communication should be endorsed, it must be acknowledged that
deliberative democracy cannot reconcile its own moral ideal of the person
with Derridas Levinasian concept of the person as responsible before the
unique other. However, I will also suggest that this failure is not to be
regretted. The gap between the ideal and the actual allows a critical
perspective upon the actual to be sustained.
Opposing Youngs faith, Mouffe employs Derridas early work to reject
the assumption that conflicts can be reconciled, noting that by proceeding
on this false assumption, Rawls and Habermas effectively eliminate the very
conflicts proper to the political itself (Mouffe, 2000, p. 134). Drawing on
the deconstructive idea of a constitutive outside, Mouffe argues that the

construction of a political identity always proceeds on the basis of some
exclusion, establishing a violent hierarchy between the poles of self and
other (Mouffe, 1993, p. 114 & 141; 2000, p. 12 & 21; 2005, p. 15). Consequently,
social relations imply relations of power, since the identity construction is
premised on exclusion. Rejecting the possibility of rational consensus,
Mouffe suggests that:
[i]nstead of trying to reduce the existing plurality through devices like the
veil of ignorance or the ideal speech situation, we need to develop a posi-
tive attitude towards differences, even if they lead to conflict and impede
the realization of harmony. Any understanding of pluralism whose objec-
tive is to reach harmony is ultimately a negation of the positive value of
diversity and difference. (Mouffe, 1995, p. 44)
Mouffe rejects both Habermass ideal of rational consensus and Rawlss

account of overlapping consensus on principles of justice, because they
wrongly assume that differences can be harmonized within one standpoint.
Although the position developed in this book clearly subscribes to
Mouffes celebration of the impossibility of justice, it does not reject, as she
does, the need to assume the possibility of harmonizing differences.
Perhaps on account of her reference to Derridas early work, Mouffe does
not acknowledge that Derrida views the constructive commitment as
itself necessary. Where Mouffe claims that faith in the possibility of conflict
resolution actually puts the democratic project at risk (Mouffe, 1996,
p. 254), I will suggest that without Rawlss reasonable faith in the possibility
of a just constitutional regime (Rawls, 1996, p.172) we cannot even begin
to create a society that develops a positive attitude to differences.
Balancing Youngs commitment to possibility with Mouffes affirmation
of impossibility, Cornells account of deconstructive justice finally gets the
conceptual balance right, which is all the more admirable given her reliance
on Derridas early texts. Against Young, Cornell does not believe that either
Habermass deliberative communication or Rawlss overlapping consensus
can include the asymmetrical responsibility to others of which Young speaks
(Cornell, 1992, pp. 91115 & 170184). Its inclusion is impossible if we are
to remain faithful to the ethical asymmetry that inheres in the respect for
the Other as Other (1992, pp. 170171). Cornell also believes that Rawlss
identification of justice with the contents of overlapping consensus pays
insufficient attention to deconstructions account of the constitutive gap
between established norms on the one hand, and the ideal of justice on the
other (1992, p. 182). Deconstructive justice, she claims, is more utopian

because it keeps open the beyond of currently unimaginable transfor-
mative possibilities precisely in the name of Justice (1992, p. 182). Although
Cornell does acknowledge that Rawlss overlapping consensus tolerates
differences, she nonetheless believes that he is more concerned than is
Derrida to reconcile his theory of constitutional essentials with established
norms (1992, p. 182). Moreover, against Mouffe, Cornell nonetheless
affirms the need to commit, with Rawls and Habermas, to the possibility of
justice, correctly pointing out that deconstruction does not deny the
necessity for [justices] elaboration within law, understood as a shared
nomos (1992, p. 182). The main difference between the constructive and
deconstructive approaches, states Cornell, is that deconstruction recognizes
that its determined principles cannot be identified as Justice, even if we
must realistically limit this identification to the content of Rawlss
overlapping consensus (1992, p. 182).
This book shares Cornells belief that deconstruction has practical
consequences for the constructive approach because it demonstrates the
need to account for the possibility of the transformation of the legal system,
faced with new cases to account for (1992, p. 166; see also p. 165). My own
analysis of Rawlss defence of constitutional essentials begins where Cornells
analysis finishes, adding to and supporting her own observation that the
gap between the actual and the ideal motivates the transformation of the
actual and allows justice to retain its critical function. This gap is constitutive:
it remains beyond accommodation, and necessarily so (Cornell, 1991). It
necessitates both the apologetic faith with respect to justices possibility
and the continued effort to achieve it.
Drawing on Derridas later ethical and political writings, new insights into
the deconstructive-constructive relation have also been put forward by
scholars such as Honig, Thomassen and Patton, among others. In Political
Theory and the Displacement of Politics, Honig addresses Derridas reading of
Jeffersons draft of the American Declaration of Independence, arguing
that the analysis highlights the dependence of the performative on the
citation of the constative (see Honig, 1993, pp. 104110; see Derrida 2002b,
pp. 4654). On the one hand, the performative that is, the Declaration of
Independence gives birth to the people itself. The people, as a distinct
entity, do not exist without the instituting moment of the performative
utterance, which declares their independence. However, the we, the
people named by the declaration, appeals also to a constative. In order to
guarantee the power of the performative and secure their innovation, the
American founders combined performative and constative utterances
(Honig, 1993, pp. 104110). Honig refers to this moment as the

undecidability of the declaration: the we, the people named by the dec-
laration, both exist and do not exist before the declaration. The performative
functions by citing a fact of existence, which cannot claim factual constative
status until the performative declaration. Using the deconstructive idea of
the undecidability involved in processes of identity construction, Honig
presents a critique of consensual conceptions of democracy, which inevitably
fail in their attempts to consolidate difference within unity. Derrida, she
believes, affirms the undecidability of the attempt, thereby assuming that
differences and conflicts cannot be eliminated in consensus. In the chapter
Rawls and the remainders of politics (1993, pp. 126161), Honig argues
that Rawls attempts to dissolve conflict within unity, and, in so doing, must
dismiss as unreasonable those who, for reasons he does not explore, are
unable to affirm their sense of justice. Despite the perhaps more negative
tone with which Honig speaks of consensual politics, my own project
overlaps with hers. Politics can be reduced neither to consensus nor
contestation, but rather takes place in their interplay.
The task of critiquing our inherited tradition from within, in the interplay
of consensus and contestation, is presented by Thomassen as the domain
proper to the political. The gap between the actual provision of content to
the demands of justice and the idea on which such provision takes place is
irreducible. In Deconstructing Habermas, Thomassen identifies a number of
ways in which Habermas is unable to close this gap. Thomassen points out
that the rationality of discourse and consensus would become meaningless
were rational consensus to be actually achieved, and also draws attention to
the irreducible gap between constitutionalism and popular sovereignty,
moments Habermas claims to unite. Arguing that Habermass concept of
tolerance cannot rid itself of certain forms of intolerance, Thomassen then
points to the difficulties Habermas faces when determining the limits
between legitimate acts of civil disobedience and apparently illegitimate,
irrational overreactions. In each case, Habermass attempts to establish the
necessity of these conceptual relationships ultimately fail. Such work
coincides with my own and is essential to the task of critiquing our
constructive tradition from within, uncovering, in distinct contexts, the
particular nature of the gap between the actual and the ideal, identifying
conceptual and empirical problems that need to be resolved in new ways.
It is hoped that this book will further a deconstructive approach to
political philosophy, which supplements the constructive faith in justices
possibility with the requisite responsibility for the failure of determined
justice to reconcile both the value of the unique individual with the value of
impartiality. This failure should not be regretted but rather affirmed as the
condition for a justice meriting the adjective critical. Were justice to be
determined and achieved once and for all, it would no longer fulfil any
further critical role for the historical present. As Habermas himself
recognizes, quoting Albrecht Wellmer, this would effectively spell the end
of human history. Although it is paradoxical that we would be obliged to
strive for the realization of an ideal whose realization would be the end of
human history (Habermas, 1990c, p. 365; see also Wellmer, 1998, p.141),11
this paradox maintains justices critical function.
Deconstructive Civic Duties: A Culture Willing to

Make the Effort
The claim that deconstruction can have a productive effect on the constructive
tradition is, of course, quite different to the claim that it will produce such
effects. This is the thought with which Patton concludes his own reflections
on the relation between deconstruction and contemporary liberalism
(Patton, 2007a; 2007b). Patton begins by identifying certain points of
convergence between Rorty, the later Rawls and Derrida; namely, their
shared affirmation of the essential historicity of the concept of democracy.
He then suggests that it is the distinction between the idea of democracy to
come and the imperfections of actually existing democracies that motivates
historical change. That said, Patton also suggests that if deconstruction is
indeed to produce effects in the dominant tradition, it needs to engage more
closely with contemporary theorizations of the democratic form of political
community. Without such engagement, it is unclear that deconstruction will
produce the effects that is promises. Consequently, Patton concludes that it
is too soon to judge the value of deconstructive political philosophy.
Patton is correct to withhold his judgement on this issue. As I suggested
earlier, commentators both sympathetic and critical unfortunately tend
to emphasize deconstructions attention to impossibility, overlooking its
commitment to the constructive orientation. If this continues, it is unlikely
that deconstruction will contribute to the production of societies that are
more just, as its productive nature lies in the interplay between constructing
forms of consensus and contesting them. In my view, the responsibility for
the effects of deconstructive political philosophy now lies with us, the users
and inheritors of deconstruction. We must not discharge ourselves too
quickly of the obligation to employ both a constructive and critical perspective,
and I hope to encourage this responsibility with the work of this book.
I will suggest that we cannot rule out the possibility that attempting to
achieve the impossible will not reap unforeseen rewards, contributing to
the development of a culture more prepared to make the effort to respond
to experiences that might not qualify as unjust from a Rawlsian, Habermasian
or Honnethian perspective. I will also attempt to identify resources within
our tradition for fostering solidarity beyond those ideas about justice that
we so obviously share, encouraging pragmatic attitudes of humility, openness
to the other, gift-giving, generosity and resilience, so that our contemporary
societies, characterized by value pluralism, are more willing to make the
effort to challenge our inherited convictions, constructing new forms of
solidarity that attempt to respond to the needs of vulnerable members of
our communities.
Part One
Justice as Fairness:
A Project to Pursue
Chapter 2
Rawls and the Possibility of Ideal Theory
Unanimity is possible; the deliberations of any one person are typical of all.
Rawls, Theory, 1971, p. 263/232 rev.
In The Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority, Derrida

briefly suggests that Rawlss constructive determination of justices content
would benefit from the deconstructive insight into the impossibility of such
determination. As Derrida puts it, the idea of a justice not exhausted by
determined principles could productively inform a discussion with Stanley
Fish in Force on H. L. A. Harts Concept of Law, and several others, implicitly
including John Rawls (Derrida, 2002a, p. 242).
Apart from this one reference, Derrida does not mention Rawls again.
Here, I take Derridas suggestion seriously, applying the first of deconstru-
ctions dual perspectives to the analysis and evaluation of Rawlss theory of
justice. As I mentioned in Chapter 1, deconstruction is characterized by two
orientations, balancing its commitment to the possibility of determining
the content of justice with an attention to the concrete ways in which justice
inevitably fails in its task. Affirming the necessity of the constructive task,
this chapter argues that Rawlss art of the possible can be seen as a realistic
attempt to resolve the demands of justice that Derrida identifies. However,
it will also emerge that as Rawls becomes more aware of the difficulties
involved in resolving the demands, he needs to qualify his theory, weakening
the strong claims of his early work. These modifications will be identified
as relevant to the second of deconstructions orientations; namely, its
attention to the impossibility of determining justices content, prefacing
deconstructions additional concern with impossibility and thereby
facilitating the task of Chapter 3, which identifies certain injustices to which
Rawlss theory of justice itself gives rise.
Before commencing the analyses of this chapter, it is necessary to briefly
recall the main elements of Derridas account of justice in Force of law,
which I explained in Chapter 1. In the idea of justice, Derrida identifies
two demands. Justices first demand is for individual consideration, along

Levinasian lines. It is the request, put forward by a unique person (the
Other), for a determination appropriate to his or her particular needs.
Justices second demand is for equal and, consequently, impartial
consideration. This second demand is a result of the plurality of requests
for individual consideration. Derrida then identifies tension between these
two demands. A principle that responds appropriately to a demand for
individual consideration will always overlook the particular demands of
other unique individuals. Conversely, a principle that compares individual
demands through the lens of impartiality will always overlook the obligation
of individual consideration (Derrida, 2002a, p. 248). Under constraints of
action, Derrida affirms that a decision must be made. However, this decision
involves a moment of undecidability because no absolute criteria exists
that might allow the request for either individual or impartial consideration
to be prioritized over the other.
With respect to Rawls, my argument will proceed as follows. First, I will
present Rawlss understanding of the art of the possible in A Theory of
Justice (1971), explaining how Rawls negotiates the demands of justice
within a Kantian framework. This framework employs the three ideas to
which, I argued, deconstruction must commit if Derrida is indeed to
overcome Levinass undue privileging of justices failure. These three ideas
include, first, impartial judgement, explained with reference to Kants
defence of publicity and of fully collective judgement; second, an ideal of
moral personhood, again developed using Kants account of instrumental
and moral reason; and third, practicability, advanced with respect to the
need for stability. Drawing on these ideas, Rawls determines the content of
what he refers to as ideal theory, using procedures that model both the
value of the individual and the value of all such individuals. Presenting the
theory as a practical and realistic attempt to respond to the demands that
Derrida believes characterize justice, I will explain how Rawls represents
each demand using the original position device, which then allows him to
claim that the content of justice is best determined in the form of two
principles that all persons should uphold.
However, in a second stage, I will analyze the various qualifications that
Rawls makes to the strong claims of his earlier work, suggesting that these
qualifications are effects of acknowledging the tension Derrida identifies
between responsibility for the Other and responsibility for all Others. Once
Rawls recognizes that the coercion required to enforce his conception of
justice would effectively rule it out as appropriate for unique individuals
who affirm different, indeed conflicting, conceptions of justice, Rawls
Rawls and the Possibility of Ideal Theory 43
substantially weakens the content of his initial theory, limiting it to a set of

more general public values or constitutional essentials that are far less
prescriptive than the two principles. Faced with the difficulty of establishing
public rules respecting the difference of the unique individual while also
upholding impartiality, Rawls increasingly refers to justice as a project to be
achieved, much like Derridas justice-to-come.
My reflection on Rawlss moderation of his initial theory provides the
groundwork for the second thrust of this book, which frames its analyses
with an additional deconstructive orientation; namely, an attention to the
impossibility of justice. Chapter 3 will identify one concrete way in which
Rawlss resolution of the tension between justices two demands privileges
the viewpoint of the majority, failing to protect the value of the unique
individual against the tyranny of the majority. The problem concerns
Rawlss application of ideal theory to our imperfect world, which requires
the development of non-ideal theory; that is, an account of morally
permissible, politically possible and effective courses of action designed to
implement ideal theory in an imperfect world (Rawls, 1999b, p. 89; 1971,
p. 246/216 rev.). Unfortunately, it will be shown that one aspect of Rawlss
non-ideal theory, namely, his account of legitimate cases of civil disobedience,
has the capacity to reproduce permanent socio-economic minorities,
effectively producing a society that is unjust on Rawlss own account, because
the inevitable injustices of a constitutional system are no longer equitably
shared as Rawls believes they should be. On this basis, it will be concluded
that Rawls is unable to provide an appropriate negotiation of justices two
demands. This is a complex claim that I do not expect readers to understand
at this early stage, and I will be devoting Chapter 3 to its development.
Returning to the objective of the current chapter, we will begin by
identifying the nature of Rawlss commitment to possibility and the reasons
why deconstruction, with its commitment to possibility and attention to
impossibility, should not be opposed to the constructive orientation.
The Immodesty of Ideal Theory in Rawlss Early Work:

Unanimous Agreement
Providing a realistic and achievable interpretation of Kants notion of
individual autonomy, Rawlss early work1 presents the strong claim that his
ideal theory responds appropriately to the particular claims about justice
that individuals put forward (Rawls, 1999a, p. 171). The theory treats people
as distinct, autonomous, unique individuals, within a set of similarly unique
individuals. In this way, the first demand for individual consideration that
Derrida identifies is framed by the second demand for reciprocity and impartial
consideration. After interpreting the criteria of Kantian autonomy using a
substantive decision procedure, Rawls presents two principles that together
provide the most appropriate moral basis for a democratic society (Rawls,
1971, p. viii/xxviii rev.), allowing for the comparison and assessment of the
needs of distinct, autonomous individuals, through the lens of impartiality.
This is not a modest claim. The early Rawls believes that there are no
other better alternatives. A just, stable society is one in which all free, equal
and rational persons accept the same two principles, in the knowledge that
their peers do likewise. It is also a society in which public institutions satisfy,
and are known to satisfy, these two principles (Rawls, 1971, p. 5/4 rev.; see
also p. 454/397 rev.; 1999a, p. 255). A just society, tightly defined in this way,
has a homogenous morality: Unanimity is possible; the deliberations of any
one person are typical of all (Rawls, 1971, p. 263/232 rev.).
The deliberations of this typical person are to follow a set of procedures
that interpret, according to Rawls, the criteria implied by Kants idea of a
public viewpoint shared by unique individuals. With the benefit of hindsight,
the later Rawls will explain that there are two stages to his provision of
realistic content; namely, the presentation of a sound conception, and the
demonstration of its practicable character (1999a, p. 486; 2001, p. 185).
I will deal with each stage, as presented in Rawlss early work, explaining
how Rawlss task aligns with the first of deconstructions orientations
namely, a commitment to the possibility of justice.
In the first stage we will see Rawls identify two requirements that ideal
theory must satisfy, requirements that together represent the real force of
Kants view (1971, p. 251/221 rev.), mapping onto the ideas to which I
suggested Derrida must commit on account of his first orientation; namely,
faith in the possibility of justice. The content of justice must represent
impartial judgement, which means that it must not only be publicizable and
public, but also obligatory for individuals by reference to the idea of fully
collective judgement. Moreover, justices content must be subject to the
acceptance of persons conceptualized as bearers of those capacities that
make justice both necessary and possible. In other words, the principles of
justice must be acceptable to persons who are free, equal, instrumentally
rational and cooperative. Each requirement impartiality and adherence
to the ideal of moral personhood is then interpreted by substantive
decision procedures, which Rawls refers to as the original position.
Reasoning in accordance with these procedures allows all citizens to arrive
at the same two principles for the regulation of public institutions.
In the second stage of ideal theory construction, Rawls tests the art to
see whether it is practicable. If the conception is to be realistic, it must first
be amenable to the context in question, satisfying coherentist feasibility
requirements. In order to meet the practical needs of real citizens in their
social life, the construction must begin with the standpoint of persons
themselves (Rawls, 1999a, p. 347 & 304), which means that its content must
cohere maximally with those moral and non-moral beliefs that real persons
are unlikely to cede (Rawls, 1971, pp. 2021/18 rev.; 1999a, p. 289).
Furthermore, a realistic conception must also be stable. Hence, Rawls tests
his account of principles against their capacity to generate public support
among citizens themselves in the real world, allowing for the reproduction
of justice across stable societies (1971, pp. 454455/398399 rev.).
It is because the two principles of justice satisfy the above requirements
that Rawls claims they together represent an art of the possible. Although
in Chapter 3 I will bring a critical perspective to this art, identifying concrete
ways in which the determination of justices content is impossible, here I
wish to suggest that the first deconstructive orientation is bound to share
the constructive faith, in spite of its risks.
Before explaining the criteria and their satisfaction, I must first explain
what Rawls means by ideal theory. The main idea is to divide the task into
two parts. The first, ideal theory, defends a conception of a just society
that we are to achieve if we can (Rawls, 1971, p. 246/216 rev.), outlining
principles that should constrain society, and explaining how such principles
fulfil their regulatory function. In later work, Rawls explains that ideal
theory maps onto the idea of a realistic utopia, presenting a conception of
the best society that we can realistically hope for, given our moral and
psychological dispositions and the particular circumstances in which justice
is to play its role. Ideal theory probes the limits of practicable political
possibility (Rawls, 2001, p. 4 & 13; see also A. J. Simmons, 2010).
The second part of the task is constructing non-ideal theory, which
specifies how the realistic utopia might be achieved, or worked towards
under non-ideal conditions; that is, in the real world, characterized as it is
by differing levels of injustice. Non-ideal theory, Rawls explains, looks for
courses of action that are morally permissible and politically possible as well
as likely to be effective (Rawls, 1999b, p. 89). As A. J. Simmons correctly
explains, where ideal theory dictates the goal, non-ideal theory dictates the
route to that goal, presenting with strategies for instituting justice in societies
that only partially comply with just principles (A. J. Simmons, 2010, p. 13).
It might specify, for example, that one respond first to the most grievous of
injustices (violations of the equal basic liberties), and only then to less
important injustices (violations of equal opportunity, followed by the

difference principle). In so doing, non-ideal theory explores strategies for
achieving its goal, considering such issues as the conditions of legitimate
acts of civil disobedience, our focus in Chapter 3.
For the most part, Rawls focuses his energy on the determination of ideal
theory, the most important part (Rawls, 1996, p. 285). As he explains, the
determination of the ideal goal is the condition for non-ideal theory, which
otherwise has no basis for its practical directives. Our focus in this chapter
will be on Rawlss account of how the content of ideal theory resolves
justices demands and why the conception is realizable.
Kantian Criteria for the Possible: Taming

Levinasian Obligation
Rawls looks to Kants account of autonomy in the hope that an inter-
pretation of its real force (Rawls, 1999a, p. 264; see also 1971, p. 251/221
rev.) will help us clarify the criteria that should apply when constructing
principles to respond to the problems that unique, autonomous individuals
face when living among other such individuals. As I suggested in Chapter 1,
the preceding formulation reflects the two conflicting demands for both
individual and impartial consideration that Derrida believes are implied by
justice. These demands are now framed by the idea of reciprocity; that is,
the idea that whatever is owed to the Other is also owed to all Others, myself
included.
Rawls hastens to add that his conception is not a literal interpretation of
Kants actual doctrine with its deep dualisms between the necessary and the
contingent, form and content, reason and desire, and noumena and pheno-
mena. Rather, the theory of justice as fairness first clarifies the essential
parts that make Kants moral conception distinctive, reformulating these
criteria within the scope of an empirical theory, by which Rawls means
within the context of a particular society whose members share a collective
body of knowledge and face certain collective practical problems (Rawls,
1971, pp. 256257/226227 rev. & p. 264/233 rev.; 1999a, p. 264).
The essential parts of Kants viewpoint are two interrelated ideas, which
Rawls takes to map onto the first two of the three criteria I mentioned
earlier; namely, impartiality and adherence to the ideal of moral
personhood. Before attempting to provide a procedural interpretation of
these ideas, Rawls contributes a particular feature of his own to Kants
account, limiting the conception to the public structure of society. He does
not claim to determine moral principles for life in general, but instead
identifies principles appropriate for public institutions; that is, for those
major social institutions such as the constitution and principal socio-
economic arrangements that distribute fundamental rights and duties and
determine the division of advantages from social cooperation (Rawls, 1971,
p. 7/6 rev. & 252/222 rev.). These major social institutions are coercive,
drawing on state mechanisms to enforce their policies, and Rawls is
concerned to determine the conditions under which such coercion is
justified. We will now explore his presentation and interpretation of these
Kantian criteria, so as to grasp the precise sense in which principles of
justice are possible, while also explaining why deconstruction should not
oppose this constructive orientation.
Impartiality: legislation for a realm of ends

The first Kantian idea, legislation for a realm of ends, maps onto the idea of
impartiality, which in turn refers to the ideas of the Categorical Imperative
and publicity. The content of justice is to be judged appropriately impartial,
first, when it expresses the idea of fully collective judgement, represented
by a categorical imperative;2 and second, when it is both publicizable and
public (Rawls, 1971, p. 264/233 rev.; see also pp. 251252/221 rev., 357/226
rev., 264/233 rev.; 1999a, p. 264).
Before explaining Rawlss accounts of the Categorical Imperative and of
publicity, let us briefly consider why Derrida can only overcome Levinass
ineffective privileging of justices failure by committing to the value of
impartiality.
Impartiality tames the radicality of Levinass ethical obligation. Both
self and Other are to take up the standpoint of impartiality, which means
that the demands that Others put forward should not be unreasonable. As
I pointed out in Chapter 1, Levinass account of ethical obligation for the
fate of the particular Other differs with impartiality in its intention. Ethical
obligation is partial through and through. Its ultimate goal is responsibility
for the unique fates of different Others. In contrast, the intention of
impartiality is to ensure that this responsibility applies to all equally, and
this means that it also applies to the Other itself.
Levinas, we know, would resist limiting responsibility by a principle of
reciprocity, since this predetermines the meaning of an obligation whose
content must remain particular. In contrast, committed to the possibility of
justice, Rawls frames obligation for the fate of the Other with the idea of
reciprocity; that is, with the second of justices demands that Derrida
identifies (namely, impartial consideration). The priority of impartiality or,

as Rawls puts it, of right entails that whatever is owed to the Other is also
owed to all Others, and also to myself, as the Others Other. When the
Other must also take up a standpoint of impartiality, then his or her claims
are to be limited to only those that others are likely to view as reasonable.
Although such a formulation betrays the obligation for the fate of the
particular Other, Derrida acknowledges our practical need for doing what
is required to negotiate the demands. Consequently, this implies that
Derrida approves of the way in which the value of impartiality allows us to
respond to plural obligations. Prioritizing impartiality is best achieved, on
Rawlss account, when one requires that the Other also commit to
impartiality, producing a symmetrical definition of self and Other, in spite
of the risk of predetermining the self-Other relation in this way.
It is worth pointing out that Derridas presentation of the im/possibility
of hospitality also suggests that the asymmetry of Levinass ethical obligation
must be framed using the ideas of equality and impartiality. As Derrida
notes, on the one hand, Kants account of cosmopolitical hospitality (that
is, the welcome offered to a foreigner) is conditional on whether it can
coexist with the idea of right, which means that it is offered only in
accordance with the rule of law and with the self-determination of the
general will on the part of nations and states (Kant, 1996, 6:352353). In
this sense, Derrida wants to say that Kantian hospitality fails because it does
not grasp the sense in which a hospitality worthy of its name expects
nothingin return and adds no conditions to its offer (Derrida, 1999a, p. 98;
Derrida etal., 2001, p. 94; see also Derrida, 1999b; 1999c, pp. 6374; 2000;
2002b, pp. 329342; 2006c). On the other hand, Derrida notes that the
unconditional hospitality of Levinasian ethics can only be offered using
forms of hospitality that are conditioned, along Kantian lines, by the idea of
reciprocity (Derrida et al., 2001, p. 98). With reference to Levinas, then,
pure ethical obligation requires the very formality that betrays it.
With these initial comments out of the way, we now turn to Rawlss
identification of impartial judgement with Kants ideas of the Categorical
Imperative and of publicity. Rawls holds that principles of justice should
aspire to be categorical imperatives (Rawls, 1971, p. 253/222 rev.). According
to Kant, hypothetical imperatives direct us to take certain steps as effective
means to a specific end, whatever that may be. This end is not itself a
necessary end for rational human beings. In contrast, categorical imperatives
are those that obligate necessarily, on account of their expressing ends that
can be accepted by all rational beings. The idea of the Categorical Imperative
equates to the view that principles are obligatory for individuals by reference
to fully collective judgement and not by reference to any contingent ends
an individual might have, including that of making the Others particular

interests my own (Rawls, 1971, p. 253/222 rev.). The conception of justice
must express a public viewpoint that may be upheld by all persons,
appropriately conceptualized as free and equal.
In his Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, Rawls provides an
interpretation of Kant that distinguishes between four different concepts:
the moral law, the Categorical Imperative, the categorical imperative
procedure (hereafter CI-procedure) and particular categorical imperatives
(Rawls, 2000, p. 167). The moral law is an idea of reason, the idea of pure
necessity, and it applies to all rational beings (including divine beings)
whether or not they are, like us, finite beings with needs. The Categorical
Imperative, however, is a directive and as such bears only upon those
reasonable and rational beings that, finite with needs and desires, experience
the moral law as a constraint. Human beings experience the law in this way
and so the Categorical Imperative applies to us. The CI-procedure adapts
the Categorical Imperative to our empirical human circumstances, provid-
ing us with a method or set of procedures for helping us work out whether
our maxim, desire or intention can be generalized to all people in our
circumstances (Rawls, 2000, pp. 167170). Particular categorical imperatives
are those maxims practical reasons which finite persons give themselves
for their action that satisfy the corresponding requirements set out by the
CI-procedure. Particular categorical imperatives are thus the content of the
CI-procedure.
Rawls believes that the central feature of his account of justice, the
original position, is equivalent to the CI-procedure: it provides a method
or set of procedures that adapt the Categorical Imperative to the empirical
circumstances of our collective judgement. We imagine ourselves as
instrumentally rational parties behind a veil of ignorance that ensures the
impartiality of our judgement, depriving us of any knowledge that would
allow us to choose principles in our self-interest. Principles chosen in such
a context are analogous to particular categorical imperatives because they
apply to parties precisely by virtue of their nature as free, equal and
instrumentally rational, and not with reference to any other contingent
end they might have (Rawls, 1971, p. 253/222 rev.). To be sure, as a number
of commentators have noticed, the principles that parties could will from
the original position are not categorical imperatives in the sense that they
are valid for the will of any rational being in any circumstance, but they are
valid, says Rawls, for any rational human being, appropriately conceived as
free and equal, who happens to be in the objective and subjective liberal-
democratic circumstances of justice (see Darwall, 1976, p. 169; Doppelt,
1989, p. 841; ONeill, 1989, pp. 206218 & 2003, pp. 347366).
The reason it is necessary to tame Levinass account of ethical obligation

with the idea of impartiality is further clarified by the opposing accounts of
Kants Categorical Imperative that Levinas and Rawls provide. In Chapter 1,
we saw Levinas insist that ethical obligation for the Others fate is not
equivalent to its formalization by the Categorical Imperative, first, because
it is not a law that I formulate freely for myself; and second, because it
demands partiality, not impartiality, as I must make the Others particular
interests my own. In contrast, Rawls believes that the Other, too, must be
responsible, which means that responsibilities are now formulated in a
reciprocal manner, framed by their ability to apply to all wills.
For Rawls, impartiality implies a second Kantian idea namely, publicity.
As we know, Rawls believes Others (now symmetrically conceptualized as
equally responsible) should follow a decision procedure that interprets
Kants idea of legislation for a realm of ends. From this idea, Rawls draws a
further consequence for principles of justice. These are to be constrained
by their ability to be acceptable to all when publicized, and by their being
in actual fact public (Rawls, 1971, pp. 251252/221 rev. & 133/115 rev.).
The idea of the Kantian contract (along with the conceptions to which it
gives rise) expresses this ideal of publicity (1971, 16/15 rev., 55/48 rev. &
133/115 rev.; 1999a, p. 293; see also Kant, 1996, 6:311, 8:303 & 8:381386).
All persons implicated by the result are to find it acceptable, which means
that the principles regulating public institutions must also actually be
public, since persons cannot find something acceptable if they are unaware
of it (1999a, p.264).
From a deconstructive perspective, we could say that the value of impartia-
lity, with its related ideas of the Categorical Imperative and publicity, allows
us to take up the risk and challenge of mediating between the need to
respond to the ethical demand of a unique, singular Other on the one
hand, and the need to respond to the demands of plural Others on the
other hand. As I will suggest in a moment, the original position can be said
to provide a method for a realistic and practicable resolution of the
aporetic demands that Derrida believes are implied by justice.
An ideal of moral personhood: free, equal, rational, cooperative

This frame of impartiality sets the limits of responsibility before Others,
which now equates to responsibility before other persons in the capacity of
moral agents; that is, before others who are also committed to impartiality.
This leads to Rawlss second idea, of persons who are free, equal,
instrumentally rational and reasonable, which maps onto the requirement
that justices content be subject to the acceptance of all moral persons. This
requirement provides a practical way of negotiating the obligation to
respond to the needs of the particular Other and to the needs of all Others,
including ones own needs.
The first Kantian idea that informs Rawlss characterization of the original
position decision procedures is that legislation must be agreed to under
conditions characterizing persons as free and equal rational beings who
express their nature when they abstract from their own private ends,
choosing only those principles that all rational beings could also will (Rawls,
1971, p. 252/221 rev.). The idea is equivalent to treating persons not as
means, but as ends in themselves, as unique individuals in the world. Moral
principles based on this idea (the idea of right) are to have priority over
any particular empirical end that an individual might have.
Rawls employs two different steps in attempting to interpret this Kantian
idea of treating persons as ends in themselves. In a first step, he identifies
the primary features of the moral person, features that represent persons
as free to choose their own ends and as willing to abide by only those ends
that others would also be able to see as reasonable. These features make the
virtue of justice both necessary and possible.
From a Derridean perspective, justice is necessary because I am obliged
to respond to the claims made by Others for a place in my world. If justice
is to be possible, then we must conceptualize ourselves as bearers of those
capacities that enable us to decide between the conflicting claims of Others.
This conceptualization is precisely what Rawls means by an ideal of moral
personhood, an ideal that also characterizes the theories of Habermas and
Honneth, as we will notice in coming chapters. This ideal is clearly not
equivalent to the Levinasian idea of the obligated self. However, Derridas
version of responsibility towards the Other indeed requires something like
the ideal that Rawls, Habermas and Honneth defend. In the case of Rawls,
when faced with plural Others, we need to view ourselves as moral persons
capable of taking up an impartial standpoint, committing to the notion of
fairness between Others.
The first capacity of moral persons is that they are capable of formulating
and pursuing a conception of their rational advantage. They are capable of
having (and are assumed to have) a conception of their good (as expressed
by a rational plan of life) (Rawls, 1971, p. 505/442 rev.). As Rawls explains,
the concept of rationality is here interpreted in the narrow sense, standard
in economic theory, of taking the most effective means to ends (Rawls,
1971, pp. 1314/12 rev.). This first capacity makes justice necessary, leading
persons with different life-plans to make conflicting claims to scarce
resources (1971, p. 127/109110 rev.). It leads the Other, from a Levinasian

perspective, to make a claim to the need for a place within the selfs world.
However, this narrow sense of rationality does not capture the Kantian idea
that persons should abstract from their private ends and choose only those
principles that all such persons could also will. Hence, Rawls identifies a
second moral capacity, the ability to formulate and abide by a conception of
justice in a spirit of social cooperation, even when its contravention might
bring personal advantage. Moral persons are capable of having (and are
assumed to acquire) a sense of justice, a normally effective desire to apply
and to act upon the principles of justice, at least to a certain minimum
degree (Rawls, 1971, p. 505/442 rev.; see also Rawls, 2001, p. 169 &
pp. 1712). This capacity makes justice possible, since it describes the ability
to consider the interests of others and to cooperate in view of mutual good.
In a second step, Rawls attempts to represent these features of moral
personhood using substantive decision procedures, which he refers to as
the original position. Following these principles, citizens arrive at principles
of justice that reflect the relevant features of themselves. The first procedure
represents the first feature of moral persons, presenting the concept of a
party to the decision. These parties are depicted as concerned to pursue
their own rational advantage. In contrast, the second original position
procedure represents the second feature of moral persons; namely, their
willingness to offer and abide by terms and conditions that are reasonable
to others too. This willingness is represented by the veil of ignorance
constraints which models the Kantian idea of abstracting from private ends
to produce unbiased public judgement. Ensuring that no one party is
unfairly advantaged by social and natural contingencies, the veil of ignorance
blocks out all knowledge that could situate parties unequally (Rawls, 1971,
pp. 136137/118 rev.; 1999a, p. 257). Unaware of their class, social status,
natural abilities and particular generation, and lacking knowledge of their
particular conception of the good and their individual psychological
tendencies, parties come to a decision that is undistorted by the lottery
of birth (1971, p. 18/16 rev.), upholding equality and impartiality (1971,
p. 19/17 rev.). Of course, if parties are to have something to discuss, the
tailoring of the veil of ignorance cannot conceal everything. Principles must
be appropriate to the societies they regulate and thus parties know everything
they need to about their society in order to decide upon its principles (1971,
p. 138/118 rev.). Unless these circumstances existed there would be no
occasion for the virtue of justice (Rawls, 1971, p. 128/110 rev.).
From a deconstructive perspective, Levinass account of the obligation to
respond to the claims of plural Others demands allegiance to equity; that is,
to the second demand that Derrida believes justice involves. Derridas

words, here, about democracy are also relevant to justice: There is no
democracy without respect for irreducible singularity or alterity, but there
is no democracy ... without the calculation of majorities, without
identifiable, stabilizable, representable subjects, all equal (Derrida, 1988b,
p. 22). Responsibility must now allow for calculation, which implies
responsibility before other moral persons, symmetrically defined and equal,
not just responsibility before the Other in the particular.
Rawls appears to be well aware of the conflicting demands that Derrida
believes justice must resolve, because he takes seriously both the
particularity of moral persons as distinct individuals and, as we saw in the
previous section, the demand for impartiality in application. Construc-
tivism conceptualizes persons as non-exchangeable individuals who are also
equal. The concern for the distinction between persons is made explicit by
the priority Rawls accords to the first of two principles: a principle
guaranteeing for all individuals the protection of their basic liberties must
be satisfied before a second principle concerning fair inequalities is brought
into play. The priority of liberty protects individuals, as distinct moral
persons, against undue interference in their liberty to pursue their own
particular good. In this sense, Rawls appears to take up the deconstructive
challenge of negotiating the conflicting demands of a justice that both
protects the particularity of individuals and responds to the demand for
impartiality between them.
On the one hand, the distinctness of Rawlss moral persons is not
equivalent to the distinctness of the Other in the particular. The latter
prevents, in advance, the very possibility of defining the person in
symmetrical terms. On the other hand, as we saw in the previous section, we
must assume, under constraints of action, that impartiality is possible, which
implies reformulating the content of non-formal ethical responsibility
within an impartial standpoint. Despite an essential non-equivalence
between the Levinasian notion of the unique Other and the constructive
ideal of moral personhood, Rawls can be said to pursue the practical intent
of ethical responsibility, albeit within a standpoint of justice.
The two principles of justice

We have just demonstrated that Rawls provides a procedural interpretation
of the aforementioned Kantian criteria in an attempt to respond to unique
individuals while also respecting all such unique individuals equally. Rawls
now makes the bold claim that all citizens, reasoning in accordance with the
two procedures, should arrive at the same two principles for the regulation
of their public life. On this basis, he claims that the principles that the
parties would choose comprise the content of the art of the possible.
As regards this content, Rawls argues that parties in the original position,
unaware of their particular situation in society and rationally interested in
formulating and pursuing a conception of their rational advantage, would
choose to sidestep certain undesired outcomes (Rawls, 1971, pp. 302
303/266 rev. & 60/53 rev.). In the first place, they would ensure equal
protection of their liberties (Principle 1), securing the conditions for
everyone to use their instrumental freedom in pursuit of their conception
of the good. In the second place, and accounting for the term justice as
fairness, parties would ensure that any inequalities in socio-economic
arrangements are fair and equitable (Principle 2). Although parties would
certainly want to be rewarded for their individual effort and ingenuity, they
would nonetheless seek protection from the risks of disadvantage from the
lottery of birth. Consequently, parties would agree that inequalities are
fair only if they satisfy the principle of fair equality of opportunity (Principle
2B) and are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged (Principle 2A or
the difference principle). Moreover, Rawls also believes that all parties would
clearly recognize the need to order these two principles in lexical priority
(1971, pp. 302303/266 rev.). No party would agree that wealth can ever
compensate for the denial of certain fundamental liberties, and this means
that the first principle guaranteeing equal liberty must be satisfied before
the second principle permitting inequalities in welfare is brought into play
(Lexical priority of liberty). Parties would also prioritize fair equality of
opportunity (2B) over the difference principle (2A) so as to further ensure
against the lottery of birth (Lexical priority of fair equality of opportunity).
Once again, these are strong claims. Believing that all citizens should
recognize that such reasoning best serves the interests of parties under
conditions of uncertainty, Rawls goes as far as claiming that unanimity on
principles of justice is possible because citizens who reason in accordance
with the original position procedure will arrive at the same outcomes (Rawls,
1971, p. 263/232 rev.). The content of the art of the possible is exhausted,
in this way, by just two principles of justice.
However, Section II of this chapter will demonstrate that Rawls becomes
increasingly aware of the difficulties of determining justices content.
Reflecting on his qualification of these strong early claims allows me to
preface the second deconstructive concern developed in the second of the
chapters in each part of this book; namely, an attention to justices
impossibility.
A Further Criterion: Practicability
We have seen Rawls, in a first stage, defend the strong claim that all citizens,
reasoning in accordance with procedures that interpret the relevant Kantian
criteria, should arrive at the same two principles for the regulation of their
public lives.
In the second stage of the construction of ideal theory, Rawls realizes that
any attempt to reconcile the value of the individual with that of all individuals
must also be realistic. As I explained in Chapter 1, this is the third idea to
which deconstruction must commit, given Derridas affirmation of the
manner in which stable norms are needed to facilitate our communicative
engagement with one another. Although these norms are not absolute or
ahistorical but merely more stable than others (Derrida, 1988a, p. 147),
we nonetheless need them so as to make sense of, and respond to, the
different claims that Others put forward. For Rawls, the criterion of
practicability implies, first, the satisfaction of coherentist feasibility
requirements and, second, demonstration of the conceptions stability; that
is, its ability to actually be accepted by real citizens.
Coherency requirements
In order to meet the practical problems for which it is designed, a theory of
justice must begin not with first principles, but with the standpoint of
persons themselves (Rawls, 1999a, p. 347 & 304).3 This means that the
principles must cohere maximally with those moral and non-moral beliefs
that real persons are unlikely to give up (Rawls, 1971, pp. 2021/18; 1999a,
p. 289). It also means that the very Kantian ideal of the person as free,
equal, instrumentally rational and socially cooperative must itself be subject
to a coherency test. In the context of the dual deconstructive perspective
that frames this books analyses, the commitment to coherency is necessary
but also impossible to achieve. In this sense, the deconstructive perspective
both affirms something like the Rawlsian method while also questioning
Rawlss tendency to equate justices content with actually established
norms.
In his 1980 article Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory (1999a, pp.
340358), Rawls identifies three characteristics by virtue of which construc-
tivism can be contrasted with foundationalist and moral realist views like
rational intuitionism and, in doing so, clarifies the importance of achieving
maximal coherency with the considered moral and non-moral judgements
that real citizens sharing a certain tradition are unlikely to give up.
First, constructivisms real task is practical not epistemological (Rawls,

1999a, p. 306 & 341). Unlike moral realist views such as rational intuitionism
whose first principles are self-evident truths given by the nature of things
and known by rational intuition (1999a, p. 344) constructivism frames its
first principles to meet particular social problems and to provide a public
basis, by means of which citizens can justify, to one another, their common
institutions. A constructive conception need only be precise enough to
achieve this result (1999a, p. 347). Like Derrida, then, Rawls rejects the
notion of epistemological or moral truth.
Second, constructivisms method begins from the standpoint of persons
as agents of construction. Whereas the rational intuitionist method simply
requires the correct recognition of first principles whose content is already
fixed, constructivism establishes a framework for deliberation relying on
our own powers of judgement, developed within and shaped by a shared
public culture (1999a, p. 347). Where rational intuitionism implies a sparse
notion of the person as a mere cognizer of moral truth (able to grasp, and
be motivated to act on, first principles) (1999a, p. 346), constructivism
presents a complex ideal, bearing those capacities that both produce the
practical problem and provide the resources for its resolution. Principles
are thus understood to result from a procedure of construction that
expresses the conceptions that citizens have of themselves and of their
society.
Third, and consequently, if constructivism is to generate an appropriate
public basis for justification, it must clarify the reason for our reluctance to
renounce certain stable considered judgements about justice. There being
no standpoint external to citizens own perspectives when dealing with the
problems of justice that arise between them, any conception of justice must
take its reference points from the perspective of real citizens.
The commitment to the practical need to cohere with actual norms
aligns, as I have suggested, with the first of deconstructions orientations
towards the possibility of justice. Justice, as Derrida puts it, must be done.
Elsewhere, Derrida explains that norms are necessary for engaging
practically with one another in a shared world. The sedimentation of shared
patterns of comprehension within inherited contexts permits historicized
understandings that are relatively stable, without which we would not be
able to engage with one another at all. Derrida refers to these as norms of
minimal intelligibility (Derrida, 1988a, p. 147) that allow us to share an
understanding of words, gestures and expressions within a particular
culture. Although he also aims to show that these norms are not absolute or
ahistorical but merely more stable than others, and although he wishes to
remind us that these conventional structures may in principle be

transformed, it is fair to say that Derrida does not believe that it would be
either possible or desirable to rid ourselves of our shared norms (1988a,
p. 147). We need them, even if there is nothing necessary about the ones
that we have inherited. Consequently, to justify our decisions to one another
with reference to justices two demands, we need to make use of those
norms that the community of friends together employ when structuring
our interactions.
For Rawls, coherentist requirements provide further justification for the
Kantian personhood ideal over other alternatives (see also Bankovsky,
2011). If there really is no standpoint external to the perspectives of parties,
then a personhood ideal must be justified against those different bodies of
evidence that, to use Derridas vocabulary, have achieved relative stability
over the course of our shared history. More particularly, the ideal must
satisfy two requirements. First, it must cohere with non-moral judgements
about normal empirical identity firmly established by the human sciences,
insofar as these conclusions refer to the idea of an acceptable public
viewpoint in science (Rawls, 1999a, pp. 295301). Second, it must cohere
with those considered moral judgements about justice that are also stable
(the convictions that slavery, despotism, torture and so on, are wrong),
judgements that refer to the idea of an acceptable public viewpoint in
practical affairs. If constructivism did not satisfy such coherentist
requirements, it would not respond to the public practical problem for
which it is designed. Although Derrida would suggest that norms are not
absolute or ahistorical but are rather relative to their users, and although
Rawls similarly acknowledges the practical need to avoid claims to absolute
truth, both philosophers agree that we can only achieve our practical ends
by constructing principles cohering with those viewpoints that allow us to
share an understanding of our social world.
Consequently, the conclusions of the human sciences impose feasibility
requirements on moral personhood ideals, providing descriptions of the
minimal conditions of mental and physical health necessary for social
cooperation: conditions of physical and mental continuity, of the capacity
to reason and use language and, most importantly, of the capacity to
cooperate with others. Such conditions are constraints that any sound
criterion of identity must satisfy (1999a, p. 296). Consequently, the
normative ideals provided by moral and political theory of the type of
person to which we aspire should not prevent basic human needs from
being met or basic human capacities from being developed. A public
conception must be rejected, Rawls insists, if its incorporated personhood
ideal requires physical or psychological characteristics that violate these

minimal conditions. Rawlsian persons interest in their two moral faculties
(for formulating and pursing a conception of the good and for formulating
and abiding by a conception of justice) accords with these minimal
conditions: by acting in accordance with principles of justice, persons
express their nature as free, equal, rational and socially cooperative beings
subject to the general conditions of human life as we know it (Rawls, 1971,
p. 253/222 rev.). As Levinasian ethics requires, justice is to be assessed
against its ability to prevent useless suffering, and Rawlss conception
frames this requirement using the idea of impartiality, taking seriously the
need to ensure that all Others are guaranteed those minimal conditions of
mental and physical health allowing cooperative relations with others.
The second feasibility constraint is more demanding: a personhood ideal
must also cohere with the considered moral judgements about justice of the
society in question.4 Such judgements are provisional fixed points which
we presume any conception of justice must fit (Rawls, 1971, p. 20/18 rev.;
see also 9). They include the convictions that religious intolerance, racial
and sexual discrimination, the institution of slavery, manipulation and
torture are unjust. It is because the Kantian personhood ideal coheres more
clearly with such judgements permitting what Rawls calls a reflective
equilibrium between principles and considered judgements that Rawls
prefers it to the alternatives.5 For example, the average utility personhood
ideal authorizes judgements we think unjust. Persons, represented by
parties who each, without exception, follow the principle of insufficient
reason in their calculations and thus take the same risks, are able to justify
to one another the institution of slavery on the basis that it produces the
greatest average happiness, and that each, in the initial contractual situation,
would choose the average utility principle even at risk of subsequently
becoming a slave (Rawls, 1971, pp. 144145/167 rev.). This judgement
being intolerable to persons in contemporary liberal democracies, the
average utility ideal must be rejected. Equally untenable for today is the
Hobbesian ideal, where purely instrumental interest alone serves as political
motivation. Our society is no longer so fragmented by those sectarian
divisions and conflicts of interest that once marked Hobbess historical
moment (Rawls, 1999a, p. 422). In sum, justice has no other foundations
apart from its reference to the acceptability of its viewpoint: the
presuppositions needed to defend justice are practical; that is, their
significance is rooted in our own capacity to provide our own reasons.
Derrida, with his historicized account of the need for stable meanings,
would agree, while also insisting that the contingency of the project should
imply responsibility for the effects of our determinations, a point that Rawls
does not explicitly acknowledge, as will become clear in Chapter 3.
Rawls thus favours the Kantian ideal of personhood for coherentist
reasons: it coincides more clearly than its alternatives with our considered
judgements of justice, clarifying why we insist on holding them. First, parties
sidestep the undesired outcomes of the average utility principle, protecting
themselves from slavery by prioritizing the protection of the basic liberties,
and by agreeing to socio-economic inequalities only under conditions that
do not infringe such liberties and that allow equality of opportunity,
benefitting the least advantaged. Second, not only do such principles
confirm our stable moral judgements, they also do not conflict with those
other considered judgements with which we would be loathe to part. In
practice, the difference principle should not lead to a callous meritocratic
society and if it did, its associated public conception should be rejected.
Third, such principles provide criteria for ordering conflicting claims in
importance because, once the root of considered judgements has been
appropriately clarified, reflective equilibrium requires that certain
judgements be rejected rather than the principles changed.
This latter point again coincides with Derridas historicized under-
standing of the need for shared meanings. As Paul Patton points out,
Derridas genealogical enquiries into a given concepts history, inter-
pretations and interconnections with other concepts often allows Derrida
to identify elements of the present concept that we might want to reconsider
or even abandon altogether (Patton, 2007a). In Rawlss case, the systemati-
zation that the principles of justice provide permits Rawls to argue that we
should abandon the meritocratic and neoliberal view. Economic reward is
not proportional to desert, for the original position shows that undeserved
accidents of birth are morally arbitrary. Moreover, individuals cannot justly
lay claim to the shares they could command in a free market because the
original position insists that inequalities in property acquisition are just
only when the appropriate background conditions of justice have been
guaranteed (Rawls, 1971, pp. 7075/6165). The systematization provided
by the principles or, as Rawls calls it, the wide reflective equilibrium
between principles and considered judgements is far from conservative,
since it demands the rejection of neoliberal judgements that are nonetheless
part of our tradition when these contradict the fundamental base justifying
our other more essential considered judgements. Here, Rawls calls on us, in
deconstructive fashion, to inherit our tradition responsibly, in a manner
that is clearly more attentive to the demands of justice than the alternative
conceptions.
The stability of the conception

I cannot over-emphasize the importance of the notion of stability for
Rawlss determination of the practicability of the conception in this second
stage of theory construction. We will see in the next section that this notion
leads the later Rawls to substantially qualify his defence of justice as fairness.
The idea is that if the conception is to be realistic and practicable, then it
must be able to generate public support among citizens themselves, in the
real world (Rawls, 1971, p. 454455/398399 rev.).
Having mapped out, in the first stage, the content of a political conception
that seems sound and reasonable, Rawls now demonstrates, in the second
stage, that the conception can be realized and is not utopian in the pejorative
sense (Rawls, 1999a, p. 486; see also 2001, p. 185). One must demonstrate
that there exist ways to bring others to share the view, either through
persuasion or coercion. However, things are more complex when it comes
to liberal conceptions of justice because certain forms of coercion are
inconsistent with the priority of liberty. Citizens should, in principle, be able
to freely uphold the public conception, rather than being coerced into
doing so. In this sense, Rawls must show that a society whose public
institutions are well-ordered by principles of justice would indeed generate
its own support (Rawls, 1971, pp. 454455/398399 rev.). Rawls believes that,
insofar as coherence requirements are met, it is reasonable to expect citizens
to recognize the principles as affirming their own individual good subject to
limits of fairness. Such citizens, it is claimed, will tend to freely affirm and
abide by those principles, allowing for the reproduction of just societies.
From a Homogenous Morality Towards an

Acknowledgement of Impossibility
We now have the elements at hand to define the criteria that inform Rawlss
early formulation of the art of the possible. The conception of justice as
fairness interprets the characteristic structure of a Kantian formulation of
the question of justice, framing responsibility for the Other with the idea of
impartiality; that is, responsibility for Others in the plural, myself included.
It provides an interpretation of the demands Derrida believes justice
involves, and it does so by prioritizing impartiality over ethical obligation so
as to achieve a practicable solution, congenial to our liberal democratic
temperament.
For the early Rawls, a society well-ordered by justice is thus one in which
all free, equal and rational persons accept the very same two principles, for the
very same reasons, affirming a homogenous morality (Rawls, 1971, p. 5/4 rev.;
1999a, p. 255).
Clearly, with its attention to the impossibility of justice, deconstructions
second orientation would remind us that this claim is immodest, impractical
and unrealistic, in spite of Rawlss hopes to the contrary. This second
orientation will direct the analyses of Chapter 3.
It is no surprise, then, to discover that Rawls soon drops the strong
claims of his early work.6 He concedes that the account of stability is
unsustainable in its above form, due to the unrealistic requirement that all
citizens affirm just the two principles of justice as fairness. In particular,
and as we will see in a moment, Rawls admits that justice as fairness with
its two principles is but one of a number of reasonable competing liberal
public conceptions, and he consequently limits the content of ideal
theory not to the two principles, but rather to a set of very general public
values that all reasonable liberal public conceptions share. These revisions
to stability are accompanied by further changes, which emphasise the
need to acknowledge the consequences of the burdens of judgement,
and which produce an account of public reason that is ecumenical and
open to change (Rawls, 1996, pp. xxxviilxii & 372434; 1999a, pp. 573
615). Unfortunately, as we will see in Chapter 3, although designed to
protect individuals from undue coercion, these changes effectively
relinquish the strong prescriptive claims about fairness, permitting forms
of suffering and disadvantage that would have been ruled out under the
original theory.
These qualifications provide fuel for Derridas view that it is not possible
to resolve, once and for all, the ideas of individual and impartial
consideration. Rawls begins to recognize the impossibility of the
constructive task, increasingly referring to justice as a project to be
achieved, much like Derridas justice-to-come. This nascent acknowled-
gement provides the impetus for the second chapter in each part of this
book, where I will identify some of the concrete ways in which the theories
of Rawls, Habermas and Honneth produce unjust outcomes. In the case of
Rawls, I will reflect, in Chapter 3, on some of the troubling implications of
his tendency to identify constitutional essentials and basic public values
with only those established norms already affirmed by everyone in
overlapping consensus, noting that this leaves Rawls unable to accord moral
weight to forms of suffering over which established norms have no
jurisdiction. I will be suggesting that this failure indicates something about
justice itself; namely, its perfectible nature and its inability to fully respond
to the needs of Others in the particular.
Qualifying stability
In Political Liberalism, Rawls explains that all qualifications to his initial
conception result from just one correction to Theory namely, the revision
of its account of the stability of a society well-ordered by justice (Rawls,
1996, pp. xviixix). Revising Theorys account of stability is demanded for
constructive reasons alone, a consequence of the need to render the
conception acceptable or reasonable to the very individuals for whom it is
designed (1996, p. xviii).
Rawls forsakes as unrealistic his earlier claim that a society is stable only
when citizens accept the very same two principles for the very same reasons
(1996, p. xix). In a modern liberal democracy, a truly impartial constructive
standpoint cannot demand such homogenous allegiance from its citizens.
With a heightened awareness of the effects of the conditions of reasonable
pluralism, Rawls acknowledges that an absolute justification of this sort,
which Rawls now terms a comprehensive doctrine, cannot satisfy the
constructive requirement that the public conception also generate its own
support. The gross coercion required to enforce justice as fairness effectively
invalidates it as an acceptable public viewpoint.
With respect to the stability of the conception, Rawls provides two
important revisions to his account of the nature and object of consensus on
justices content. These changes result in a far less prescriptive account of
justices content, in an effort to avoid undue coercion. From a deconstructive
perspective, such changes indicate the difficulties involved in negotiating
individual and impartial consideration.
Qualifying the nature of consensus: overlapping

(Political Liberalism, First Edition)7
The first change takes place in the first edition of Political Liberalism, which
presents a revised understanding of consensus upon the content of justice.
Consensus is now presented as overlapping (1996, Lecture IV) wherein
persons still accept the same public conception (justice as fairness) but for
different reasons.
Instead of a simple consensus around the same reasons, overlapping
consensus results from persons affirming two principles of justice from
within their own comprehensive, or partially comprehensive, doctrines,
each from [their] own point of view (Rawls, 1996, p. 134). A doctrine is
comprehensive when it includes conceptions of what is of value in human
life, limiting both political and non-political conduct and, in the limit, life
as a whole. The political conception is a module, an essential part, which

fits into and is supported by the various reasonable comprehensive doctrines
within society (1996, p. 12). It is important to emphasize, however, that the
conception of justice is not the result of political compromise (a mere modus
vivendi) but is rather affirmed in common by citizens, for their own reasons,
as having great value.
Citizens insert the political conception into their reasonable
comprehensive doctrines using the method of reflective equilibrium
(1996, p. 28). Individuals assess the public conception in terms of how well
it articulates their own considered convictions of political justice, at all
levels of generality, after due examination, and once all adjustments have
been made. In an overlapping consensus, citizens achieve a stage of
reflective equilibrium that now incorporates the principles of justice as part
of their different comprehensive views. A Protestant might uphold the
principles of justice because he or she supports freedom of religion, thereby
sustaining a principle of toleration that underwrites the fundamental
liberties protected by the first principle. A Kantian might affirm the political
conception on the basis of Kants comprehensive philosophical liberal
doctrine and its account of moral autonomy. A citizen with a hybrid view,
affirming both a freestanding political conception of justice and a large
family of non-political values, might affirm the principles of justice on the
basis that political values normally outweigh any non-political values that
happen to conflict with them. These three alternative comprehensive views
overlap in supporting the same public conception but for different reasons.
Despite this important modification, Rawls still believes that reasonable
citizens will nonetheless unite around the very same public conception of
justice. However, he subsequently qualifies this view still further, even
conceding that consensus cannot reasonably be expected to obtain on just
one public conception of justice alone. This is a striking concession, the
significance of which has not been sufficiently explored.
Qualifying the object of consensus: constitutional essentials

(Political Liberalism, Second Edition)
The important concession that the object of consensus cannot reasonably
include justice as fairness alone is presented, along with a number of further
revisions, in the New introduction to the second edition of Political Liberalism
(also referred to as Introduction to the paperback edition) (Rawls, 1996,
pp. xxxvlx) and in The idea of public reason revisited (1999a, pp. 573
615). It is a qualification that substantially weakens Rawlss initial claims.
Not only does he acknowledge that consensus for the same reasons cannot
reasonably be expected, he also admits that expecting agreement on the very
same conception is equally unreasonable. Surrendering the idea that
overlapping consensus will ever obtain on one political liberal conception
alone, Rawls instead defends what he sees as the far more reasonable
expectation that consensus obtain on a set of more basic public values and
constitutional essentials that a family of reasonable political liberal
conceptions together endorse.
Consequently, the second edition of Political Liberalism defines the well-
ordered stable society as one in which: (A) everyone accepts and knows that
others accept the principles of one of a family of reasonable, liberal, public
conceptions of justice; and (B) the basic social institutions are effectively
regulated by one of a family of reasonable, liberal, public conceptions of
justice (or a mix), which includes the most reasonable conception (Rawls,
1996, pp. xlixl). The political conception of justice as fairness presented
in Theory is now just one member of a family of reasonable conceptions,
because reasonable disagreement about the most reasonable political
conception is to be expected.
Substantially qualified, the content of justice now includes a far less
prescriptive set of basic political values that all reasonable citizens can
together be expected to affirm. With simple consensus on just the two
principles of justice ruled out as unlikely, Rawls instead expects agreement
around the more limited question as to what makes political conceptions
reasonable or unreasonable, and consequently claims that we will together
endorse a more basic set of shared political values, which he also refers to
as constitutional essentials.
Allowing citizens to separate reasonable from unreasonable political
conceptions, constitutional essentials specify the general procedures of
government and the political process, and, most importantly, those equal
basic rights and liberties of citizenship that legislative majorities are to
respect (Rawls, 1996, p. 227). When a number of reasonable liberal political
conceptions coexist, it is of the greatest urgency that such essentials are
identified, subject to the liberal principle of legitimacy, which demands
that political power be exercised in accordance with only those values that
all citizens may reasonably be expected to endorse (1996, p. 137, 216 &
217). As Rawls had already remarked in the first edition of Political
Liberalism:
It is inevitable and often desirable that citizens have different views as to

the most appropriate political conception; for the public political culture
is bound to contain different fundamental ideas that can be developed in

different ways. (Rawls, 1996, p. 227)
Hence, Rawls claims that justices content may only be given by those basic
public values on which overlapping consensus obtains, since only these can
facilitate non-coerced allegiance to justice (Rawls, 1996, pp. xlviiixlix & 6).
To qualify as reasonable, a liberal conception must therefore affirm the
basic set of shared public values on which overlapping consensus has
obtained. First, it must specify certain liberties (familiar to democratic
regimes). Second, it must assign a special priority to these freedoms,
protecting them from majority voting with a constitution. Finally, it must
include some form of equal opportunity principle, allowing citizens to
access all-purpose means to use their liberties. Rawls recognizes that
different liberal political conceptions can take up these basic public values
in conflicting ways without preventing an overlapping consensus from
obtaining around them.
Clearly these changes signify a retreat from the strong claims of his early
theory, relinquishing the ideal of a just society in which all citizens affirm
the same conception for the same reasons. The just society is now comprised
of citizens affirming one of a family of reasonable liberal conceptions
(including justice as fairness), underwritten by a shared commitment to a
set of more basic public values. Rawls even recognizes that it would be
unreasonable to expect citizens to affirm these basic public values for the
same reasons, acknowledging that citizens will embed these values in
different and unspecified ways into their particular moral, philosophical or
religious comprehensive doctrines (Rawls, 1996, p. 156). All that is possible
is an ideal that protect[s] the basic liberties and prevent[s] social and
economic inequalities from being excessive (1996, p. lvii; see also p. lvi &
Lecture VII: 3).
From a deconstructive perspective, we can say that such qualifications are
needed in order to respect the uniqueness of individuals, who each affirm
different comprehensive doctrines, while also maintaining a commitment
to impartiality. However, as I will argue in Chapter 3, this substantial
weakening of the theory effectively prevents Rawls from responding to
certain forms of suffering. In this sense, respecting the uniqueness of
individuals is achieved, for Rawls, only by prioritizing impartial consideration
over individual consideration, which effectively prevents the very respect
that such impartiality was intended to uphold. This problem occurs because
realistic constraints produce such limited normative agreement that the
theory effectively relinquishes the sorts of prescriptive claims about fairness,
suffering and disadvantage that Rawls initially intended his theory to make
in its attempt to avoid a merely formal defence of individual liberty. I intend
to suggest that if Rawls had explicitly recognized that the constructive
project will always fail, he might have been more willing to maintain his
defence of the more demanding content of his original theory, which
certainly involves the coercion of individuals but, in so doing, produces a
vocabulary that allows individuals to demand positive support for their
individuality on the part of institutions.
Further Qualifications
The attempt to make his account of stability realistic produces further

changes, including an attention to the consequences of burdens of
judgement and important modifications to his concept of public reason,
again designed to make sense of the need for the conception of justice to
respect the uniqueness of individuals and attract uncoerced support.
The reasonable: the consequences of burdens of judgement

The first change is a greater emphasis on the value of the Reasonable,
acknowledging the consequences of what Rawls refers to as the burdens of
judgement. Adding significantly to the conception of the Reasonable
already presented in Kantian constructivism in moral theory, Rawls now
defines it as a virtue of persons, in terms of two basic aspects. In the earlier
text, the Reasonable designates the willingness to propose and abide by fair
terms of cooperation, provided others do likewise. In Political Liberalism it
also includes the willingness to recognize the burdens of judgement and
to accept their consequences for the use of public reason (Rawls, 1996,
Lecture II: 1 & 2). This second aspect equates to a particularly strong
conception of tolerance. Certain forms of disagreement are fully compatible
with the reasonableness of those who disagree (Rawls, 1999a, p. 476). The
burdens of judgement or the burdens of reason, as Rawls elsewhere
refers to them (1999a, p. 475), are the many hazards involved in the correct
(and conscientious) exercise of our powers of reason and judgement in the
ordinary course of political life (Rawls, 1996, pp. 5556). More obvious
sources include: difficulties involved in assessing conflicting and complex
empirical and scientific evidence; problems in weighting the relevant
considerations; difficulties in determining the content of concepts due to
reasonable differences in judgement and interpretation; difficulties in
balancing different kinds of normative considerations; and difficulties in

setting priorities and making adjustments in cases where institutions must
be realistically limited. Acknowledging differences in viewpoint as effects of
unique life experiences, we realize that our reasonable differences indicate
neither irrationality, nor prejudice, nor self-interest, nor wilfulness
(although Rawls is quick to point out that these sources of unreasonable
disagreement play their all too familiar part in political life) (1996, p. 58).
Reasonable as opposed to simple pluralism describes the proliferation
of different ethical and religious ideals, which nonetheless share a
commitment to fairness (see also Charles Larmore, 2003, p. 378).
Once again, the inclusion of reflection on the sources of reasonable
disagreement appears to reflect a growing attention to the unique life
experiences of the Other, whose needs and interests are irreducible to my
own. Consequently, simple consensus on just two principles is no longer
feasible. However, given that we must nonetheless commit to the idea of
impartiality, and thus to an ideal of moral personhood, Rawlss idea is that
we should be able to commit to an overlapping consensus on those far
more basic political values that a family of reasonable liberal political
conceptions together affirm.
Public reason: wide and open to change

Greater attention to the burdens of judgement also entails changes to
Rawlss account of public reason, which describes those reasons citizens
are entitled to use when discussing how their public institutions should be
organized. The remarkable insight of the second edition of Political
Liberalism is that the content of public reason is not fixed, any more than it
is defined by any one reasonable political conception (Rawls, 1996, p. liii).
This historicized account of public reason coincides with Derridas idea
that norms are not absolute or ahistorical but merely more stable and, as
such, may in principle be transformed when the demands of justice are
negotiated in new ways.
For Rawls, public reason is public in three ways (1996, p. li & 213). First,
it is public as concerns its users: it is the reason of a public. If reason is to
reflect this fact, it must be limited by the criterion of reciprocity, which
states that the reasons we offer for our political action should be accepted
by other reasonable citizens (1996, p. xlvi; see also p. 217 & 253).
Second, public reason is also public as concerns its object. Its object is
the good of the public and matters of fundamental justice. Since conceptions
of the good life vary, the good life in question must be limited to a more
basic set of public values, or, as we saw earlier, constitutional essentials

(1996, pp. 227230, xlviiixlix & 6). As for matters of fundamental justice,
Rawls believes that public reason should, again, be restricted to these
essentials, and not extend, strictly speaking, to other matters to which we
often refer as political (for example, matters such as tax legislation, laws
regulating property, statutes protecting the environment, funds for museums
and the arts etc.) (1996, pp. 215216; see also Larmore, 2003). Such
limitation is needed for two reasons (Rawls, 1996, p. 214215). First, public
reason must be able to be realized in practice, and this means that agreement
on matters of fundamental justice must be achieved before other broader
issues can be considered. Consensus is to be expected on constitutional
essentials, for example, but not on tax legislation. Second, and of interest
for our purposes, when other political issues arise that do not directly
concern fundamental matters, Rawls suggests that it may not be appropriate
to require public consensus. As long as agreement obtains on constitutional
essentials, then citizens might often be correct to settle further issues (for
example, the protection of the environment or funds for the arts) within a
more particularist spirit. Rawls thereby makes space for decisions that are
more appropriate to the particularity of the Others involved. Moreover,
public reason need not apply to the background culture of civil society in
which reasonable comprehensive doctrines are pursued within particular
associations such as churches, universities, professional groups and so on
(1996, p. 13; 1999a, p. 576). Citizens may draw on non-public reasons for
judgements that do not directly concern the basic structure of society.
Finally, public reason is public because of its content, given by ideals
expressed by the family of reasonable political conceptions. Once again, we
notice the concessions Rawls makes in order to account for the need for
this content to be the object of non-coerced agreement. The first edition of
Political Liberalism clearly requires an exclusive view of the ideal; that is,
public reason is to exclude all reference to comprehensive reasons. For
societies that already recognize the distinction between comprehensive and
political, non-public reasons only jeopardize the ideal of publicity. However,
the second edition of Political Liberalism and The idea of public reason
revisited revise this view, supporting a wide view of public reason on the
basis of the proviso. Reasonable comprehensive doctrines may be
introduced into public reason at any time on the proviso that, in due course,
public reasons are presented as support (Rawls, 1996, pp. lilii). As with the
question of stability, such modifications permit a more realistic account,
designed to reflect what real citizens are capable of implementing. Enlarging
the limits of public reason acknowledges that the roots of democratic
citizens allegiance to a political conception lie in their respective

comprehensive doctrines, be these religious or non-religious (Rawls, 1999a,
pp. 592593). If citizens come to recognize the strong ways in which
comprehensive doctrines sustain political conceptions, then this can only
assist in fostering the duty of civility, facilitating the kind of society to which
public reason aspires.
This qualification again weakens the strength and immodesty of Theorys
initial claims, but, as we will discover in Chapter 3, it does so at the expense
of the admirable substantive normative content that the virtue of civility
should invoke (see also Chapter 8). First, it now appears that public reason
is not specified by only justice as fairness, but rather by a set of more basic
political values which reasonable political liberal conceptions together
endorse. It is crucial that public reason is not specified by any one political
conception of justice, certainly not justice as fairness alone (Rawls, 1996,
pp. liliii). Second, this set of political values, says Rawls, is in fact open to
change over time, a function of the practices of real citizens in their work of
justifying to one another their institutions (1996, p. 6; 1999a, pp. 581582).
Third, public reason can indeed include non-public reasons, in an attempt
to strengthen civility among citizens, once these citizens recognize the strong
ways in which the differences of others in fact foster justice. Consequently,
in his attempt to provide a realistic solution, the content of public reason
becomes increasingly vacuous, dropping the more demanding fair equality
of opportunity principle and the difference principle, and thereby limiting
normative values to only those which are already affirmed in common.
Despite these many qualifications, it remains true to say that Rawls
maintains his commitment to the possibility of determining the content of
justice. The endorsement of the basic public values, embodied in a
constitution, remains the minimal requirement that any reasonable public
conception must satisfy. In this sense, while uniform agreement on the
details of one public conception is not to be expected, Rawls continues to
defend the art of the possible, insisting that consensus may be achieved on
a set of more basic political values (Rawls, 2006, pp. xlviiixlix & 6).
Moderating the Art of the Possible:

A Deconstructive Perspective
This chapter has demonstrated, first, that Rawlss commitment to the art of
the possible initially sustains strong, immodest and demanding normative
claims about the possibility of determining the content of justice. We saw
Rawls frame the responsibility to the Other with the idea of impartiality
among all Others, a necessary strategy if justice is possible, as Derrida
believes. This leads Rawls to defend a Kantian ideal of moral personhood,
which symmetrizes Levinass asymmetrical ethical obligation by also
requiring the Other to take up a standpoint of impartiality, limiting his or
her claims to only those that others are likely to view as reasonable. Finally,
Rawls demonstrates that his conception is practicable because it coheres
with those moral and non-moral judgements that have attained great
stability over time. Although Derrida wishes to remind us that these norms
are not absolute or ahistorical but merely more stable than others, Derrida
would agree that such norms are necessary if we are to be able to engage
practically with one another at all.
On this basis, we saw that the early Rawls presents a tightly defined account
of the just society that appears not to do justice to the uniqueness of the
Other person. Justice requires that all free, equal and rational persons
accept the very same public conception, in the knowledge that their peers do
likewise, within a society structured by (and known to be structured by) the
conception in question (Rawls, 1971, p. 5/4 rev.; see also 454/397 rev.;
1999a, p. 255).
I then demonstrated that Rawls comes to substantially qualify these strong
claims with a series of important concessions, providing support for Derridas
additional view that it is not possible to fully resolve the value of the unique
individual with the value of impartiality among all unique individuals.
First, as we have seen, the stability of the just society no longer requires
simple consensus on one public conception, but rather overlapping
consensus on a set of general public values implicitly affirmed by a family of
reasonable liberal public conceptions that includes justice as fairness. This
qualification is needed in order to uphold the value of the unique individual,
who, Rawls recognizes, should not be coerced into affirming a public
conception that has no relation to his or her specific conception of the
good life.
Moreover, Rawls emphasizes the importance of the Reasonable with its
acknowledgement of the consequences of burdens of judgement. Again,
he acknowledges the need to recognize that differences in viewpoint need
not indicate unreasonableness. Consequently, he stresses the need to avoid
undue coercion of unique individuals who, due to different social and
background conditions, identify different bodies of relevant evidence,
provide different weightings to the component parts of the evidence and
come to different judgements and interpretations. This leads Rawls to back
away from the strong claims of Theory and to instead defend a far more basic
set of shared public values.
However, I have also indicated the line of argument to be pursued in the
next chapter; namely, that the attempt to respect the uniqueness of the
individual leads Rawls to align the content of justice with only those values
that everyone can affirm in overlapping consensus, leaving his theory
unable to recognize the moral weight of values and sentiments that are not
affirmed or experienced in common. In this sense, the priority granted to
impartiality effectively prevents the very respect for the uniqueness of
individuals that such impartiality was designed to protect. Unfortunately,
the implications are serious in that the changes relinquish the strong
prescriptive claims about fairness of the earlier work. By ruling out the
difference principle and the fair equality of opportunity principle as
constitutional essentials, Rawlss theory is no longer able to prevent the
forms of suffering and disadvantage produced by neoliberal societies that
should be ruled out by the theory of justice as fairness. I will argue that
despite his growing sensitivity to the difficulties of reconciling individual
and impartial consideration, Rawls over-privileges impartiality in the form
of norms that are already affirmed in overlapping consensus, thereby
providing a merely formal defence of individual liberty that cannot always
respond to the suffering of Others.
Chapter 3
Rawls and the Undecidability of the Original

Position Procedure
The ideal of a just constitution is always something to be worked toward ... A just
regime is a project, as Habermas says, and justice as fairness agrees.
Rawls, Reply to Habermas, 1996, pp. 401402
Following on from the work of Chapter 2, which presented Rawlss art of

the possible along with its subsequent qualifications, this chapter takes
seriously the second of deconstructions orientations; namely, an attention
to the impossibility of completing the constructive art of justice. My
analyses allow me to defend the need to cultivate a culture prepared to
make the effort to identify and respond to sufferings that are not recognized
as injustices by Rawlss constructive theory. In this sense, I defend the view
that justice is possible only on the basis of an attempt to achieve the
impossible that is, to make amends for our inevitable failure to fully
reconcile individual and impartial consideration.
I will begin by recalling the reasons why deconstruction commits to, but
is not exhausted by, the constructive orientation. A second orientation, atten-
tion to the impossibility of justice, also characterizes its outlook. This work
will frame my attempt to demonstrate that justice is not exhausted by the
constructive content we saw Rawls attribute to it in Chapter 2. Reasonable
faith in the possibility of a just constitutional regime must, in this sense, be
supplemented by an attempt to respond to the concrete ways in which
justice proves to be impossible. Using Rawlss vocabulary against him, I will
identify certain concrete ways in which the ideal theory presented in
Chapter 2 produces difficulties for Rawlss understanding of non-ideal
theory; that is, his account of courses of action designed to achieve justice
in an imperfect society (Rawls, 1999b, p.89; 1971, p. 246/216 rev.). I will
argue that one aspect of Rawlss non-ideal theory, namely, his account of
legitimate cases of civil disobedience, has the capacity to reproduce
permanent socio-economic minorities. This effectively produces an unjust
Rawls and the Undecidability of the Original Position Procedure 73
society on Rawlss own account insofar as the inevitable injustices, as Rawls

puts it, of a constitutional system are no longer equitably shared, as he
believes they should be. Consequently, Rawlss theory cannot rule out the
production of moral forms of resentment or even of anti-social and immoral
manifestations of excusable general envy, which produces destructive
forms of collective behaviour that undermine cooperation. These analyses
will allow me to claim that justice, as Rawls presents it, is not possible, even
when it is carefully constructed and correctly instituted. In closing, I will
also provide evidence that Rawls himself reluctantly comes to acknowledge,
to a limited degree, the impossibility of determining justices content,
affirming the perfectible status of theories of justice, and I will suggest that
theories of justice would do well to engage more explicitly with this idea.
In this way, I intend to take a critical stance towards the work of both
Derrida and Rawls. Pursuing the suggestion of Chapter 1, I will argue that,
although Derrida himself correctly emphasizes the possibility and
impossibility of justice, it is fair to say that his own textual analyses of
contemporary political and social theory are not always as effective as they
might be. If deconstruction is to produce effects in such contexts, its
challenge must be taken up by political and social theorists, sociologists,
economists, policy-makers and legislators: those who, in their pursuit of
social justice, have the opportunity to reflect on the constitutive relation
between current conceptual systems and specific injustices. As for the
constructive orientation, I will suggest that Rawlss reluctant acknowledge
ment of justices perfectible nature must be celebrated as the very condition
for the critical function of justice, which depends on the practical possibility
of continually revisiting justices imperfect forms.
The Priority of Liberty: Initial Immunity to

Anti-Democratic Outcomes
As I outlined in Chapter 1 when explaining Derridas ideas of justice and
democracy, deconstruction commits to the constructive orientation without
being exhausted by it. In spite of the tension that exists between the value
of the unique individual and the value of all such individuals, a decision
must be made and criteria are needed for this decision. Hence, the need to
commit to the possibility of constructing a content that negotiates the two
demands in a more convincing way than the alternatives. This commitment,
I argued, requires upholding three important constructive ideas; namely,
impartiality, an ideal of moral personhood and practicability.
However, deconstruction does not subscribe to the art of the possible in

any simple sense. It requires that responsibility individual and collective
be assumed for the negotiations inevitable failure. Continued vigilance is
needed with a view to identifying the ways in which the negotiation fails, a
sensitivity that compels [us] to denounce not only theoretical limits but
also concrete injustices (Derrida, 2002a, p. 248). In this sense, deconstructive
justice is not exhausted by the constructive moment.
This second deconstructive orientation is not immediately evident in the
work of Rawls. As I noted at the start of Chapter 2, Derrida himself briefly
suggests that Rawlss constructive determination of justices content would
in fact benefit from the deconstructive insight into its impossibility (2002a,
p. 242), and I explore this suggestion in the current chapter. However, my
own deconstructive analysis of the injustice of Rawlsian justice moves beyond
Derridas rather limited analyses of the conceptual limits of democracy,
which I outlined in Chapter 1. As I indicated there, Derridas account of
these limits misses its mark when applied to the contemporary theories of
liberal democracy offered by Rawls, Habermas and Honneth, since these
are not exhausted by the majority principle that Derrida critiques.
In Chapter 1, we saw Derrida suggest that the axiom of numerical equality,
which Aristotle identifies with democracy, destroys the freedoms it is
designed to protect. Not only does it deny the freedom of individuals (by
allowing, in principle, the possibility of a majority denying freedom to
some), it also destroys the freedom of all as equals (since denying freedom
to some would annul the principle of the equality of all) (Derrida, 2005a,
p. 34). Democracy, identified with the axiom of numerical equality, has the
capacity to destroy itself, because it effectively allows a majority to legitimately
contest it.
However, as I briefly indicated in Chapter 1 when pursuing Pattons
suggestion, if deconstructions attention to impossibility is to produce
effects in contemporary theories of liberal democracy, then it must engage
more closely with the more complex set of axioms that define such theories.
Rawlss theory is not anti-democratic in the sense that Derrida identifies,
because Rawls limits outcomes of the majority voting principle in an absolute
sense, first, by the basic liberties, which are removed from majority regulation
by a constitution that protects them; and second, by the limits of fairness.
In Theory, for example, the majority principle does not exhaust democracy,
but rather constitutes just one component of a set of constitutional
procedures to which majority outcomes are themselves subject. Within the
framework of justice as fairness, the role and scope of the majority principle
is specified at the second stage of a four-stage sequence in which the two
principles of justice are applied (Rawls, 1971, pp. 195201/171176 rev.).

After selecting principles in the original position, parties move to a second
stage, a constitutional convention, where they are delegates to the choice of
a constitution. The veil of ignorance is partially lifted so that parties, while
lacking information about their own social position, are nonetheless made
aware of the general facts about their own particular society. Delegates are
then able to choose the most effective constitution among the options, one
that satisfies the principles of justice and is best calculated to lead to just
and effective legislation.
There are two limitations on the delegates choice of a constitution. First,
the basic liberties of all are to be equally protected. Second, procedural
arrangements are to be both just and feasible, leading to a fair and effective
system of legislation. Rawls believes that a majority voting principle is a
practical necessity and must be included in the procedural arrangements of
a legislative system. However, he insists that its outcomes be subject to the
standard set by the first principle of equal liberty, which requires the
protection of the fundamental liberties of the person and liberty of
conscience and freedom of thought (1971, p. 199/174175 rev.).
Consequently, political procedure which includes the majority voting
principle is subject to two conditions, which Derridas analysis of democracy
does not consider. First, its procedures are limited by the basic liberties
specified by the constitution, including the political liberty to vote and to
hold public office, as well as freedom of speech and assembly; liberty of
conscience and freedom of thought; freedom of the person; the right to
hold personal property; and freedom from arbitrary arrest and seizure as
defined by the rule of law (1971, p. 60/53 rev.). As Rawls put it, Unless
constitutionally recognized restrictions on majority legislation and other
elements are in place, the basic liberties and other freedoms will not be
properly protected (1996, p. 424). Protecting the basic liberties in a
constitution effectively removes them from majority regulation altogether.
To its defence of constitutional protection of the basic liberties (1996,
p. 227; see also p. 338, 339 & 348), Political Liberalism identifies a second
limit that must apply to majority outcomes; namely, the Reasonable. This
limit is to apply because not even the constitutional protection of liberty can
completely safeguard against the tyranny of the majority that Derrida fears.
Outcomes of majority voting may well be legitimate in upholding the basic
liberties, while also unjust in their deviation from the principles. Like a
criminal trial, Rawlss imperfect procedural justice cannot secure a just
outcome but guarantees only that the substantive procedures themselves are
fair. A democratic constitution is an example of imperfect procedural justice,
and commitment to it involves agreeing to both its benefits and its

drawbacks. In other words, citizens have a political duty to comply with
whatever the majority enacts, even if the majority outcome deviates from the
principles (Rawls, 1971, p. 229/201 rev.). Consequently, Rawls thinks that a
second condition must apply to the majority voting principle namely,
satisfaction of the moral-political virtue of fairness, or what Rawls refers to as
the Reasonable (Rawls, 1996, pp. 427433; see also 1971, p. 355/312; 1999a,
pp. 180181). This condition specifies that the burden of unjust outcomes
must be acceptable to reasonable persons, which means that it cannot weigh
too heavily in any one case, but rather must be more or less evenly distributed
over different groups in society (Rawls, 1971, p. 355/312; 1999a, pp. 180181;
see also 1996, pp. 427433). We are obliged to carry the burden of injustice,
only as long as it is a part of the inevitable difficulties of working with a consti-
tutional regime, distorted by the difficulties of judgement, and only insofar as
this burden is equitably shared. Consequently, Rawls acknowledges that the
duty to comply is problematic for permanent minorities suffering the burden
of injustice for many years who, in fact, have a duty to resist (1971, p. 355/312
rev.). The duty to comply is therefore limited by fairness; it consists in
equitably sharing the inevitable imperfections of a constitutional system.
To summarize, then, Rawls sidesteps what we saw Derrida refer to earlier
as the suicidal tendency of democracy, first, because the priority of the basic
liberties effectively limits, absolutely, the outcomes of majority voting; and
second, because the requirements of the Reasonable ensure that the
inevitable imperfections of a constitutional regime are equitably shared.
The priority of liberty means that the political and basic liberties can only
be restricted in the extreme case of constitutional crisis, when democratic
institutions no longer operate effectively and when their procedures for
dealing with emergencies are postponed (Rawls, 1996, p. 354). In this
exceptional case, temporary suspension of democratic political institutions
may indeed be required. Consequently, Rawls would probably claim that
the case to which we saw Derrida refer in Chapter 1 namely, the suspension
of democratic procedure during the 1992 Algerian elections, designates a
case of constitutional crisis, justifying the suspension of certain fundamental
political principles. With a view to protecting other basic liberties, one
might be more correct to limit the principle of equal participation, including
the right to vote and hold public office, than to allow other basic liberties to
be threatened by democratic procedure. For Rawls, suspension of certain
basic liberties is warranted, in such an extreme case, for their very protection,
solely for the sake of preserving these institutions and other basic liberties
(1996, p. 355).
As such, Rawlss theory negotiates both the principles of the freedom of

moral persons, as distinct individuals, and the freedom of all, as moral
equals, in a manner that is more nuanced than the model of democracy
that Derrida considers. In Rawlss theory then, democracy does not, as
Derrida fears, lead to its own destruction, but rather includes constitutional
measures designed to protect public institutions and other basic liberties in
times of constitutional crisis.
Although Derridas account of democracys failure does not apply to
Rawlss account, which is not exhausted by the majority voting principle, the
practical intent of Derridas analyses can still be brought to bear on Rawlss
theory, which nonetheless continues to privilege the reflections of the
majority in the determination of justices content. Pursuing such analysis
takes seriously Derridas definition of the philosopher who, as I explained
in Chapter 1, is a person who demands accountability from those in charge
of public discourse; that is, a person who demands that we take responsibility
for the concrete forms of injustice that are produced or maintained when
one commits to the constructive task of determining justices content.
The Failures of Rawlsian Justice: On the Duty to

Comply with Injustice
Derridean undecidability characterizes Rawlss political constructivism in
two senses. First, as we will see shortly, at any given moment in time, the
content of the original position cannot be fully determined, in principle.
Second, this is a consequence of the fact that any determination of its con-
tent inevitably produces its own forms of injustice. In both Theory and
Political Liberalism, the original position procedure, applied to the constitu-
tional convention, legislation and judicial decisions, cannot provide defini-
tive criteria to determine when the inevitable imperfections or inevitable
injustices (Rawls, 1971, p. 355/312) of constitutional procedure are no
longer equitably shared. Consequently, the theory risks institutionalizing
those very permanent minorities who Rawls believes have a right to civil
disobedience. And yet, even if these permanent minorities had the
resources and motivation to oppose such injustice, Rawls claims that the
use of techniques such as civil disobedience is illegitimate in cases of ongo-
ing socio-economic marginalization. This contradiction can only be
resolved on Rawlss account by affirming (as he himself acknowledges in
his mature work) that it is always necessary to re-enter the original position,
at a subsequent point in time, calling on others to do likewise, so as to test
our principles and political values against our changing considered

judgements about justice.
My reflections will reveal that the status of the original position is similar to
the one we saw Derrida ascribe to justice in Chapter 1. Under constraints of
action, justices content must be determined, but this content does not
exhaust justice. On the one hand, we must assume that we can determine the
content of the original position in the form of political values affirmed in an
overlapping consensus. On the other hand, we must also concede that the
determination of its content does not allow the reasonable limits of inevitable
injustice to be determined in advance of ongoing reflection on the changing
set of considered judgements of all those involved. That is, we must
acknowledge the concrete ways in which the art of the possible remains
impossible in principle. The original positions content is given, though not
exhausted, by a certain set of shared political values, and this content neither
equates to nor guarantees justice. Consequently, in view of Derridas justice-
to-come, it must, in principle, be possible to re-enter the Rawlsian standpoint
of fairness, modelled by the original position, so as to reassess publicly affirmed
political values, constitutional essentials and legislative and judicial outcomes,
against those changing considered judgements or sentiments about justice
that are formulated or experienced as new situations of injustice arise.
The undecidability of ideal theory for non-ideal theory

I will be suggesting that Rawls contradicts himself in his presentation of
the criteria for determining when the inevitable injustices (Rawls, 1971,
p. 355/312) of constitutional procedure are no longer equitably shared.
On the one hand, Rawls explicitly states that this burden cannot weigh too
heavily in any one case, thereby ruling out the institutionalization of
permanent minorities. On the other hand, when determining the conditions
of the duty to comply with and the duty to resist the outcomes of a
constitutional regime, Rawls limits any opposition to only those clear and
obvious infractions of basic liberties and of a very basic and uncontroversial
equal opportunity principle. Not only does this mean that the
institutionalization of permanent socio-economic minorities cannot be
prevented, but it also suggests that this sorry situation cannot be legitimately
contested. In so doing, Rawls contravenes his own initial insight regarding
the need to ensure that such inevitable injustices are equitably shared.
Rawlss account of the duty to comply and civil disobedience are part
of non-ideal theory, and this means that, before proceeding to the analysis,
we need to recall the main characteristics of the distinction between ideal
and non-ideal forms of constructive theory. As I explained in Chapter 2,

Rawls divides the constructive task into two parts (see also A. J. Simmons,
2010). Ideal theory constructs a conception of a just society that we are to
achieve if we can (Rawls, 1971, p. 246; see also 2001, p. 4 & 13). In Theory, it
provides a defence of two principles of justice as fairness that should regulate
the well-ordered society. As we saw in Chapter 2, the expanded edition of
Political Liberalism qualifies the content of ideal theory in important ways,
withdrawing the strong defence of two principles and instead limiting ideal
theory to a more restricted defence of those public values and constitutional
essentials that together constrain the family of reasonable political liberal
conceptions, which also includes justice as fairness.
In contrast, non-ideal theory specifies how this ideal conception might
be achieved, or worked towards, under non-ideal conditions; that is, in the
real world, characterized as it is by reasonable disagreement and by differing
levels of injustice. Non-ideal theory thereby presents strategies for instituting
justice in societies that only partially comply with just principles, considering
such issues as the duty to comply with certain forms of injustice as well as
the duty to resist.
This chapter is concerned with the manner in which the ideal of justice
(along with its dual commitments to both individual and impartial
consideration) informs Rawlss presentation of non-ideal theory. Ideal theory
does not itself determine the conditions under which its citizens should
comply with or oppose certain forms of injustice. This is because it cannot
state, in advance, whether opposition produces greater or fewer benefits
than compliance. This, I argue, is one way in which Derridas notion of
undecidability is visible in Rawlss constructive theory. In order to facilitate
practical and workable solutions, the limitation of the duty to resist to
blatant and obvious injustices effectively determines the tension between the
value of impartiality and the value of the unique individual in favour of the
majority viewpoint about what counts as injustice, thereby requiring
minorities to comply with certain forms of socio-economic marginalization.
In other words, the undecidability between justices demands, that is,
responsibility before the individual and responsibility before all such
individuals, is determined in favour of the majority of such individuals,
overlooking responsibility before the unique individual or before a more
limited set of suffering individuals. Rawlss decision to limit the duty to resist
to only those injustices that are already obvious to all sits uncomfortably with
his recognition that permanent minorities should have legitimate recourse
to forms of civil disobedience when their burden of injustice is not equitably
shared, even in such cases where the injustice is not obvious to all.
As Rawls explains, inequitable sharing of the burdens of injustice may

also produce the moral sentiments of resentment (on the part of those who
suffer) and indignation (on the part of those who bear witness), and even,
in extreme and unfortunate situations, the toxic, immoral and anti-social
sentiment of excusable general envy, which threatens the very idea of
cooperative good. However, Rawls does not acknowledge that the capacity
for his theory to institutionalize inequitable burden should, in principle,
prevent him from limiting the duty to comply to just those obvious
injustices that the majority alone views as unjust. Nor does he recognize that
in some cases excusable general envy should qualify as a sentiment with
moral relevance, which the majority should then include in their set of
considered judgements. This is a complex set of claims, and I will attempt
to unpack them in what follows.
Acceptable and unacceptable injustices in Theory:

questioning the distinction
First, I will examine Theorys four-stage sequence, where, with reference to
the idea of the original position, principles of justice are determined and
applied. As indicated earlier in this chapter, Rawls concedes that laws
enacted under a just constitution can nonetheless be unjust if they deviate
from the principles. This does not mean, however, that we should take it on
ourselves to actively oppose their injustice. On the contrary, we are bound
to comply with unjust laws provided that they do not exceed certain limits
of injustice (Rawls, 1971, p. 351/308 rev.). It is Rawlss presentation of the
distinction between acceptable and unacceptable injustice that I will here
be questioning.
In a first stage, parties in the original position select principles of justice,
after which they move to a second stage, where they are delegates to the
choice of a constitution. As I explained earlier, the veil of ignorance is partially
lifted so that delegates know the general facts about their own particular
society. However, the idea of the original position is not affected (Rawls,
1971, p. 198/174) by this partial lifting of the veil, because delegates still
have no information about their own social position and are thereby bound
to choose a constitution that should be acceptable to all. The constitution
they choose not only protects the basic liberties, but also specifies those
procedural arrangements likely to produce a just and effective system of
legislation. In the third stage (the legislative stage), proposed bills are assessed
from the perspective of a representative legislator who knows nothing about
him or herself, thereby maintaining the practical intent of the original
position. Statutes must satisfy not only the principles of justice (a requirement
Rawls will retract in Political Liberalism) but also the limits laid down in the
constitution. In the final stage, we assume the role of judges, interpreting
both the constitution and the laws as members of a judiciary.
At the level of the constitutional convention, Rawls explains that only the
first principle (the equal liberties principle) is to be included as a
constitutional principle. The second principle (the fair equality of
opportunity and the difference principle) is to be taken up at the legislative
stage. The exclusion of the fair equality of opportunity and difference
principles is warranted, Rawls explains, because factors involved in their
pursuit are often the subject of controversy; their application normally
requires more information than we can expect to have. It is impractical for
principles whose nature and pursuit are subject to reasonable debate to be
included in a constitution that must be seen to be upheld by public
institutions (Rawls, 1971, pp. 198199/174175 rev.).
The first point to note is that injustices are to be expected because only
imperfect procedural, and not perfect procedural, justice can be achieved.
Like a criminal trial, even a fair procedure can produce imperfect outcomes;
due process cannot guarantee a just outcome. The second point to note is
that the injustice of an outcome is measured against the principles of justice
to which all citizens should agree. As is clear from Chapter 2, Political
Liberalism modifies this, requiring that agreement obtain only on a more
limited range of shared political values and on constitutional essentials
themselves. In Theory, however, the constitutional essentials are themselves
selected by delegates who have already agreed to justice as fairness. The justice or
injustice of an outcome resulting from the imperfect procedures of a fair
constitutional convention is thus to be judged by comparison with the
principles themselves. Unjust outcomes may well be procedurally just without
necessarily conforming to the principles of justice (1971, p. 198/173 rev.).1
When constitutional procedures permit majority outcomes that are less
than just, Rawls believes that citizens face a conflict of duties (1971,
p. 363/319 rev.); that is, a conflict between two opposing political duties:
the duties to comply with, and to resist, unjust laws. Compliance with laws
that produce unjust outcomes is a duty for two reasons. First, having
committed to the viewpoint of a constitutional convention, we must choose
among the very limited number of feasible procedures that have a chance of
being accepted at all. We recognize, at this point, that none of these feasible
procedures will always decide in our favour. Outcomes that appear unjust to
us are to be expected even when we think that the constitutional procedures
permitting them are fair. Second, consenting to one of these imperfect
procedures is preferable to no agreement at all. Accepting the advantages of

an effective constitution implies accepting the risk that we might also suffer
from the defects of one anothers knowledge. There is, states Rawls, no
other way to manage a democratic regime (1971, p. 355/312 rev.).
The critical question that must then be asked concerns the precise limits
of the duty to comply. As Rawls puts it,
At what point does the duty to comply with laws enacted by a legislative
majority (or with executive acts supported by such a majority) cease to be
binding in view of the right to defend ones liberties and the duty to oppose
injustice? (Rawls, 1971, p. 363/319 rev.; see also 1971, p. 351/308 rev.)
In order to know which duty has priority, we need criteria to determine how
to balance them.
Rawlss response to his own question is that compliance with unjust laws
is no longer a duty when injustice exceeds certain limits (1971, p. 352/308
rev.). As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, when discussing the priority of
Rawlsian liberty, the limits of injustice are exceeded in two cases: first,
where basic liberties are not upheld, and second, where citizens do not
share equitably in the inevitable injustices. It is at this point, however, that
Rawls makes a striking and unfortunate concession. He states that when
working out whether a citizens share of injustices is equitable, citizens
should not consider socio-economic injustices. That is, one should ignore
violations of the difference principle, which specifies that inequalities are
to maximize the expectations of the worst off. The exclusion of socio-
economic injustice from due consideration is necessary, says Rawls, because
infractions of the difference principle are not easy to ascertain and are thus
unlikely to be the object of agreement. In other words, disagreement over
socio-economic injustice is to be expected given the difficulty of weighing
up statistical and other information. Rawls writes:
There is usually a wide range of conflicting yet rational opinion as to

whether this [difference] principle is satisfied. The reason for this is that it
applies primarily to economic and social institutions and policies. A choice
among them depends upon theoretical and speculative belief as well as
upon a wealth of statistical and other information, all of this seasoned with
shrewd judgement and plain hunch. (Rawls, 1971, p. 372/327 rev.)
It follows, then, that it would be impractical to limit inevitable injustice by

reference to a principle that generates wide-ranging disagreement.
By excluding violations of the difference principle, Rawls suggests that

when the basic liberties are upheld (the first requirement), the requirement
to share equitably in inevitable injustices (the second requirement) only
applies to particularly blatant (1971, p. 372/326 rev.) violations of the
principle of fair equal opportunity because such infractions are easier to
identify. In other words, Rawls restricts the duty to resist unjust laws to only
those obvious and clear cases of substantial injustice and, more particularly,
to serious infringements of the first principle of justice, the principle of equal
liberty, and to blatant violations of the second part of the second principle,
the principle of fair equality of opportunity (1971, p. 372/326 rev.).
Obvious infringements are clearly recognizable violations of liberty that
are practised by social institutions. They include blatant injustices where
certain minorities are denied the right to vote or to hold office, or to own
property and to move from place to place, or when certain religious
groups are repressed and others denied various opportunities (Rawls,
1971, p. 372/327 rev.). Unlike the evaluation of violations of the difference
principle, the establishment of these wrongs does not presuppose an
informed examination of institutional effects but rather is obvious to all
(1971, p. 372/327 rev.). In this way, Rawls limits the duty to resist to only
those injustices that can be perceived as obviously and clearly wrong not
only by the minority, who feel either resentment at their own suffering or
indignation at the suffering of others, but also by the majority. Rawls thus
concludes that civil disobedience legitimate opposition to unjust
outcomes is limited, in principle, to only those clear infractions that all
persons with a sense of justice are capable of recognizing.
The implications are important and unfortunate. Rawls obviously thinks
that the duty to resist injustice is legitimate when seeking to secure civil and
political liberties, but not when correcting injustices in the distribution of
income, housing, education and social mobility. The latter are to be
tolerated because, due to the difficulties of weighing the evidence, it is not
obvious to all that they are even unjust. Moreover, as long as civil and
political liberties are guaranteed, Rawls believes that normal political
processes regulated by majority voting can be relied upon to correct the
aforementioned socio-economic injustices.
Rawls is certainly too optimistic here. An oppressed minority often enjoys
the liberty to vote, freedom of speech, freedom of association and formal
equality of opportunity to access good schools, sporting facilities, jobs,
government posts and so on, without, for all that, being able to defend itself
against being outvoted for long periods on issues such as the distribution of
income, housing and education (see also Haksar, 2003). Guarantees of civil
and political liberties cannot prevent the existence of permanent minorities

who, for many years, inequitably suffer the burden of the inevitable injustices
of a constitutional regime in this case in the form of socio-economic
injustice. Rawls himself goes some way towards recognizing this very point
when he concedes that, in view of the complexities, it is difficult to check
the influence of self-interest and prejudice (Rawls, 1971, p. 372/327 rev.).
As Vinit Haksar points out, in the case of substantial but less obvious cases,
even high-minded people can perpetrate injustices for long periods of time,
believing that they are doing what is right and just (Haksar, 2003, p. 388).
Such considerations suggest that the duty to resist should also apply to
those cases in which injustice is not obvious but nonetheless weighty. Indeed,
it is my view that Rawls himself should agree with this assessment, given his
comments in Theory that the injustices should not weigh too heavily in any
particular case (Rawls, 1971, p. 355/312 rev.; see also 1999a, p. 180; 1996,
p. 428). However, he does not recognize that, in a near-just society, permanent
minorities often endure such injustice even when all citizens enjoy the
formal liberty to vote along with formal access to attend good schools, live in
safe neighbourhoods, access sporting facilities, apply for jobs on the basis of
merit, stand for public office and so on. The socio-economic injustice to
which permanent minorities submit tends to go unscrutinized both by the
majority and the courts alike, precisely because the basic liberties and some
form of weak equal opportunity principle continue to be upheld.
To use Derridas vocabulary, the conflict between the duty to comply
and the duty to resist remains undecidable. Against Rawls, it appears
difficult to determine, in advance, the criteria by means of which to balance
these duties (see also Feinberg, 1989, pp. 116124; and Farrell, 1980). Such
criteria should not be limited, as Rawls suggests, to only those more obvious
breaches that are capable of being accepted as such by the majority, for this
excludes other breaches no less serious, which, given the difficulties of
weighing up statistical and other information, are less likely to be the object
of reasonable agreement. In Theory, justice as fairness cannot provide
criteria to determine the acceptability of the injustice of legitimate laws
because it is unlikely that persons can agree, even when they employ their
sense of justice. The sense of justice, here, is undecidable.
This does not mean, however, that the idea of impartiality between unique
individuals, interpreted by the original position, is not worth pursuing. I am
not suggesting that we would do well to reject Rawlsian principles entirely.
For the practical reasons that make Derrida commit to the possibility of
justice, the attempt to provide a public vocabulary that allows us to justify
our norms to one another is a worthy task to pursue and, in this sense, Rawls
is not wrong to limit the content of a just constitution to those principles

that are likely to be the object of reasonable agreement. However, it is fair
to say that Rawls should show greater awareness of the injustices that may be
reproduced by a reasonable constitution, encouraging his fellow citizens to
take seriously not only moral forms of resentment and indignation, but also
as I will argue in the next section manifestations of excusable general
envy. As Axel Honneth correctly points out in deconstructive spirit, justice
implies individual and collective responsibility for the pathologies that our
societies reproduce, even when constitutional essentials and basic public
values are upheld (see Chapters 6 and 7).
Given the fact of social complexity and societys tendency to change, it
makes little sense, then, to lay stake to a definitive determination of justices
content. Outcomes of the original position procedure are necessarily
revisable. The original position procedure, applied to the constitutional
convention and to legislative and judicial outcomes, cannot be exhausted
simply by those values that are likely to be the object of reasonable
agreement, for this excludes those considered reflections about unjust
outcomes not yet recognized by the majority.
Compliance in Political Liberalism: the undecidability of political values

Next, I consider whether Rawlss mature account, in Political Liberalism, of
an overlapping consensus on political values and constitutional essentials
can provide the desired criteria. Once again, it will be shown that under
conditions of value-pluralism, these political values and essentials cannot
determine the reasonable limits of inevitable injustice in advance of the
consideration of a changing set of judgements about previously unrecognized
injustices. The set of political values and essentials commonly affirmed by
the family of reasonable liberal, public conceptions are only of limited use
in determining the reasonable limits of unjust outcomes. This is because
these shared political values are interpreted in conflicting ways by different
liberal, public conceptions, thereby legitimizing a large range of reasonable
disagreement between public conceptions themselves. Reasonable dis-
agreement in interpreting public values means that citizens considered
reflections about justice will also conflict in new legislative and judicial
settings. In such cases, citizens must be able to re-enter the standpoint of
impartiality modelled by the original position, so as to reassess their shared
political values, constitutional essentials and legislative and judicial
outcomes against the changing set of considered judgements about injustice
aired for consideration in public reason. Once again, from the deconstructive
perspective, a determined content of justice produces its own forms of

injustice and must be thereby reworked and revised, resembling Derridas
idea of justice-to-come.
First of all, we must recall that, in Political Liberalism, Rawls recognizes that
the gross coercion required to enforce the public conception of justice as
fairness would effectively invalidate it as an acceptable public viewpoint. As
discussed in Chapter 2, Rawls revises his account so that the public
conception of justice, which all persons affirm, includes only those shared
public values that a variety of different, often incompatible, liberal political
conceptions are able to endorse. In any actual society, a number of differing
liberal political conceptions compete with one another in societys political
debates. Thus, political liberalism must explain how a well-ordered society
is possible given not only reasonable pluralism in comprehensive doctrines,
but also reasonable pluralism in liberal political conceptions of justice
(Rawls, 1996, p. xlviii). After defining the conditions that a liberal political
conception must satisfy, Rawls claims that an overlapping consensus between
liberal political conceptions of justice can obtain on certain, more basic,
public values that each conception shares with the others.
As indicated in Chapter 2, a liberal political conception must satisfy the
following conditions: first, it must specify certain liberties (familiar to
democratic regimes); second, it must assign a special priority to these
freedoms; and third, it must include some form of equal opportunity
principle, allowing citizens to access all-purpose means to use their liberties
(Rawls, 1996, pp. xlviiixlix & 6). Different liberal political conceptions will
satisfy these conditions in different ways. Rawls concedes, for example, that
other liberal political conceptions might prefer to substitute, for both the
fair equality of opportunity and difference principles, a principle guaran-
teeing for everyone a sufficient level of adequate all-purpose means (1996,
p. xlix). Given the burdens of judgement, we recognize that those different
liberal political conceptions, incompatible with the one we happen to
affirm, are not, for all that, unreasonable, as long as they satisfy the above
three conditions (1996, p. xlix). Consequently, an overlapping consensus
between conflicting liberal political conceptions (and not just conflicting
comprehensive moral doctrines) can only obtain on those more general
public values that coincide with the above three conditions, for these are
the values that each liberal political doctrine interprets in often conflicting
ways. Overlapping consensus on these values is the only sort of consensus
practicably possible.
In this sense, while affirming ones own particular political liberal
conception, one must also accept that other political conceptions, which
satisfy the three aforementioned conditions, are reasonable, even if their

interpretation of these conditions conflicts with ones own. The basic public
political values on which overlapping consensus obtains thereby invite, and
permit, a plurality of different, indeed conflicting, interpretations, and,
under conditions of reasonable pluralism, this disagreement is to be
expected and accepted.
Now the question arises as to whether these more basic political values
are sufficient to resolve the problem we considered in the previous section,
allowing us to determine when the inevitable injustices of a constitutional
regime are no longer equitably shared. Inall cases, it is clear that the basic
liberties are to be upheld. This is non-negotiable. However, as concerns
socio-economic injustice, it again seems unlikely that reference to basic
political values affirmed in overlapping consensus can allow us to convince
one another that the burden that permanent socio-economic minorities
endure is, in fact, unjust. These political values, being very general and
inviting conflicting interpretations including, for example, both justice as
fairness and neoliberalism, cannot provide the desired criteria. Consequently,
although citizens might succeed in convincing others that their own political
conception is, at least, reasonable, they cannot reasonably expect others to
endorse their own specific interpretation of the basic public values. As Rawls
puts it:
While I view [justice as fairness] as the most reasonable (even though

many reasonable people seem to disagree with me), I shouldnt deny
that other conceptions also satisfy the definition of a liberal conception.
Indeed, I would simply be unreasonable if I denied that there were other
reasonable conceptions satisfying that definition, for example, one that
substitutes for the difference principle, a principle to improve social well-
being subject to a constraint guaranteeing for everyone a sufficient level
of adequate all-purpose means. (Rawls, 1996, p. xlix)
Reasonable disagreement over the specific interpretation of these shared

political values is to be accepted, and this means that differences in viewpoint
with respect to socio-economic injustices must likewise be accepted.
As we saw in Chapter 2, faced with the problem of reasonable disagreement
over the interpretation of shared political values, Rawls believes it urgent
for citizens to reach agreement, at the very least, on constitutional essentials,
by which he posits, first, fundamental principles specifying the general
structure of government and political process (including some form of
majority voting); and second, equal basic rights and liberties of citizenship,
which legislative majorities are to respect (1996, p. 227). These principles

and procedures basically institutionalize those general political values that
all liberal political conceptions must endorse (namely, affirmation of basic
liberties, prioritization of these liberties and inclusion of some form of
equal opportunity principle). In other words, only the basic political values
alongside general principles for political process can be specified in a
constitution. Consequently, Rawls now states, as he did in Theory, that
constitutional essentials should exclude both the difference principle and
the fair equality of opportunity principle, whose more demanding
interpretation of fairness cannot be institutionalized in a constitution
without unreasonable coercion (1996, pp. xlviiixlix, 6 & 227230). To this
he now adds that the constitution should also include a weak version of
equal opportunity which simply guarantees that careers are open to talents,
far less prescriptive than the fair equal opportunity principle which also
guarantees a fair chance to attain such careers, such that those with similar
abilities and aspirations are not affected by their social class (Rawls, 1971,
p. 301/266 rev. & 73/63 rev.).
Developing Theorys insights still further, Rawls draws an important
difference between legitimacy and justice, explaining why outcomes may be
legitimate but unjust. From the perspective of citizens who affirm, for
different reasons, one of a family of reasonable liberal political conceptions,
an outcome can be said to be legitimate but not just. An outcome is
legitimate when enacted in accordance with a constitution whose procedures
and basic equal liberties embody those political values that reasonable
liberal political conceptions together endorse. However, as Rawls states,
legitimacy allows an undetermined range of injustice that justice might not
permit (Rawls, 1996, p. 428), because an outcome may accord with
constitutional procedure, upholding basic liberties, without, for all that,
satisfying the more demanding account of justice that various political
liberal conceptions might invoke. Compliance with legitimate outcomes,
which one believes to be unjust, is nonetheless a political duty, limited, as in
Theory, to injustices that cannot be too gravely unjust (1996, p. 428), since
at some point the injustice of the outcomes of a legitimate democratic
procedure corrupts its legitimacy (1996, p. 428).
But at what point does the injustice of outcomes corrupt the legitimacy
of democratic procedure enacted in accordance with a constitution that
embodies the three publicly affirmed conditions? Once again, and to a far
greater extent than in Theory, we come up against the undecidability
between the duty to comply and the duty to resist. Now Rawls cannot
even state, as he did in Theory, that injustice is objectively measured against
the two principles of justice as fairness, because he now concedes that it is

not even reasonable to require all citizens to agree to just these two
principles. By defining injustice in terms of deviation not from justice as
fairness, but rather from the perspective of any one reasonable liberal
political conception of justice, Rawls effectively cedes the possibility of
objectively identifying a legitimate state of affairs as unjust. For example, an
outcome may accord with constitutional procedure, upholding equal basic
rights and liberties, thereby satisfying a neoliberal political conception
without for all that satisfying the more demanding account of socio-
economic justice represented by justice as fairness, which regulates socio-
economic inequalities with the fair equality of opportunity and difference
principles. In this sense, the very standard for measuring injustice is
relinquished. Consequently, the extent to which an outcome is judged
unjust will differ as a function of the particular kind of public liberal
conception that a citizen affirms, and this allows a far larger grey area of
injustice than Theory permitted.
It appears, then, that when a minority (comprised of those who feel
resentment at their suffering or indignation at the suffering of others) is
unconvinced that a majority outcome is just, they have three main options
available to them, none of which are all that helpful. The first is to argue
that the outcome does not satisfy the constitutional essentials that embody
the shared political values that each reasonable citizen affirms. In the case
that either the basic liberties or the weaker equal opportunity principle
have not been upheld, the injustice lies in the deviation of the outcome
with the constitutional essentials to which all agree, and this injustice can be
referred to the courts. As Rawls himself agrees, when the basic liberties and
the equality of opportunity principle (whereby careers are open to talents)
are not upheld, such injustice is easy to recognize. Clearly, this strategy does
not allow minorities to contest socio-economic issues, since the Rawlsian
constitution includes no principle to regulate such matters. In the case
of consistent failure to uphold these essentials, civil disobedience is
legitimate.
The second option available to such minorities is to convince the
legislature that the shared political values embodied in the constitution are
not satisfied by an unjust socio-economic outcome and that new legislation
is needed to amend the injustice. Convincing the legislature is harder, in
this case, because such injustice is far more difficult to ascertain:
These matters are nearly always open to wide differences of reasonable

opinion; they rest on complicated inferences and intuitive judgements
that require us to assess complex social and economic information about

topics poorly understood. (Rawls, 1996, p. 229)
Clearly, this strategy is unlikely to succeed because, as Rawls himself

concedes, it is extremely difficult to convince other citizens that a particular
socio-economic arrangement is unjust.
The third option available to minorities who wish to contest inequitable
suffering is to convince the majority that the public values embodied in the
constitution are no longer just. This being the only legitimate strategy
available to minorities, it is regrettable that Rawls does not recognize the
manner in which his weakening of the nature and object of consensus
prevents him from playing the role of a responsible citizen. In other words,
I am suggesting here that Rawlss attempt to respect the uniqueness of the
individual effectively fails because, in an attempt to allow individuals to
pursue their difference uncoerced, he aligns the content of justice with
only those values that everyone can affirm in overlapping consensus. Granting
too much priority to impartiality, Rawls rules out the very respect for unique
individuals that the revisions to his theory were intended to correct, because
the unfortunate outcome of reading Rawls is that one becomes increasingly
unable to recognize the moral weight of values and sentiments that are not
affirmed or experienced in common, thereby allowing a far larger grey area
of injustice that increases the vulnerability of the disadvantaged. Had Rawls
recognized Derridas point namely, that the determination of justice
inevitably involves coercion of some sort, negotiating two demands that
remain, in principle, non-negotiable Rawls might have been more willing
to take the risk of defending the need to institutionalize far more demanding
principles (like the difference principle and the fair equality of opportunity
principle) which are not, for all that, affirmed by everyone in common.
Although the qualifications of Rawlss later work reflect a growing awareness
of the impossibility of determining justices content, they also reveal an
increasing inability to recognize the moral value of those demands that are
not recognized by everyone in common. For Derrida, the impossibility of
determining justices content raises the stakes in that it produces individual
and collective responsibility for the concrete forms of suffering that
individuals endure.
Under conditions of value-pluralism then, we cannot say, in advance of
the consideration of others reflective judgements about justice or their
sentiments in cases of suffering, which inevitable injustices of a
constitutional regime might be objectively determined as too gravely
unjust. However, it is clear that a response to the burden of injustice that
socio-economic minorities endure cannot rely on just those values that are
affirmed by everyone in common. Instead, citizens must be called upon to
take into consideration new considered judgements and new moral
sentiments about situations around which there exists no consensus.
On the one hand, Rawlss view that public values are to be determined
through the exchanges of public reason acknowledges, to a certain degree, a
view about justice that resembles Derridas account of justice-to-come. It is
clear that Rawls does not believe that a just constitution can prevent injustice
and this leads him to affirm the sense in which the content of justice is open
to change. When a minority is convinced that certain members of their society
take on an inequitable share of inevitable injustices, they may make use of
public reason in an attempt to convince the majority that majoritarian public
values no longer make sense of the set of considered judgements about justice
that the entire public holds. Rawls thinks that the minority should call on all
others to re-enter the impartial standpoint modelled by the original position,
so as to test publicly instituted constitutional principles and legislative and
judicial outcomes in public reason against the changing set of considered
judgements about injustices, judgements that now include the minoritys
moral resentment or indignation at inequitable suffering. Although, from the
standpoint of the original position, not everyone will share the same considered
judgements about socio-economic differences, we must nevertheless include
in our considerations the considered judgements of others when these others
sincerely believe that certain outcomes are too unjust to accept. These make
up a new set of considered judgements, which must now be included in our
impartial considerations. The framework thereby extends the idea of the
original position, adapting it to different settings as the application of
principles requires (Rawls, 1996, p. 398). In this sense, Rawls attempts to
cope with the tension between the majoritys viewpoint about what counts as
injustice, on the one hand, and the minoritys rejection of inequitable burden,
on the other, by using a present-time-of-entry interpretation of the original
position (Rawls, 2001, p. 106; see also 2001, pp. 8687; 1996, p. 399). The
idea is that the original positions content cannot be fully determined in
advance of an engagement with the considered reflections about justice of its
own citizens, when these feel resentment or indignation at inequitable burden.
Justice remains to-come because the construction of principles of justice
should be informed by judgements that change over time as the minority
attempts to convince the majority that the burden of some is, in fact, unjust.
On the other hand, it is fair to say that Rawls himself does not display
enough awareness of the effects of the qualifications presented in his later
theory, which effectively prioritize impartial over individual consideration.
Facilitating what Rawls describes as practical and workable solutions, we

have seen that his non-ideal constructive theory tends to determine the
undecidability between the duty to comply and the duty to resist in favour
of the majoritys viewpoint about what counts as injustice, thereby requiring
minorities to comply with the burdens of socio-economic marginalization
that, strictly speaking, should be opposed insofar as they are not equitably
shared. In this sense, Derridas reflections on the possibility and impossibility
of justice allow us to recognize our complicity in, and responsibility for, the
reproduction of such injustice.
Correcting Rawls on Excusable General Envy: A Sentiment

with Moral Significance
I have suggested that although Rawls goes some way towards acknowledg-
ing the impossibility of justice, affirming the need to include in our
considerations the judgements of others who sincerely believe that certain
outcomes are too unjust to accept, he does not notice that his decision to
prioritize impartial over individual consideration contributes to the
reproduction of injustice. As Axel Honneth would probably wish to point
out, this problem rears its head yet again when Rawls refuses to acknowledge
the moral relevance of the sorts of pathological and antisocial reactions
that permanent disadvantage tends to produce.
To explain further, the reader will have noticed that I referred, in the
above sections, to parts of Rawlss text which indicate his view that moral
sentiments of resentment and indignation, along with the acts of civil
disobedience such sentiments provoke, are collectively advantageous: they
motivate citizens to attempt to justify their views before others, perfecting
their account of justice in search of fair terms of cooperation [that] can be
acknowledged by everyone without resentment of humiliation (Rawls,
1996, p. 303). However, Rawls does not acknowledge how unlikely it is that
permanent socio-economic minorities will experience their inequitable
burden as an injustice, even when it should qualify as such. Such
marginalization instead tends to produce the immoral and antisocial
sentiment of excusable general envy where the least advantaged envy the
more favoured, producing hostile attitudes that undermine the cooperative
arrangements that Rawls counts as just. Although I agree with Rawls that
envy cannot qualify as a moral sentiment, because it does not uphold the
sense of justice, my argument here is that manifestations of excusable
general envy are nonetheless of moral relevance to our social world.
Such manifestations are often expressions of general humiliation, whose

origin lies in an inequitable burden of inevitable injustice. In this sense,
excusable general envy, albeit not itself a moral sentiment, is clearly of
moral significance for those citizens who aspire to just institutions.
Expressions of general humiliation should motivate the construction of a
new content for justice. After explaining why Rawls refuses to grant the
status of moral sentiment to excusable general envy, I will present the
reasons why such envy is nonetheless of moral significance.
According to Rawls, resentment, indignation and guilt are expressions
of our sense of justice. Excusable general envy, on the other hand, is
not. Resentment is a moral reaction to the unjust injury and harm that
the wrongs of others inflict upon us; indignation is a moral response to
the injuries that others inflict upon others (Rawls, 1999a, p. 111; 1971,
p. 484/424 rev.); and guilt is our apprehension about the resentment and
indignation of others that our own actions may provoke (1971, pp. 483
5/4234 rev.). Such sentiments are moral because they are grounded in
our sense of justice, affirming the idea of collective advantage, and
motivating the very search for principles of justice.
In contrast, the sense of rancour and hostility that manifests in excusable
general envy is not collectively advantageous. Seeking to undermine
cooperation, the sentiment does not reflect our sense of justice and, as such,
is not a moral feeling (1971, p. 533/467 rev.). Excusable general envy
describes the sentiment of a set of individuals envying the greater good of
others to such an extent that they are prepared to do things that make
everyone worse off, simply in order to reduce the discrepancy between them
(1971, p. 532/466 rev.). Moreover, when others become aware that they are
envied, they may become jealously protective of their better circumstances,
thereby further undermining the cooperative attitudes that justice is meant
to promote. This envy is general as opposed to particular because it does
not describe competition between individuals but, rather, concerns rivalry
between social classes (1996, pp. 531532/466 rev.). It is excusable when
the basic structure of society is in fact responsible for its production, permitting
very large socio-economic disparities that wound ones self-respect to such an
extent that one cannot be reasonably expected to overcome ones rancorous
feelings (Rawls, 1971, p. 534/468 rev.; 2001, p. 88). Excusable general envy
differs, in this sense, from resentment, because it produces bitterness in the
face of defeat instead of a moral commitment to remedying unjust institutions
(1971, p. 533/467 rev.). As such, it is collectively disadvantageous, producing
antisocial, pathological tendencies instead of a commitment to the sense of
justice (1971, p. 532/466 rev.; see also 2001, p. 87, 202 & 100).
Although Rawls is correct in refusing to attribute to excusable general

envy the status of a moral sentiment, he unfortunately overlooks its moral
significance. This is regrettable for two reasons. First of all, it prevents Rawls
from acknowledging the deep sense in which just constitutions are unable
to respond to inequitable distribution of the burden of socio-economic
marginalization. As I demonstrated in previous sections, Rawls affirms the
need to limit constitutional essentials to only those basic public values to
which everyone can agree namely, the basic liberties and a basic equal
opportunity principle, thereby ruling out the possibility of instituting more
demanding principles such as the difference and fair equality of opportunity
principles. This effectively leaves those who are concerned by ongoing
socio-economic disadvantage with no viable recourse other than that of
trying to convince the privileged majority that the condition of the minority
is unjust. When such reasonable strategies fail over the course of generations,
moral resentment and indignation can easily give way to unreasonable
forms of excusable general envy, expressed in rioting, gangland activity,
alcohol-fuelled violence and other generally destructive behaviour. The
important point, however, is that, against Rawls, the basis of the feeling can
still be traced to a moral experience of unfair disadvantage which is relevant
to the project of justice. This is a point that we will see Honneth further
develop in Chapters 6 and 7.
Second, given his own account of the dependency of the development of
a sense of justice on healthy families and communities, Rawls should also
acknowledge that the longer the period of disadvantage, the more likely it
is that those who endure the burden of injustice will lose their sense of
justice altogether, unable to trace their feelings back to a moral experience.
This, in my view, is why it is highly unlikely that those inequitably suffering
socio-economic marginalization will engage in positive forms of collective
action and acts of civil disobedience, although these should, I have argued,
be considered legitimate. As Rawls himself recognizes in sections devoted
to the two stages of moral development, the sense of justice is acquired
gradually as a child grows up, first, thanks to parents or carers, whose
reactions to a childs desires and behaviours function as validations or
injunctions (Rawls, 1971, pp. 4623/405 rev.); and second, thanks to
associations such as schools, neighbourhoods, sports clubs and other forms
of association, including the national community as a whole, whose
expectations and patterns of approval and disapproval teach the child the
virtues of a good classmate, a good neighbour, a good sport and a good
citizen (Rawls, 1971, pp. 4678/40910 rev.). Those suffering the burden of
socio-economic marginalization over the course of a generation or more
will, in this way, internalize the normative expectations of the majority,

developing a strong sense of their own insufficiency, which in turn makes
them less likely to question the dominant norms using legitimate means. In
such cases, general envy is more likely to develop than moral resentment
and indignation, although clearly the fault lies with the inability of a
constitutional regime to equitably distribute its inevitable injustices.
In this sense, Rawlss growing awareness of the need for the content of
justice to change in response to new considered judgements about injustice
should now also include the acknowledgement of the responsibility of
constitutional justice for any manifestations of excusable general envy to
which it gives rise. Rawls initially believes (with due reason) that excusable
general envy is not to be expected within a society regulated by the two
principles of justice as fairness, because the difference and fair equality of
opportunity principles limit inequalities by reference to fairness. However,
when he later acknowledges that the content of justice can no longer
reasonably include just these two principles but must only affirm those
more basic public values that all liberal public conceptions of justice can
uphold (neoliberal and social democratic alike), Rawls can no longer rule
out the production of excusable general envy within relatively just societies.
Rawlsian citizens who affirm an imperfect constitutional regime must, in
this sense, also accept the burden of responsibility for its effects, including,
in this case, responsibility for manifestations of excusable general envy.
In later chapters, I will present Axel Honneths account of justice as an
attempt to take seriously our responsibility for those pathological and
antisocial tendencies to which an imperfect constitutional regime gives rise.
In so doing, I will provide reason to support my own deconstructive view of
justice; namely, that the content of justice must be reworked anew in an
attempt to respond to the inevitable blind spots of the determination of
justice, which itself produces new problems and new considered reflections
about injustice that must in turn be taken into consideration. To use
Derridas vocabulary, in the face of its inevitable failure, justice remains
to-come: a project to be achieved.
Justice-to-Come in Rawls
Using the second of deconstructions two orientations, namely, attention to

the impossibility of the constructive art of the possible, I have shown that
Rawlss present-time-of-entry interpretation of the original position (Rawls,
2001, p. 106) is introduced so as to make sense of considered judgements
about justice that change over time in response to new problems, produced
by the tension between the majoritys viewpoint about what counts as
injustice and the minoritys experience of inequitable burden, a tension
that leads to conflicting judgements about justice. In this sense, outcomes
of the original position procedure are necessarily revisable, due to the fact
that they resolve this tension in specific ways. In grasping the ever-present
possibility of re-entering the original positions standpoint of justice at any
time so as to reassess public values, Rawls increasingly comes to acknowledge
not only the impossibility of achieving justice in the present, but also justices
future-oriented character, an effect of the continued attempt to use the
ideal of justice to critique the inevitable failure of its determined form. I
then argued that Rawlss acknowledgement of the need to consider new
judgements about injustice must be expanded to include the need to
respond to manifestations of excusable general envy, which has moral
significance even if it does not qualify as a moral sentiment. In so doing, I
suggested that the justice of a constitutional regime is inevitably imperfect,
which means that citizens who commit to it must also commit to the attempt
to perfect it. That is, a duty of justice is that citizens must commit, in a
deconstructive sense, to justice-to-come.
Let us now consider the occasional references by Rawls to the impossibility
of achieving justice in the present, evidence of a vocabulary that comes to
resemble that of Derridas. On the one hand, Rawls begins with the clear
assumption of reasonable faith in the possibility of justice. This is the
necessary condition for any pursuit of a better world and, as such, remains
the condition of the constructive orientation. Political philosophy assumes the
role Kant gave to philosophy generally; the defence of reasonable faith ...
in our case, this becomes the defence of reasonable faith in the possibility
of a just constitutional regime (Rawls, 1996, p. 172). Constructivism, states
Rawls, assumes that a just constitution is realizable (1996, p. 398). In a rare
moment of lyricism, he reiterates Kants apologetic defence of justices
possibility, suggesting that to concede that justice is not possible leaves us
wondering whether life itself is worth living.
If a reasonably just society which subordinates power to its aims is not

possible and people are largely amoral, if not incurably cynical and self-
centred, one might ask with Kant whether it is worthwhile for human
beings to live on the earth. (Rawls, 1996, p. lxii)
Put simply, we cannot pursue the ideal of justice, in our lives as citizens,
without assuming its possibility.
On the other hand, in his mature work, Rawls acknowledges, in a number

of places, that justice is, quite simply, humanly impossible. From the point
of view of civil society, it turns out that a just constitution cannot be fully
realized (1996, p. 398, emphasis added). No constitution is ever perfectly
just, as no human institution can be that (1996, p. 429). Even the original
position procedures, he states, are imperfect. In view of the imperfection
of all human political procedures, there can be no procedure [which is
purely procedural] with respect to political justice and no procedure could
determine its substantive content (1996, p. 429). In these comments, Rawls
clearly concedes the impossibility of constructing a fully objective
interpretation of justice, although, as I have argued in this chapter, he does
not fully consider the implications of impossibility for his own theory.
Let us now turn to Rawlss comments on justices future-oriented character.
Given that even the original position procedures are no guarantee for
justice, the content of any original position outcome, even the principles
themselves, must remain open to contestation, in principle. The content of
justice remains to-come in a Derridean sense. As Rawls explains, citizens
in civil society can, in principle, re-enter the original position at any time
(Rawls, 2001, p. 86). Doing so allows one to check public principles against
those reflective considered judgements about justice that change in time as
generations give rise to new groups who face different political problems
(2001, p. 86).2 Although the original position says that parties imagine their
selection of principles to hold in perpetuity, thereby representing
impartiality between all persons present and future, this does not mean,
states Rawls, that citizens committed to impartiality should view its outcomes
as determined once and for all (Rawls, 1996, p. 399). It is important to
recognize that the content of justice is not fixed. As Rawls explains with
reference to the content of public reason:
It is crucial that public reason is not specified by any one political concep-
tion of justice, certainly not by justice as fairness alone. Rather, its con-
tent the principles, ideals, and standards that may be appealed to are
those of a family of reasonable political conceptions of justice and this
family changes over time ... Social changes over generations also give
rise to new groups with different political problems. Views raising new
questions related to ethnicity, gender and race are obvious examples,
and the political conceptions that result from these views will debate the
current conceptions. The content of public reason is not fixed, any more
than it is defined by any one reasonable political conception. (Rawls,
1996, p. liii)
Recognizing that the content of justice remains open to contestation,

Rawls affirms that the possibility of actually achieving justice plays the role
of a future ideal. Justice, states Rawls, is a project to be carried out (1996,
p. 398).
Moreover, when discussing the realistically utopian role of political
philosophy, one of four roles he ascribes to justice in Justice as Fairness: A
Restatement, Rawls makes a striking admission, the implications of which he
does not appear to fully recognize. On the one hand, he states that political
philosophy plays the realistically utopian role of probing the limits of
practicable political possibility. It tries to realize justice in the form of ideals
and principles that society can actually achieve, even if the ideal itself is, in
principle, unreachable. On the other hand, Rawls admits that there is no
reason why the limits of the possible are to be given by the actual, for we
can to a greater or lesser extent change political and social institutions, and
much else (2001, p. 5). This is a striking statement, as it explicitly affirms
that justices content need not necessarily cohere with the considered
judgements of actual citizens, since these can be changed in line with more
demanding moral principles (see also Reynolds, 2006).
I have argued, along Derridean lines, that we cannot determine in
advance whether engaging in the forms of civil disobedience that Rawls
defines as unreasonable would not reap unforeseen rewards. I also suggested
that citizens who commit to justice must also commit to the attempt to
perfect the imperfections of their constitutional regime, contributing to a
culture prepared to make the effort to take seriously not only infractions in
civil and political liberties, but also other injustices, no less serious, which
are unfortunately more difficult to recognize. I have also argued, against
Rawls, that antisocial and pathological manifestations of excusable general
envy are nonetheless of moral significance, indicating a culture that has
become complicit in the injustice it produces. One implication of Rawlss
nascent acknowledgement of justices impossibility is that he would do well
to loosen the link between the art of the possible and those existing norms
that are actually affirmed in overlapping consensus, cultivating a culture
more willing to engage with the impossible in view of constructing new
forms of social life that are more appropriate to the needs of suffering
individuals. In this sense, deconstruction encourages Rawls to take more
seriously his own statement that The ideal of a just constitution is always
something to be worked toward ... A just regime is a project, as Habermas
says, and justice as fairness agrees (Rawls, 1996, pp. 401402). Justice is
perfectible, both possible and impossible.
Part Two
Rational Consensus: Open to

Contestation in Principle
Chapter 4
Habermas and the Possibility of Popular

Sovereignty
Our first sentence expresses unequivocally the intention of universal and uncon-
strained consensus.
Jrgen Habermas, Appendix to Knowledge and
Human Interests, 1987a, p. 314
In this part of the book and the next, I use Habermas and Honneth to explore
Rawlss unanswered question about the extent to which justices content
should be determined by those actual values (or, to use Habermass vocabulary,
those de facto norms) that everyone happens to uphold. A deconstructive
perspective, according to which justice is both possible and impossible, suggests
that although the reliance on popular expectations can facilitate the practical
negotiation of individual and impartial consideration, such expectations do
not exhaust justices content. Justice is irreducible, in this sense, to the set of
actual judgements that people together affirm. In Chapters 2 and 3, I
suggested that Rawls is too eager to reconcile his determination of justices
content with those norms that are currently the object of an overlapping
consensus, and this prevents him from acknowledging the normative
importance of judgements and sentiments about justice that are not also
affirmed by the majority. Framed by a deconstructive attention to both
necessity and impossibility, we noticed that Rawlss worthy commitment to
practicable norms nonetheless leads him, in some cases, to overlook the
complicity of existing norms in the production of certain forms of suffering
on the part of individuals and minority groups. Although Rawls concedes that
the limits of the possible are not given by the actual, for we can to a greater
or lesser extent change political and social institutions, and much else (Rawls,
2001, p. 5), his own art of the possible is overly determined by those norms
that just happen to be affirmed in common.
In this and the following chapters, we will use Habermass and Honneths
accounts of justices content to question this Rawlsian tendency and to
explore ways to loosen the connection between the art of the possible and
existing norms, by instead negotiating the demands of deconstructive
justice in a manner that allows individuals and minorities to contest a state
of affairs. Since both thinkers likewise commit to the possibility of
determining justices proper content, their debate with Rawls can be said to
concern the proper limits of the art of the possible. I begin by considering,
in this chapter and the next, Habermass response to the blind spots of
Rawlsian justice, balancing this, in turn, with Honneths consideration of
the failures of Habermasian justice and with my own later reflections on
theimpossibility of Honnethian justice. From a deconstructive perspective,
the disagreement between Rawls, Habermas and Honneth over the limits of
the art of the possible provides further evidence of the inability to fully
reconcile the tension between the demands of ethical obligation to
individuals and impartial consideration, which we saw Derrida identify.
Each constructive theorist attempts to provide a response to the failure of
their predecessor to properly negotiate these considerations, thereby
attempting to perfect justice in the course of its history. A deconstructive
perspective frames this ongoing theoretical development as an attempt to
balance the constructive commitment to practicable solutions with
responsibility for the effects such negotiations produce, thereby inscribing
a Levinasian trace of ethical obligation within justices imperfect forms
(see Derrida, 1991, pp. 1148). On this deconstructive reading, each theory
presents itself as just one part of a history of imperfect conceptions of
justice, where perfection remains an impossible but worthy ideal. As I will
suggest in Chapter 8, theorists of justice would do well to include in their
theories an explicit reflection on the failures of their respective theories,
encouraging the development of a culture more willing to take responsibility
for its complicity in the production not only of structural harm (including
marginalization, poverty, homelessness, psychological and physical injury,
drug addiction, malnutrition and so on), but also of excusable general
envy, produced by ongoing disadvantage and manifested in forms of
antisocial behaviour, trauma, abuse, acts of violence, rioting, gangland
activity and criminality.
Returning to the task at hand, I will be arguing, in this chapter, that
thanks to his own interpretation of the three constructive ideas of impartial
judgement, moral personhood and practicability, Habermas corrects Rawlss
tendency to identify justice with those merely de facto norms the basic
public values and constitutional essentials that citizens just happen to
affirm in common. In ascribing moral weight to claims and sentiments that
are not yet the object of overlapping consensus, Habermas helps me support
Habermas and the Possibility of Popular Sovereignty 103
Drucilla Cornells perceptive but underdeveloped position that Rawls is

more concerned than is Derrida to reconcile his theory of constitutional
essentials with established norms (Cornell, 1992, p. 182). It will be shown
that Habermas corrects the privilege that Rawls tends to ascribe to the
pragmatic value of overlapping consensus on the one hand, while avoiding
the excess of Levinasian individual consideration on the other. We will
notice that Habermass discourse ethics is designed to take seriously both
the particular interests that persons may have as distinct participants in
action and the requirement of impartiality among persons, resolving both
deconstructive demands in outcomes of real discourses.
Impartial judgement is now explained with reference to an interpretation
of Kantian moral interest as generalizable interests, these being produc-
tively generated through empirical discussions between all those affected
by the norms in question. In this way, Habermas believes that minorities
and majorities may creatively generate new norms through cooperative
forms of rational argumentation, which places every individual on an equal
footing by requiring that the evaluation of a contested norm satisfy our
presuppositions about the character of uncoerced mutual comprehension.
Consequently, the ideal of moral personhood is presented in terms of those
capacities that enable persons to interact with one another in view of con-
structing a generalizable interest. As for practicability, this is no longer
advanced with respect to the stability of overlapping consensus but rather
with respect to the possibility of generating empirical forms of rational con-
sensus through actual discussions that appropriately represent individuals
and minorities.
Of course, in the next chapter, I will balance this positive appraisal of
Habermass commitment to possibility (the first deconstructive orientation)
with the second orientation of this book; namely, a deconstructive attention
to impossibility. I will be arguing, first, that Habermass discourse ethics
does not succeed in conceptually resolving the freedom of the moral person
as a distinct individual with the freedom of all as moral equals, but instead
defers the moment of their resolution to the future, conceding that a fully
intersubjective rational consensus is not only empirically implausible, but
also conceptually impossible. If the goal of rational consensus indeed fails
for empirical and conceptual reasons, and if this goal is nonetheless a
necessary part of our intersubjective lives, then Habermass theory must be
supplemented by reflection on the types of attitudes that enable citizens
not only to aim for undistorted discussion, but also to respond to their
failure to achieve it. Again, I will suggest that this failure is not regrettable
but rather essential to justice itself, which only maintains its critical function
for the present when it exceeds any actual consensus. Risk, negotiation,
failure: this is all part of the process of striving to achieve a better future.
However, continued effort in the face of failure also requires new forms of
political sensibility collective responsibility, openness to the other person,
a willingness to challenge inherited convictions, resilience and so on.
Overcoming the Failures of Rawlsian Justice
The task of this chapter, however, is to demonstrate that Habermass

commitment to the possibility of justice leads to a negotiation of individual
and impartial consideration that overcomes the problems of Rawlss theory
of justice while also avoiding the excess of Levinasian obligation. Crystallizing
similar reservations expressed in earlier work (see Habermas, 1979, p. 184
& 205; 1984, p. 230 & 436; 1987a, p. 92, 290 & 411; 1990a, p. 43, 66, 79, 94,
116117, 119, 122, 198 & 213214), Habermas opens his 19951998 debate
with Rawls by questioning Rawlss interpretation of each of the three key
ideas central to the possibility of justice that we considered in Chapter 2;
namely, impartiality, moral personhood and practicability (Habermas, 1995,
pp. 109131; Rawls, 1996, pp. 373434; Habermas, 1998, pp. 75102).1
These are the three ideas that I suggested deconstruction must uphold if it
is to avoid the futility of Levinass insistence on the impossibility of state-
based justice and instead make sense of Derridas acknowledgement of the
need to risk determining justices content (Chapter 1). For our purposes,
Habermass own account of these three ideas can be said to respond to
Rawlss failure to ascribe due weight to ethical obligation towards suffering
individuals and minorities, even when their claims are not yet the object of
overlapping consensus.
In a first step, Habermas argues that Rawlss functional defence of
impartiality unfortunately relinquishes any stake to the intrinsic necessity of
this worthwhile ideal and instead concedes that its plausibility is contingent
upon its ability to systematize the extant substantive judgements of a
specifically democratic society. In a second stage, Habermas targets Rawlss
account of the two moral faculties of personhood (namely, rational egoism
and a sense of justice) that respectively map onto the design features of the
original position; that is, the depiction of parties and the veil of ignorance
constraints. Rawlss representation of the nature and reasoning of moral
persons is rejected by Habermas for being monological, thereby forgetting
the intersubjective character of moral reason. Finally, Habermas also rejects
Rawlss account of practicability, noting, as I indicated earlier, that Rawls
grants undue primacy to those public values affirmed in overlapping

consensus, thus overlooking the need for norms of interaction to remain
subject to the judgement of those affected by them, or, in other words, to
the principle of democratic popular sovereignty. As we will see in a moment,
each criticism targets the privilege that Rawls ascribes to established public
values affirmed in overlapping consensus, at the expense of minority claims
that nonetheless qualify for recognition by the majority.
Habermass criticisms originate in an alternative justification of the
impartial standpoint, a pragmatic and moral idea that is assumed by all
persons capable of any social interaction whatsoever, not just by those
Rawlsian citizens whose extant judgements such an idea happens to
systematize. Considering Habermass argument in subsequent sections, it
will be shown that his negotiation of individual and impartial consideration
ascribes greater weight to the consideration of the interests of individuals
and minorities, by requiring that all affected freely accept the consequences
and the side-effects that the general observance of a controversial norm
can be expected to have for the satisfaction of interests of each individual
(Habermas, 1990a, p. 93). I will attempt to demonstrate that it is fair to
say that discourse ethics, founded on the above principle, attempts to
resolve the two demands that Derrida understands the concept of justice
to imply.
Turning to Habermass alternative justification of the impartial
standpoint, we keep the following aims in view. First, we intend to provide
an account of the alternative manner in which Habermas negotiates the
tension between the demands of ethical obligation to individuals and of
impartial consideration that we saw Derrida earlier identify. In so doing,
we will note the sense in which Habermass interpretation of Kants concept
of moral interest opposes Levinass interpretation of this concept, in an
effort to avoid the futility of Levinass insistence on the impossibility of
state-based justice. Second, we intend to clarify the sense in which
Habermasian deliberation overcomes Rawlss failure to properly negotiate
the demands of deconstructive justice. And finally, we will nonetheless
gesture towards some of the difficulties Habermas faces in his task, sowing
the seed for the concern of Chapter 5, which employs deconstructions
attention to impossibility in identifying some of the concrete ways in which
Habermasian deliberation fails to achieve justice. At the end of the book,
I will defend a set of deconstructive attitudes, premised on the importance
of cultivating openness, humility and resilience, which are far more
demanding than the duty of civility or of solidarity that Rawls and Habermas
respectively defend.
Impartiality: Justification, Not Mere Acceptance
The mature Rawls does not aim to prove the absolute necessity of the idea
of impartiality for moral interaction. Doing so would be equivalent to
demanding the allegiance of citizens to a comprehensive doctrine, and he
realizes that this is unreasonable under modern conditions of value-
pluralism. Relinquishing the task of proving the intrinsic moral necessity of
impartiality, Rawls instead claims that it is contingently plausible. That is, we
need the idea because it systematizes the settled convictions of our
specifically democratic society (Habermas, 1990a, p. 79).
This is a problem for Habermas, who believes that Rawlss appeal to
merely contingent patterns of acceptance unfortunately relinquishes the
strong stake to validity and justification that individuals and minorities are
entitled to claim (Habermas, 1998, p. 50 & 5967). Instead, Habermas
wants to reinstate universal standards of justification that allow us to
distinguish between norms that are merely de facto, on the one hand, and
valid, on the other. Doing so involves demonstrating that our moral
intuitions originate in features of intersubjective life that, as Thomas
McCarthy puts it, are deeper and more universal than those arbitrary
features of our particular tradition (1990, p. ix).
In contrast to the mature Rawls who retracts the immodesty of his initial
theory, which implausibly implied that the content of justice results from
persons deliberating in like manner Habermas once again seeks a strong,
universal justification for the concept of justice. For Habermas, the desire
for justice is not specific to a particular history, but rather expresses a
moral interest that belongs to all rational beings. The idea that justice
invokes justification rather than mere acceptance grounds a number of
interrelated criticisms of the Rawlsian account. One such criticism focuses
on the concept of overlapping consensus, which Habermas dismisses as
merely instrumental and functional in that it does not validate the theory
but rather indicates its capacity to be peacefully institutionalized (1998, pp.
6063). A further criticism targets the concept of the Reasonable, which
Habermas sees as a mere description of an extant attitude of enlightened
tolerance rather than a predicate for the cognitive validity of moral and
political judgements (1998, pp. 6367).
As with both Rawls and Levinas, Habermas presents his own understanding
of the necessary traits of justice by reformulating Kants notion of moral
decision. Consequently, our reconstruction of Habermass reformulation
allows us to situate his account midway between Rawls and Levinas. On the
one hand, Rawlss reliance on the conceptual explication of extant judge-
ments that everyone holds in common leads him to overlook the ethical
obligation to make sense of those particular judgements of individuals and

minorities about their suffering. For Rawls, such judgements are controversial
and impracticable, since they are not yet affirmed by everyone in common.
On the other hand, Levinas clearly privileges individual over impartial
consideration. Levinass non-Kantian interpretation of Kantian ethics
(Chapter 1) takes off from the experience of humiliation that Kant
associates with moral interest, which Levinas understands as an effect of
the disruption of my law-giving nature by the laws of a unique individual.
This disruption requires that I prioritize the consideration of the Others
laws over other forms of consideration, which is why Levinas rejects state-
based justice as a betrayal of ethics, framed as it is by impartial consideration.
Habermass interpretation of Kant can be said to correct the Rawlsian
privilege accorded to those judgements that happen to be affirmed in
common, while also avoiding the excess of a Levinasian ethics of individual
consideration.
It is the Kantian commitment to constructing objective, rational norms
within empirical history that attracts Habermas. However, uniting each of
Habermass interpretations is the belief that Kant cannot sustain his rigid
separation of the rational will from empirical interest, which prevents Kant
from explaining how the empirical and historical will can also be rational.
Habermass empirical and intersubjective revision of Kantian reason
corrects this error by providing a set of rational procedures for agents to
follow in their intersubjective, empirical engagements with one another,
procedures that negotiate the tension between ethical obligation and
impartial consideration.
Uniting pure practical reason and empirical interest:

generalizable interests
Habermass early defence, in The Structural Transformation of the Public
Sphere (1989a), of the possibility of historical progress by way of rational-
critical debate involves a critique of Kants strict separation of moral,
rational causality from empirical, natural causality, which leaves Kant
unable to explain how empirical political decisions can also be moral
(1989a, pp. 102117). Habermas believes that this failure indicates
something about reason that Kant did not explicitly acknowledge: the
exercise of reason is inseparable from the empirical needs and interests of
reasoners. Revising Kants theory, Habermas provides a procedural method
for ensuring that the publicity principle plays its desired role of a rational
ideal by identifying only those empirical interests that are also
generalizable to the entire public and not merely to a select few.
Habermas argues that because Kant misunderstands the way in which the
publicity principle applies to empirical and historical interests, the principle
plays two contradictory roles in Kants philosophy of history as both a
pure rational ideal and as a mere ideological cover for the pursuit of
unilateral empirical interests. Defending a universal principle for the
determination of generalizable public interests, Habermas believes that he
rescues Kants publicity principle from the jaws of mere ideological interest,
where ideology is here understood by Habermas in a Marxist sense; that is,
as the ideas that the ruling class employs to account for their interest in
controlling the means of material production. Of course, in the next
chapter, I will attempt to show, as I did with Rawls, that Habermas does not
(and cannot) succeed in his task, because the history of the rational ideal of
justice cannot be distinguished in any absolute sense from a history of mere
ideology. Here, however, I instead focus on presenting the claims of
Habermas, demonstrating that his own understanding of the possibility of
justice can nonetheless be seen, on a first appraisal, as a worthy attempt to
negotiate the demands that Derrida identifies in the concept of justice.
According to Habermass analysis, Kant ascribes two primary functions
sociological and methodological to the public use of practical reason.2 In
its first role, it serves as an empirical condition for the actualization of the
free use of reason. To progress in the use of practical reason, we need to
learn to communicate our arguments to others and have the former
corroborated or criticized by the latter. Without freedom to employ our
reason in communication with others, we cannot properly orient our
thinking (Kant, 1996, 8:3542). The capacity to freely choose those laws
that apply to ones will is thereby mediated by a public sphere in which the
free use of reason is externally possible (1996, 8:3637). Thus, the
actualization of freedom indeed depends, in part, on the existence of
concrete social opportunities to practice ones reason (what Kant calls
external freedom) (Kant, 1970, p. 247; 1996, 8:36). Habermas concludes
that Kant supports the idea of a public sphere, by which he means a
domain of our social life, open in principle to all citizens, in which such
citizens deal with matters of general (or public) interest without being
subject to coercion, formulating what can be called a distinctly public
opinion (Habermas, 1989b, p. 231 & 236).
In its second and methodological role, publicity serves as a principle
promising the accuracy of the use of practical reason in politics by guaran-
teeing the convergence of the form of politics with the form of morality
(Kant, 1992, 7:20 & 34). Kant writes: The touchstone of whatever can be
decided upon as law for a people lies in the question: whether a people
could impose such a law upon itself (1996, 8:39; see also 8:381 & 8:305),
and this means that without authorization to speak out publicly the truth
would not come to light (1992, 7:20). Like Rawls, Habermas notes that
Kants publicity principle thus professes to unite politics with the moral idea
of autonomy by framing political principles with the requirement that they
both be acceptable to all when publicized and be indeed public (see Chapter 2)
(Habermas, 1989a, p. 102).
The publicity principle is thus the test of the moral validity of politics.
According to Habermas, Kant had already ascribed to public consensus the
function of a pragmatic truth test of the objective validity of theoretical
judgement when he wrote, in the Critique of Pure Reason, that the touchstone
whereby we decide whether our holding a thing to be true is conviction or
mere persuasion is therefore external, namely, the possibility of
communicating it, and of finding it to be valid for all human reason (Kant,
2000a, A820A821/B848B849). Although of merely pragmatic value in
the theoretical realm (since the truth of a theoretical judgement ultimately
rests on the agreement of judgement with the object in the appearance),
Habermas claims that this test of consensus in the public sphere obtains
constitutive value in the philosophy of right. Politics, Kant tells us, is
objectively valid only insofar as its maxims are both capable of publicity and
actually publicized (2000a, A820A831/B848B859).
As Habermas remarks, the publicity principle is intended to guarantee
the convergence of the content of right (positive rights and laws) with
morality insofar as publicity requires of right that it conform to the moral
autonomy of individuals. Although, in Kant, a political condition (a
condition of right) is indeed distinct from a moral condition, the moral law
remains the formal basis of political right (Kant, 1996, 8:30). On the one
hand, morality and right are distinguished by Kant as regards the object to
which they apply. Whereas the moral law internally commands the will and
requires that actions be performed for the sake of internal duty alone, right
commands action alone, requiring only that actions (external freedom)
conform to the form of law and enforcing this with the threat of punish-
ment. Kants objective principle of right thus states that any action is right
if it can coexist with everyones freedom in accordance with a universal law,
with freedom here referring to external and not internal freedom; that is,
to actions not intentions (Kant, 1996, 6:231). The moral law cannot force
individuals to be free: enforcing morality is a contradiction in terms, since
morality must be freely chosen. On the other hand, despite their different
objects, the law remains the rational form for political action. Although the
objective principle of right does not command intentions, it does demand
that action at least conform to the form of universal law: the actions of one
actor should not have harmful effects on the capacity of other actors to
pursue their own external freedom. Hence the idea that external freedom
(action) is right if it can at least coexist with the external freedom (action)
of others in accordance with a universal law; hence the need for the
regulation of institutions by principles that are acceptable to all when
publicized (see Chapter 2) (Kant, 1996, 6:230231). Insofar as Kant defends
the moral politician who attempts to formulate principles in accordance
with rational deliberation against the political moralist for whom politics
concerns the expert exploitation of technical knowledge (Kant, 1996,
8:429), Habermas views Kant and Rawls as allies opposed to the threat of
the scientization of politics (Habermas, 1984, p. 290; 1979, p. 205).
However, while he shares Kants commitment to uniting politics with the
form of moral law, Habermas disagrees with Kants separation of inner and
external freedom. Habermas argues that in attempting to separate pure
practical reason from empirical interest, Kant fails to provide a clear method
for applying the publicity principle to the empirical interests of historical
publics. Consequently, the publicity principle falls short of its promise to
emancipate the whole of society from manifestations of unilateral will. This
error is strikingly revealed in Kants explanation of how to implement the
publicity principle, which unfortunately sanctions the pursuit of the
unilateral interests of a limited property-owning public, instead of upholding
generalizable interests. For example, when discussing the determination of
concrete laws for the regulation of action, Kant draws a distinction between
co-beneficiary of right (a mere member of a civil state) and co-legislator of
right (a citizen of a civil state), stipulating that only the latter, citizens, qualify
for votes on legislation (1996, 8:294). Co-beneficiaries are to comply with
and enjoy the protection of civil laws, affirming their status as free human
beings (1996, 8:290291) and equal subjects to the same laws (1996, 8:291
294). However, only those persons who are also independent, as citizens, are
to co-legislate (1996, 8:294296). As Habermas points out, Kants definition
of the qualifications required for independence, namely, that one own the
property that supports one (an estate, or a skill, trade, fine art or science),
effectively limits the public to a small subset of the male population,
excluding the entire female populace and the majority of their property-
less male counterparts (Habermas, 1989a, p. 111; see also Kant, 1996,
8:294296).
Kants reasoning proceeds as follows. First, according to the principle of
publicity, every co-beneficiary of a state with private stakes and interests has
to will that state in unison. Second, the legislation of right must be acceptable
to all co-beneficiaries with private stakes and interests. Third, property

owners have distinct and competing private interests, but the interest of
wage labourers is effectively subsumed by the interest of their employers.
Fourth, all interests are thus represented when the co-legislating public is
comprised of property owners alone. Fifth, the restriction of the public
sphere to the historical category of property owners with private stakes and
interests does not violate the principle of publicity when it is also assumed
that equal chances exist among all co-beneficiaries for the acquisition of
property (and thus, of private interests) (Kant, 1996, 8:296).
So, on the one hand, the bourgeois property-owning male public intends
to dissolve the unilateral authority of the ruling Estates by recourse to the
reciprocity invoked by the principle of publicity. On the other hand, the
assumption of political power by these very same private individuals
establishes the juridical condition on the basis of their private interest
alone, thereby constituting an act of unilateral domination. Habermas
concludes that Kants inability to provide a clear procedural method for
applying the principle of publicity to the whole set of empirical interests,
including the interests of those who do not own property, effectively ascribes
to the principle two opposing functions; namely, a rational idea with
emancipatory potential, and an ideological masquerade for merely
unilateral (not generalizable) interests.
One could defend Kant from Habermas, at this point, by suggesting that
it is not Kants publicity principle that is at fault, but rather his acceptance
of the distinction between active (co-legislative) and passive (co-beneficiary)
citizens. The publicity principle demands that access to the active,
co-legislatory sphere be, in principle, open to all, hence Kants demand for
genuinely free competition. However, Habermas believes that the demand
for free competition itself expresses the particular interest of those who
deploy it, in this case the bourgeoisie, and that once it becomes clear that
the pursuit of the rational idea of publicity is inseparable from empirical
interests in social interaction, a different type of procedural practice for the
determination of truly generalizable interests is needed, one that does not
predetermine the interests involved.
Beginning with the assumption that the pursuit of the rational idea is
inseparable from empirical interests in social interaction, Habermas thus
proposes to secure the publicity principle as a bridge between morality
and politics by applying it to the rationalization of the empirical interests
of those affected (Habermas, 1989a, p. 24450; see also McCarthy, 1978,
p. 328). The object of the publicity principle is now defined as the impartial
regulation of the empirical interests of partners in social interaction, with
reference to generalizable interests. In this way, Habermass version of the

publicity principle is able to unite the conflicting ideas expressed by Kants
philosophy of history; that is, the idea that moral politics is to be affirmed
on the basis of duty alone (and not on the basis of interest) and the idea
that the universal end of the public is its interest in empirical happiness
(see also McCarthy, 1978, p. 327; Finlayson, 1999, p. 30).
What is important for our purposes here is that Habermass concern to
uphold the strong sense of justification that characterizes Kants theory
allows him to make place for the interests of individuals and minorities in
deliberations about public principles, even when judgements expressing
such interests are not the object of a Rawlsian overlapping consensus. In
this sense, Habermas would claim to avoid the tendency of Rawlss mature
theory to determine justices content in favour of the majoritys viewpoint
about what counts as injustice, which, as we saw in Chapter 3, requires that
minorities comply with the burdens of socio-economic marginalization
when their judgements about their injustice are not also affirmed by
everyone else. As we will see in the next section, Habermas provides a set of
discursive procedures that profess to guarantee that the judgements of
minorities and individuals are included in discussions about public
principles, thereby avoiding the reproduction of majoritarian forms of
injustice.
This procedure for determining generalizable interests on which to
structure political principles can certainly be seen as a practical negotiation of
the two demands of justice that Derrida identifies. The first requirement
ethical obligation to respond to the unique interests of particular individuals
is now framed by the idea of an impartial standpoint, which represents the
second requirement that these unique interests be granted equal consider-
ation. Of course, from a Levinasian perspective, which accords absolute
priority to the consideration of the Others interests, the effort to consider
all interests equally repudiates the ethical relation itself. However, if state-
based justice is to attempt to shoulder its ethical obligation to all Others,
then procedures are needed to compare the particular interests of distinct
individuals, even if this means that our particular ethical obligations cannot
always be upheld.
The object of analysis: empirical reason

In what I am designating here as his next major work, Knowledge and Human
Interests (1987a), Habermas maps out the specific relation between reason
and human interest so as to account for his view that the procedures of
justice are to apply to empirical interests expressed in, and satisfied by,
normative structures of action-coordination. Revisiting Kants separation of
the exercise of reason from empirical interests, Habermas instead argues
that reason is always interested, and that its object of moral interest is
intersubjective interaction undistorted by domination, wherein the mutual
interests of all may achieve fruition.
On the one hand, Kant insists that theoretical reason would overstep its
proper bounds if it attempted to explain how pure practical reason is
exercised in the empirical world of phenomena (Kant, 1996, 4:458459 &
4:461462). The objective reality of the idea of a free will cannot be
theoretically explained by reference to empirical laws of nature, because an
empirical cause would effectively rule out the very freedom of the will,
invalidating the idea of the moral law itself, which requires that its law be
freely willed.
On the other hand, Kant acknowledges that if reason is practical a cause
determining the will to action then it must nonetheless affect the senses.
Rational causality must have an empirical component to be capable of
effecting practical action in the phenomenal world (1996, 4:460463). Kant
thus introduces the concept of a pure practical interest of reason, which
plays the systematic role of guaranteeing the causal link between pure reason
and the empirical world of interacting objects. Interest, in Kant, is the
pleasure that we connect with the idea of the existence of an object or action
(2000b, 5:205). It expresses a relation between the object or action and our
faculty of desire. The distinction between a merely empirical and a pure
interest thus concerns the origin of the interest. Empirical interest in what is
pleasant or useful originates in pathological need stimulated by the
inclinations of sensibility. Pure, practical, rational interest originates in the
moral law: the moral law itself awakens or produces a need, and thus an
interest in the faculty of desire, which is determined not by inclination, but
rather by principles of reason alone (Kant, 1996, 5:73). Pure interest
produces what Kant refers to as moral feeling or respect (1996, 5:8081,
4:460461, 5:73, 5:7679, 4:400, 6:399403; 2000b, 5:209210, 5:222 & 5:257
260). While, for reasons expressed in the preceding paragraph, the nature
of the production of this pure interest cannot be explained theoretically,
pure interest is nonetheless practically necessary. Without it, pure practical
reason cannot produce empirical action (Kant, 1996, 4:460). As Habermas
notes, in order to enact the moral law in the empirical world, human beings
must actually want or desire to do so (Habermas, 1987a, p. 201).
However, pure interest is neither empirical (since it originates in the
moral law) nor purely rational (since it equates to pathos and desire).
In this sense, pure interest fits uncomfortably with the rest of Kants
system, with its rigid division between rational-empirical and noumenal-
phenomenal. On the one hand, pure interest or moral feeling is an
experiential fact on whose basis we defend the practical reality of pure
reason. On the other hand, this fact is not itself empirical: it claims the
ambivalent status, says Habermas, of a transcendental experience, an
experience of the moral law for which an empirical explanation cannot
be provided. Within the confines of Kants system, the idea of a non-
empirical genesis of reason which is not, for all that, severed from
experience is absurd or system-exploding, to use Habermass hyperbolic
expression (Habermas, 1989a, p. 116). It designates an experience
(moral feeling) as incomprehensible yet necessary (Habermas, 1987a,
p. 202).
In his work after Knowledge and Human Interests, Habermas explicitly sets
out to avoid the problems that Kants rigid division between reason and
interest creates, proposing that we instead begin with the premise that
reasons exercise and interests are manifest in forms of action and social
interaction. Shifting the focus of analysis away from a Kantian philosophy of
the monological subject of reason and onto reasons practical expression in
intersubjective, action-coordinating norms, Habermas hopes to arrive at a
typology of actions along with their associated interests, in view of identifying
the pragmatic function of the moral interest. The moral interest is now
defined as the determination of intersubjective norms of interaction, free
from domination and founded on generalizable interests.3
Of course, the attempt to comprehend Kantian moral feeling in terms
of a pragmatic interest in achieving mutual understanding will always
overlook the very aspect of moral interest its incomprehensibility that
Levinas takes to be morally relevant (see Chapter 1). For Levinas, the
empirical and experiential feeling that the idea of the moral law generates
is an experience that cannot be reduced to ones own comprehension. This
is because the experience of moral law is not, as Kant believes, a law that
I freely give myself, but rather a law that I receive from another person who,
in this way, challenges my sovereignty, producing an obligation whose
particularity cannot be formalized in terms of a categorical imperative.
This, Levinas believes, is why Kant acknowledges that moral interest is
humiliating, producing a priori a feeling that can be called pain (Kant,
1996, 5:73). Where Levinas emphasizes the ethical relevance of the
incomprehensibility of moral interest, Habermas sees a contradiction to be
avoided. Habermasian subjects need not be forever limited by the finite
consciousness of the Levinasian self who is infinitely and indefinitely
obligated to respond to a law it cannot understand because such a self can

pragmatically overcome its limitation by seeking the perspective of the
other person through communication. Hence, Habermas transgresses and
betrays Levinasian ethical responsibility for the incomprehensible Other,
whose law is experienced as foreign and hostile, so as to instead focus on
the attempt of subjects to achieve a shared perspective across their initial
differences.
Transgression and betrayal of Levinasian ethics is necessary if ethical
obligation is to play a meaningful role in our lives as social beings. In these
lives, we undertake to communicate with others, coordinating our action
for mutual benefit, which in turn involves comparing obligations, desires
and interests. Derrida recognizes this need to risk transgression when he
states that justices responsibility for the unique Other, and for all Others as
equals, must be negotiated for the sake of ethics itself.
Attempting to comprehend the incomprehensible and compare the
incomparable, Habermass starting point is the very presupposition that we
can understand the other and that consensus is possible, an apologetic that
resembles Rawlss Kantian assumption; namely, reasonable faith in the
possibility of a just constitutional regime (Rawls, 1996, p.172). From this
starting point, Habermas then determines criteria by virtue of which norms
of action for unconstrained and undistorted communicative action can be
validated in argumentation oriented towards mutual understanding among
all those with relevant interests, thereby upholding Kants publicity principle
as a rational idea and avoiding its complicity in the reproduction of mere
ideology (Roderick, 1986, p. 74). These criteria, and the manner in which
they reconcile individual and impartial consideration, constitute the focus
of the next section, again presented from our first deconstructive orientation
towards the possibility of justice.
The categorical imperative procedure: an intersubjective justification

In Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (1990a), Habermas
formulates a critique of Kants categorical imperative, for reasons that he
also takes to apply to Rawlss original position procedure. The critique
concerns what Habermas refers to as a monological philosophy of the
subject. Kants categorical imperative procedure is problematic, because it
entitles a solitary individual to validate for all others any maxim that he or
she can will, without contradiction, to be a universal law. But a merely
subjective assessment errs, because it does not ascribe importance to the
empirical judgements of those other subjects who are also affected by the
norm in question. Any test of the undistorted nature of intersubjective

norms must also include the judgements of those subject to such norms.
Evaluation of social norms cannot be undertaken monologically, but rather
requires that interacting partners (or their advocatory representatives)
validate the contested norm of action themselves. Habermas thus
reformulates the categorical imperative procedure in the form of procedural
criteria for constructing the content of generalizable interests in real
dialogues among those affected.
Habermass identification of these procedures takes the form of a rational
reconstruction of the pragmatic presuppositions of consensually oriented
communicative action. He lays out, first, a theory of communication in
which meaning and validity are analyzed in pragmatic terms namely, in
terms of their ability to coordinate action with others; second, a universal
pragmatic examination of the basis of intersubjective validity namely, the
principle of universalization (U); and third, an account of procedures (D)
to follow to ensure moral justification, producing intersubjective norms
free from domination (see also Cronin, 1993, pp. xiiixviii). No longer are
norms assessed in the head of a solitary individual. Rather, evaluation takes
place through discussion among those affected. The inclusion of affected
individuals in the evaluation process is intended to guarantee an agreement
that recognizes the particular interests of unique individuals while also
treating such individuals equally and impartially.
First, analyzing structures of social interaction rather than consciousness,
Habermas identifies a typology of pragmatic forms of coordinating
interaction. In general terms, social action can be either strategic or oriented
towards mutual understanding (communicative).4 Strategic action seeks to
influence interaction with another by the threat of sanctions or the prospect
of gratification. In contrast, communicative action aims to rationally motivate
another to freely participate in interaction, thereby depending on the
reciprocal and mutual understanding of communicative acts (Habermas,
1990a, p. 58). Communicative action is logically prior to other action-types.
Already situated within, socialized by, and oriented around a lifeworld
background consensus an implicit or explicit recognition of shared values
subjects have at their disposal a set of shared understandings by means of
which to coordinate their action. In this sense, even strategic acts function
by using shared norms and values of communicative action to non-
communicatively pursue advantage (Habermas, 1984, pp. 288294; 1987b,
pp. 113197). Acceptance of lifeworld truth and validity claims can, however,
be uncritical. Thus Habermas distinguishes between validity claims that have
merely de facto status and those that are the object of rational acceptance.
When disagreement arises over an aspect of the lifeworld, subjects engage in

strategic action (to influence their peers to abide by certain norms) or they
enter into rational discourse (argumentation oriented to consensus) so as to
raise, assess and, if at all possible, redeem validity claims. Communication
succeeds or fails on the basis of agreement or disagreement about certain
basic dimensions; namely, the truth of constatives (in theoretical discourse),
the rightness of regulatives or norms of action (in practical discourse) and
the truthfulness or sincerity of representatives (in therapeutical discourse)
(Habermas, 1984, pp. 2242).
Second, Habermas argues, by means of what he calls a universal prag-
matic analysis, that a rule of argumentation principle (U) or the moral
principle (1990a, p. 93) is employed whenever participants attempt to
resolve disagreements consensually. Principle (U) is derived from the
presuppositions that participants must assume when committing to the
effort to achieve mutual understanding (Habermas, 1996a, p. 531 & p. 109;
see also Rehg, 2002). First, participants entering into rational debate assume
that they and the others know what it means to discuss whether or not a
norm of action should be adopted. Armed with his action typology,
Habermas assumes, more specifically, that a social norm is a shared
behavioural expectation whose general observance coordinates interaction
by regulating the satisfaction of the particular interests of parties in the
light of a shared value. Second, participants in argumentation assume that
if they are to reach agreement on a norm through argument, they must
convince one another that a shared behavioural expectation indeed selects
interest-regulating values, which have value for all, producing the coordin-
ated satisfaction of interests. Consequently, whoever intends to justify a
norm in discourse is committed to a discourse that (a) is open to all
competent actors, (b) provides its participants with symmetrical chances to
introduce and problematize assertions, and to express their needs and
desires, (c) is subject to neither internal nor external coercion and (d)
requires that the utterances of participants be sincere or truthful (Habermas,
1999, p. 48). Third, participants in argumentation assume that the
agreement for which they strive is to be supported by only those reasons
that survive after each person has been free to question them. Thus, fourth,
participants assume that their individual perception of shared interests is
undistorted only if they can convince others, in terms the others consider
appropriate, that the norms general observance indeed coordinates action
according to an interest-regulating value having priority for all, with accep-
table consequences for social order. From these practical presuppositions,
Habermas derives the pragmatic principle (U) (a rule of argumentation)
which stipulates that every valid norm must be such that all affected can
accept the consequences and the side-effects its general observance can be
anticipated to have for the satisfaction of everyones interests (and these
consequences are preferred to those of known alternative possibilities for
regulation) (Habermas, 1990a, p. 65; see also p. 93). Principle (U) thus
describes the elements of an impartial standpoint that participants cannot
but presuppose when attempting to coordinate interaction for the mutual
satisfaction of interests.
This account allows Habermas to distinguish between the merely de facto
forms of agreement that comprise the content of Rawlss overlapping
consensus and valid forms of agreement which uphold the mutual
satisfaction of the interests of both majorities and minorities alike.
Habermas hereby acknowledges the validity claims advanced by minorities,
even when these claims are not yet the object of overlapping consensus
(1990a, pp. 6268). As for Kant, like the principle of publicity, (U) clarifies
the moral insight and practical intent at work in the consensually oriented
discourse of the property-owning bourgeois public in its opposition to the
de facto, unilateral authority of the estates, while also requiring the
inclusion of those unique interests of co-beneficiaries who lack Kants
requisite property condition (1990a, p. 65).
Third, the theory concerns not only a pragmatic understanding of
communication, and an account of our pragmatic presuppositions about
validity principle (U) but also, and importantly for our purposes
regarding social justice, a procedural approach to moral justification in
actual arguments. Whether arguments lead to fair compromise depends
essentially on procedural conditions subject to moral judgement
(Habermas, 1992a, p. 448) and these conditions are established by
determining in what sense (U), a moral rule of argumentation and part
of the logic of practical discourses, is to regulate actual discursive practices
in which contested norms are intersubjectively evaluated. Habermas
advances the principle (D), a procedure that seeks to satisfy the moral
principle in concrete contexts of consensual conflict resolution. According
to principle (D), only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or
could meet) with the approval of all affected in their capacity as
participants in a practical discourse (Habermas, 1990a, p. 93). This
means, first, that all affected by a contested norm (or representatives of
those affected) are to be included as actual participants in a practical
discourse; second, that all such participants are to be granted the
symmetrical distribution of communication rights; third, that none is to
be subject to coercion of any form; and fourth, that participants are to be
themselves sincere and truthful (Habermas, 1999, p. 48). Habermas refers

to discourse explicitly conducted according to principle (D) as discourse
ethics or, in his later work, discourse morality (see also McCarthy, 1994,
p. 46).
The principle (D) is procedural in the sense that it is unable to determine
the content or outcome of the practical discourses that take place. Unlike
Rawlss theory, whose principles, public values and constitutional essentials
are substantive, Habermasian procedures do not themselves determine
which norms of action are fair, but instead leave this task to the judgements
of participants themselves. Consequently, the institutionalization of
practices of rational public debate subject to the principle (D) is the
guiding ideal of Habermass entire theory (McCarthy, 1978, p. 293). As he
explains, the settling of political questions, as far as their moral core is
concerned, depends on the institutionalization of practices of rational
public debate (Habermas, 1992a, pp. 4478), which enable the self-
regulation of society (1992a, p. 432).
With procedures to guarantee impartiality, principle (D) also guides us in
those cases where rational consensus (and hence, moral validity) seems
unachievable; that is, when no clear generalizable interests can be identified
or when certain participants refuse or are unable to shoulder the moral
perspective. In cases where rational argument switches to bargaining, and
when it is no longer possible to achieve moral validity, participants can still
use (D) to determine legitimate outcomes that retain procedural impartiality.
Since bargaining power does not derive from the power of the better
argument but from material resources, threats, promises and the like, the
discourse principle, which is supposed to secure an uncoerced consensus,
may be brought to bear only indirectly, through procedures that regulate
bargaining from the standpoint of fairness (1996a, p. 166). The negotiation
of compromises then follows procedures that provide interested parties
with an equal opportunity to influence one another during the bargaining
such that all affected interests come into play and have equal chances of
prevailing (1995, p. 167).
We concluded Chapter 3 by identifying the need to loosen the link
between Rawlss art of the possible and those existing norms that are
actually affirmed in overlapping consensus. Habermass theory promises
to contribute to this loosening by providing citizens with avenues to
construct new forms of social life that are more appropriate to the needs
of the suffering individuals who, as we noticed in Chapter 3, lack sufficient
opportunity to contest their inequitable allocation of the burdens of the
inevitable injustices of Rawlss constitutional regime. We now have
grounds to say that Habermas provides a more nuanced negotiation of

the demands of deconstructive justice than Rawls. Habermas thinks
through the need for the provision of institutional opportunities for
individuals to contest and reformulate norms themselves, providing a
negotiation of the tension between individual and impartial consideration
that draws on their own understanding of their specific interests and
those of others.
Moral Personhood: Procedural Features,

Not Substantive Assumptions
Clearly, the legitimacy of an intersubjective norm can only be upheld by
virtue of the implied or explicit acquiescence of those real persons whose
interactions are regulated by the norm in question. This simple idea,
central to the Habermasian project, motivates a further critique of Rawlss
theory, this time focusing on the latters ideal of moral personhood, whose
two moral faculties respectively map onto the design features of the original
position procedure, which citizens use to help them identify principles of
justice for their social institutions. Continuing the criticism expressed in
the preceding section, Habermas rejects Rawlss original position device as
mere monological reasoning, which overlooks the need to subject our
norms to the empirical judgements of those real persons affected by
them.
The first faculty of the Rawlsian personhood ideal, the ability to formu-
late and pursue a conception of the good life, is represented in the original
position by the characterization of the parties to the decision as instrumentally
rational, taking the most effective means to their ends. The second faculty,
the capacity for a sense of justice or the willingness to offer and abide by fair
terms of cooperation, is depicted by the original positions veil of ignorance
constraints, which abstracts from private ends to produce unbiased public
judgement. Rawlsian citizens place themselves in the original position so as
to arrive at principles of justice that reflect the relevant features of
themselves.
Rawls does not require that the principles of justice and the more basic
set of public values and constitutional essentials be validated by others in
real discourses. In theory, a citizen can arrive at such principles without
checking their judgements about valid norms against those of others. For
Habermas, the monological nature of Rawlss argument constitutes a
defence of substantive values that oversteps the proper boundaries of a
philosophical account of justice. Against Rawls, Habermas claims that

philosophy cannot make any kind of substantive contribution ... [it]
does not have privileged access to particular moral truths (1990a, p. 211).
All philosophy can do is explain and ground the moral point of view
(1990a, p. 211), identifying its procedural criteria and encouraging the
attempts to substantively realize it in historical form. The moral validity of
an essentially substantive and monologically argued theory, such as the
one that Rawls defends, can only be confirmed in actual or advocatory
practical discourses satisfying the procedures of principle (D). Doing so
would mean subjecting the social norms that reproduce socio-economic
disadvantage to critique by the disadvantaged themselves, a possibility
that we saw Rawls exclude in Chapter 3 when he states that the judgements
of the disadvantaged are often controversial and cannot provide a
practicable ground for the stability of well-ordered societies.
Like Rawls, Habermass alternative ideal of moral personhood is presented
in terms of the capacities that enable persons to take up an impartial
standpoint. Consequently, their definitions vary as a function of their
understanding of the defining elements of this standpoint. Habermass
moral person is a bearer of the capacities that allow for participation in
consensually oriented action. Moral persons have particular strategic
interests that they pursue in their interactions with others (since this is what
generates conflict and makes impartiality practically necessary). Moral
persons also implicitly accept the universal and necessary communicative
presuppositions of argumentative speech, thereby affirming as valid some
sort of principle of universalization (since this is what makes impartiality
possible).
The ideal of ethical personhood that Levinas upholds requires
unconditional obligation for the fate of the particular Other. Like Rawlss
ideal, Habermass concept of moral personhood tames this unconditionality
with the requirement that both self and Other take up the impartial
standpoint, presenting their own interests, attempting to comprehend
those of Others and working out a way in which shared interests can be
mutually satisfied. In this sense, discourse ethics takes seriously the particular
interests that persons may have as distinct individual participants in action
only by framing this with the requirement of impartiality among persons
that Levinas rejects and, in so doing, providing a practicable negotiation of
the demands that Derrida associates with justice.
I now turn to Habermass understanding of the third idea to which
deconstructive justice must commit if justice is to be possible, namely, the
practicability of the conception.
Practicability: Expressions of Popular Sovereignty,

Not Overlapping Consensus
This empirical and intersubjective interpretation of Kantian reason
equates to an account of practicability that once again rejects its Rawlsian
counterpoint for granting undue primacy to those substantive public values
already affirmed in overlapping consensus, overlooking the need for norms
of action at every level to be subject to the judgement of all those real
persons affected by them. To use Habermass vocabulary, Rawls does not
recognize that his constitutionalism (his defence of normative systems of
individual rights that regulate our interactions) cannot actually be justified
without their validation by the articulation of the wills of citizens themselves,
in actual practices of democratic will-formation or concrete expressions of
popular sovereignty. Rawls, like Habermas, wants individuals to view
themselves as authors of their institutions. However, he does not pursue the
pragmatic implications of this acknowledgement, which should mean that
addressees of institutions must themselves acquiesce to all of the norms that
regulate interaction hence Habermass call for the creation of public
spheres in which rational public debate can actually take place. By explicitly
emphasizing the ability for action-norms to change with reference to the
differences of real citizens, Habermass account of practicability is, in my
view, closer to Derridas understanding of the merely relative stability of
social norms, an account that is far more flexible than that of Rawls.
The practicability of the conception no longer relies on the capacity for
overlapping consensus to provide social stability. Rather, Habermas insists
that his conception is practicable and realistic because the institutionalization
of public spheres provides opportunities for generating empirical forms of
rational consensus through real discussions that appropriately represent
individuals and minorities. In other words, Rawlss art of the possible
misunderstands the very real sense in which norms are contested and
articulated in real forums of discussion.
This general problem exerts itself in at least two ways, each of which
prevents Rawls from grasping the nature of the cognitive claim to legitimacy
that a constitutional state is entitled to make, leading to the sorts of
problems we identified in Chapter 3. First of all, Habermas believes that
the original position procedure represents the resumption of natural-law
argumentation (Habermas, 1996a, p. 57; see also pp. 5657 & 8384) that
characterizes the modern liberal tradition, leaving Rawls unable to articulate
the justificatory link between the individual liberties of the moderns (private
autonomy) and the popular sovereignty of the ancients (public and civic
autonomy) (1996a, pp. 5051 & 6773; see also Constant, 1988, pp. 307328).
The modern liberal defends the priority of individual rights by reference to

a fictive state of nature from which such rights are derived, an idea Rawls
continues in the form of the original position (Habermas, 1996a, p. 57; see
also pp. 5657 & 8384). In contrast to the ancients, for whom the concept
of law as the collective will of the people is compatible with the subjection of
the individual to the authority of the community, the moderns concept
of law as the expression of natural individual rights (to free association,
property, freedom of opinion and so on) is compatible with the subjection
of collective expressions of popular sovereignty to the authority of the
individual. A theory first developed in vacuo, Rawlss constructivism
distinguishes itself from other natural-law arguments (formulated in the
liberalisms of Hobbes, Locke, Kant and Rousseau) only insofar as he
explicitly requires, in a second stage, that an accommodating political
culture be shown to actually exist, thereby ensuring that the theory is realizable
(1996a, p. 57).5 In this sense, Rawls does not actually recognize the sense in
which the natural rights developed in vacuo are actually justified by the
accommodating political culture; that is, by its validation in expressions of
popular sovereignty.
The second criticism expresses a similar concern; namely, that by viewing
reasonable overlapping consensus as an indication of the theorys
widespread acceptance, Rawls does not acknowledge the sense in which
democratic will-formation or expressions of popular sovereignty actually
justify the public conception (see Habermas, 1996a, pp. 5666). Hence,
Rawls does not require that citizens themselves actually legitimize the natural,
liberal, individual rights his theory defends. As our own analyses revealed in
Chapter 3, without such justification, individual rights impose illegitimate
restrictions on the public will and constrain the liberty of subsequent
generations, preventing individuals and minorities from actively contesting
marginalizing laws when their judgements about such laws are not already
the subject of overlapping consensus. Habermas fears that, subject to such
externally imposed restrictions, citizens will be unable to reignite the
radical democratic embers of the original position in the civic life of their
society, because it will appear to them that the discourses of legitimation
have already taken place, with the results already embodied in the
constitution (Habermas, 1995, pp. 6970).
Rawlss concern with the practicability of his art intervenes only at a
second stage when such rights are tested against the culture to see whether
the political culture promises to accommodate the theory (Habermas, 1998,
p. 120; see also Rawls, 1999a, p. 486). Rawlss two-stage account of the
theorys practicability in this way supports liberal rights with a priori features,
thereby ascribing to the democratic process a merely functional role in
guaranteeing social stability, rather than the justificatory and legitimizing

role that Habermas ascribes to expressions of democratic will-formation
(Habermas, 1998, pp. 127128). For Habermas, concerns with the art of
the possible must inform the very determination of rights themselves, such
that theory construction and the conditions for its realization are co-original.
This allows Habermas to distinguish between the merely de facto laws that
happen to exist in overlapping consensus and legitimate laws that instead
refer to the collective public will.
Habermass account of practicability suggests that social norms may be
contested at any time and are thereby necessarily open to ongoing
substantive change. As I will suggest in the next chapter, the construction of
substantive norms takes on a futural dimension in Habermass account,
because the attempt to inject respect for the particularity of individuals into
discursive exchange means that our norms remain open to contestation in
principle. In spite of certain important differences between Habermass
and Derridas accounts of normativity (to be explored in the next chapter),
the flexibility that Habermas accords to the construction of substantive
norms and the attentiveness to the merely provisional stability of their
content makes his account share certain features with Derridas. For
Derrida, norms are discovered in a tradition we share, a contingent
determination of a commitment to the possibility of communicating in the
face of its impossibility. Rawls is less sensitive than Habermas to the moral
weight of the particularity of the needs, interests and judgements of unique
individuals or minorities, and consequently his account of practicability
reaffirms those norms that already provide stability, refusing to explore the
extent to which the limits of the possible should be given by the actual.
The Im/Possible Content of Democratic Will-Formation
This chapter has demonstrated, first, that Habermass debate with Rawls
supports the position that I developed in Chapter 3, namely, that Rawls
determines the tension between individual and impartial consideration by
over-privileging norms that are already affirmed in overlapping consensus,
thereby overlooking those claims to validity put forward by individuals and
minorities that are not the object of overlapping consensus. Second, I
showed that Habermass alternative account of justice effectively overcomes
Rawlss problem by acknowledging that intersubjective norms are only
legitimate when they are validated by those subject to them, in real practices
of democratic will-formation.
Habermass theory has been presented here as a worthy attempt to

negotiate the two demands ethical obligation and impartial consideration
that Derrida believes justice implies. Discourse ethics ascribes moral weight
to the particular interests that persons have as distinct individual participants
in action, and it frames its consideration of such interests with the equal
consideration of the interests of all, thereby upholding the requirement of
impartiality among persons. In so doing, Habermas displays greater
sensitivity than Rawls to the need for norms to remain accountable to unique
individuals in the particular, and, in so doing, Habermas acknowledges that
norms of interaction are open to contestation at any time.
We saw in the previous chapter that, in attempting to allow individuals to
pursue their difference uncoerced, Rawls aligns the content of justice with
only those values that everyone can affirm in overlapping consensus, ruling
out the very respect for unique individuals and their ability to contest their
intersubjective norms that the revisions to his theory were intended to
correct. By wrongly identifying validity with contingent patterns of social
acceptance, Rawls undermines the very critical function that the concept of
justice should play for actually existing norms. Habermas encourages the
ongoing productive creation of just norms, through the institutionalization
of public opportunities for individuals and minorities to contest the norms
to which they are subject, so as to reformulate them in the interests of all,
thereby providing a more careful negotiation of the tension between
individual and impartial consideration. Although Habermass theory is less
modest than Rawls in claiming that its procedures apply to all language
users whatsoever, it is nonetheless more modest in an important sense,
relinquishing Rawlss aim of providing a substantive content to the concept
of justice, and granting real individuals the chance to negotiate their norms
for themselves.
In the next chapter, however, I intend to balance my positive appraisal of
Habermass commitment to the art of the possible with the second
orientation of this book; namely, Derridas attention to the undecidability
of the tension between individual and impartial consideration. It will be
shown that rational consensus is both empirically implausible and
conceptually impossible, and, consequently, that Habermass discourse
ethics does not succeed in conceptually resolving the freedom of the moral
person as a distinct individual with the freedom of all as moral equals. This
demonstration will drive the book towards the following conclusion. In our
role as citizens (for the theorist is also a citizen addressing peers), we must
reflect more carefully on the implication of the inevitability of justices
failure. One such implication is that we will need to cultivate civic attitudes
of openness, humility and resilience, prepared to respond to ongoing

failure in the hope of a more just future. If individuals, each with their
unique instrument and musical contributions, are to indeed be able to
create the beautiful orchestral performance of which Rawls speaks (1971,
pp. 524n/459n rev.), then we need to cultivate the sorts of attitudes that
allow us to strive to achieve the impossible. Although both Rawls and
Habermas surely aim for this sort of social beauty, they do not devote
enough attention to the sorts of civic attitudes that might facilitate an
ongoing quest for social justice in the face of failure.
Chapter 5
Habermas and the Perfectibility of

Deliberative Outcomes
This entropic state of a definitive consensus, which would make all further commu-
nication superfluous, cannot be represented as a meaningful goal because it would
engender paradoxes (an ultimate language, a final interpretation, a nonrevisable
knowledge etc.).
Jrgen Habermas, Reply to symposium participants, 1996b, p. 1518
This chapters analyses are grounded on the second orientation of this

book; namely, an attention to the undecidability of the tension between
individual and impartial consideration. The previous chapter argued that
Habermass theory facilitates the institutionalization of public opportunities
for individuals and minorities to contest the norms to which they are subject,
thereby negotiating this tension in a manner that avoids identifying justice
with only those Rawlsian values that are also the object of overlapping
consensus. This positive appraisal is balanced here by an analysis of certain
ways in which Habermass theory fails to achieve its ends. It will be shown
that the ideal of rational consensus is both empirically plausible and
conceptually impossible. However, Habermass theory should not be
dismissed outright, but rather requires supplementation by a set of civic
attitudes humility, openness and resilience that equip citizens to continue
to strive for justice in the face of failure. I will suggest that these attitudes
are implied by Derridas own response to Habermass outright rejection of
deconstruction in the 1980s (Derrida, 1988a, pp. 111160).
Although Habermass account initially appears to avoid the anti-
democratic tendencies of Derridas concept of democracy, it will be shown
that an attention to the undecidability of the tension between ethical
obligation and impartiality nonetheless sheds light on a number of problems
with the Habermasian approach. With Derrida, we will demand
accountability from Habermas for these problems, balancing the

constructive commitment to the possibility of justice with a responsibility
for the failures of the art of the possible.
Protections for Autonomy: Initial Immunity to

As we saw in Chapter 1, the early Habermas of the 1980s rejects deconstruc-
tion for denying itself the resources to engage in the very forms of rational
argument that allow for the negotiation of the tension between ethical
obligation and impartial consideration. Habermas claims that by seeking to
demonstrate that ostensibly rational discourses function by virtue of
persuasion, rhetoric, influence and power, Derrida refuses to give credence
to the validity claims that Habermas believes are embedded in communication
oriented to mutual understanding. By presenting philosophical argument
in terms of literary rhetoric and strategic language-use, thereby bound up
with power, conflict and unilateral interests, Derrida refuses to engage with
the very category of interaction that Habermas identifies with the idea of
morality. For Habermas, this strategy is evasive: Derrida refuses to engage in
argument at all, because he realizes that to do so would be equivalent to
performatively confirming Habermass position. Derrida seeks to blur the
distinction between moral communication and strategic interaction, which,
according to Habermas, effectively robs philosophy of its primary duty to
solve problems (1990b, p. 210).
In Chapter 1 I suggested that this popular liberal dismissal of deconstruc-
tion overlooks the fact that Derrida explicitly affirms the need to risk
determining the content of justice in response to the suffering of particular
others, in an attempt to reconcile ethical obligation and impartiality. Moreover,
I suggested that one of the ways in which Derrida illuminates the irreducibility
of force is by drawing attention to the conceptual tension between the
defining components of a particular conceptual system. We saw Derrida
identify two demands in our concept of justice that can only be resolved by
compromising the integrity of each. Conceptual tension haunts our political
tradition of liberal democracy, surfacing in a variety of forms. I discussed one
of these forms earlier, when outlining Derridas interpretation of the majority
voting principle that Aristotle identifies with democracy, which fails to
properly negotiate the two demands it is designed to protect (Chapter 1). Not
only does the principle fail to protect the freedom of individuals (by permit-
ting the possibility of majorities denying freedom to some), it also threatens
the equality of individuals (because the denial of freedom to some would
Habermas and the Perfectibility of Deliberative Outcomes 129
undo the principle of the equality of all) (Derrida, 2005a, p. 34). Given that
Habermass discourse ethics presents itself as an explicit attempt to negotiate
the tension between individual and impartial consideration (Chapter 4),
I would now like to consider whether Derridas account of the undecidability
of the demands of justice, and of the irreducibility of force, can be said to
pertain to Habermass account.
It is not immediately clear that the procedures of discourse ethics display
the anti-democratic tendencies that Derrida identifies with Aristotles
concept of democracy. Like Rawlss theory of justice as fairness, deliberative
democracy is not defined uniquely by the majority voting principle. Instead,
as Patton indicates with more general reference to contemporary theories
of liberal democracy (Patton, 2007a, p.163), Habermass theory engages a
more complex set of axioms, within which the majority voting principle
plays a far more limited role. The principle of numerical equality does not
lead deliberative democracy to its own destruction, because it is framed by
the system of procedures that together define the principle (D), which
intends to guarantee the very individual autonomy that grants deliberative
procedure either its moral validity (through rational consensus) or its
legitimacy (through fair bargaining) (Chapter 4). Majority voting must itself
be subject to the very deliberative practice that legitimizes it.
My first point, then, is that majority voting is not even required when
redeeming disputed validity claims consensually, because the procedures
for doing so constrainall those involved to attempt to adopt the perspectives
of all others, in view of determining, together, the interests that are shared
(Habermas, 1990a, p. 65). Majority voting enters into the equation only in
cases where participants in argumentation refuse to shoulder a moral
perspective or where no clear, generalizable interests can be identified.
This occurs when participants either refuse, or are unable, to abstract
themselves from their strategic standpoints. In such cases, majority voting
negotiates a compromise through fair bargaining.
My second point is that even when the majority voting principle is
deployed in instances of fair bargaining, it is still subject to the value of
reciprocal individual liberty, which attempts to prevent non-democratic
outcomes from compromising the principle of individual consideration. As
I explained in Chapter 4, bargaining which draws on material resources,
threats, promises and the like is still subject to the discourse principle
(D), albeit indirectly (Habermas, 1996a, pp. 165168, 176183, 191192,
282283 & 338341). The discourse principle secures the impartiality of the
outcome of discourse from the standpoint of procedural fairness. In other
words, it spells out the procedures that provide all interested parties with an
equal opportunity to influence one another during bargaining, so that all
affected interests come into play and have equal chances of prevailing. It
also requires that the outcome be subject, in principle, to future contestation
according to these same procedures. As part of this system, outcomes of
majority voting must satisfy three conditions, which are designed to uphold
individual consideration. Not only must the outcome be more advantageous
to all than no arrangement whatsoever, it must exclude the production of
both free riders who withdraw from cooperation, and exploited parties who
contribute more to the cooperative effort than they gain from it (1996a,
Chapter 3.1.4). In other words, even when a majority vote is a component
of the determination of the outcome, the arrangements must remain
subject, in principle, to the very deliberative practice that legitimizes it
(Habermas, 1996a, p. 306; see also pp. 179180, 291295 & 303306).
Consequently, in contrast to Derrridas presentation of democracys anti-
democratic potential, and on this initial inspection, Habermasian democratic
procedures attempt to rule out, in advance, outcomes that threaten to
destroy them. Whereas, for Derrida, democracys enemy is internal to the
concept itself, deliberative democratic procedure is not auto-destructive to
the same degree because majority outcomes are legitimate only when
accountable before the very autonomy that grants the procedures their
legitimacy (1996a, p. 180). As Habermas writes, legal coercion must not
destroy the rational motives for obeying the law (1996a, p. 121).
However, although the complexity of deliberative procedures provides
some measure of protection against anti-democratic potentialities with its
realistic negotiation of individual and impartial consideration in real
discourses or fair bargains, I hope to show that Derridas account of the
undecidability of the tension between individual and impartial consideration
is still relevant for Habermass ideal of a fully intersubjective consensus. In
what follows, I will suggest that this ideal is neither empirically plausible nor
conceptually possible. Although it will be shown that Habermas himself
comes to a partial acknowledgement of what I am referring to as the
deconstructive insight, he does not, in my view, shoulder its implications,
which undermines the emancipatory promise of his theory of justice.
Beyond an Obsessive Levinasian Analysis: Problems with

Asymmetrical Obligation
Before mounting an attack on the empirical implausibility and conceptual
impossibility of deliberative democracy, a critique that will nonetheless
maintain a strong sympathy for the reconstructive project, I would first like
to explore the extent to which Levinass emphasis on non-formal

responsibility for the particular Other can be said to provoke vigilance with
respect to justices determined forms. I will do so by identifying those aspects
of the discourse-theoretical account that fail to uphold non-formal ethical
obligation. However, in so doing, it should become clear that Levinass
perspective frustrates the drive for greater justice by refusing the very
attempt to think through practicable ways of negotiating plural obligations
when there are many individuals to consider.
As I suggested in Chapter 1, Derrida gets the conceptual balance right by
insisting that Levinass account of obligation to a plurality of Others the
Other and the Third indeed requires the constructive commitment to
possibility. While acknowledging that ethical obligation for the Other and
the Third produces the idea of the equal right of all Others to individual
consideration, Levinas refuses to recognize the value of the family of ideas
that marks the constructive project; namely, the value of impartiality among
Others, an ideal of moral personhood that Others, too, must uphold, and
the practicability of political principles. Troubled by the obsessive nature of
Levinasian ethics, which is provocative and unfair in its one-sided
characterization of justice as betrayal, I will instead try to isolate what I see
as the value of the orientation towards impossibility, maintaining a critical
approach to Habermass theory that is not, for all that, unsympathetic to his
project.
The non-formal ethical obligation that Levinas claims to discover in
Kants moral principle (see Chapter 1) renders problematic the very
methodological assumption on which Habermass system is built, namely,
the supposition that two participants in interaction (A and B) are able to
achieve a shared intersubjective (and thus objective) standpoint concerning
the validity claims implied by their interaction. When, by taking the position
of an observer, participants have reason to believe that their understanding
of the interaction is shared by their partner, they can then lay claim to an
objective viewpoint that fulfils expectations in a reciprocal manner. Levinas
would ask whether this shift in analysis from participant to observer
perspective can indeed maintain the essential characteristic of the ethical
experience that, from a participant or subjective perspective, Kant
designates as moral interest.
Habermass argument proceeds as follows (see Habermas, 1987b,
pp. 3536 & 204205; 1990a, pp. 2529, 65, 144, 153156 & 198; 1992b,
pp. 170177). Person A objectifies his or her local interaction with person
B by adopting the perspective of an observer examining the behaviours
and implied expectations of both A and B. This observer takes the position
of the generalized other (Habermas, 1987b, pp. 3536; 1992b, p. 179 &
181), defined, following George Herbert Mead, as a socialized adult who
has internalized the roles and norms of a particular social reality. In the
course of experience, socialized adults learn both to expect certain
behaviours from others in particular situations and to recognize that
othershave certain expectations of them in return. Returning to the initial
participant or subjective perspective, A projects onto B those expectations
and behaviours that A has learnt to expect from the generalized other,
using these projections as a guide for his or her own actions. Based on this
learning process, A is able to evaluate shared action norms in terms of
their acceptability for the generalized other and, in this case, for B, as a
concrete instantiation of the generalized other. If, from the perspective
of the generalized other (that is, from the perspective of the socialized
observer), both A and B are able to accept the consequences and side-
effects that the general observance of the action-norm has for the
satisfaction of their own individual interests, then the interaction can be
said to be reciprocal; that is, based on a generalizable interest. By means
of this procedure, A has reason to believe that both parties expectations
will be fulfilled, which means that As standpoint is fully intersubjective,
and is thus moral.
The argument that participant and observer perspectives can be
successfully united supports Habermass position that the internal
contradictions in Kants account of moral feeling can be resolved by
shifting the focus of analysis from subjective to intersubjective reason; that is,
reason expressed in the communicative structures that participants use to
coordinate their actions. In Chapter 4, we saw Habermas identify a
contradiction in the status that Kant had ascribed to moral interest. On
the one hand, moral feeling attests to the capacity for the moral law to be
practically effective: human beings must empirically desire to act on the
moral law. On the other hand, moral feeling cannot be empirical because
otherwise it would effectively predetermine the will to action by empirical
laws alone, thereby ruling out the very possibility of the moral law that is,
the free will. In order to overcome the contradiction involved in defining
moral feeling as at once empirical and non-empirical, Habermas shifts the
focus of his analysis away from structures of subjective reason and onto
intersubjective structures of reason, deployed by participants who engage
in communicative action, thereby analyzing a reason that is already
empirical.
The shift effectively assumes that the analysis of intersubjective structures
of interaction can actually be fully resolved with a subjective perspective.
Levinas would question this presumed equivalence, rejecting the very

possibility of achieving the mutual imbrication of participant and observer
perspectives. As I argued in Chapter 4, Levinas takes seriously the
incomprehensibility of the ethical experience that Kant describes, and
questions the ability of the observer perspective (of Habermass socialized
adult or generalized other) to grasp the essential characteristic of this
experience. For Levinas, Kants moral law is non-formal and incompre-
hensible, precisely because it is not a law that I give to myself in the
spontaneous, enunciative pragmatic position of the I (or je), but rather a
law that is received in the receptive pragmatic position of the you (or tu).
Following Lyotards reading of the relation between Levinass pure
prescriptive and Kants moral norm, the pragmatic position of passive
receptivity or the pragmatics of being commanded by the pure prescriptive
(Act) is not equivalent to the pragmatic position of spontaneous enunciation,
a pragmatics of reformulating for oneself, in ones own terms, the received
command (in such a way that the maxim of your action is valid as the principle of
a universal legislation). As Lyotard indicates, there remains an irreducible
gap between each respective pragmatic function; a pragmatic gap between
the register of the receiver (you) of the elementary prescriptive Obey or
Act, on the one hand, and the epistemic and denotative register of the
reformulating subject (I), on the other. This difference cannot be fully
overcome by the patterns of learning with which Habermass participants
formulate both for themselves and for the Other the content of the
moral ought. From a Levinasian perspective, As responsibility for the fate
of Bs interests (that is, for interests other than As own interests) is overruled,
in Habermass account, by the interests of the generalized other. Habermas
chooses to emphasize As pragmatic ability to project onto B the interests
that A has learnt to expect from the generalized other. In contrast, Levinas
chooses to emphasize As pragmatic ability to be affected by B, in the register
of the elementary prescriptive (Obey) (Lyotard, 1986).1
This difference in emphasis indicates a deeper point of contention
between Levinas and Habermas with respect to their understanding of the
transcendental conditions of morality. For Habermas, the necessary
conditions of consensually oriented communication are the pragmatic
presuppositions that permit it, presuppositions which he reconstructs in a
form of quasi-transcendental defence of principle (U). For Levinas, the
necessary condition of morality is the ability for the I to be affected by
the Others law. Once again, this difference between Habermas and
Levinas is clarified with reference to their divergent interpretations of
Kants presentation of the transcendental conditions of morality. For Kant,
pure practical freedom is an a priori fact of reason. The will cannot

determine itself to action on the basis of law unless it assumes, as given, the
existence of the freedom which is problematic for the theoretical interest.
The existence of practical freedom is an empirical fact of reason, an a
priori principle that is attested to by moral feeling. If moral action is to be
at all possible, then we must assume the idea of freedom, along with its
ability to produce action in the empirical world (Kant, 1996, 5:122). In
order to avoid the contradiction of affirming the existence of a feeling
that is both rational and empirical, Habermas instead suggests that Kants
a priori fact of reason finds its equivalent in the pragmatic presuppositions
that, according to Habermas, are necessary conditions for intersubjective
communication oriented towards mutual understanding (Habermas,
1973, p. 185).
By contrast, Levinas does not shift the terrain of analysis from subjective
to intersubjective structures of communication, but instead presents the
contradictory nature of Kants moral interest as indicative of the very
condition for morality; namely, the capacity for a finite rational subject to be
empirically affected by laws that are not of his or her creation. For Levinas,
the rational-empirical nature of Kants fact of reason cannot be reconciled
with Kants view of practical freedom giving itself its own law. The fact of
reason is thus not the consciousness of ones own practical freedom as such,
but rather the decentring realization that my freedom is not the only
practical law in my world. The condition of morality, for Levinas, is the
assumption of an other freedom the Other whose interests and needs
are irreducible to mine and whose fate is caught up with my own.
In other words, where Habermas makes moral interest comprehensible
in terms of shared pragmatic presuppositions, Levinas retains the
incomprehensibility of the moral interest as a necessary condition of
morality, with the effect that both defend very different pragmatics of
obligation. Levinas would question the moral importance that Habermas
ascribes to As ability to project onto B the reactions and expectations of the
social group as a whole. Levinas would instead remind Habermas that ethics
demands that A acknowledge that the irreducibility of Bs laws to As
projection remains the very condition of morality. Consequently, Levinas
would defend a pragmatics of listening and exposure, rather than a
pragmatics of reciprocal projection.
The Levinasian perspective thus problematizes Habermass claim that
the moral principle of argumentation (U) is indeed fully intersubjective,
overcoming the problems of the philosophy of consciousness that haunt
Kants categorical imperative procedure and Rawlss original position
device of representation. From the Levinasian perspective, Habermass

defence of (U) is grounded on a pragmatics of projection that excludes a
more fundamental condition, anterior to projection, that makes communi-
cation possible; namely, a Levinasian pragmatics of exposure listening to
and learning from an Other person. Consequently, the Levinasian
perspective would suggest that Habermas effectively reinstates a philosophy
of consciousness: A evaluates action norms by projecting onto B As own
monological understanding of the norms of the socialized generalized
other. Real intersubjectivity, on Levinass account, would instead demand
the suspension of ones own interests and the taking on of the interests of
the Other, in a movement of openness and exposure. Moreover, a principle
requiring openness, exposure and suspension of self-interest appears to
rule out the very principle that Habermas identifies with ethics namely,
the reciprocal assumption of the possibility of achieving an outcome that
satisfies generalizable interests.
The problem, then, is not that (U) is not fully intersubjective, but rather
that Habermas claims to achieve full intersubjectivity when, according to
Levinas, an intersubjective process of evaluation is impossible, in principle.
The pragmatic position of the you, commanded by ethical responsibility, is
irreducible to the spontaneous, enunciative position of the I, who justifies
his or her own enjoyment or self-interest in terms which he or she believes
the other will also find acceptable.
At this point Habermas could reply that, following the initial exposure
that Levinas describes, it is nonetheless necessary to assume that one can
understand the Other. One cannot simply listen without also reformulating,
in ones own terms, the content of the Others communication. It is precisely
for this reason that Habermas insists that the assumption of universal
agreement is counterfactual. Discourse, he states, necessarily begins
with the counterfactual assumption that universal agreement is possible
(1973, p. 185). However, from a Levinasian perspective, this counter-
factual assumption is only a secondary condition of the possibility
of communication, positing itself as a response to a more primary
precondition; namely, being-affected beyond the ability to reformulate the
content of this experience. This is why Levinas speaks of discourse in terms
of learning, a being taught in a non-maieutic fashion (Levinas, 1969,
p. 204) in which the Other who expresses himself precisely does not give
himself (1969, p. 295).
Habermas could also respond that his own model of language-use is not
representational, and is thus not the primary target of Levinass critique.
Discourse, for Habermas, is not representative of a reality that is somehow
external to language, but rather reality is produced as an effect of discourse

itself. In this sense, Habermas might agree with Levinass claim that language
does not represent the Other as such, and that language has a function over
and above its supposed capacity to represent. However, as I indicated in the
previous paragraphs, Levinas is not simply targeting the representational
model but also the pragmatic model that Habermas explicitly defends,
namely, the view that participants in discourse must assume that they
actually can understand one another.
Levinasian responsibility is clearly not equivalent to Habermass
pragmatics of mutual understanding, which commands the self to justify his
or her enjoyment to the other.2 Responsiveness or answering for the Other
(Levinas, 1969, p. 124), not spontaneous self-expression, is the goal of
communication, and this idea falls outside the framework of justifying self-
interests to another.
This insistence on justices failure can provoke a certain vigilance with
respect to determined forms of justice, such as Habermass. Exposure,
marked by an attitude of openness towards and curiosity about the Other,
promises to reorient the exchange, preventing the imposition or projection
of those presumptions about the Others interests which I may already have.
This attitude is important if the Habermasian self is to avoid predetermining
the learning process with those expectations about interaction that
socialized adults have developed over the course of their experience. As
Young points out, symmetrical reciprocity alone cannot account for the
moment of respect for the particular, other person that is the condition for
commencing a deliberative exchange (Young, 1997, p. 340).
It is not surprising, then, that the preceding paragraphs continually
highlighted the ways in which ethical obligation is not equivalent to
Habermass commitment to impartiality. However, when this insistence on
failure is not counterbalanced by faith in the possibility of justice, vigilance
surrenders its critical potential. We are well within our rights to ask whether
ethical responsibility is even a meaningful goal if it cannot allow us to
distinguish between better and worse forms of failure. On the one hand,
Levinas appears to encourage the Socratic gadfly, who, with its goading,
arousing and persuading, stirs the sluggish steed that is the State into action
(Plato, 2005, 28b32e). On the other hand, this great and noble steed will
be spurred only when provoked by terms it understands, formulated in its
own language, and this means that we must engage productively with the
language of consensus, negotiation and possibility, hoping against hope for
progress, albeit without the strong teleology and blind faith that tends to
accompany the constructive pursuit.
Norms and laws are, for Levinas, always de facto and never valid or
legitimate: they always fail to satisfy the ethical obligations to particular
others that make just laws necessary (Levinas, 1998a, p. 205). The liberal
states justice is structurally perfectible but this is not, as Habermas believes,
because its content can always be revisited in the light of the very
presuppositions of discourse that secure its validity or legitimacy. Rather, as
I noted in Chapter 1, the states justice is perfectible because its content
(including the procedural content that Habermas identifies) always betrays
ethical responsibility. Levinasian ethics simply cannot be reconciled with
justice, and this leads to the idea that charity must compensate for justices
failure and the rather unsettling claim that rebellion must begin once order
sets in (see Chapter1).
The pessimistic language Levinas continually associates with state-based
justice discourages the cultivation of the very resilience and conditioning
required for the sorts of attitudes of exposure and openness that his
account should, in principle, encourage.3 It is ultimately Levinass refusal
to engage with the language of possibility and progress that leaves his
ethics impotent and unsatisfying. As I have already suggested in earlier
sections of this book, the attention to failure must be balanced with a
commitment to the constructive moment, along with the ideas of
impartiality, moral personhood and practicability that such commitment
involves.
However, the attention to impossibility what I am also referring to as the
second of deconstructions orientations nonetheless encourages an
attempt to identify those parts of Habermass theory where the tension
between individual autonomy and the equality of all cannot be reconciled
without also compromising one of the demands. As I did with Rawlss theory,
I will now attempt to locate the concrete ways in which Habermasian justice
is complicit in the reproduction of certain forms of injustice.
First, it will be shown that Habermass theory does not satisfy the
requirements of practicability to which constructive conceptions must
commit, because, as McCarthy correctly points out, the ideal of rational
consensus is rarely, if ever, achieved in empirical practice. Moreover, the
ideal of rational consensus will be shown to be not only empirically
implausible, but also conceptually impossible, with the effect that any
commitment to the project of justice will also require the cultivation of civic
attitudes including openness to the other person or the willingness to
challenge ones inherited convictions, humility or the awareness of the
finitude of reason and resilience or the effort to pursue justice in spite of
ongoing failure.
Rational Consensus: Empirically Implausible
As Rawls points out, if a theory of justice is to meet the practical problems

for which it is designed, then its principles must be achievable in practice.
Practicability is an essential characteristic of the art of the possible. A
conception that simply condemns human nature as too corrupt to be moved
by its principles would not serve its practical end (Rawls, 2001, p. 185).
Habermas agrees with this sentiment, but disagrees with Rawlss account of
practicability, which misunderstands the very real sense in which norms are
contested and articulated in real forums of discussion. Hence, we saw
Habermas insist that the institutionalization of public spheres provides
opportunities for generating empirical forms of rational consensus through
discussions that include individuals and minorities. Here, it will be shown,
however, that the empirical achievement of rational consensus in modern
democracies is rarely to be expected, and the ideal is thus not appropriate
for negotiating the tension between the demands of individual and impartial
consideration.
Habermas states that the rational consensus is realizable if the empirical
circumstances are amenable (see also Thomassen, 2008, pp. 2733 & 33
37).4 At other times, Habermas concedes that the idealizations of rational
discourse are, if not in fact, then at least in principle realizable, their
realization once again prevented by empirical constraints. Participants must
suppose that a rationally motivated agreement could in principle be
achieved, whereby the phrase in principle expresses the idealizing proviso:
if only the argumentation could be conducted openly enough and continued
long enough (Habermas, 1984, p. 42). In other words, although a particular
public might not be able to achieve rational consensus, they should still
acknowledge that such consensus is achievable on the condition that they
are able to discuss an issue for as long as is necessary, with chances for
everyone implicated to have their say.
For McCarthy, the addition of this idealizing proviso makes the ideal of
rational consensus unsuitable for modern democracies (1993, pp. 181
199). McCarthy does not question as I intend to Habermass pragmatic
justification of the conceptual presuppositions of communication. Rather,
he questions whether the ideal of rational consensus is indeed appropriate
if it is rarely, if ever, achieved. Following Rawls, McCarthy argues that a
conception has to be realistic, and he thus suggests that in spite of the
problems that we ourselves identified in Chapter 3, the notion of reasonable
overlapping consensus might be more appropriate for modern democracies
under conditions of value-pluralism (1993, p. 198 & 244).
McCarthy considers, first, Habermass account of interests and needs,

which he argues is disastrous for the possibility of consensus (1993, p. 183).5
As we know, rationally motivated consensus requires the general acceptability
of the anticipated consequences of a norm for the legitimate satisfaction of
needs. Shared cultural values and interpretations provide the framework of
social interaction in which needs and interests are expressed. However,
within a pluralistic society as divided over cultural values as is our own, it is
doubtful that it is possible to achieve a shared evaluative basis for the
interpretation of needs (Habermas, 1984, p. 92).
McCarthys concern is equivalent to the criticism that Rawls himself
presents in his Reply to Habermas, according to which Habermas effec-
tively offers an account of the truth and validity of judgements of both
theoretical and practical reason, which makes it inappropriate as a public
conception. Rawls reminds Habermas at this point that in a society
characterized by value-pluralism it should not be expected that uncoerced
consensus will obtain on a comprehensive, evaluative doctrine such as
discourse ethics (Rawls, 1996, p. 373 & 376381). It is unlikely that a
discourse that validates norms in terms of the satisfaction of participants
needs and interests will ever admit of closure, because it is, in principle,
open to participants in practical discourse to call into question the very
evaluative language that frames the debate. In modern democracies, debate
often turns around the very terms in which problems are identified and
posed, data selected and described and so on. In other words, normative
disagreement turns on value disagreement and, as Habermas himself
recognizes, we cannot presuppose that rational agreement on values is
possible. Cultural and ethical values, though more or less widely shared, do
not count as universal and can be made plausible only in the context of a
particular form of life (Habermas, 1984, p. 42). Moreover, in a pluralistic
society it is even more unlikely that values can serve as the primary basis for
consensus. And yet such consensus is necessary if shared needs and interests
are to be empirically determined.
Next, McCarthy considers Habermass response to a situation in which
interests are not only different but competing, and he argues that under
conditions of modern value-pluralism, fair bargaining is far more plausible
than rational consensus, and he reminds us that bargaining nonetheless
fails to capture the core of our sense of justice (McCarthy, 1993, pp. 187
192). Although negotiating a compromise through fair bargaining is a
reasonable means for dealing with interest-conflicts, Habermas believes it
to be a second-best alternative when discourse proves there to be no
common interest (Habermas, 1990a, pp. 6876). Rational consensus is
achieved only when participants discover a general interest by distancing

themselves from particular first-order interests, adopting an impartial
standpoint in which ones own interests count for no more or less than
those of any other participant. However, fair bargaining, which does not
involve any distancing from particular interests, appears to McCarthy as far
more realistic than rational argumentation. Even if we outfit our good-
willed participants with the intelligence and sensitivity to understand and
appreciate the needs, interests and viewpoints of others, we are still far from
rationally motivated consensus, which can only be achieved if all agree on
the authentic interpretation of each individuals needs. Given the very
different hermeneutic and evaluative starting points afforded by a pluralistic
and individualistic culture, it is highly unlikely that even sensitive and
committed persons will be able to pursue this process to the end. The
obstacles to its empirical achievement are formidable. Indeed, this is why
Habermas adds the aforementioned idealizing proviso that a rationally
motivated agreement is possible if only the argumentation could be
conducted openly enough and continued long enough (Habermas, 1984,
p. 42). McCarthy concludes that, by idealizing what is empirically implausible,
Habermas maintains a residue of the Kantian dichotomy between the
phenomenal and the noumenal, in the form of a tension between situated
reasoning and the transcendence required by his model, a point I will
discuss more carefully in the next section (McCarthy, 1993, pp. 181182).
If the theory is in fact to meet the practical problems of individuals within
societies marked by modern value pluralism, then it is not appropriate to
insist for conceptual reasons alone that rational consensus is possible.
Rather, the notion of an acceptable, public point of view also needs to be
realistic and practicable. If it is highly unlikely that rational consensus can
obtain in actual practice, then we would do well to consider other methods
for negotiating the tension between individual and impartial consideration,
which is why McCarthy prefers Rawlss account of reasonable overlapping
consensus, in spite of its inability to ascribe due weight to those claims that
are not already the object of such consensus (1993, p. 198).
In Chapter 6, I will consider an even deeper criticism of the empirical
plausibility of the ideal of rational consensus. For Axel Honneth, even on
those rare occasions when participants freely arrive at a rational agreement,
such an achievement does not often respond to experiences of humiliation,
disrespect or social shame. These experiences sit uncomfortably with
the language of individual and group interests, because such language
clouds forms of deep structural domination that prevent persons from
being able to clearly express the nature of their injury in the public sphere.
This suggests that the public sphere of rational argumentation may need
to be supplemented by a more nuanced account of power and its effects on
subjectivity. Although I suggested in the previous chapter that Habermass
discourse ethics can be said to respond to Rawlss failure to ascribe due
weight to the claims of individuals and minorities when such claims are not
yet the object of overlapping consensus, I will argue in Chapter 6 that
Habermass negotiation of the deconstructive tension between individual
and impartial consideration in turn pays insufficient attention to patterns of
deep structural domination that prevent actors from clearly articulating
their injury in the public language of individual and group interests. Rational
consensus is not simply empirically implausible but also a political-hegemonic
ideal that cannot easily recognize certain forms of structural injury.
Rational Consensus: Conceptually Im/Possible
Even in the unlikely case that empirical forms of rational consensus are
achieved, in a manner that also articulates those injuries produced by
patterns of deep structural domination, there nonetheless remains a further
conceptual problem with the idea of rational consensus. The mature
Habermas clearly presents the idea of rational consensus in a conceptual
sense as both possible and impossible. That is, the ideal of rational consensus
is possible only on the condition that one also recognize its impossibility.
Drawing attention both to the conceptual possibility and impossibility of
rational consensus, this claim is different to the Levinasian position, which
tends to emphasize impossibility alone. However, it is fair to say that
Habermas does not carefully reflect on the implications of this radical
acknowledgement for his theory of deliberative democracy.
In Chapter 6, I suggested that elements of Rawlss mature theory can be
seen as an implicit acknowledgement of the impossibility of achieving
justice in the present. I pointed out that Rawlss present-time-of-entry
interpretation of the original position effectively acknowledges that an
outcome of the original position procedure is necessarily revisable, due to the
fact that it resolves, in a specific way, the tension between the majoritys
viewpoint about what counts as unjust and the minoritys experience of
inequitable burden, a tension that leads to conflicting judgements about
justice. I also suggested that Rawls comes to recognize, albeit to a limited
degree, that original position outcomes are imperfect, thereby committing
to the future-oriented, perfectible character of justice in a manner similar
to Derridas idea of justice-to-come. Here I suggest following Thomassens
analysis, that the mature Habermas also makes important concessions to his
theory, which in effect defer the resolution of justices demands to a future
moment, such that it, too, bears the perfectible character of justice-to-
come.
The mature Habermas affirms, on a number of occasions, that, if actually
achieved, rational consensus would render further communication
unnecessary. He writes, This entropic state of a definitive consensus, which
would make all further communication superfluous, cannot be represented
as a meaningful goal because it would engender paradoxes (an ultimate
language, a final interpretation, a non-revisable knowledge etc.) (Habermas,
1996b, p. 1518). Habermas also quotes Albrecht Wellmers acknowledgement
of the paradox involved in striv[ing] for the realization of an ideal whose
realization would be the end of human history (Habermas, 1990c, p. 365;
see also Wellmer, 1998, p. 141). As David Owen points out, one notices the
influence of Derrida on Wellmers view that political decision-making marks
a moment beyond the justificatory resources of communicative reason, and
it is to this view that Habermas here refers (Owen, 2010; see also Honneth,
2009, Chapter 10).
Habermas is obliged to make this important concession because his
empirical and reconstructive justification of rational consensus can only
claim hypothetical and not absolute status. In other words, given that the
content of any fully rational consensus would be non-revisable and absolute,
it cannot be possible in principle, because such an absolute state of affairs
would effectively contradict the merely hypothetical status that reconstructive
justification of empirical practice is entitled to claim for its results. This is a
complex statement that requires unpacking. On the one hand, the method
of rational reconstruction presents its results as universally necessary and
objective. On the basis of an analysis of a particular empirical situation of
language exchange, Habermas is able to identify certain pragmatic
presuppositions as necessary conditions for the exchange. On the other
hand, such reconstruction is itself immanent to the practices of social
interaction that it analyzes. It cannot transcend its local context.
Consequently, Habermas recognizes that he can only claim a hypothetical
status for his empirical analyses, whose predictions must consequently be
continually tested against new interactions, along the lines of a reconstructive
science. It is clear to Habermas that the results of reconstructive analysis are
thus necessarily revisable, even though they attempt to transcend the local
context of the analysis. Reconstructive analysis is never able to attain the
sort of transcendental certainty to which Kantian analysis lays stake. As
Habermas puts it, We have to put our reconstructions up for discussion
time and again (1990a, p. 97), checking their predictive accuracy against
individual cases of interaction. The non-revisable and absolute status that a
fully rational consensus implies in fact contradicts the necessarily revisable
status that immanent, reconstructive analysis allows. This is why Habermas
makes the remarkable concession that the ideal reference points of his
theory are, in actual fact, not attainable in principle, or attainable only
approximately (1990c, p. 365).
This raises the further question as to how Habermas makes sense of this
concession within the framework of his theory. As Thomassen explains,
Habermas adjusts his theory to include the acknowledgement of the
impossibility of rational consensus as an additional procedure. This leads to
a processual account of discursive testing (Thomassen, 2008, pp. 3334). To
his account of the principles that characterize impartial discourse (D),
Habermas adds the procedural requirement that participants agree that
the result of their discourse be open to contestation, in principle. This procedure,
in effect, defers any absolute resolution of the tension between individual
and impartial consideration to a future moment, while nonetheless
maintaining the idea of absolute resolution as the ideal reference point of
his theory.
The inclusion of the procedure that participants agree that the result of
their discourse is open to contestation is, in principle, designed to concede
the impossibility of a fully rational and non-revisable consensus in the
present, without, for all that, compromising the predictive strength of
Habermass reconstructive justification of the pragmatic presuppositions of
communication oriented towards mutual understanding. Participants who
rationally affirm that their actual consensus remains open to contestation
are also affirming that no empirical consensus is ever fully rational, since a
fully rational consensus would not be open to contestation. This open to
contestation, in principle clause allows Habermas to supplement the
presupposition of the possibility of rational consensus with the
acknowledgement of its impossibility (Habermas, 2003, p. 102). As
Thomassen suggests, this additional procedural requirement exposes any
actual consensus to the potential no of any discourse participant
(Thomassen, 2008, p. 33). The possibility of a final consensus is excluded in
the sense that any actual consensus is only ever conditional: it must remain
open, in principle, to a possible challenge (2008, p. 34).
To use Derridas vocabulary, then, the concept of rational consensus is
both the condition of the possibility of communication and the condition
of its impossibility. On the one hand, the presupposition of the possibility
of achieving rational consensus is the condition for commencing
communication oriented towards mutual understanding. In this sense,

Habermas is correct: the idea of rational consensus is a pragmatic
presupposition. On the other hand, as Thomassen points out, in a state of
rational consensus, communication is rendered both superfluous and
impossible, there being neither need nor room for further exchange. The
idea of rational consensus heralds the end or limit of communication (2008,
p. 28).
This is not the Levinasian claim that mutual understanding is simply
impossible. Rather, it is the affirmation of two separate pragmatics that lie
in tension with each other. In other words, the first pragmatic presupposition
of the necessity of a rational consensus is not itself fully rational without its
opposing pragmatic presupposition concerning the impossibility of rational
consensus. It is the presupposition that our first sentence does not simply
express the intention of universal and unconstrained consensus
(Habermas, 1987a, p. 314), but also the intention of misunderstanding one
another. The willingness to communicate in a non-coercive manner with
others thereby involves both the pragmatic assumption of the possibility
and impossibility of doing so. As Geoffrey Bennington tells Habermas in his
fictive dialogue with the man: The end of communication as you formulate
it would be the end of communication itself. So if we want to communicate,
we also have to want not quite to understand each other (Bennington,
2001, p. 53). Without this affirmation, any appeal to reason and to non-
coercive consensus functions merely coercively, by denying the very
irrationality of the pragmatic presupposition of the possibility of rational
consensus.
In this sense, Thomassen is correct to point out that Habermass ideal of
rational consensus has the status of a Derridean to come, a future that is
not a continuation of the present, but rather heterogeneous to the present
itself. This future is both empirically and conceptually impossible and
remains necessarily postponed (Thomassen, 2008, p. 35). If it is to play any
role in Habermass theory whatsoever, rational consensus is necessarily
impossible. Although the entire framework of deliberative democracy
explicitly depends on his reconstructive defence of the presupposition of
the possibility of universal and unconstrained consensus, the willingness to
enter into communication pragmatically requires the opposing assumption
concerning the impossibility of rational consensus. In Derridas terms,
deliberative democracy is marked by a paradox. The procedural norms that
it institutionalizes full inclusion, equality, the consideration of the interests
of other participants on their own terms and so on cannot, in principle,
be satisfied.
Provisionality and its Challenges: Derridas Critique

of Habermas and Deconstructive Civic Attitudes
Given that communication now depends on opposing pragmatic
presuppositions concerning the possibility and impossibility of rational
consensus, any outcomes of rational deliberation are, in principle, open to
contestation. This means that just norms can only claim a provisional status
and are only ever relatively stable.
It should be clarified, however, that this is not a Levinasian perspective.
Nothing in the idea that rational consensus is im/possible undermines
Habermass reasons for defending deliberation over certain undesirable
alternatives that he wishes to rule out; namely, traditional or inherited
sources of authority and the scientization of politics. In other words,
reference to the ideal of rational consensus can still help to explain why we
believe that certain forms of failure are better than others, even when we
fail to achieve the ideal. The ideal helps us contest the authority of
cosmological and religious doctrines, of princes and of the tyranny of
majoritarian opinion, because the authority of such doctrines depends on
an order that is not rooted in the authority of the unique and particular
reason of individuals (Habermas, 1979, p. 184). If rational deliberation is
both possible and impossible, this does not mean that it has no authority,
only that its authority must remain, in principle, subject to the very reason
that makes it both possible and impossible. Habermass initial presentation
of rational deliberation and the mature account suggested by his concessions
are nonetheless united by a commitment to the view that there is no
standpoint external to citizens own perspectives when questions of justice
arise between them.
That said, Habermas does not sufficiently acknowledge the set of
challenges that the provisionality of the content of justice heralds. Without
strong conviction in the necessity and universality of our norms, citizens
may tend to pessimism, despair and, consequently, anti-social attitudes.
Reiterating Kants apologetic defence of justices possibility, we saw Rawls
remind us, in Chapter 3, that to concede that justice is not possible leaves us
wondering whether it is worthwhile for human beings to live on the earth
(Rawls, 1996, p. lxii).
How, then, might we commit to the constructive attempt to achieve justice
when this achievement is ruled out in advance? It is at this point that our
constructive thinkers tend to fail us, at the very moment when we need to
discover, within our tradition, the resources for developing and exercising
civic attitudes that allow us to pursue the ideal of justice, responding to the
injustices that such engagement inevitably produces. In addition to the

Rawlsian sense of justice, described as the willingness to offer to one
another fair conditions of cooperation, we also need civic attitudes of
humility, openness and resilience. Alongside our faith in the ability to
achieve justice, we need to humbly accept the frailty of our reasons ability
to achieve its ends. In addition to confidently expressing our own needs
and interests, we need to be open to others, cultivating an interest in their
experiences and concern for their vulnerabilities, challenging our inherited
convictions. Instead of despairing at our inability to achieve justice in the
present, we need to become resilient, determined to achieve a better future
in spite of its illusiveness.
In my view, such attitudes I will risk referring to them as deconstructive
are visible in Derridas own response to Habermass combative early
dismissal of his work, which Derrida describes as unjust or overhasty
(2006a, p. 301). Where Habermas lays claim to the immodest value of
universality, Derrida suggests that there is no ethics of discussion without
certain attitudes towards the history of exchange that one has inherited.
In my view, these attitudes include those I have already mentioned
above: humility, openness to the other person and resilience in the face of
those inevitable misunderstandings that interaction produces. Responding
to Habermass 1980s critique in a lengthy footnote within Afterword:
Toward an Ethic of Discussion (Derrida, 1988a, pp. 156158; see also
1989a, p. 821), Derrida suggests, in a manner similar to Habermas, that
such an ethic would draw on the rules, however imperfect, that socialized
persons have inherited, since these are the only tools by means of which
engagement can take place. However, Derrida does not view these norms as
rationally necessary but rather as contingent to history, time and place. The
rules of engagement are best understood as contingent determinations of a
commitment to the possibility of communicating in the face of its
impossibility. Consequently, Derrida defends a set of social procedures that
correspond to this commitment, procedures that I present here as evidence
of the civic attitudes that I mentioned in the preceding paragraph: humility,
openness and resilience. Derrida speaks of the need to closely study the
object of evaluation, to listen to others before projecting a viewpoint, to
attempt to understand the particularity of a thought, to discuss the positions
of others in their own terms as carefully as possible and to proceed with an
open mind (see Derrida, 1988a, pp. 157158; see also 1989b, pp. 259260;
Thomassen, 2008, p. 121). We work out the norms that we together uphold,
contingent norms that nonetheless make possible a certain threshold of
understanding. As Thomassen points out, the procedures that Derrida
mentions are similar to Habermasian procedures, comprising such rules as

full inclusion, equality and the attempt to abstract oneself from ones own
subjective perspective to consider the interests of other participants on
their own terms.
However, the attitudes that Derrida brings are different to the confidence
of the enunciating Habermasian self. It is precisely Habermass lack of
humility, openness and responsibility for his inevitable failures that lead
Derrida to turn Habermass work against him. Derridas criticism turns
around the academic and philosophical standards that both men have
inherited and to which both are committed, standards that Habermas does
not adhere to in his critique of Derridas early writings. As Derrida writes:
With a stupefying tranquillity, here is the philosopher of consensus, of

dialogue and of discussion, the philosopher who claims to distinguish
between science and literary fiction, between philosophy and literary crit-
icism, daring not only to criticize without citing or giving a reference for
twenty-five pages, but, even worse, justifying his nonreading and his atmo-
spheric or hemispheric choices by this incredible alibi: Since Derrida
does not belong to those philosophers who like to argue [argumentationsfreu-
digen Philosophen, my emphasis!], it is expedient [ratsam] to take a closer
look at his disciples in literary criticism within the Anglo-Saxon climate
of argument in order to see whether this thesis really can be held. ...
Such procedures still surprise me, and I have difficulty believing my eyes,
in my incorrigible naivet, in the confidence that I still have, in spite of
everything, in the ethics of discussion (in morality, if not in moralism), in
the rules of the academy, of the university, and of publication. (Derrida,
1988a, p. 157)
Lacking humility, Habermas boldly expresses his views, without the shadow
of a doubt as to whether his interpretation is correct. Lacking openness,
Habermas does not even undertake to read Derridas work carefully on the
latters own terms. He displays no commitment to the basic academic value
of attentively reading and listening to the other (1988a, p. 157). This leads
Habermas to overlook the elementary rules of philology and of
interpretation, confounding science and chatter.
Is there a performative contradiction more serious than that which con-

sists in claiming to discuss rationally the theses of the other without hav-
ing made the slightest effort to take cognisance of them, read them, or
listen to them? (Derrida, 1988a, p. 158; see also 1989b, p. 260)
Derrida thereby turns Habermass preferred charge of performative

contradiction against the man himself, who, by his bold and inattentive
practice, rejects the very norms he claims to uphold. And finally, Habermas
has no need for a virtue such as resilience, since he is completely inattentive
to his own failures. Consequently, there is no attempt, on his part, to take
responsibility for the imperfection of his interpretation.
I have suggested in this chapter that the mature Habermas goes some way
to acknowledging the second deconstructive orientation that drives this
book, because he recognizes, to a certain extent, that the ideal of rational
consensus is both the condition of the possibility of communication and
the condition of its impossibility. Consequently, to principle (D) he adds
the procedural requirement that participants agree that their deliberative
outcomes are open to contestation, in principle. Hereby deferring the absolute
resolution of the tension between individual and impartial consideration to
a future moment, Habermas effectively affirms that the norms of justice are
perfectible in the deconstructive sense. This is perhaps captured in the
mature Habermass willingness to put aside his earlier polemic attitude to
Derridas work, recognizing that Derrida seems to be still inspired by the
memory of the promise of radical democracy. It remains for him a source
for the reticent hope in a universal solidarity that permeates all relations
(Habermas, 2008, p. 277; see also Aubert, 2012, p. 189). The source for
hope is a future that is both empirically and conceptually impossible and
remains necessarily postponed, but which nonetheless plays a positive role in
motivating the effort to achieve it.
Habermas does not, however, recognize the implications of provisionality
for participants committed to justice in their world. Commitment to justice
in the face of its impossibility requires the cultivation of a new set of civic
attitudes, including humility, openness and resilience in the face of failure.
Part Three
Perfecting Recognition Relations

Chapter 6
Honneth and the Possibility of Mutual

Recognition
Mutual recognition is both possible and necessary ... We are responsible for find-
ing a solution, because we live under the constraints of action.
Honneth, The relevance of contemporary French philosophy, 2012,
pp. 24 and 37
As the previous chapter demonstrated with its deconstructive attention to

impossibility, Habermass theory cannot entirely keep its promise of
overcoming the complicity of Rawlsian justice in the reproduction of
permanent minorities. On the one hand, the institutionalization of public
opportunities for debate represents a positive move towards negotiating
ethical obligation and impartial consideration in ways that allow for
individuals and minorities to contest their intersubjective norms. On the
other hand, this does not guarantee that intersubjective relations will be
undistorted by domination. First, it is unlikely that rational consensus will
actually be achieved under conditions of value-pluralism, which, as McCarthy
points out, often prevent consensus from obtaining around the evaluative
framework within which problems are identified and posed, data is selected
and described, and needs and interests are identified. If rational consensus
is empirically implausible, most outcomes of deliberation will not satisfy
rational demands, leaving unchallenged those very structures of domination
that Habermass theory intends to overcome. Moreover, even on those rare
occasions that rational consensus is empirically achieved, Habermas must
concede, in deconstructive fashion, that the ideal is conceptually impossible,
producing the paradoxical effect of halting the very intersubjective exchange
within which Habermasian justice resides (Thomassen, 2008, pp. 3334).
Consequently, as Bennington puts it, any desire to achieve mutual under-
standing also involves wanting to misunderstand one another, and this means
that justice cannot be identified, in any absolute sense, with empirical forms
of consensus (Bennington, 2001, pp. 5055). In spite of the emancipatory
intent of Habermass theory, it is uncertain as to whether even a rare case of
deliberative consensus can indeed eliminate domination entirely.
This chapter presents an additional reason for doubting Habermass

strong claims. While sharing the deliberative commitment to undistorted
communication relations, Axel Honneth suggests that rational consensus
does not exhaust the idea of justice because, alone, it cannot secure certain
practical relations-to-self that are the condition for positive freedom. For
Honneth, freedom is conditional upon norms that permit mutual
recognition, to which he ascribes a specific sense. The ideal involves
recognition, in that I experience my projects as having value only when
significant others also recognize their value. Recognition is mutual when
these others also experience their own projects as having value through the
positive recognition that I now afford them. In other words, mutual
recognition signifies the ascription of value to the projects of all through
relations of positive recognition, such that the self and the other become
integrated into each others projects. Indeed, this concept allows Honneth
to explain the historical development of norms of justice as a process of
struggles for mutual recognition.
Following the structure of this book, this chapter now presents Honneths
theory as a nuanced negotiation of the two aporetic demands that Derrida
believes justice implies (Chapter 1), in view of responding to the injustices
that both Rawls and Habermas leave unchallenged. Although Derrida
realizes that justice must be done, by way of negotiating the non-negotiable,
he reminds us that no particular determination can fully satisfy the demands
of both individual and impartial consideration. While confirming the need
for a broadly constructive commitment to the art of the possible,
deconstruction also draws attention to the concrete failure of this art to
reconcile justices demands. This chapter presents Honneths theory as a
conscious attempt to correct the errors of Rawls and Habermas, in view of
perfecting justice in the course of its history. However, my appraisal of the
success of Honneths venture will be qualified in Chapter 7, which will
demonstrate that Honneth does not apply his critical attitude to his own
theory, overlooking the complicity of this theory in the production of
certain forms of concrete injustice. This failure supports the deconstructive
view that justice only retains its critical force for the present when it is not
exhausted by that present, an insight that requires that citizens cultivate
a new set of deconstructive attitudes, including humility, openness and
resilience.
Limiting the scope of this chapter to a sympathetic account of Honneths
theory, presented here as a nuanced response to the concrete failures of
Rawls and Habermas to properly negotiate ethical obligation and impartial
consideration, I will proceed in the following manner.
Honneth and the Possibility of Mutual Recognition 153
First, we will study Honneths defence of the Hegelian insight into the
nature of the free will, which both Rawls and Habermas overlook. Hegel
believes that freedom is exhausted neither by the Kantian wills capacity to
abstract itself from desires and inclinations, nor by its ability to serve as its
own law, freely choosing its particular content. Rather, Hegelian freedom
involves a third moment that Kant did not make explicit, whereby the selfs
choice achieves objectivity only when significant others also freely bestow a
positive value on that choice, such that the selfs freedom is cooperatively
integrated into the others pursuits.
Next, it will be shown that Honneths Hegelian account of freedom also
draws on contemporary French philosophy in an explicit attempt to
supplement the reciprocity of Kantian justice, the source of self-respect,
with two further intersubjective ethical relations. Levinass ethics and
Derridas deconstruction allow Honneth to defend the importance of
asymmetrical relations of unilateral care or love, which allow the self to
develop self-confidence. Moreover, in Sartres political writings Honneth
discovers an ethics of social cooperation, such that collective action is
motivated by demands for social value, the condition of self-esteem. Having
isolated the practical importance of three separate intersubjective relations,
Honneth identifies experiences of injustice as denials of self-respect, self-
confidence and self-esteem.
Third, I explain how Honneths Hegelian concept of practical freedom
corrects the errors of Rawlss and Habermass theories. Against Rawls,
Honneth ascribes moral import to the pathological sentiment of excusable
general envy experienced by minorities. This is an antisocial sentiment
that Rawls hopes will not occur, but whose moral significance he
nonetheless overlooks, since it is not framed by a commitment to
cooperation. In so doing, Honneth responds to the problem we identified
in Chapter 3, where, by weakening his strong early claims and instead
identifying justice with basic public values affirmed in overlapping
consensus, the mature Rawls fails to acknowledge the moral importance
of the controversial judgements and sentiments of suffering minorities
about their experiences. Against Habermas, Honneth refuses to reduce
mutual recognition to the achievement of rational consensus, targeting
the priority Habermas accords to the linguistic evaluation of the values
and interests of individuals and groups, which fails to make sense of other
phenomena of moral significance pathological feelings, experiences of
disrespect, humiliation and social shame that are not often aired in the
public sphere of deliberative debate, with its language of generalizable
interests.
Finally, I suggest that of the three constructive accounts of justice studied in

this book, Honneths art of the possible, with its attentiveness to social
pathology, is closest in orientation to the deconstructive account of justice that
this book defends. By starting with the specific pathologies that our determined
forms of justice reproduce, Honneth requires what I refer to as deconstructive
responsibility for justices failures, seeking justice-to-come in an effort to leave
the mark or trace of perfect justice on the imperfect. However, I also preface
the concerns of Chapter 7, noting that Honneth does not balance his
constructive faith in the possibility of mutual recognition with an attention to
the ways in which his own account fails to negotiate justices demands.
Honneths Hegelian Critique of Kantian Autonomy:

Human Interdependency
For Honneth, the theories of Rawls and Habermas are overly Kantian in
that they reflect an account of freedom that does not make sense of the
deep relations of interdependency that exist between people. Turning
instead to Hegel, Honneth adds an additional element to Kants presentation
of the free will; namely, the idea that freedom is historically achieved only if
ones projects are also recognized by others as having value, such that
freedom becomes a mutual and cooperative pursuit.
Moreover, Honneths deep sympathy for Habermass emancipatory
project does not prevent him from discovering resources for his Hegelian
account of freedom in the tradition of contemporary French philosophy
that the early Habermas rejects. Honneth constructs his theory according
to the very practice his theory demands, identifying the cooperative value
of those traditions that have fallen into disrepute in the mainstream of
theory-construction (Bankovsky and Honneth, 2012; Bankovsky and Le
Goff, 2012; Critchley and Honneth, 1998, p. 34). Drawing on theoretical
currents often viewed as incompatible, including German critical theory,
American pragmatism, psychoanalysis, clinical psychology, and contemp-
orary French philosophy and social theory, Honneths theoretical pursuit
ascribes value to those aspects that coincide with his own project, adhering
to the Hegelian idea that his own project comes to cooperative fruition only
through the projects of others. I will say more on this in Chapters 7 and 8,
when discussing the sorts of deconstructive attitudes that contribute to
cooperative pursuits.
It is to the details of Honneths nuanced and complex account of freedom
that I now turn, since this will allow me to later explain why Honneths
negotiation of the deconstructive tension between ethical obligation and

impartial consideration is more sensitive to systematic oppression of
minorities and individuals than the theories of Rawls and Habermas.
Recalling that Kants concept of autonomy as self-determination is central
to the theories of justice that Rawls and Habermas defend (Chapters 2 and
4), I turn now to Honneths Hegelian critique of Kantian freedom. Kant is
an important figure for Honneth too, because, as we will see, Kantian
freedom is nonetheless an important part of Hegels concept which also
includes the historical and institutional location of the free will.
According to Honneth, Hegels concept of freedom is more complete
than Kants, demonstrating that the will is free only when it partakes of
communicative relationships within which it realizes its freedom through
the realization of the freedom of others (Honneth, 2010a, pp. 1015; Hegel,
1991, 410). This formulation might initially appear to resemble not only
the Kantian description, where self-determination equates to the limiting of
ones autonomy by reference to the similar autonomy of others, but also
Habermasian and Rawlsian freedom, which offer reciprocal protections for
the freedom of all. However, Honneth believes Hegels formulation differs
with these Kantian versions by according pride of place to the way in which
our relationships with others not only affect the production of our own
subjective needs, desires and inclinations, but also inform our experiences
concerning the substantive inclinations that we take to enable or disable
our freedom.
To clarify this complex point, Honneth outlines the three moments of the
free will that Hegel identifies in the Elements of the Philosophy of Right (Hegel,
1991, 410; Honneth, 2010a, pp. 1015), explaining that Kant includes
only the first two. The first moment of freedom, which Hegel also refers to
as abstract universality, describes the ability of the will to abstract itself
from every possible content (5). In this moment, the will separates itself
from its needs, desires, inclinations and drives. However, although Hegel
believes that this definition captures an elementary component of individual
freedom (manifest in our capacity for suicide), it can also lead to complete
inactivity, because action of any kind requires that we choose a certain
determined content for the will. The second moment of freedom follows on
from the first and consists in the ability to make an informed choice between
given contents (6), which is why Honneth describes Kants account of the
free will as an optional model of self-determination (Honneth, 2010a,
p. 11). For Kant, the individual does not need to be determined by just any
desires but can instead make a choice from among the options, guided by
the formal dimension of the second moment namely, that the free will is
its own law and thus takes the form of a law. Given that the competing
desires or inclinations serving as choice options are still essentially contingent
to the desiring subject in question, who has no control over the different
impulses, Honneth does not think that Kant can escape the charge that this
reflective choice nonetheless retains a certain arbitrariness that rules out
real freedom (2010a, pp. 1112). Hegel solves this problem by adding to
these two moments a third, which is intended to explain the conditions
under which a certain option can be said to be objective and necessary,
rather than subjective and contingent (2010a, p. 12).
This third moment entails a communicative model of individual free-
dom (2010a, p. 15) that enables one to be with oneself in the other (see
Honneth, 2010a, p. 14; see also Wood, 1991, p. xii; Wood, 1990, p. 71). If
I understand Honneths interpretation correctly, he believes that according
to Hegel the self can only rule out the arbitrariness of his or her choice
when significant others also freely bestow a positive value on this choice. As
Allen Wood explains, the free Hegelian self actively relates to the other
person in such a way that the other becomes integrated into the selfs
projects, completing and fulfilling them. In this way, the others activity
becomes part of the selfs action, rather than standing over against it (Wood,
1991, p. xii). At this point, Honneth is also eager to remind us that Hegelian
freedom is not merely ascertained in linguistic form the focus of
Habermass analysis but is also expressed as impulses and emotions that
are experienced as healthy or pathological. This is why Hegel describes
reciprocated friendship and love as paradigmatic of the feeling of the
third moment of freedom (7; see also Honneth, 2010a, p. 13). To the first
moment of thoroughly abstract freedom and the second moment of one-
sided, monological, Kantian optional choice (7), Hegels third moment
adds a relation in which the others free ascription of value is experienced
as a constitutive condition of my own freedom. In the relational freedoms
of love and friendship, we are not one-sidedly within ourselves, but willingly
limit ourselves with reference to an other, even while knowing ourselves in
this limitation as ourselves (7). In other words, I learn about my value as
a being that is capable of practical freedom only through the recognition
accorded to me by significant others, which allows me to grow in self-
confidence, self-respect and self-esteem. As we will see in the coming
sections, this is not simply a freedom achieved by reasoning in accordance
with the original position procedure or by securing a rational consensus
through deliberative argument. Rather, this freedom is achieved through
norms that express freedom in interdependency, which are healthy for all
parties. In this sense, Honneths Hegelian account of freedom has strong
origins in physical and emotional human dependency.
A Hegelian Concept of Practical Freedom
Consequently, we can now say that, for Honneth, real and effective freedom
depends on the existence of normative structures that allow one to develop
certain practical relations-to-self, which themselves depend on the validation
of ones capacities by ones peers.
Spelling out the sorts of conditions under which persons achieve real and
effective freedom, Honneth takes his starting point from Hegels pivotal
assumption that in the normal social circumstances that prevail in modern
societies, our norms and values have become more or less imbued with the
rational expectation that they be reasonable for all parties, which means
that their moral guidelines can now provide the parameters for our
behaviour (Honneth, 1995a, p. 5; 2010a, pp. 4041; see also Honneth, 1997,
p. 33; 2002, p. 501). When speaking of ethical life (Hegel, 1991, Part 3),
within which freedom has become objective, Hegel says that the ethical will
represents nothing more than the simple adequacy of the individual to the
duties of the circumstances to which he belongs, it is rectitude (Hegel, 1991,
150). One must, he says, simply do what is prescribed, expressly stated,
and known to him within his situation (150). Without the assumption that
our norms are already more or less rational, we have nowhere to begin our
analysis, and this, says Honneth, is why Hegel rejects Kants categorical
imperative as context-blind or merely formal (Honneth, 2010a, p. 57).
This Hegelian approach to the justice of norms takes shape in an analysis
that Honneth refers to as normative reconstruction, which defines
Honneths own approach. The normative reconstruction of just norms
begins with the conditions of life in a particular socio-historical moment,
reconstructing those norms of interaction that appear to be indispensable
to the realization of the individual freedom of all members of a society, in
that they appear to be reasonable for all parties, while also identifying those
which appear to depart from the ideal of mutual recognition (Honneth,
2010a, p. 57).
Persuaded by the distinction Hegel makes between three different spheres
of normative interaction, namely, life in the family, the State and civil society,
Honneths analysis abstracts from the social lifeworld of modern society
three practical relations-to-self, each with their mode of intersubjective
validation. These relations-to-self are indispensible, Honneth claims, for
the achievement of real freedom. The first is self-confidence, or the ability
to trust in ones own feelings and desires, insofar as these are validated by
the solicitude of others (in the intimate, affective relations of love and
friendship). The second is self-respect, or the belief that one has an authority
equal with others to make claims and demands, insofar as this authority is
validated by others (who mutually accord one another egalitarian rights).

The third is social esteem, social achievement, or the feeling of belonging,
insofar as this feeling is validated by others (in relations of solidarity)
(Honneth and Anderson, 2005, pp. 127131, 138 & 142145).
Developed through a process whereby the self learns about his or her
capacities in the course of familial life, participation in civil associations and
life within the State, Honneth claims that this interdependent account of
freedom accounts for the complexity of our intersubjective lives, structured
by normative expectations of different types.
Self-respect: egalitarian recognition and the Kantian state

When discussing Habermass interpretation of Kants publicity principle in
Chapter 4, I pointed out that Kant intends the laws of a State to conform to
the moral autonomy of individuals. The actions of one actor should not
harm the capacity of other actors to pursue their own external freedom,
since freedom of action makes possible the forms of internal freedom that
Kant identifies with morality (Chapter 4).
The laws of the Kantian State apply to all equally. For Honneth, such laws
allow citizens to recognize themselves as self-determining actors. Their
ability to freely put forward their claims is protected by basic liberties that
apply to all equally, usually including such constitutional liberties as freedom
of speech and association, liberty of conscience, freedom of personal
property, freedom from arbitrary arrest and political liberties such as the
freedoms to vote and to stand for public office (Rawls, 1996, Lecture 8).
According to Honneth, the protection of egalitarian freedom is an
important step in the right direction (Anderson and Honneth, 2005,
p. 129), because it supports the development of self-respect, one of the
three aforementioned practical relations-to-self that are necessary for
persons to be capable of free action. Constitutional protection of basic
liberties serves to confirm the belief in ones authority equal to that of all
others to make claims and demands, since such protection intersubjectively
validates ones entitlement to the same status and treatment as all others.
When a subject is structurally excluded from the possession of certain
rights, the implication is that he or she is not deemed to possess the same
degree of moral accountability as other members of the society (Honneth,
1992, p. 191). This experience is usually coupled with a loss of the ability to
relate to oneself as an equal to other individuals.
However, on its own, the equal distribution of rights and liberties does
not guarantee that authentic, healthy forms of subjectivity will be realized,
because these depend not only on the confirmation of ones entitlement to

the same treatment as others, but also on the validation of ones interpretation
of ones own needs and of ones own social worth. This leads Honneth to
the view that Habermass and Rawlss concepts of freedom are incomplete,
because both are grounded on the Kantian account of freedom as self-
determination (Honneth, 2008a, Lecture 1). That is, both Habermas and
Rawls believe that freedom is adequately protected when the equal basic
liberties are upheld.
Self-confidence: Levinasian recognition and deconstructive love

Clearly, Hegelian freedom is not exhausted by Kantian self-determination
but also requires safeguards over and above the constitutional protection of
egalitarian basic liberties, which do not protect the other practical relations-
to-self that facilitate effective freedom.
In the work of Levinas and Derrida, Honneth discovers resources for the
defence of an intersubjective obligation that is not exhausted by the idea of
equality. Indeed, for Honneth, deconstruction, with its deep links to
Levinasian ethics, foregrounds the opposing obligation to treat people
unequally, best described as a principle of unilateral care or love (Honneth,
1995b; Bankovsky and Honneth, 2012, p. 30). This is why Honneth refers to
deconstructive ethics as the other of Habermasian justice, aligning it with
the ethics of care that Carol Gilligan presents (Honneth, 1995b, Sections 3
& 4; Gilligan, 1993). As dependent individuals, we have both emotive and
physical needs that must be cared for, and this means we may need political
principles requiring appropriate responses to the specific needs of the
indigent, thereby treating people unequally. Deconstructive care or love is
non-reciprocal. It does not require that the care or love be returned, which
is why Honneth associates it with the ethics of gift-giving that he discovers
in the work of French sociologist Marcel Mauss (Bankovsky and Honneth,
2012, p. 30).
The egalitarian frame does not recognize the moral weight of those
particular obligations arising from specific relations of interdependency. As
individuals, we depend on loved ones to recognize our particular needs,
and to offer sympathy, affection and love, allowing us to develop confidence
in our perceptions of our own needs (Honneth, 1995b, p. 316; Bankovsky
and Honneth, 2012, pp. 3031). Equally so, when recognition of an
individuals needs is withheld or directly contravened, it is difficult for the
individual to achieve the sort of human integrity that Honneth believes
justice is concerned with. Blatant disregard of others needs produces
psychological injury, preventing the injured individual from trusting in

their understanding of their needs. As Honneth explains, what is special
about such forms of physical injury, as exemplified by torture or rape, is not
the raw pain experienced by the body but the coupling of this pain with the
feeling of being defenselessly at the mercy of another subject, to the point
of being deprived of all sense of reality (Honneth, 1992, p. 190; see also
Scary, 1985, Chapter 1). Such maltreatment not only contravenes the
Kantian principle of the equal liberties of persons, but more importantly, it
signals the complete violation of ones perception of ones own needs,
producing psychological harm which is also experienced at the level of the
body, with lasting damage to ones confidence in the ability to freely
coordinate ones action.
As I explained in Chapter 1, the liberal tradition, with its emphasis on
equal liberties, tends to dismiss deconstruction for denying itself the very
resources to engage in political debate. For Honneth, this popular critique
misunderstands the grounds on which deconstruction defends its positions,
which he now presents as a normative conception that provides the
positive outlines of an ethic (Honneth, 1995b, p. 307). To reject
deconstruction as an explication of the irreducibility of force is to
misunderstand the very ethical principle motivating the deconstructive
effort. Instead of merely negatively explicating the indeterminacy of moral
rules (1995b, p. 307), deconstruction develops a phenomenology of moral
experience, which, like Hegels account of freedom, is reflected in one
important dimension of the intimate relations of friendship and love
(1995b, p. 308; Derrida, 1997b). This ethic, suggests Honneth, expresses
the obligation of care, benevolence or love, an affective openness to the
particularity of the other (1995b, p. 307), the weight of a responsibility to
address the needs of the other person without first considering whether the
response is consistent with the principle of equal treatment (1995b, p. 309).
Although it is an important component of friendship and love, it is not yet
equivalent to full Hegelian freedom, which also requires that the self find
its fulfilment in its obligation of loving care. This fulfilment also involves a
third intersubjective sphere to be considered in the next section wherein
ones contributions receive social esteem for their cooperative merit.
However, deconstructive care nonetheless draws attention to an important,
and often forgotten, component of the Hegelian account.
Moreover, it should not be said that Habermass idea of solidarity is
equivalent to Honneths understanding of unilateral, deconstructive care
or love (Honneth, 1995b, p. 317; Habermas, 1990d, pp. 244249; 1992c,
p. 252; Aubert, 2012, pp. 188189; see also Chapter 8). Habermasian
solidarity describes the concern for the welfare of ones fellow man (1990d,
p. 244), wherein participants involved in consensually oriented
argumentation recognize one another not only as equal persons, but also as
unique individuals, thereby incorporating an affective concern for the
existential fate of other human beings into their shared lifeworld. However,
in this relation of solidarity, everyone is recognized as a unique individual
to the same degree, and this excludes the kind of privilege that unilateral
care ascribes to ones fellow (Honneth, 1995b, p. 317). Where, in
Habermasian solidarity, subjects reciprocally uphold the welfare of both
others and themselves, deconstructive justice draws attention to the
asymmetrical, unconditional nature of certain ethical relations (Honneth,
1995b, pp. 316317).
In Chapter 7, I will consider more closely Honneths acknowledgement
that his reduction of deconstruction to an ethics of care is not equivalent to
Derridas deeper mission, with its attention to the impossibility of justice
(Bankovsky and Honneth, 2012, p. 31; see also Bankovsky, 2012). Clearly,
Honneth equates deconstruction with a norm discovered in the horizon of
those shared subjective expectations that are embodied in our interactions.
Consequently, Honneth maintains that the deconstructive principle is
discovered in, and normatively reconstructed from, the present, since it
already structures so many of our relationships. However, Honneth is also
aware that this worthwhile deconstructive commitment to the possibility of
rendering to another his or her particular due does not make sense of the
second deconstructive orientation structuring this book; namely, an
attention to the impossibility of the attempt (Bankovsky and Honneth,
2012, p. 31). In the next chapter, I will identify the implications of
deconstructions deeper mission for Honneths theory, drawing attention
to the concrete ways in which Honneths theory inevitably fails to negotiate
justices demands.
Self-esteem: social achievement and

the Sartrean promise of group recognition
In addition to the constitutional protection of egalitarian liberties, which
facilitates self-respect, and the bestowal of love or care, which produces self-
confidence, Honneths Hegelian concept of interdependent freedom
involves a third intersubjective relation that is responsible for producing a
sense of ones social value, the feeling that ones contribution to society is
valuable to other members of society. This feeling is possible when society
rallies around its members in relations of solidarity, ensuring that those
who contribute are valued for their cooperative effort (Honneth and
Anderson, 2005, pp. 127131, 138 & 142145). Once again, Honneth
discovers resources in the contemporary French tradition (including Michel
Foucault, Georges Sorel, Pierre Bourdieu, Claude Lvi-Strauss and Luc
Boltanski), and I will focus here on his use of Jean-Paul Sartres political
writings, which assist Honneth in presenting social cooperation and
collective action as oriented towards the value of social esteem (Honneth,
1995a, pp. 141160; 1995c, pp. 158168; see also Le Goff, 2012).
There are three parts to Honneths reading of Sartre. First, the Honneth
of The Struggle for Recognition (1995a) discovers, in Sartres early theory of
intersubjectivity, an account of the struggle for recognition as an
existential fact of human existence, which is nonetheless presented as a
negative dynamic of reciprocal reification. In this first stage, Honneth takes
Sartres account of intersubjectivity to reject the very possibility of mutual
recognition. In explaining how the human subject achieves consciousness
of self, Sartre ascribes importance to the relation with another person. The
subject is able to transcend his or her projects by asking him- or her-self
questions and by receiving questions from others. Self-consciousness is
achieved when one views oneself through the eyes of the other, the others
look. However, this achievement is unsatisfying, because the others look is
experienced as objectification. The subject can only escape objectification
by returning the others gaze and objectifying the other in return, resulting
in an ongoing objectifying exchange.
Hence, the second stage of Honneths reading centres on the growing
prominence of the concept of historical progress in Sartres political
writings, which finally grants a positive value to recognition. Explaining the
existence of French anti-Semitism as a form of social disrespect, visible in
the historical and class-specific experiences of the Jewish petty bourgeoisie
(Honneth, 1995a, p. 156; see also Le Goff, 2012, pp. 71 & 83), Sartre
becomes increasingly concerned with the possibility of overcoming social
conflict and producing societies that respect their members, thereby
indicating his awareness of the limits of a negative account of recognition as
reciprocal reification. As Honneth puts it, Sartre comes to realize that he
can only account for the possibility of overcoming anti-Semitism by
reorienting his theory towards the possibility of mutual recognition.
Consequently, his political writings present the struggle for recognition not
as an existential fact of human subjectivity, but rather as a pathological, non-
symmetrical relationship between groups that can, in principle, be corrected
(Honneth, 1995a, p. 157; see also Le Goff, 2012, p. 71). In his analysis of
anti-Semitism (Sartre, 1995) and of anti-colonial struggle (Sartre, 2001),
Sartre recognizes that the negative account of recognition presented in the

earlier work can be resolved, to some extent, in positive forms of non-
conflictual, mutual recognition (Bankovsky and Honneth, 2012, p. 25).
As Alice Le Goff points out, there is a third stage to Honneths reading,
which revisits the negative interpretation of Sartres Being and Nothingness
(1993) presented in The Struggle for Recognition (Le Goff, 2012, p. 72).
Honneth now claims that this work provides one of the most convin-
ing presentations of the socio-ontological and existential meaning of
recognition (Bankovsky and Honneth, 2012, p. 24), because Sartre
distinguishes recognition as a cognitive state from recognition as an
existential, socio-ontological stance towards others, focusing on the
latter. For Honneth, Sartres account of the second form of recognition
is useful, because it clearly demonstrates that recognition does not simply
relate to the other person as an object of knowledge, but rather as a
practical agent caught up in my own projects. This leads Honneth to
claim that his view that recognition is the condition of self-realization
coincides with that of Sartres, who claims that recognition relations play
a constitutive role with respect to ones capacity to situate oneself
existentially and practically in the world (Bankovsky and Honneth, 2012,
p. 24).
Sartre allows us to see that struggles for recognition within the sphere of
civil society are attempts to correct an asymmetrical and pathological
relationship between groups. Social movements can now be understood as
demands for the recognition of the value that a particular group brings to
its society. The denigration of individual or collective lifestyles is often
experienced as an insult or as degradation (Honneth, 1992, p. 191).
Those who suffer from this form of social devaluation typically fall prey to a
loss of self-esteem, in that they are no longer able to view themselves as
having those characteristic traits and abilities deemed worthy of esteem
(Honneth, 1992, p. 191). This in turn impacts upon their capacity to achieve
their freedom in cooperation with others.
With his typology of three different types of moral experience, Honneth
deepens the ideas of moral personhood that Rawls and Habermas defend.
In so doing, he widens the range of experiences now subject to critique so
as to include those concrete experiences of injustice that are produced by
Rawlss and Habermass failure to properly negotiate the tension Derrida
identifies between individual and impartial consideration. Honneth does
this, I claim, within a strongly constructive framework that, in spite of its
attention to asymmetrical relations, nonetheless ascribes priority to the idea
of impartiality.
Normative Reconstruction and its Ideas: Impartiality,

Moral Personhood and Practicability
Honneth refers to his method as normative reconstruction. Beginning
with the conditions of life in a particular socio-historical moment, the
method reconstructs those norms of interaction that appear to be necessary
for realizing the freedom of all, while also identifying those which do not
embody the ideal of mutual recognition (Honneth, 2010a, p. 57; 2008b). In
so doing, his method accords pride of place to particular experiences of
injustice, to those obstacles to the satisfaction of the normative expectations
of parties (Honneth, 2001, p. 188). This attention to experiences of injustice
in their particularity contrasts with the broader focus of both Rawlss
problem of value-pluralism and of the deliberative conflicts that interest
Habermas.
I explained earlier that Honneth follows Hegels view that the self can
only rule out the arbitrariness of his or her choice if significant others also
freely bestow a positive value on this choice, such that the projects of both
self and other are intertwined. If freedom is only possible in a particular,
social form, then we can only make sense of denials or repudiations of
freedom by analysing whether the normative expectations that a particular
social reality implies are indeed satisfied by actual historical norms
(Honneth, 1995a, p. 5; 2010a, pp. 4041). Particular historical norms can
be described as ethical only when they achieve the sort of reciprocity that
mutually allows for the realization of the freedom of both parties (Honneth,
2000, p. 59; 2010a, p. 57). Using an empirically informed analysis, Honneth
is then able to define a problem of justice as a particular denial, in a precise
context, of the normative expectation that freedom should be mutually
achieved (Rssler, 2000, p. 10).
Clearly, Honneths theory embodies the three ideas of impartiality, moral
personhood and practicability that characterize the broadly constructive
orientation of Rawls and Habermas (Chapters 2 and 4), and which Derrida
also defends (Chapter 1). The idea of impartiality serves to limit each of the
spheres, including the deconstructive principle of love or care. Egalitarian
law is more obviously framed by impartiality, in that it applies to all equally,
thereby validating ones status as an equal before the law. Impartiality, in
this sense, supports an ideal of the moral person as an author of valid claims,
on a par with others. The Levinasian and Derridean sphere of unilateral
care is likewise limited by the value of impartiality. As Jean-Michel Salanskis
points out, although Honneth notices, without hesitation, that Levinass
ethics is not equivalent to the notion of equal treatment, the radicality of
the Levinasian idea is reduced to the level of the prerequisite conditions for
undistorted communication among individuals, who are now defined
symmetrically as in need of unconditional love (Salanskis, 2012, pp. 205206).
Consequently, asymmetrical obligation becomes symmetrized, supported
again by impartiality.
The sphere of cooperative value is also framed by impartiality, in that only
projects that do not involve the systematic devaluation of others are entitled
to social esteem. That persons need social esteem is not enough, of course,
for their projects to warrant being valued. The mutuality of the ideal of
recognition places limits on those group-projects deemed worthy of positive
recognition. White supremacists, for example, are not entitled to be valued
for their cooperative nature, since their conception of the good life involves
both the devaluation of non-whites and their exclusion from the possession
of egalitarian rights. However, public-service parking inspectors, who in
Australia are often first-generation immigrants or of low socio-economic
background, are entitled to be positively valued for the contribution their
work makes to public order, security and the upkeep of cities, since they do
not deny the value of other groups. They would, for example, deserve
protection from shaming in the media, and from humiliation and assault at
the hands of angry members of the public who are unhappy about receiving
a fine. Deepening his symmetrical personhood ideal still further, Honneth
adds the characteristic of requiring validation of ones value to society as a
cooperative project (Honneth, 1992, p. 191).
Moreover, like Rawls and Habermas, Honneth believes that justice is,
indeed, practicable. It is an existential fact of our lives, says Honneth, that
in certain situations we take it upon ourselves to make a decision between
conflicting spheres of recognition (Bankovsky and Honneth, 2012, p. 37).
Although justice has plural meanings, since demands for justice can be
raised in each of the three spheres, a careful sociological study of the
particular nature of the case and of the sorts of expectations embodied
within it should be enough for us to identify what should be done (Bankovsky
and Honneth, 2012). Indeed, Honneths Hegelian premise allows him to
suggest that this happens all the time: the rationality of our institutions is
visible in the course of their history, because they have emerged in a process
whereby they correct themselves in response to new cases, in view of
satisfying the expectations already embodied by our practices.
Although the undecidability of the decision also appears to find solid
direction in the expectations that our practices imply, deconstructions
second orientation towards impossibility should also encourage an attention
to the exclusions that such negotiations produce. Residual undecidability
prevents moral decisions from being as straightforward as Honneth suggests,

and this will be our focus in the next chapter.
However, for our purposes here, it is fair to say that by adding to the
principle of equality a deconstructive principle of unilateral care and a
principle requiring the ascription of value for contributions to cooperative
projects, Honneth is able to respond to certain sufferings about which Rawls
and Habermas remain silent.
Correcting Rawlsian Justice
In Chapter 3, we noticed that the mature Rawls comes to limit the content
of justice to only those public values that are already the object of an
overlapping consensus between persons with competing conceptions of the
good life, leading him to retract the strong defence for the two principles of
justice of his earlier work. In so doing, Rawls makes two errors (Chapter 3).
First, he relinquishes the resources needed to recognize the moral
importance of the judgements of suffering individuals and minorities about
their experiences. Given that such judgements are controversial and
unlikely to be the object of consensus, Rawls believes that considered
reflections about justice should only include such controversial judgements
once individuals and minorities manage to convince majorities to share
their view. Of course, for structural reasons, it is unlikely that this will occur,
which means that individuals and minorities end up inequitably suffering
the burdens of the inevitable injustices of Rawlss constitutional regime,
even though in principle such burdens should be equitably shared. The
second error concerns Rawlss inability to recognize the moral significance
of the sentiment of excusable general envy that minorities who suffer such
burden are likely to feel. Although Rawls is correct to say that such antisocial
sentiments manifest in acts of violence, assault, rioting, gangland activity
and criminality are immoral because they are not framed by the
commitment to cooperation that characterizes the moral sentiments, he
nonetheless overlooks their moral relevance by ignoring societys complicity
in their production (Chapter 3).
With his own more nuanced negotiation of what I refer to here as the
Derridean demands of justice (Chapter 1), Honneth provides an answer to
both of these problems. Although the set of criticisms that Honneth himself
brings to Rawls are not persuasive, resting, in my view, on misunderstandings
of the Rawlsian project, this should not prevent us from firmly endorsing what
I now take to be Honneths essential point of methodological difference.1
Commencing with the Hegelian assumption that the particular expectations

of subjects about their interactions provide the key to determining the
morality of their practice, Honneth uncovers those unsatisfied expectations
that lead individuals and minority groups to experience a particular practice
as a relation of domination.
In those publications, since The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar
of Social Conflicts (1995a), that deal with the implications for political justice,
Honneth presents what I take to be two main criticisms of Rawlss theory
(Honneth, 1991a; 2004a; Honneth and Markle, 2004; Honneth and
Anderson, 2005). After explaining why neither is terribly persuasive, I will
then formulate what I take to be Honneths central disagreement with Rawlss
theory, and I will defend Honneths sensitivity to concrete sufferings as
indicative of a more nuanced negotiation of what I refer to as the deconstructive
tension between ethical obligation and impartial consideration.
Honneths first criticism targets Rawlss ideal of moral personhood,
which Honneth wrongly identifies with the instrumental liberty of the
parties responsible for choosing principles of justice (Honneth, 1991a, pp.
2022, 27 & 29). The veil of ignorance falls too low, and this means that
parties in the original position do not have knowledge of what real people
in society are like (Honneth and Anderson, 2005, pp. 140141).
Consequently, these instrumentally rational parties are unable to grasp the
fact that they cannot actually realize their liberty without the support of
others (2005, pp. 12731, 138 & 1425).
However, this view indicates two errors in Honneths understanding of
Rawlss ideal of moral personhood and its representation via the original
position. First, as I explained in Chapter 2, the instrumental rationality of
the parties is only one component of Rawlss ideal of moral personhood,
which also includes the sense of justice or the Reasonable, represented by
the veil of ignorance, which limits instrumental rationality with the
constraints of fairness. Consequently, real persons, who reason in accordance
with the original position procedures, are clearly bound to limit their
decisions in accordance with notions of impartiality, mutuality and
reciprocity (Bankovsky, 2011, pp. 99103). Second, Rawls clearly states that
the parties in the original position know everything they need to know
about their society in order to decide upon its principles. This includes
knowledge of the objective and subjective circumstances of justice, which
include the findings of the human sciences with respect to the conditions
of healthy subjectivity (Rawls, 1971, 22). The parties know that when the
veil of ignorance is lifted, they will find that they regard their own life
project as worthy of recognition, that they need the recognition of others in
order to even want to pursue a conception of the good and that they develop
their sense of morality through family life, through participation in civil
associations and through their experience of citizenship (1971, 65, 70,
71 & 75). Central to this coherentist methodology (see Chapter 2), parties
also know the accepted facts about their particular society: facts about
political affairs, the general principles of economic theory, the basis of
social organization, the laws of human psychology and the empirical
findings of the human and social sciences (1971, p. 137/119 rev.). As Rawls
clearly states, There are no limits on general information (1971, pp. 137
138/119 rev.). This is clearly an account that attempts to provide justice
with a content that coheres with the considered moral and non-moral
judgements specific to the structure of life that prevails in liberal democratic
societies, which ascribes an important place to the effects of human
interdependency.
Honneths next criticism also demonstrates an inadequate grasp of
Rawlss principled commitment to the actual realization of practical
freedom (Bankovsky, 2011, pp. 104108). Honneth argues that the object
of Rawlss theory is the negative liberty of individuals (Anderson and
Honneth, 2005, p. 131, 137, 142 & 144). Although egalitarian right offers
formal protection from external interference in ones liberty, thus allowing
one to develop ones faculties, formal protection alone does little to
guarantee that such faculties will actually be realized (Anderson and
Honneth, 2005, p. 138). Formal protection of liberty by means of a fair
distribution of primary goods does not deal with the very source of real
freedom; namely, with the quality of communicative relations, which serve
to validate or invalidate our practical relations-to-self (Anderson and
Honneth, 2005, p. 142; Honneth and Markle, 2004, p. 387). Honneth
concludes that justices object-domain is not the negative freedom to seek
positive forms of recognition, but rather the actualization of mutual
recognition and the associated validation of practical relations-to-self.
However, on closer inspection, Rawlss theory aims at least in intention
to guarantee the actual realization of the faculties to a certain minimal
level of functioning (Rawls, 2001, p. 169 & 1712).2 Although Honneth
agrees that egalitarian right validates the belief in ones equal authority
(the condition of self-respect), he believes Rawls overlooks the other
practical relations-to-self that also facilitate practical freedom. However,
again, Honneth seems unaware of the extent to which Rawlss sociol-
ogically informed description of the stages of moral development
resembles his own. Rawls associates the development of self-confidence
with the first stage in the sequence of moral development (Rawls, 1971, 70).
Like Honneth, Rawls entrusts the family in one of various forms with
the role of validating, by precepts and injunctions, the moral attitudes of
children (Rawls, 1971, pp. 462463/405 rev.). A child does not yet under-
stand moral distinctions, and this means that the reactions of parents or
carers to his or her instincts, desires and behaviours function as validations
or injunctions, allowing the child to trust in his or her own feelings, to
trust in others and to have confidence in his or her own abilities, enabling
the child to launch out and test maturing abilities and skills (Rawls, 1971,
p. 464/406 rev.). Rawls also recognizes that the family can, of course, exert
an unfavourable influence on the child, infringing his or her basic liberties
and opportunities as a future citizen, which means that Rawls shares
Honneths view that a public conception of justice should require the family
to guarantee the reproduction of basic capabilities: the abuse and neglect
of children is prohibited by family law (Rawls, 2001, pp. 1011 & 1637;
Bankovsky, 2011, pp. 104108). As for the development of self-esteem,
Rawlss theory again intends to uphold Honneths commitment to a society
in which no member is denied social esteem for his or her contribution to
the common good. In the second stage of moral development (the morality
of association (Rawls, 1971, 71), Rawls describes the internalization of
norms of conduct framed by the reactions of approval and disapproval of
group members, or of those in authority, to ones behaviour. His description
is supported by the companion principle to the Aristotelian Principle
(1971, pp. 440441/3867 rev., see also 65 and 67), which notes that
without the prerequisite experience of social recognition, no-one would
even wish to formulate and pursue a conception of the good. By internalizing
normative patterns of social recognition, one learns the virtues of a good
student and classmate, the ideals of a good sport and companion, and even
the characteristics of a good citizen (1971, pp. 467468/40910 rev.).
Seeking to secure, for all, the opportunities to strive to perfect ones
conception of the good and to seek recognition for this good among ones
peers, Rawls intends his society to allow persons to express their nature in
mutually sustaining forms, for it is only in active cooperation with others
that ones powers reach fruition[, o]nly in the social union is the individual
complete (1971, pp. 524525n/45960n rev.). This is part of the reason
why, in Chapter 2, I presented Rawlss theory as a worthy attempt to reconcile
the tension between the demands of justice that Derrida identifies, namely,
ethical obligation towards the needs of particular others and impartial
consideration.
Although the criticisms Honneth himself directs at Rawls misfire, the
attention to social pathology that Honneths theory demands nonetheless
allows it to respond to the two problems with Rawls that I outlined in

Chapter 2 and at the start of this section. By way of example, let us consider
how Honneth responds to the French riots of 2005, whose cause and social
meaning was the subject of considerable disagreement (Halpern and
Honneth, 2006). On 27 October, police were called to a construction site in
Clichy-sous-Bois, a suburban ghetto to the east of greater Paris, to investigate
an alleged break-in. When they tried to stop six youths of African or North
African origin for questioning, three other teenagers took shelter in a
power substation, believing that they too were chased. Tensions between
the youth and law enforcement agencies erupted into violent conflict
following the death by electrocution of two of these boys and the serious
injury of a third (Mouloud, 2006), along with the story quickly spreading
that police and substation security were responsible for the tragedy (Cazelles
etal., 2007). Other events put fuel to the fire, with tear gas, thrown by law
enforcement agencies, entering the local mosque when the French Muslim
community was still celebrating Ramadan. Violence quickly spread to other
areas of Ile-de-France, and then further afield, to hotspots with large migrant
populations, affecting at least 250 towns, including Marseille (the first port
of call for many Northern African immigrants of previous French colonies),
Toulouse, Lyon, Lille and Strasbourg. The defining characteristics of this
three-week period include, first, the location of the riots in poor, migrant
areas; second, the trigger for the hostilities, wherein police and security
were seen as responsible for the death of youths; third, the nature of the
rioters, youthful and intensely bitter and angry; fourth, the object towards
which the riots were directed, namely, law enforcement agencies, including
the police, fire fighters and the militarized arm of the national police
responsible for security (les Compagnies rpublicaines de scurit or
CRS); and finally, the nature of the riots, which did not include looting, but
rather the throwing of Molotov cocktails, the burning of around 10,000 cars
across France, the destruction and vandalization of buildings and the firing
of live ammunition, again directed primarily at law enforcement agencies
(Canet etal., 2008).
Rawlss theory is unable to make sense of the moral demands that
Honneth believes are implied by this direction of bitterness and anger by
youth towards French law enforcement agencies. In this sense, he displays
insufficient awareness both of the variety of injustices that may be
reproduced by a reasonably just constitution and of the detrimental effect
this has on the collective psyche. On Rawlss model, we are bound to say
that the riots were fuelled here not by moral sentiments, which still uphold
the value of social cooperation, but rather by general envy, whose rancour
and hostility threatens the very possibility of cooperation itself. For Rawls,
envy should not qualify as a moral sentiment, since it is not framed by
considerations of fairness (1971, p. 533/467 rev.), and this leaves him
unable to acknowledge the moral significance of the riots, fuelled by
experiences of institutional disrespect that should be troubling to societies
who are concerned by justice. Although Rawls would say that such general
envy is excusable, in that the socio-economic disparities that the basic
structure permits, with its unequal distribution of the social bases of esteem,
clearly wound ones self-respect to such an extent that one cannot reasonably
be expected to overcome ones rancorous feelings (1971, p. 534/468 rev.;
2001, p. 88), his theory nonetheless ascribes moral weight only to those
forms of civil disobedience that are cooperatively pursued. To view the
uncooperative actions of the rioters as merely unlawful is, however, to be
drawn into the discourse of the French law enforcement agencies, expressed
by then Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who focused on the criminality of
the initial alleged break-in and of the riots that followed, using offensive
descriptions like bandes de racailles (scum), voyous (thugs), voyoucratie
(gangster-power), trafiquant darmes (gunrunners) and so on (Didier,
2005), continuing his provocative stance earlier that year that such suburbs
should be cleaned out with a Krcher, a well-known brand of high-pressure
water cleaners (Bernard, 2007; for Sarkozys defence, see also Le Journal de
20 heures, 29 June 2005).
However, in what I describe as a deconstructive spirit, Honneth points
out that justice implies individual and collective responsibility for the
pathologies that our societies reproduce, even when Rawlsian constitutional
essentials and basic public values are formally upheld. When asked to
comment about the riots, Honneth expresses the conviction that his theory
of recognition can throw light on the deep sense of disappointment that
the youth feel about the forms of recognition their society affords them,
making visible the psychological harm caused by the denial of ones social
value. Although formally afforded an equal status before the law, youths in
migrant suburban ghettos do not enjoy conditions under which they can
actually make use of these rights. It is their expectations concerning the
recognition afforded in the sphere of civil society that have been
disappointed, in that they receive no acknowledgement of their capacity to
make a positive and productive contribution to society, but are rather
objects of suspicion, groups who constitute a permanent danger to society
at large. In this sense, their social recognition, their productive contribution,
their positive visibility appears to be denied (Halpern and Honneth, 2006).
An account of the lack of institutional respect afforded to such youths by
police is clearly expressed by philosopher Alain Badious contribution to

the newspaper Le Monde in LHumiliation ordinaire on 15 November 2005
concerning his adopted sons experience with the law. His son is black,
having had what one would call a fairly standard French upbringing, without
the problems or disruptions that North African youth experience. In spite
of this, although just fifteen years of age during the eighteen months prior
to the publication of Badious article, his son was stopped by police in the
street for random security and identity checks on too many occasions to
count, including, during that short period, six occasions when he was
handcuffed, taken to the police station, insulted, locked to a bench and left
under surveillance for hours, without any further repercussions. Towards
the end of the three-week period when the rioting occurred, Badiou
explains that his son and another boy of North African descent were
questioned by police for purchasing a bicycle which turned out to be stolen,
only to find that they were suddenly facing a charge of group assault,
committed fifteen days earlier at the commencement of the riots. As the
title of the article suggests, Badious focus here is on the regular humiliation
migrant youth face at the hands of French police. From Honneths
perspective, sentiments of humiliation, disrespect and social shame are
pathological symptoms of a breakdown in intersubjective recognition
relations. The antisocial expressions of excusable general envy, which
Rawls correctly refuses to describe as moral sentiments, are nonetheless
viewed by Honneth as having moral relevance for societies concerned with
justice. Such pathological sentiments are now viewed as symptoms of a
deep-seated institutional disrespect that is maintained in spite of the
achievement of formal equality before the law. Expressing a similar position,
Lilian Thuram, one of Frances biggest soccer stars at that time, born in
Guadeloupe but raised in the troubled Parisian banlieue and an active
member of the council for the assimilation of immigrants (Haut Conseil
lIntgration, 2007), suggested, in Honnethian spirit, that We need to
understand the origin of the malaise. Before talking about security, we need
to talk about social justice (LExpress.mu, 10 November 2005; see also Le
Nouvel observateur, 15 November 2006; Bremner etal., 2005).
Moreover, the disrespect to which the young rioters reacted itself has a
long history indicated by the reaction to the governments imposition of a
state of emergency. The irony was not lost when the French government
imposed emergency measures on 8 November, by applying a law established
in1955 during the war in French Algeria, which ultimately led to Algerias
independence. Applied in colonized Algeria in 1955, this law was now
exercised in France to control second and third generations of immigrant
youth, who continue to experience disrespect and economic hardship in

contemporary France.
It is Honneths nuanced attention to the hidden morality expressed in
the experiences of dominated groups, who are nonetheless formally equal
before the law, that allows his theory to make visible a set of moral injuries
that I have suggested do not directly qualify as such on Rawlss theory. In
this way, Honneth deepens Habermass concern that Rawlsian citizens will
not be able to reignite the radical intent of the original position in their
civic lives because the satisfaction of the public constitutional values serves
to hide those deep structural asymmetries that have such an insidious
impact upon human subjectivity (Habermas, 1995, pp. 6970).
Correcting Habermasian Justice
Despite sharing Habermass broad concern to identify justice with

communicative relations undistorted by domination, Honneth offers a
critique of the Habermasian project that largely supports the view presented
in my book. In an explicit attempt to perfect justice in the course of its
history, Honneths theoretical analysis begins not with our considered
judgements about justice, nor with our rational assumptions about the
conditions of mutual understanding, but rather attempts to make visible
forms of moral injury. In this sense, his account is closest to what I shall
refer to as deconstructive responsibility and I will explain why in the next
section.
Leaving to one side Honneths critique of the early Habermass conces-
sions to functionalism (Honneth, 1991b, Chapter 7; Deranty, 2009, pp.
8898), I will simply focus here on two interrelated criticisms that serve to
make my point, extending the critique of the empirical implausibility of
Habermasian rational consensus that I offered, with the help of McCarthys
analyses, in Chapter 5. The first criticism is most clearly expressed in Moral
consciousness and class domination (1995c, pp. 205219), which, as Jean-
Philippe Deranty points out, presents a rejection of Habermass hypothesis
that class struggle has become deactivated in late-capitalist states, by which
Habermas means the capitalism of social democracies. According to
Habermas, deactivation has occurred due to the belief that claims to
material deprivation, bound up with class inequalities, lose their momentum
within a capitalist framework, which redistributes resources of money and
time to those who suffer such deprivation. Habermas explains what he sees as
the deactivation of class struggle by reference to the material compensation
for the lack of privilege that disadvantaged classes suffer, all of which is
managed in a technocratic manner by the late-capitalist or social democratic
states administrative ability to maintain itself by integrating its opponents.
For Habermas, material compensation and the institutional integration of
collective bargaining have effectively drained the practical and political
interests of wage-workers of their force, to such an extent that social
transformation arising out of the struggle between antagonistic classes is
now unlikely (Habermas, 1976; see also Honneth, 1995c, p. 216; Deranty,
2009, p. 99).
Honneth suggests that it is incorrect to say that class conflict no longer
exists, nor that the dominated classes are content to put aside their contest
with capitalism because they are satisfied with their compensation. The
conflict remains but is simply less visible, because the moral claims presented
by the disadvantaged are not easily expressed in capitalisms language of self-
or group-interest, a language that is reproduced by Habermass theory, with
its reference to the vocabulary of the generalized interest. The daily life of
the industrial proletariat produces securely anchored feelings of injustice,
expressed in responses to disrespect, humiliation and social shame, which
are not easily translated into the language of clearly formulated group
interests that might then be expressed, considered and synthesized in one of
Habermass deliberative public spheres. Although Habermas might respond
that experiences of disrespect, humiliation and social shame can be expressed
in the public sphere in terms of an interest in avoiding such experiences,
Honneths point is that such experiences are unlikely to be aired for
consideration, since they are often both inchoate and experienced as
personal failure rather than as concrete self- or group-interests and, in this
sense, such experiences tend to go unnoticed in the arena of public debate.
In this sense, the language of interest can be described as the discourse of
the political-hegemonic public sphere, which can only understand the
moral injury of suppressed classes as a group-interest, to be satisfied by
compensation with material goods (Honneth, 1995c, p. 207). However,
material redistribution is not usually experienced as sufficient recompense
by the working class, because it does not respond to the normative expectation
that society provide the means for suppressed classes to achieve their freedom
through cooperative pursuits. Consequently, Honneth concludes that
the ideas of justice in relation to which socially suppressed strata evaluate
their social order are discovered in perceptions of injustice that express
objections to disrespect, humiliation and social shame, rather than in
positively formulated accounts of group-interest, which Habermas tends to
rely on in his defence of generalizable interests (Honneth, 1995c, p. 212).
By identifying the language of self- and group-interests or values as normative

claims, Habermass theory ignores the relevance of sentiments that have not
reached the level of elaborated value judgements, expressed in the language
of interests (Honneth, 1995c, p. 208).
This concern with Habermass hypothesis of the deactivation of class
struggle leads Honneth to a second criticism, which targets the priority
Habermas accords to the linguistic expression of the aforementioned values
and interests of individuals and groups. As Honneth explains in The social
dynamics of disrespect (2007a, pp. 6379), a social theory that so strongly
emphasizes the linguistic dimension of human interaction cannot but fail
to perceive the moral significance of phenomena that are not expressed in
the form of rational argument (2007a, pp. 7172). Although interaction
(normatively mediated social relations) is not identified in Habermass
work with linguistic communication, the two are closely related. Language
allows participants to call into question the validity of their norms of
interaction, serving as the medium within which the justice of norms can be
rationally assessed. As we saw in Chapter 4, this leads Habermas to suggest
that the institutionalization of practices of rational public debate allow
societies to self-regulate in accordance with the idea of justice, which is
achieved with rational consensus (Habermas, 1992a, p. 432). Honneths
interest in the French phenomenological tradition indicates his essential
difference with Habermas on the question of language. The main difference
between our views, Honneth explains, is that Habermas believed, and still
believes, that our only access to phenomena of consciousness is by means of
a language, by what is linguistically articulated ... In my view, this premise
is no longer correct (Bankovsky and Honneth, 2012, p. 27). Honneth
instead thinks that it is possible to give a relatively accurate moral description
of certain emotional reactions that indicate the existence of a breakdown in
recognition relations. As a result, phenomena that are not automatically
mirrored in linguistic articulation can still be analysed for their moral
import (2012, p. 27). Indeed, Honneth turns to Derrida and Levinas
precisely in order to examine the moral importance of non-deliberative
intersubjective relations, expressed in asymmetrical relations of unilateral
care (2012, p. 30). Habermass focus on language prevents him from
noticing the moral importance of non-linguistic experiences of disrespect,
humiliation and social shame, which, often inchoate and deeply personal,
seldom receive airing in the public spheres language of shared, general
interests. Such non-deliberative experiences indicate pathologies in
intersubjective relationships, symptomatic of the inability of persons to
achieve their freedom through the freedom of their peers.
The fact that language does not encompass the entirety of morally
relevant phenomena magnifies the critique offered in Chapter 5 concerning
the empirical implausibility of the ideal of rational consensus. Not only is it
unlikely that a discourse validating norms by reference to the satisfaction of
needs and interests will ever admit of closure, it now appears that not even
the rare achievement of rational consensus can guarantee justice. Those
moral injuries revealed in experiences of humiliation or disrespect are not
often expressed in the public language of individual and group interests,
nor can they be compensated or controlled by redistributive means within
the framework of the capitalism of social democracies. Consequently,
according to the second deconstructive attention to failure that drives this
book, the political-hegemonic public sphere, within which rational
argumentation takes place, needs to be supplemented by a more nuanced
account of the manner in which it comes to obscure certain forms of moral
injury.
Deconstructive Responsibility in Honneths Diagnosis

of Social Pathology
Of the three thinkers whose work we have so far considered in this book,
Honneths plural theory of justice is closest in its orientation to the account
of justice-to-come that I am defending. First, Honneths very starting point
lies with the pathologies that our determined forms of justice are liable to
produce. Second, and consequently, his theory relies on a strong and
explicit commitment to perfecting our imperfect historical norms. In my
view, there are important similarities between his attention to the breakdown
of just norms and what I refer to as deconstructive responsibility.
By balancing his first orientation to the necessity and possibility of justice
with a careful attention to the failure of determined norms to reconcile
ethical obligation and impartial consideration, Derrida calls for a strong
sense of individual and collective responsibility for the empirical forms of
force that justice inevitably deploys. Derridas attention to the inevitable
failure of just norms is anything but a neutralization of the interest in
justice, an insensitivity toward injustice. On the contrary, it hyperbolically
raises the stakes in the demand for justice ... It compels to denounce not
only theoretical limits but also concrete injustices, with the most palpable
effects, in the good conscience that dogmatically stops before any inherited
determination of justice (Derrida, 2002b, p. 248). By commencing his
theory with an immanent analysis and diagnosis of the specific forms of
moral injury that individuals and groups suffer in their particular historical
moment, Honneths attentiveness to empirical harm maps onto this
deconstructive responsibility. He views such injuries as symptoms indicating
that our norms of interaction fail to embody the Hegelian ideal of mutual
recognition, wherein the particular freedom of an individual comes to
cooperative fruition through the freedom of his or her peers. By focusing
each time on specific forms of empirical failure, Honneths theory encour-
ages us to view the commitment to justice as an ongoing attempt to reorient
and correct our intersubjective norms. As I will suggest in Chapter 7, this
reminder should encourage the sorts of attitudes that I associate with the
deconstructive project: humility with regard to our ability to achieve justice
in the present, openness or the cultivation of concern for others and
resilience faced with the illusiveness of the goal.
Moreover, Honneths attempt to build in an asymmetrical principle of
unilateral care or love, discovered, in part, in the ethics of Levinas and
Derrida, allows him to acknowledge that justice also requires responding to
the particularity of a persons needs, offering guarantees that these needs
are worthy of consideration and thereby contributing to the confidence
that a person has in the perception of his or her own needs. Clearly, this is
a worthy attempt to negotiate the tension between the two demands Derrida
associates with justice, supporting an account of the political that
acknowledges the productivity of the tension between the idea of achieving
reciprocal norms on the one hand, and the idea of rendering to another
person his or her due on the other.
However, as I hope to demonstrate in the next chapter, Honneth does
not bring his implicit awareness of justices perfectible nature to his own
theory, because he continues to make strong claims about the possibility of
achieving justice in the present, in the form of mutual recognition. In this
way, when it comes to his own theory, he overlooks the second deconstructive
orientation that drives this book, namely, the attention to the impossibility
of justice, which should in fact prevent his tidy reduction of deconstruction
to a principle of recognition as unilateral care or love. Following the
structure I have established in this book, I will now reflect on the ways in
which deconstructions attention to failure is implicitly assumed by the
theory of justice that Honneth defends, and I will encourage him to consider
the pragmatic implications of our inevitable failure to achieve mutual
recognition in our intersubjective practices.
Chapter 7
Honneth and Moral Progress in the Quality

of Recognition Relations
Even when there is no apparent gap between de facto practices and implicit norms,
the ideals associated with the distinct forms of recognition always call for greater
degrees of morally appropriate behaviour than is ever practiced in that particular
reality.
Honneth, Grounding recognition, 2002, p. 517
By asking that we commence with those concrete pathological recognition

relations that our determined forms of justice are liable to reproduce,
Honneth encourages us to perfect our imperfect historical norms. I
suggested, in the last chapter, that this attentiveness to empirical harm
clearly maps onto deconstructive responsibility, which Derrida presents as a
heightened sensitivity to the palpable effects of our inherited determination
of justice (Derrida, 2002b, p. 248). I also suggested that although Honneth
would not express it in these terms, the ongoing endeavour to reorient our
intersubjective norms to correct specific pathologies expresses an implicit
commitment to the deconstructive idea of justice-to-come, the aporetic
idea of reconciling ethical obligation with impartial consideration. By
making visible those concrete injustices that the theories of Rawls and
Habermas reproduce, Honneth can be said to negotiate the demands of
deconstructive justice, striving to perfect justice in the course of its history.
In this chapter, however, I suggest that Honneths implied awareness of
justices perfectible nature is obscured by his broadly constructive insistence
on the possibility of actually satisfying the ideal of mutual recognition in the
present. Consequently, Honneth largely disregards the second of the
deconstructive orientations driving the analyses in this book namely, an
attention to the inevitable failure to achieve justices determination.
I will begin by explaining that, like the theories of Rawls and Habermas,
Honneths plural theory of justice initially appears to offer some immunity
against the sorts of anti-democratic outcomes that Derrida believes are
Honneth and Moral Progress in the Quality of Recognition Relations 179
permitted by democracys majority voting principle. However, this does not

mean that Derridas presentation of the impossibility of justice is not
relevant to Honneths theory. After pointing out that Honneths reduction
of deconstruction to a principle of unconditional love fails to capture the
more radical critical role that Derrida intends the idea of justice to play for
determined conceptions of justice themselves, I demonstrate that, like
Habermass rational consensus, the ideal of mutual recognition is marked
by problems of both a conceptual and empirical nature. Demonstrating
that mutual recognition is conceptually impossible in the present and that
even the painstaking and careful weighing up of the evidence cannot rule
out residual empirical harm, I remind Honneth that even his own nuanced
negotiation of justices demands is not immune from complicity in the
reproduction of injustice, and I encourage him to balance confidence with
humility, so as to bring his critical perspective to bear on his own theory.
Authentic Identity: Initial Immunity to

Before identifying various ways in which Derridas account of the
undecidability between the demands of justice and of the irreducibility of
force might apply to Honneths theory of mutual recognition, I would like
to first defend Honneth from Derridas analysis, in Rogues (2005a), of
democracys anti-democratic tendencies. As with the theories of Rawls and
Habermas, it is not immediately clear that Honneths plural theory of justice
displays the anti-democratic tendencies that Derrida identifies with Aristotles
account of democracy (Chapters 1 and 3). For Honneth, a just democracy is
not defined uniquely by the majority voting principle that Aristotle associates
with the concept, but rather includes a set of plural axioms which are more
complex that those that Derrida considers (Patton, 2007a, p. 163). Honneth
limits the scope of the majority voting principle by ascribing priority to
egalitarian right, which means that outcomes should not deny recognition
to individuals of their capacity for autonomy (Honneth, 2007a, p. 141).
Granting priority to a principle of equality may appear contrary to
Honneths statement, elsewhere, that the three moral ascriptions of
egalitarian respect, unconditional love and social merit cannot be ranked
from some superordinate vantage point (2007a, p. 141). However, to the
question of whether majority outcomes should be allowed to compromise
the liberty of some, Honneths answer is a resounding no. Clearly, this
Hegelian and axiological theory is strongly liberal, framed by Kants
commitment to the equality of persons. Aiming to secure the individual

requirements for effective freedom, Hegelian justice rules out majority
voting outcomes that invalidate a particular individuals capacity for
freedom. Consequently, Honneth upholds the Rawlsian and Habermasian
view that individual autonomy is an absolute limit to majority outcomes
(Honneth, 2001, p. 174). As Honneth writes, Strictly speaking, even a
morality of recognition follows the intuitions that have always prevailed in
the Kantian tradition of moral philosophy: in the case of a moral conflict,
the claims of all subjects to equal respect for their individual autonomy
enjoy absolute priority (Honneth, 2007a, p. 141; see also Honneth, 1997,
p. 33). In this sense, Honneth would not disagree with Rawlss view that the
just and the good are complementary: no conception of justice can draw
entirely upon one or the other, but must combine both in a definite way
(Rawls, 1996, p. 172; see also Bankovsky, 2011, pp. 108112). Clearly,
Honneths defence of freedom in association with others is not strictly
communitarian in nature, since it involves commitment to the self-
realization of all members of society in their different communities, and
thus beyond any one particular community (Honneth, 1991a, pp. 2931;
1995a, pp. 171179). Honneths formal conception of ethical life is
framed, in this sense, by right: if ones freedom is to be achieved in and
through the freedom of another, then ethical life is limited by the freedom
of all (Honneth, 1995a, pp. 171179; Zurn, 2000, p. 118; Bankovsky, 2011,
Section III). The majority voting principle itself rests on, and is to be limited
by, the mutual expectation that its outcomes uphold the equality of all.
In contrast to Rogues (2005a), where Derrida presents democracys enemy
as internal to the concept itself, Honneths reconstructive internal critique
allows him to make explicit a normative expectation implied by the very
concept of democracy, such that the very idea of popular sovereignty implies
the reciprocal respect for individual liberty (Honneth, 2002, p. 514).
Reconstructive internal critique is an effective weapon because, as Antti
Kauppinen points out, the implicit normative demands it identifies already
exist within practices themselves, and this means that they are motivationally
efficacious for participants themselves (Kauppinen, 2002, p. 486; Honneth,
1995a, p. 2 & 144; 2002, p. 514). Consequently, sharing Habermass view
here that legal coercion should not destroy the rational motives for obeying
the law (Habermas, 1996a, p. 121), Honneths idea of democratic justice
affords some protection against the anti-democratic potential visible in
Aristotles concept of democracy.
Be that as it may, I will now suggest that the practical intent of Derridas
account of the undecidable tension between ethical obligation and impartial
consideration can still be brought to bear on Honneths theory. On the one

hand, the explicitly therapeutic design of Honneths theory makes it far
more attentive than Rawlss or Habermass to the exclusions and social
pathologies reproduced by relatively just societies, and this attentiveness
resembles the notion of deconstructive responsibility. On the other hand, it
will be shown that the ideal of mutual recognition cannot be conceptualized
as possible in the present without producing contradictions, and that even
a painstaking empirical negotiation of the tension between the principles
of the different spheres cannot rule out the reproduction of social harm. As
Honneth comes to a partial acknowledgement of this point, the calculation
of the content of justice begins to resemble deconstructive decision. In the
face of undecidability, the decision must be made on the basis of an analysis
that is each time unique (Derrida, 1999d, pp. 115116), while conceding
that the decision might not be justifiable in a more general way (Bankovsky
and Honneth, 2012, p. 37). In spite of certain similarities between the
projects of Honneth and Derrida, I will suggest that Honneth nonetheless
retains his overconfident faith in the possibility of achieving mutual
recognition. He does not display the same level of humility that accompanies
Derridas analyses and proposals. Consequently, although Honneths
intellectual generosity and sensitivity to pathology is able to make visible a
far larger range of empirical harm than Rawls or Habermas, I still believe
that he remains insufficiently aware of the inevitable complicity of his own
theory in the production of injustice and consequently underestimates the
importance of the sorts of civic attitudes that accompany the deconstructive
project.
Initial Problems with Honneths Interpretation of

Deconstructive Care
Before commencing my analysis, I should point out that Honneths
interpretation of deconstruction as a principle of unconditional love is not
equivalent to the account of deconstruction that I am defending in this
book. Nor is it consistent with some of Honneths other comments about
Derridas accomplishments. On the one hand, Honneths attempt to
practise his own theory by identifying the value of deconstruction for the
cooperative philosophical pursuit (Chapter 8) is a breath of fresh air and a
positive alternative to the popular rejection of deconstruction. On the other
hand, Honneths own interpretation does not coincide with Derridas
identification of deconstruction with justice itself. Honneths instrumental
use of deconstruction threatens to overshadow its more radical role, which

insists on the critical function of the irreducibility of justice to its determined
conceptions, including the determinations of Honneths own theory. This
will be my focus in later sections of this chapter.
Honneths more or less instrumental approach situates deconstruction
with the tradition of phenomenology, where it defends an account of
asymmetry as a fundamental existential category (Bankovsky and Honneth,
2012, p. 31). Honneth is thereby able to focus on the ethical relevance of
asymmetrical relations in the affective and intimate sphere, an alternative
to Habermass principle of symmetrical equality. While realizing that this
does some harm to Derridas work by not dealing with the deepest elements
of his thinking (2012, p. 31), Honneths main intention is to identify in
deconstruction what is most useful for his own work, since this is often the
most productive way to deal with the work of other writers (2012, pp. 31).
Agreeing that deconstruction is not fully equivalent to the ethics of care
and love that he identifies with it, Honneth concedes that he overlooks
deconstructions deeper mission (2012, p. 31).
There are at least two ways in which Honneths interpretation is not
equivalent to Derridas deconstruction. First, the reduction of deconstruction
to a principle of unilateral love is only possible if one overlooks all evidence
of Derridas commitment to impartiality. Honneth reduces Derrida to
Levinas, overlooking the sense in which Derrida takes critical distance from
Levinas by instead committing to the possibility of state-based justice (see
Chapter 1). Consequently, Derridas contribution lies less in the discovery
of Levinasian asymmetry and more in the dual commitment to both ethical
obligation and impartiality, which is why he emphasizes the undecidability
of the idea of justice. This account of Derridas contribution is even suggested
by Honneth, who contradicts his reduction of deconstruction to a principle
of unilateral care when he notes that the accomplishment of Derridas
recent writings is to have discovered the irresolvable but productive tension
that prevails in the domain of the moral (Honneth, 1995b, p. 319). By
preferring to identify deconstruction with asymmetrical relations, Honneth
then overlooks this accomplishment, which would have implied his
acknowledgement of the very undecidability of justice itself.
This leads to the second problem with Honneths interpretation. By
overlooking the undecidability of justice itself, Honneth unites the dual
commitments to asymmetrical care and impartial consideration within the
horizon of an ethics of recognition, a horizon that deconstruction would
question. Honneth sets up this horizon by reformulating the asymmetrical
nature of Levinasian ethics as a characteristic of a symmetrically defined ego,
which is now presented as being in need of unconditional love. As Salanskis

puts it, one cannot help but be struck by the radicality of Honneths
rejection of the Levinasian perspective (Salanskis, 2012, p. 205). The
imperative to assist the Other is no longer presented as a requirement
which befalls the self, but rather describes a primitive need of the self itself,
which makes possible the path to the good life (2012, p. 205). Radical,
unilateral and asymmetrical obligation before Others in the particular is
once again domesticated in terms of a symmetrical conception of selves,
again defined in like manner, in need of loving care. However, as Derrida
points out, ethical obligation interrupts the horizon of the ego: [Levinas]
clearly intends to mark an interruption: an interruption of both symmetry
and dialectic. He breaks with both Kant and Hegel (Derrida, 1999d, p. 91).
Asymmetrical obligation cannot be sublimated by the objective morality of
Hegelian justice, where individuals are nonetheless symmetrically defined
in that each achieves freedom in and through the freedom of the other (see
also W. P. Simmons, 2003, pp. 7895).
These two points reveal important differences between the deconstruction
that I am defending in this book and Honneths reduction of deconstruction
to the egos primitive need for unconditional love. Although consciously
overlooked by Honneth, Derridas deeper mission is of interest to us here,
since it encourages us to bring a critical perspective to Honneths theory
itself, offering a diagnosis of the potential for both conceptual and empirical
failure which marks Honneths normative conception.
Conceptual Tensions in Honneths Theory
Like Habermas, with respect to his ideal of rational consensus, Honneth

has recently come to present the ideal of mutual recognition in a conceptual
sense as both possible and impossible. Honneth shares Habermass ideal of
undistorted communication relations, but extends its range beyond rational
argumentation to include normative expectations that have not yet been
formulated explicitly. Consequently, Honneths project is marked by similar
tensions, which emerge in two forms. First, so as to protect reconstructive
internal critique from the problems of value relativism, Honneth is forced
to affirm transcultural, transhistorical standards of increasing individuality
and social inclusion, in relation to which historical recognition relations
can be assessed. This constitutive gap between the actual and the ideal,
which implies a strong commitment to moral progress, implies that the
ideal of mutual recognition cannot be achieved in the present. Second,
these transcultural standards cannot assist us when the principles regulating

each of the three spheres produce conflicting demands, since each principle
attempts to promote individuality and social inclusion in different ways.
This irresolvable but productive tension (Honneth, 1995b, p. 319) must
nonetheless be determined through individual responsibility (Honneth,
2007a, p. 141), an idea that resembles deconstructive responsibility, albeit
without the accompanying deconstructive attention to the unjustified
character of decision.
These two points allow us to see that Honneths theory cannot rid itself of
the undecidability of which Derrida speaks. Any commitment to the
possibility of achieving mutual recognition in our lifeworld must be
supplemented by attention to the concrete ways in which our determinations
fail to live up to justices demands. If justice is properly conceptualized as a
normative surplus that, as Honneth puts it, motivates us to continue our
efforts to search for its institutional realization (Bankovsky and Honneth,
2012, p. 36), then Honneth should take the next step in acknowledging,
with humility, that the determinations of his own theory fail to exhaust the
idea of justice.
The gap between the actual and the ideal: moral progress
In Chapter 5, following Thomassens analysis, we noticed that the mature
Habermas builds into his theory the procedural requirement that
participants agree that the result of their discourse be open to contestation
in principle, thereby deferring any absolute resolution of the deconstructive
tension between ethical obligation and impartial consideration to a future
moment. This move is replicated by Honneth, who now concedes that even
when the ideal of mutual recognition appears to be achieved in actual
practice, we must nonetheless assume that moral progress is still possible.
In a deconstructive sense, one can say that the ideal of mutual recognition
is both possible and impossible in the present.
On the one hand, the possibility of achieving norms that allow individuals
to achieve their freedom in and through the freedom of others is central to
Honneths entire project. Indeed, reconstructive internal critique begins
with the Hegelian assumption that the norms of our interaction express the
rational expectation that they be reasonable for all parties (Honneth,
1995a, p. 5; 2010a, pp. 4041; see also 1997, p. 33; 2002, p. 501). By
reconstructing those normative demands implied by emotions, antisocial
behaviour, informal sanctions and so on, the social critic identifies
unarticulated expectations that can then be aired in deliberative form
within a Habermasian public sphere that is now far more attentive to those
expectations that were initially obscured from view.
On the other hand, like Habermas, Honneth realizes that the justification
of the Hegelian assumption can only claim hypothetical and not absolute
status, since reconstructive internal normative critique is always immanent
to the practices of social interaction that it analyzes. Honneths defence of
the ideal of mutual recognition cannot, in this sense, transcend those local
contexts within which normative reconstruction takes place. However, the
location of immanent critique within a particular social context opens
Honneths method to the problem of value relativism, which would view
our concerns to secure self-respect, self-confidence and self-esteem through
mutual recognition as limited to only those local contexts within which it
can be demonstrated to play a role. Realizing that internal reconstructive
defence rules out the possibility of an absolute justification of its findings,
and wanting to protect his theory from the charge of value relativism,
Honneth follows Habermas by assigning to the ideal of mutual recognition
the hypothetical status of an unavoidable idealizing presupposition
(Honneth, 2002, p. 514; see also Kauppinen, 2002, p. 485; Bartol, 2008;
2009; Wysman, 2009). Only by assuming that the ideal of mutual self-
realization through recognition has universal appeal can the theory play a
role for human subjects inall interpersonal contexts. Honneth thus commits
to the hypothesis that the ideal of mutual self-realization through recognition
is a transcultural, transhistorical, universal telos of moral interaction, even
while realizing that the claim has merely hypothetical status by virtue of the
immanent nature of the reconstructive analysis.
Reconstructive internal critique can take two forms, weak or strong, and,
as Kauppinen points out, Honneth clearly favours the latter of these
(Kauppinen, 2002, p. 485; Honneth, 2002, p. 514). A weak critique
presents the implicitly practised norms as contingent, in that they just so
happen to structure the practices of a particular society. In contrast,
Honneth pursues the strong claim that the implied expectations reflect a
concern for self-realization that is universal, transcending all factual forms
of authority. The problem, of course, is that Honneth is unable, then, to
answer Kauppinens perceptive question as to how a particular societys
implicit norms of recognition can indeed generate a universalistic basis for
critique. Honneth writes, I am fully aware of the burden of proof that this
hypothesis places on me (Honneth, 2002, p. 509). Realizing that
reconstructive internal normative critique is specific to the practices it
analyses, Honneth chooses to grant to his transcultural telos the status of a
hypothesis (2002, p. 509).
We now need to consider the reasons why Honneth is concerned to avoid

value relativism and why the hypothesis of a transcultural telos of self-
realization through mutual recognition allows him to do so. It appears that
Honneth identifies value relativism with an attribution model of recognition,
which relinquishes any criterion against which the appropriateness of the
attribution can be judged (Honneth, 2002, p. 507; 2007b, p. 332). Let me
explain this point. Responding to Arto Laitinens question as to whether
recognition either responds to a quality that a subject already possesses or
brings into effect this quality, Honneth refers to the former as value realism
and to the latter as value relativism (Honneth, 2002, pp. 507508; see also
Laitinen, 2002), which Honneth associates with Heikki Ikheimos
attribution interpretation (Ikheimo, 2002). Honneth wishes to avoid the
attribution model, because it relativizes the existence of qualities to the
perspective of the attributor, relinquishing any criterion against which the
appropriateness of the recognition can be judged (Honneth, 2002, p. 507;
2007b, p. 334). However, Honneth does not wish to side with the value
realist view either, which views an act of recognition as nothing but a
response to pre-existing features (Honneth, 2002, pp. 507509; see also
Laitinen, 2002, p. 473). As Laitinen also acknowledges, the problem with
the value realist or response model is that it does not make sense of the
constitutive role that recognition plays in the development of the qualities
themselves (Laitinen, 2002, p. 473; Honneth, 2002, p. 509). According to
Honneth, the human sciences clearly demonstrate that recognition
conditions and facilitates the development of those features that it
recognizes. Without recognition, humans are unable to identify with the
capacities that they possess. Consequently, Honneth follows Laitinen in
claiming that recognition is both a response to evaluative features and
a precondition of personhood (Laitinen, 2002, p. 474; Honneth, 2002,
p. 507; see also Markell, 2007, pp. 102103), a compromise between the
attribution and response models that also makes sense of the historical
alterability of our values (Honneth, 2002, p. 513). In other words, recognition
not only picks out certain qualities that human subjects already possess
(namely, the capacity for self-development and autonomy), but it also
conditions for the development of those qualities (since human subjects
only come to identify with capacities that are also afforded recognition by
others). Honneth refers to this view as moderate value realism (Honneth,
2002, p. 513; 2007b, p. 334).
We can now say that Honneth wants to avoid the value relativism associated
with the attribution model, because it makes the qualities that are recognized
utterly relative to those who attribute. Without a criterion to evaluate the
appropriateness of attribution, the social critic is unable to reject the

recognition of humans as objects by Nazi attributors. One might say that
the reconstructive internal critic could probably still identify unarticulated
guilt as a symptom of pathology (Kauppinen, 2002, p. 484). However, in
very extreme cases, where wrongful attributions have been internalized to
such an extent that the attribution is no longer accompanied by unarticulated
guilt or fear, the social critic is simply unable to identify those internal
contradictions between implicitly accepted norms and explicitly stated aims
that Honneth believes can motivate attributors to modify their attribution
norms. In other words, transcultural standards are required, against which
attribution can be judged.
The hypothesis of a transcultural standard of self-realization allows
Honneth to protect internal reconstructive criticism against these disturbing
forms of value relativism. This hypothesis allows us to claim that all human
subjects have a capacity for autonomy, which requires the recognition of
others for its development and realization (Honneth, 2002, p. 509; see also
Kauppinen, 2002, p. 484). Moreover, from this basic universal standard,
other yardsticks can be derived, which again explain why certain acts of
recognition are objectively better than others (Honneth, 2001, p. 143 &
186; 2002, p. 511; 2007b, p. 334; 2007c, p. 367). The first yardstick is a
measure of individuality, which states that recognizing more aspects of
human personality is better than recognizing fewer. This allows us to claim
that the capacity for individual autonomy is objectively increased when one
is granted not simply freedom of thought and of expression, but also
freedom to vote, to hold public office and to receive an education. A second
yardstick is a measure of social inclusion, which states that recognizing the
capacity for autonomy of more individuals is better than to recognize the
capacity for autonomy of fewer. This standard allows us to say that a society
that recognizes the voting capacity of white men is objectively less progressive
than a society that also recognizes the voting capacity of women and of
persons of all racial backgrounds. These transhistorical and transcultural
standards allow Honneth to claim that struggles for recognition are not
dependent on a contingent commitment to self-realization that just happens
to belong to Western liberal democracies, but rather express a virtually
anthropological force that produces a progressive dynamic, orienting our
history towards the self-realization of all.
My purpose here is to show that Honneths commitment to transcultural
standards effectively rules out the possibility of achieving the ideal of mutual
recognition in the present. It does so in the following way. By establishing a
difference between actual norms of recognition and transcultural standards,
Honneth is led to equip his theory of justice with a robust conception of

moral progress, which, once again, claims hypothetical status (Honneth,
2002, p. 503, 508, 509 & 510). The hypothesis of universal self-realization
implies, Honneth states, that moral progress is always possible: even when
there is no apparent gap between de facto practices and implicit norms, the
ideals associated with the distinct forms of recognition always call for greater
degrees of morally appropriate behaviour than is ever practiced in that
particular reality (Honneth, 2002, p. 517). One can never rule out the
possibility of moral progress, because to do so would be to wrongly assume
that our merely hypothetical transcultural, universal standards had already
been justified by reconstructive internal critique, when the most such
critique can allow is local, not universal, justification. As I explained, with
reference to Habermas, the method of normative reconstruction cannot
transcend its local context, since its predictions must be continually tested
against new interactions, along the lines of a reconstructive science whose
results are necessarily revisable. Consequently, Honneth arrives at the
unanticipated conclusion that even if we are all convinced that our particular
reality satisfies the ideal of mutual recognition, we must nonetheless
concede that the values of our lifeworld are perfectible in principle. We
must always demand the further perfection of our moral action, such that
the historical process is characterized by a permanent pressure to learn
(Honneth, 2002, p. 517; 2001, p. 180).
Here, Honneth partially acknowledges Derridas central point; namely,
that justice can only sustain its critical function for the present precisely
because it is not exhausted by its determination, however realistic and
practicable this might be. As Honneth puts it: In order to be up to the task
of critique, the theory of justice outlined here can wield the recognition
principles surplus validity against the facticity of their social interpretation
(Honneth, 2001, p. 186). The irreducible difference between actual norms
and the ideal of mutual recognition, which Honneth refers to as a normative
surplus (2002, p. 517), has the effect of motivating us to continue our
efforts to institutionalize the ideal.
However, the introduction of the idea of moral progress sits uncomfortably
with, and indeed challenges, Honneths strong claims that mutual
recognition is possible in the present. On the one hand, as I suggested in
Chapter 6, Honneths Hegelian premise allows him to suggest that mutual
recognition is regularly achieved in our everyday practice, since we so often
view our intersubjective norms as reasonable for all parties. However, on
the other hand, Honneth explicitly states that even when the ideal of mutual
recognition appears to have been actually achieved, we must nonetheless
still view our norms as perfectible in principle (2002, p. 517). This tension,
in Honneths work, prevents him from recognizing the implications for his
own theory of the irreducibility of justice to its determination. If justice
sustains its function only because it is not exhausted by its determination,
then it is not just that the facticity of our norms fail to live up to the ideal of
mutual recognition, with its associated relations-to-self of self-confidence,
self-respect and self-esteem. Rather, the very determination of the content
of the ideal itself, by reference to which the facticity of our norms is then
assessed, is also marked by failure. In other words, Honneth also needs to
acknowledge that his very theory itself, with its three plural principles, does
not exhaust the idea of justice. It seems to me that he is unwilling to concede
this point, since he wants to hold self-realization up as a transcultural ideal
around which all of history is structured.
Contrasted with the humility that Derrida brings to his analyses and
proposals, Honneths confidence in the merits of his own achievement
leaves little place for an interrogation of the limits of his own project.
Risking brevity here in order to provoke reflection, I would like to suggest
that this overconfidence prevents Honneth from giving due weight to the
consideration of relations-to-self that do not align with the three category
distinctions of his Hegelian theory. On the one hand, his analyses suggest
that these three distinctions are those that we, the children of modernity,
have learned to perceive in other human subjects, such that justice involves
publicly making explicit the knowledge that we have acquired in the
process of socialization (Honneth, 2002, p. 512). On the other hand, the
idea that our norms are perfectible in principle should surely prevent
overconfidence in the reduction of justice to just these three spheres,
encouraging us to reflect on other relations-to-self which we might also wish
to foster. One example is self-composure or equanimity, which is surely
associated with soundness of judgement, allowing persons to respond in
appropriate ways, without apprehension and anxiety, when facing problems
or situations of crisis. One can, in many cases, be self-confident, trusting in
ones own perception of ones needs, without also being self-composed,
trained to respond to new situations without embarrassment and unease. A
second example is the capacity for self-abnegation, self-exposure, humility
and openness to the other person. This capacity is also a practical relation-
to-self that is itself a relation-to-other, in that it allows one to come to a
modest appraisal of the limits of ones own freedom, supporting generosity,
healthy curiosity and outwardly turned interest, so that one learns from
others without fear or suspicion. A third example is the capacity for both
self-control and self-expression, the ability to control and express ones
emotions, which allows one to productively channel ones desires. To these

three relations-to-self, we might add others, whose lack is also experienced
as debilitating, including self-reliance, self-sacrifice, physical strength and
so on. It is unclear where such relations-to-self are situated amid the
tripartite category distinctions. Acknowledging that his own theory itself
does not exhaust the idea of justice might well be productive for Honneth,
encouraging the exploration of a whole host of relations-to-self and
relations-to-other that we might also wish to foster in addition to self-
confidence, self-esteem and self-respect (see also Owen and van den Brink,
2007, p. 22, Point 3).
Finally, as Jean-Philippe Deranty points out, the essential vulnerability of
the human being towards other non-human living organisms also implies
that social emancipation cannot be thought of in isolation of the liberation
of nature, which would imply that the project of achieving our own freedom
is caught up with the projects of other living organisms (Deranty, 2012; see
also Deranty, 2005; Haber, 2006, Introduction). If we join Honneth in
starting with Hegels pivotal assumption that, in the normal social
circumstances of our modern societies, our norms and values imply the
expectation that they be reasonable for all parties, should we then extend
this expectation to non-human living organisms who appear not to bring
rational expectations to their interactions with us? Honneth believes that
nature cannot be conceived as a subject of rights, since this would risk
relegating the democratic will of citizens to the rank of negligible factor.
Instead, he suggests that nature be valued simply as the foundation of our
lifeworld that, as such, requires protection (Honneth, 2010b, p. 10).
However, the quality of our interrelations with non-human living organisms
impacts upon our own relations-to-self in a variety of ways, such that nature
does not appear to be adequately described in terms of the backdrop of
interhuman relations (Derrida, 2008). In any case, such questions can be
raised only when we push Honneths acknowledgement regarding the
constitutive difference between actual norms and the idea of justice further,
to include the very determination of justice in the form of a tripartite theory
of recognition.
By drawing attention to the fact that justice exceeds the satisfaction of the
expectations implied in our lifeworld, we are encouraged to engage in a
permanent effort to perfect our world. However, this attempt cannot lay
stake to the strong teleological endpoint, whose hypothesis Honneth
defends, of a society whose members all enjoy self-confidence, self-respect
and self-esteem. The Derridean perspective suggests that the undecidability
of justice prevents us from providing substantive content to the endpoint
towards which we strive, such that our existence is, quite simply, a striving.
By taking up the deep question which Rawls does not himself pursue
(Rawls, 2001, p. 5) concerning the extent to which justices content should
be given by the actual, deconstruction encourages an attention to as yet
unimagined possibilities that allow us to question any over-enthusiastic
willingness to determine justices content by reference to just those
practicable qualities that Honneth believes we, the children of modernity
have already learnt to perceive in one another.
The undecidability of conflict between the spheres

I now hope to demonstrate that although Honneth once again acknowl-
edges, to some extent, Derridas account of the undecidability of the
demands of justice, he nonetheless emphasizes the ease with which indi-
vidual decision is possible. Honneths desire to instil the reader and social
critic with a sense of confidence in his or her capacity to make an informed
decision faced with different bodies of evidence comes at the loss of encour-
aging a critical attention towards, and responsibility for, those undesirable
effects that even well-informed and careful decisions produce, effects on
which I will focus more closely in the next section.
On the one hand, Honneth endorses Derridas view that there exists a
tension between the demands of justice. Indeed, we saw earlier that
Honneth contradicts his own reduction of deconstruction to a principle of
unconditional love by agreeing that Derrida discovers the irresolvable but
productive tension that prevails in the domain of the moral (Honneth,
1995b, p. 319). Drawing on this idea still further, Honneth states that the
tension between the three principles regulating each of the spheres resists
resolution, since each is equally as important as the others (2007a, p. 141).
Indeed, as he himself points out, his own theory deviates from traditional
conceptions in that it acknowledges this tension: Between the three
modes of recognition, which taken together are to constitute the moral
point of view, there cannot be a harmonious relation, rather there has to
obtain a relation of constant tension (Honneth, 1997, p. 32). The
existence of this tension leads Honneth to acknowledge that there is a
certain element of unattainability in [his] account of making and
responding to normative demands (Bankovsky and Honneth, 2012, p. 36).
The moral attitudes cannot be ranked from some superior vantage point,
and this means that Honneth shares Derridas view that the decision must
be made on the basis of an analysis that is each time unique (Derrida,
1999d, pp. 115116), whose criteria cannot, from the perspective of the
moral conception developed here, in any way be decided in advance

(Honneth, 1997, pp. 3233). One must face the unavoidable fact that in
cases of conflict there are no universally acceptable solutions (Bankovsky
and Honneth, 2012, p. 37). This is precisely because the type of moral
problem that we confront in our everyday lives does not concern the
coherent application of a moral principle, but the conflict-laden integration
of different moral points of view (Heidegren, 2002, p. 442).
On the other hand, Honneth believes that the Derridean vocabulary of
undecidability is both exaggerated and hyperbolic (Bankovsky and
Honneth, 2012, p. 37). It overstates the case because it places too much
emphasis on the impossibility of deciding, especially given the evidence
that persons can and do make well-informed decisions all the time, taking
up a posture that Honneth refers to as individual responsibility. As
Honneth writes: The entire domain of the moral is pervaded by a tension
that can be resolved only in individual responsibility (2007a, p. 141). We
have to take it on ourselves to find a solution because we live under the
constraints of action (Bankovsky and Honneth, 2012, p. 37). The simple
truth is that we do manage to integrate different viewpoints into our
everyday lives. As Honneth puts it, it seems to be an existential fact of our
lives that in certain situations we have to take it upon ourselves to make a
decision between conflicting spheres of recognition (2012, p. 37).
As for how we conduct this Derridean and Honnethian analysis that is
each time unique, Honneth nonetheless thinks that individual
responsibility is a painstaking but relatively straightforward matter of
gathering and weighing up the evidence, determining the empirical
likelihood of certain options producing or preventing forms of harm and
deciding between the available options. Although there are no meta-
procedures to help us decide in cases where the principles themselves
suggest conflicting decisions, a careful reconstruction of implied normative
expectations should provide the parameters for a reasonable decision.
Once again, then, in spite of his initial sensitivity to the tension that exists
between the principles regulating the intersubjective spheres, Honneth
chooses to emphasize the possibility of achieving justice in the present,
playing down the second of the deconstructive orientations that marks this
book, namely, an attention to impossibility. Although Derrida agrees that
only a decision is just (2002a, p. 253), he nonetheless resists identifying
the content of that decision with justice. Reflecting the implications of
Honneths strong commitment to infinite moral progress, Derrida prefers
to speak of the responsibility taken by each person as interminable in
spite of its urgency (Derrida, 1999d, pp. 115116). That is, in spite of the
constraints of action that Honneth correctly evokes (Bankovsky and

Honneth, 2012, p. 37), the decision is never presently just, fully just (Derrida,
2002a, p. 253), since no absolute criteria exists that might allow the request for
either individual or impartial consideration to be prioritized over the other.
Drawing on Kierkegaard, Derrida refers to individual decision as madness,
premised as it is on an undecidable leap of faith without the necessary
justificatory procedures (Derrida, 1995, p. 65, 77 & 80). Individual respons-
ibility is infinite, and, for a finite being, the responsibility that must be taken
up is nonetheless one that cannot be assumed (Derrida, 2006b, p. 113).
Honneths primary concern is practical; namely, to encourage the careful
social critic and citizen to take up their responsibility to make an informed
attempt to resolve the demands of justice with sensitivity to the specificities
of the case. However, Derridas concern is no less practical. Reminding the
critic and citizen that not even the most careful of decisions can avoid
producing unjust effects, Derrida ushers in attitudes of openness, humility
and resilience that balance out overconfident optimism.
Between domination and emancipation: inauthentic identity

In spite of his faith in the emancipatory character of the ideal of mutual
recognition, Honneth reveals that he is often unsure about how to reconcile
two competing accounts positive and negative of the impulse to secure
mutual recognition (Honneth, 2002, p. 504 & 518). His preference for the
positive version comes at the expense of the insights into the nature of
social struggle, and its effects on identity, that are promised by the negative
account. Were he to reflect more closely on the undecidability between the
two different accounts, he would deepen his theory with an attention to
processes that he shifts to the theoretical margin (Bankovsky and Le Goff,
2012).
The first impulse to secure recognition is, of course, emancipatory. It
drives the conviction that the struggle for recognition is provoked by a
particular moral experience namely, the emotive objection to the failure
of others to recognize certain important aspects of ones identity (Honneth,
2002, p. 504). This first impulse motivates us to seek recognition relations
that facilitate the practical freedom of all, since we realize that we can only
achieve our freedom when we are recognized in positive ways by others who
are also free.
However, Honneth identifies a second impulse to secure recognition, of
a different nature, which lies in tension with the first. This impulse is
described using the more or less deconstructive vocabulary of antisocial
cannibalism that marks Derridas analysis of the possibility of friendship

(Derrida, 1988b; 1989b; 1997b; Honneth, 2002, pp. 503504). Drawing on
certain elements of the psychoanalytic tradition, Honneth explains that
early childhood experiences of symbiosis have lifelong influences,
compelling us to continually rebel against the experience of no longer
having the other at our disposal. The impulse to rebel against established
recognitive norms expresses a cannibalistic attempt to deny the
independence of those with whom one interacts, in an attempt to recreate
the original symbiosis, ensuring that the others perspective is no different
to ones own. Honneth describes this process as antisocial, since it denies
the others difference, recognizing, in the other, only those qualities that
also serve the subjects own projects.
This vocabulary resembles Derridas reflections on the cannibalism of
perfect friendship, where he points out that the perfection of Michel de
Montaignes friendship for tienne La Botie obliterates the defining feature
of friendship (1997b, Chapter 7; Montaigne, 1958, Book I, 28). Montaignes
friendship is perfect, since he knows his friend as himself. However, this
perfection spells the end of perfect friendship, since it appropriates the very
difference between two persons that is the condition for friendship, thereby
cannibalizing his friend. Derrida explores this tension in his own account of
his deep friendship for Paul de Mann, in which he seeks to know the friend
who must also exceed his knowledge. The excess of friendship to knowledge
is the condition of the possibility of friendship, but also of its impossibility
(1989b, p. xvi; 1997b, p. 27; see also Deutscher, 1998).
To return to Honneths vocabulary, it appears that the very attempt to
achieve ones own self in and through the other may well be premised, as
Honneth suggests, on the desire to re-establish an original symbiosis where
the other remains at the selfs disposal (2002, pp. 503504), in which case,
the permanence of the struggle for recognition would depend not on a
commitment to moral progress at all, but rather on an anti-social cannibalism
that leads each subject to deny, again and again, the others difference
(Honneth, 2001, p. 504).
As to how to resolve these two opposing motivations, Honneth admits
that he is not sure where to go from here (2001, p. 504), since the problem
is difficult to solve (2001, p. 518). It is entirely unclear how these antisocial
impulses are to be connected to the moral experiences we have in mind
when speaking of feeling a lack of, or a withholding of, recognition (2001,
p. 504). Be that as it may, Honneths work clearly encourages us to view the
drive towards mutual recognition as an emancipatory, moral force in our
history. This preference is also revealed in Honneths wariness of the French
traditions tendency to identify recognition with negative forms of

objectification or reification, a counterpoint to the German tradition, which
instead emphasizes recognitions positive role in the production of
authentic identity (Bankovsky and Honneth, 2012, p. 26). As Honneth
explains, the French disposition begins with Rousseau, who insists that
anothers look distracts the self from recognizing its true beliefs and desires,
thereby producing an inauthentic self and contributing to social decline
(2012, p. 26; Rousseau, 1984). This negative account is then inherited by
Lacan, Sartre and Althusser, for whom interpellation is misrecognition
(Althusser, 1971, pp. 12788). By privileging the positive dimension of
recognition over its objectifying potential, Honneth clearly partakes of the
German tradition, in the footsteps of Hegel and Fichte (Bankovsky and
Honneth, 2012, p. 26).
My point is that Honneths reflections on the difficulties of resolving the
negative and positive dimensions of recognition should encourage an
approach to the ideal of mutual recognition that is not simply affirmative
but also critical of its orientation and content. His preference for the
positive version prevents Honneth from bringing a sufficiently critical
perspective to his own account. Doing so would require drawing attention
to the imbrication of positive and negative forces, acknowledging that even
those loving, positive forms of recognition afforded by a mother to her
child, or between lovers, are not exempt from possessive, appropriative and
cannibalistic impulses, such that it appears insufficiently critical to speak of
the development of the undistorted authentic identity of the child and
the moral person (Bankovsky and Le Goff, 2012, pp. 1215). I take this to
be Judith Butlers point, when she reminds Honneth that the goodness of
the original social bond coexists alongside its capacity for destruction,
such that both elements, together, produce the ambivalent structure of the
psyche on the basis of which individual and group ethical attitudes are
formed (Butler, 2008, p. 105; see also Honneth, 2008c).
Although I believe that the deconstructive commitment to the possibility
of justice requires approaches similar to Honneths, which attempt to
carefully think through the conditions for the construction of undistorted
communicative relations, it is also fair to say that the second deconstructive
orientation towards impossibility also requires that we avoid overconfidence
in our capacity to actually achieve such relations. The French tendency to
associate the struggle for recognition with forms of domination should not
prevent social theory from pursuing mutual recognition as a worthy ideal,
but it should rule out overconfidence in our ability to overcome subjugation
and domination (see also Le Goff, 2012; McNay, 2012; Owen, 2012; Malabou,
2012). In this sense, Honneths distinction between a positive German and

a negative French tradition no longer appears to be so clear-cut.
Honneths increasing awareness of these difficulties may account for his
reference to the agonism of struggle (2002, p. 502), by which I understand
him to mean that the struggle for recognition cannot eliminate conflict or
negative forms of domination, such that there is, necessarily, something
permanent about struggle itself. If this is his idea, then it is not so far
removed from a project of deconstructive justice.
Empirical Difficulties with Honneths Theory:

Residual Harm
Even the painstaking and careful empirical negotiation of the tension
between the three spheres cannot rule out the reproduction of injustice.
Risking an analysis that is dangerously brief of the complex stakes involved
in Frances controversial decision to ban the wearing of ostentatious religious
symbols, including the headscarf, in public schools, I will quickly indicate
that the sorts of strategies and outcomes that are possible on Honneths
theory of recognition can neither rule out the reproduction of empirical
harm, nor avoid complicity in the production of new harms. This is not a
criticism that will then lead me to propose my own perfect solution that will
altogether rule out the production of social pathology. Deconstructive
attention to the inevitability of failure suggests that perfect solutions are
simply not possible. My reason for risking this overhasty analysis is to simply
remind Honneth that his own theory is not immune from complicity in
injustice, since the tone of his work often leads one to believe the contrary.
What might one say, from the perspective of the theory of recognition,
about the passing of the bill by President Jacques Chirac in March 2004 to
ban the wearing of all ostentatious symbols or garb indicating religious
affiliation in state primary and secondary schools? The debates around the
formulation of the bill concern the appropriateness of the wearing of
headscarves by Muslim girls in French public schools; hence, I will risk
referring to the bill here as a ban on headscarves, in spite of the fact that it
applies to all ostentatious religious symbols.
Taking what I believe to be Honneths perspective, one can make four
claims. First, as he himself states briefly, the assessment of the law should
turn around empirical evidence of its ability to cause less psychological and
social harm to the implied normative expectations of Muslim girls, the
primary subjects of the law. Honneth himself believes that the ban on
headscarves should probably be lifted, since there is not enough empirical

evidence to suggest that a ban will cause less psychological and social harm
than no ban at all. Insofar as we cannot know with certainty the reasons
which motivate a number of young girls to wear the veil, we should not
prohibit wearing it in the public sphere. If the desire to wear the veil can
signify a form of oppression, be it familial or communitarian, it can also
reflect a logic of emancipation or a desire to affirm ones autonomy
(Honneth, 2006). Honneth describes his position on the issue as agnostic
because, if I understand him correctly, it is non-partisan and not ideologically
aligned, but is based merely on the empirical hypothesis that allowing the
veil in public schools will produce less harm to those normative expectations
implied by the interactions of Muslim girls in the course of their lives within
the family, civil society and the state (Honneth, 2006).
Second, one can then say that the lifting of the ban should also be
accompanied by the institutionalization of Habermasian public spheres
within which debate about community, associational and state norms can
take place. As we now know, Honneth does not disagree with Habermass
attempt to institutionalize public debate, but rather wants to make visible
those implied expectations that are initially obscured from view within the
deliberative arena. As Honneth states on a number of occasions, discursive
exchange allows parties to explore their norms for themselves, so as to
determine norms that are reasonable for all, in the various spheres of social
life in which they find themselves. This point follows on from the one that
was raised above, namely, that Muslim girls themselves should be able to
express their own views on the matter and have a say in the laws that regulate
their lives.
Thirdly, the lifting of the ban and the institutionalization of equal
opportunities for Habermasian debate should also be accompanied by
careful sociological research into those implied normative expectations
that remain unsatisfied by current practices. Justice is not a simple matter
of allowing Muslim girls to express their own views on the matter, since the
intersubjective relations within which they do so might prevent certain of
their own unsatisfied expectations from coming to light. The social critic
(in the form of sociologist, public servant or social worker) must carefully
reconstruct those normative expectations implied by social practices that
unfortunately remain unsatisfied, indicated by pathological symptoms such
as inchoate or unarticulated emotions, antisocial or destructive actions,
informal sanctions and so on, which are symptoms of the fact that certain
expectations are not being met. Once made explicit by the careful social
researcher, these can then be aired in a Habermasian public sphere of
deliberative exchange, which is now far more attentive to those expectations

that were initially obscured from view.
It is not entirely clear what this all means for the case that we are here
considering. What sort of unsatisfied expectations might the social critic
uncover? Honneth would respond that this question cannot be answered in
advance of a careful analysis. However, for the sake of exploring what
Honneths theory then allows us to do with the possible findings, let us
consider certain hypotheses about the unsatisfied expectations that one may
encounter, hypotheses that were expressed by various members of the public
in the media at the time and referred to obliquely or explicitly in official
reports (Commissariat gnral du plan, 2005; Commission de rflexion sur
lapplication du principe de lacit dan la Rpublique, 2003; Ministre de
lducation nationale de lenseignement suprieur et de la recherche,
2005).
In the sphere of civil society, one might encounter a Muslim girls
expectations that her value within her community be upheld. When she
wears the veil, valued by her Muslim community, she has a sense of her own
special contribution to her social group, developing self-esteem. The law
prevents her from satisfying this expectation. However, still within her own
community, one might encounter French Muslim girls expectations that
she be valued on a par with her male counterparts, an expectation that is
not always satisfied by her sometimes subordinate position, marked out by
the veil. The ban might provide her with resources for challenging her
subordinate position, again producing increased self-esteem. Within a
broader civil sphere that includes organizations other than her Muslim
community, one might encounter the unsatisfied expectation that her
Muslim difference, marked by the veil, be valued by non-Muslim children,
instead of marking her out as a recent immigrant, often of lower economic
class, whose contribution to the wider non-Muslim society is not widely
understood or desired.
Moving into familial life, the social critic may encounter the implied
expectations, on the part of young Muslim women, for protection from
sexual oppression, or for support of her own understanding of her needs
and desires, expectations that might not always be satisfied within the norms
of family life, and without which she is less able to control the way in which
she belongs to the wider French society.
In the legal sphere, subject to laws of the state, the social critic may
encounter the expectation that the Muslim girl enjoy the protection of laws,
which do not also prevent her from pursuing her conception of the good
life. Such a sentiment might be expressed as a reluctance to accommodate

French liberal values, if these are experienced as preventing Muslims from
freely pursuing their beliefs. One might also encounter an expectation to
enjoy a right to an education equivalent in quality to other children, a right
that is jeopardized when the ban leads some Muslim families to school their
girls privately or some schools to isolate those girls who do not comply,
thereby further contributing to segregation and isolation.
Fourth, with these expectations now made explicit by the careful social
researcher, deliberation in different public spheres can take place in a
manner attentive to pathologies that were initially obscured, such that
principles that satisfy the procedures of discussion or fair bargaining can
then be said to reflect undistorted communication relations (Chapter 4).
I am now able to indicate at least three initial reservations concerning the
ability of Honneths theory to respond to all forms of empirical harm or
avoid complicity in the reproduction of pathologies. First, if at least some of
the hypotheses regarding the unsatisfied implied expectations of young
Muslim women are correct, then it is likely that a public deliberative sphere
expressing such expectations will include opposing claims that are difficult
to adjudicate. We may find ourselves facing the demands that young girls be
allowed to wear the veil, since it is an important part of their belonging to
the Muslim community; that Muslim girls be protected from potential
subordination within their own communities; that Muslim girls be protected
from their devaluation within the wider non-Muslim community; that young
Muslim women be protected from sexual oppression and supported in
their understanding of their own needs and desires; that the freedom to
have an education be real rather than merely formal; and that young
Muslim women be protected from segregation and isolation. First, drawing
on McCarthys reflections (1993, pp. 181199), a problem now arises similar
to the one that we identified earlier in Habermas; namely, that under
conditions of modern value-pluralism, it is unlikely that agreement will ever
obtain on the very evaluative framework within which problems are
identified and posed, data is selected and described and needs and interests
are identified. Consequently, we will see recourse to fair bargaining, which
is likely to produce decisions, based on majority voting outcomes, that those
of faith will be unable to view as legitimate. Second, Honneths idea of
individual responsibility does little to assist. Even on the basis of a
painstaking empirical analysis, it is not correct to describe the identification
of a just outcome as a straightforward process of gathering and weighing up
the evidence, determining the empirical likelihood of certain options
producing or preventing forms of harm and deciding between the available

options. Third, although Honneths brief comments on the matter are not
founded on his own careful analysis of the complexity of the issues involved,
the overly simple suggestion that one remove the ban does not reflect the
sort of awareness that his actual theory demands of the whole host of
normative expectations that are likely to be implied, including the likelihood
of expectations that young Muslim women be protected both from
communitarian norms and from disrespect from the wider non-Muslim
community. And finally, concerning the motor for social critique, and in
spite of Honneths indebtedness to Habermass account of popular
sovereignty, Honneth largely ascribes priority to the sociologist-critic, whose
privileged position allows him or her to observe, measure and understand
intersubjective pathologies that not even the victims themselves are fully
capable of articulating. In the context in which the sociologist-critic will
need to operate, this privilege is accompanied by the risk of adding insult
to injury and reinstating incapacity (see also Owen and van den Brink,
2007, p. 22, Point 4; Bader, 2007, p. 239).
For these initial reasons, I suggest that although Honneth promises a
more nuanced consideration than Rawls and Habermas of the implied
normative expectations involved in this complex case, impossibility
remains a permanent feature of the political landscape. The theory of
recognition cannot absolve itself from complicity in the reproduction of
empirical harm, and an ongoing practice of critical engagement, in response
to inevitable failures, will be required.
Deconstructive Attitudes in the Face of Failure
At this point, one might respond that my brief account of the inevitability
of residual empirical harm should not lead us to reject Honneths theory,
which is better equipped than most to make visible complex and deep social
pathologies. One might say, first, that the affaire du foulard or the French
hijab ban is difficult to think through from Honneths perspective precisely
because Honneths theory identifies hidden moral expectations that other
theories simply overlook. One might respond, second, that it is unlikely
that any theory could in fact generate a tidy solution in such cases, and that
the value of Honneths theory lies in its ability to isolate different principles
for different spheres of life, thereby allowing the sociologist-critic and the
participant in discussion to think through complex situations in a manner
more suited to the diversity of implied expectations. I agree with both

points, but would simply remind Honneth that he would do well to
acknowledge that when it comes to deciding on courses of action his three
principles are of little procedural assistance either to the sociologist-critic
or to participants in discussion. Individual responsibility is not so
straightforward as Honneth implies. The task of the sociologist-critic, who
must identify, observe and measure intersubjective pathologies, itself relies
on specific evaluative judgements to allow for the isolation and formulation
of problems, the selection and description of data, the identification of
needs and interests, the determination of standards for their comparison
and so on. Moreover, when the sociologist-critic brings his or her findings
to participants involved in Habermasian deliberation, who are themselves
divided over questions of value, it seems highly unlikely that they will agree
to the critics evaluative schema, letalone to the critics findings.
My main point is that Honneth may wish to qualify his faith in possibility
with a consideration of the sorts of attitudes and postures that citizens will
need to cultivate if they are to live cooperatively with one another in a
diverse society that continually fails to achieve justice in the present.
Although it is understandable that, faced with the fragility and illusiveness
of justice, one might cloak ones theory in a tone of confidence, in an
attempt to convince others that the ideal is worth pursuing, one ultimately
needs to square up to failure, both as a theorist and as a citizen. The
attitudes of humility, openness towards others and resilience in the face of
failure are attitudes that we find at work in Derridas analyses and proposals,
which have the potential to demonstrate concern for fellow citizens by
refusing to settle for anything less than justice (Chapters 1 and 5). Indeed,
I firmly believe that part of the attractiveness of Honneths work lies in his
own practice of theory construction, which includes some of these attitudes.
In a spirit of openness and generosity, the younger Honneth rebels against
the rejection of French philosophy in the Germany academy, questioning
the privilege accorded to the American and English tradition and focusing
on the potential value of Foucault, Sartre, Levinas, Derrida, Althusser,
Boltanski, Bourdieu and so on (Critchley and Honneth, 1998, p. 34;
Bankovsky and Honneth, 2012, p. 3738). In a context marked by polemic
French-German exchanges in the wake of the early Habermass rejection of
an entire French tradition as irrational, Honneth instead tries to find
value in the French tradition for his own theory, consciously pursuing his
own project in and through the projects of others. In a spirit of resilience,
Honneth explicitly constructs his theory in response to the failures of his
peers, strongly committing, in his own practice, to the ideal of moral

progress. I now encourage Honneth to supplement this openness and
resilience with a stronger sense of humility, engaging with and responding
to the inevitable failures of his own account. It is to a consideration of these
deconstructive attitudes that I now turn.
Chapter 8
Im/Possibility and the Cultivation

of Deconstructive Civic Attitudes
The analyses of Chapters 3, 5 and 7 suggest that to ascribe a broadly

therapeutic function to constructive theories of justice is to overlook their
complicity in the reproduction of injustice. For Honneth, internal normative
reconstruction in the Hegelian sense is expressly therapeutic, since it
identifies and explains specific instances of social pathology, and then
proceeds to prescribe a remedy in support of the realization of authentic
forms of identity (2010a, p. 44). Although Habermas himself reserves the
term for a particular type of discourse that aims to clarify systematic self-
deception (1984, p. 21, 23 & 41), his theory of justice also lays stake to a
broadly therapeutic role in its attempt to overcome distortions in
communication relations. Rawls, too, ascribes to constructive theory the
explicitly practical role of resolving particular social problems in his case,
the problem of modern value pluralism (Rawls, 1999a, pp. 340358).
Using the dual deconstructive orientations that frame this book, namely,
a commitment to the possibility of achieving justice in the present and an
attention to the inevitable failure of the attempt, I have suggested that the
constructive philosopher is too optimistic in ascribing to justice a therapeutic
role. Looming large with the developments that Rawls, Habermas and
Honneth propose, justice is again deferred by new or unconsidered
problems that are overlooked or produced by each subsequent theory.
Justice begins to appear like a mirage, shifting to the horizon at a pace with
ones step. Our reasonable faith in our ability to achieve justice is challenged
when we realize that Rawlss mature theory, with its defence of those basic
public values on which overlapping consensus obtains, does not acknowledge
the normative value of the judgements of minorities about their disadvantage
(Chapter 3). However, our faith is restored with the proposals of
Habermas, who now offers tools to identify validity claims that are not yet
recognized by the majority, allowing minorities to challenge their injury
through rational debate (Chapter 4). Only now more problems emerge.
Not only is there too much disagreement over values themselves, such that
rational consensus appears empirically implausible, but it also turns out
that some injustices simply do not reach the light of day within an open
forum of public deliberation. When suddenly we realize that the desire to
achieve mutual understanding also involves wanting to misunderstand,
then our very commitment to achieving consensus appears misplaced
(Chapter 5). However, Honneth finally promises to make our failures his
very starting point. Reconstructing those normative demands implied by
experiences of humiliation, disrespect or social shame, the social critic is
able to identify unarticulated moral expectations that can be aired within a
more inclusive public sphere. Now it appears that justice is achieved through
a learning process, where, in the course of struggle, we acquire knowledge
about those norms of recognition that are reasonable for all parties. At long
last it appears that we can indeed achieve our freedom cooperatively,
through mutual recognition (Chapter 6). But again, our hopes are dashed,
because closer inspection reveals that not even Honneths painstaking
approach, with its sensitivity to pathology, can avoid complicity in the
production of injustice (Chapter 7). To protect reconstructive internal
critique from the problem of value relativism, Honneth affirms transcultural,
transhistorical standards in relation to which actual norms can be assessed,
and this constitutive gap between the actual and the ideal implies that the
ideal of mutual recognition can no longer be achieved in the present.
Utterly exhausted by our efforts, we realize that the ideal towards which we
strive is a mere hypothesis, and that justice-to-come has no essential
content whatsoever. This commitment to the possibility of constructing
justice is truly an art; one that appears to be impossible to complete.
The dual deconstructive orientation, towards both possibility and
impossibility, allows us to present these evolving constructive theories as just
one part of a history of imperfect conceptions, where perfection remains
an impossible ideal. Although the practical commitment to justices
possibility is certainly the condition for its pursuit, justice is clearly not
exhausted by the determined content that it is assigned. Since deconstruction
aims to achieve justice, it requires the pursuit of constructive strategies.
However, with its additional attention to impossibility, deconstruction also
prevents attitudes of overconfidence with respect to achieving our goal.
It is, perhaps, understandable that a tone of confidence pervades the
presentations of our constructive thinkers. Clearly, justice is not only illusive
but also fragile. To reflect upon its impossibility is to risk undermining the
very faith that conditions its pursuit. The danger of forgetting justice (Jay,
2008, p. 12) cannot be underestimated, given its capacity to undermine the
Im/Possibility and the Cultivation of Deconstructive Civic Attitudes 205
hard-fought gains that have so often made our social world more reasonable.
Consequently, the attention to failure that I have encouraged in this book is
qualified by the defence of justices critical potential. It is the very impossibility
of determining justice in the present that indeed secures its ongoing critical
function. Were justice to be exhausted by a non-revisable original position
outcome, or by a non-contestable rational consensus, or by the full
actualization of norms of mutual recognition, then the concept would have
no further critical role to play. It would lose all orienting function for the
present. The possibility of critique, in this sense, is premised on the
constitutive gap between the actual and the ideal.
Indeed, we have seen that all of the constructive thinkers considered
in this book offer partial acknowledgement of this deconstructive insight
(Chapters 5 and 7). The mature Rawls affirms that justice is an ideal
that is not so much achieved as worked toward (1996, p. 401). For
Habermas, parties to a rational consensus must also agree that their deli-
berative outcomes are open to contestation in principle, deferring the
absolute resolution of justices content to a future moment (Habermas,
2003, p. 102). Honneth, too, concedes that even when it appears that there
is no gap between actual and ideal, we must nonetheless assume that moral
progress is still possible, for otherwise we have no standard by which to
judge the present (Honneth, 2002, p. 517). In other words, the perfectibility
of justice is the condition for its critical function because its complete
determinability would undermine the practical possibility of revisiting its
outcomes, thereby surrendering the utopian potential of the concept of
justice for actual norms. Consequently, to be more humble with respect to
the possibility of achieving justice in the present should not, for all that,
undermine our commitment to it.
This insight leads me to suggest that the attitudes associated with the
constructive commitment, namely, reasonable faith, optimism and
confidence, are necessary for the pursuit of justice but are not sufficient on
their own. Derridas response to the early Habermas implies that justice is
also facilitated by outwardly turned civic attitudes (Chapter 5). Habermass
combative dismissal of his work is unjust (Derrida, 2006a, p. 301), because
it does not display the appropriate postures for careful engagement with
others. More particularly, Habermas refuses to take up three deconstructive
attitudes (Chapter 5). The first of these, openness, describes a willingness
to learn from others so as to challenge our inherited convictions. The
second, humility, suggests an awareness of the finitude and frailty of reason.
The third, resilience, describes the effort to keep striving in the face of
failure. According to Derrida, Habermas does not proceed with an open
mind before projecting a viewpoint, for this would require attentively

reading and listening to the other on the others own terms, which, in his
reading of Derrida, Habermas failed to achieve (Derrida, 1988a, p. 157).
Nor does Habermas display the slightest humility, which would at least
require an acknowledgement of his failure to uphold shared academic
norms (see Chapter 5). Finally, unaware of his own downfall, Habermas has
no need for a virtue like resilience, and makes not the slightest effort to
take responsibility for his inattentive practice (Derrida, 1988a, p. 158). It is
not surprising that the lack of such virtues fuelled what Derrida has described
as a kind of war, not between the two men themselves, but between their
supporters (Derrida, 2006a, p. 302). As Derrida explains, these warring
attitudes also harmed the students who had to form alliances and were
then sometimes handicapped in making progress (Derrida, 2006, p. 302).
In other words, while a tone of confidence in the possibility of just procedures
and principles promises to inspire shared commitment to the fragile ideal
of justice, cultivating deconstructive attitudes can also foster civility across
difference, preparing citizens to strive once exhaustion sets in, demonstrating
concern for their fellow citizens by refusing to settle for less.
Cultivating Effort: Openness, Humility and Resilience
The trace of these deconstructive attitudes is, in my view, visible in the brief
contemporary history of the broadly constructive tradition of justice that I
have studied in this book. As each constructive thinker becomes increasingly
aware of the difficulties involved in resolving justices demands, successive
theoretical qualifications are accompanied by a reflection on the additional
attitudes that citizens now need to bring to their shared pursuits. The duty
of civility, mentioned only once in Rawlss Theory, plays a far more central
role in his later revisions, describing the duty not to invoke the faults of
social arrangements as a too ready excuse for not complying with them
(Rawls, 1971, p. 355/312 rev.). Honneths theory, too, affords practical
importance to openness or a willingness to learn from others in challenging
inherited convictions, as is clear by his own attempt to learn from, and
ascribe some form of cooperative value to, a contemporary French tradition
often relegated to the margins of his own inherited German tradition.
Habermas, too, notes the central role of solidarity in the maintenance of
a just form of life (1990d, p. 244), and he also displays a performative
commitment to the deconstructive attitudes when later encountering
Derrida on cooperative terms.
Be that as it may, such acknowledgements are only partial and largely

implicit, such that the transformative potential of the attitudes is subdued
by the constraints of each theory. I will turn to each theorist in turn to
explain my point, suggesting that the role of theory is not so much the
realistic taming of our expectations as the encouragement of resilient and
generous aspirations to realize the impossible.
The limits of Rawlss duty of civility

In order to avoid undue coercion of unique individuals with different
conceptions of the good life, the mature Rawls revokes his strong, immodest
defence of just two principles of justice so as to instead defend a set of far
more basic public values on which overlapping consensus can obtain. In so
doing, he establishes a new ideal to which citizens are to aspire; namely,
the ideal of public reason with its duty of civility (Chapter 2) (Rawls, 1996,
p. 219 & xxxix). The duty of civility is afforded increasing prominence as
Rawls begins to recognize that institutions and laws are always imperfect
(1996, p. 242). Civility describes a willingness to uphold our institutions in
the face of their defects, since without this willingness mutual trust and
confidence are liable to break down (1971, p. 355/312 rev.).
This duty to comply with a constitutional regime derives from the fact that
other citizens share with us the same sense of its imperfection (1996,
p. 242) and that we owe it to one another to keep striving to live politically
with others in the light of reasons all might be expected to endorse (1996,
p. 243). The duty of civility also involves accepting that other citizens have
comprehensive reasons that are different to our own, on whose basis they
affirm the public values. On Rawlss mature account, citizens are even
encouraged to introduce reasonable comprehensive doctrines into public
reason on the proviso that public reasons are presented in due course
(Chapter 3) (Rawls, 1996, pp. lilii). This is intended to foster still further
the duty of civility by allowing citizens to recognize the deep ways in which
comprehensive doctrines sustain political conceptions, motivating citizens to
accept one anothers differences and preserv[ing] the ties of civic friendship
(1996, p. 253). Indeed, the duty of civility is one of the great political virtues
that a regime oriented towards justice should encourage (1996, p. 123).
The duty of civility appears to resemble the deconstructive attitudes I
mentioned above. First, it implies openness to others in their difference,
such that one recognizes and indeed appreciates the ways in which
comprehensive difference sustains a shared commitment to public values.
Second, it implies humility with respect to the possibility of actually achieving
justice, since citizens are asked to uphold imperfect institutions. Finally, it

implies resilience, since citizens are willing to put in the effort to prevent
mutual trust and confidence from breaking down.
However, despite these initial similarities, we soon notice that Rawls turns
to the duty of civility only to tame our expectations rather than to inspire
us to strive for greater justice. The duty of civility requires that in a state
of near justice at least, there is normally a duty (and for some the obligation)
to comply with unjust laws (Rawls, 1971, p. 355/312 rev.). Oriented towards
compliance rather than critique, civility is opposed to the deconstructive
attitudes because it does not actively cultivate a culture prepared to shoulder
its responsibility to alleviate suffering. Rather, civility encourages compliance
with unjust laws.
My own contribution is to remind Rawls that at the origin of the duty of
civility is an attitude of concern for fellow citizens. This attitude requires, in
a deconstructive sense, that one refuse to settle for anything less than
perfect justice, in spite of its impossibility.
Honneths encounter with the French tradition

Honneths theory also implies acknowledgement of the practical importance
of these deconstructive attitudes. My presentation of the three broadly
constructive thinkers has been most sympathetic to Honneth, whose attempt
to negotiate ethical obligation and impartial consideration can be said to
practise deconstructive responsibility, by explicitly commencing with
those social pathologies that are symptoms of the failure of our inherited
norms of justice (Chapter 6). Although Honneth unfortunately does not
also critique the theoretical limits of his own defence of authentic identity,
his theory very much displays the good conscience that dogmatically stops
before any inherited determination of justice (Derrida, 2002b, p. 248).
Honneths approach also implies two of the three deconstructive attitudes
that characterize Derridas work, namely, openness and resilience. With
respect to the latter, by commencing with failures themselves and by
committing to a robust conception of moral progress in spite of the risks in
doing so, Honneth encourages attitudes of resilience, since citizens are now
expected to make an effort to participate in an ongoing learning process
about one anothers implied normative expectations, in an attempt to
institute reasonable norms.
As for openness, or the willingness to learn from others, Honneths own
practice indicates an attempt to proceed with an open mind before
projecting a viewpoint (Derrida, 1988a, p. 157), ascribing value to the
uniqueness of anothers thoughts in an attempt to foster constructive

relations. The cooperative potential of this willingness to learn is revealed
in the effects that Honneths work has produced in attenuating the
unaccommodating nature of contemporary French-German relations,
which scarred cooperative philosophical development from the 1980s
onwards (Critchley and Honneth, 1998; Bankovsky and Honneth, 2012).
Sensitive to the negative effects of pathological recognition relations on
cooperative freedom, and aware of the expectation to afford social value
where it is due, Honneth does not allow his strong identification with
the German tradition of recognition theory (Bankovsky and Honneth,
2012, p. 26) to prevent him from discovering value in contemporary French
philosophy. This effort to actively practise his own theory in its very
construction, viewing diverse philosophical currents as expressions of
freedom within a cooperative venture, can also be seen as a deconstructive
attitude, expressing the willingness to bring an open mind to the relation
with others, challenging ones inherited convictions.
Honneth understands the importance of this effort for cooperative
freedom. He points out that we cannot underestimate the effect of the
criticisms Habermas brought to the French tradition in the 1980s, for these
produced a series of polemical encounters that had a very damaging effect
and placed the Franco-German relation under the heading irrationality
versus rationality (Critchley and Honneth, 1998, p. 34). This fruitless
dualism contributes to a certain and still growing underestimation of the
French tradition (1998, p. 34). With his Hegelian assumption that our
modern traditions are more or less imbued with rational expectations
concerning the structure of our interactions, Honneth presumes that the
practice of contemporary French philosophy, itself an intersubjective pursuit,
also expresses rational demands. This starting point contrasts with the early
Habermass position. Indeed, Honneth even suggests that the tendency of
contemporary French philosophy to focus on the ethical relevance of
asymmetrical relations might well indicate a critical rebellion against the
strength and preponderance of the idea of equal respect within the French
republic (Bankovsky and Honneth, 2012, p. 32). Honneths willingness to
find value in a philosophical tradition often relegated to the margins of
broadly constructive political theory can be seen, in my view, as an endeavour
to repair a pathological relation within the institution of philosophy itself, a
relation that frustrates the possibility of a cooperative pursuit.
It is not surprising, in this sense, that the revival of recognition theory
outside of France in the early 1990s, with its growing interest in contemporary
French philosophy, has itself contributed to the renewal of critical theory in
France, resuming cooperation across French-German borders. We even

begin to see the outlines of a new style of French political philosophy, with
philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists and economists increasingly
working together to explore the intersections between recognition theory
and the sociology of gift-giving (Bankovsky and Le Goff, 2012, pp. 1112 &
18; see also Ricoeur, 2005; Renault, 2004; 2008a; 2008b; Deranty and
Renault, 2007; Deranty, 2005; 2009; Deranty and Haber, 2009; Caill, 2007;
Lazzeri, 2010 & 2012). The Derridean and Levinasian idea that ethics is not
exhausted by a principle of reciprocal equality also overlaps with the
sociology of the gift, an important current in French social theory, originally
presented by Marcel Mauss, which in turn informs Honneths work.
Revitalized in the last thirty years by French academics associated with the
Mouvement Anti-Utilitariste en Sciences Sociales (MAUSS), including the likes
of Jean Baudrillard, Vincent Descombes, Bruno Latour, Claude Lefort,
Philippe Chanial and Cornelius Castoriadis, the sociology of gift-giving
presents an important alternative both to the utilitarian account of
intersubjective relations and to the paradigm of rational choice in the social
sciences, which tends to account for cultural and economic relations in the
instrumental language of rational self-interest (Chanial, 2008). For our
purposes, we can see that Honneths deconstructive attitude of openness
which leads to the discovery of value in certain aspects of the French
tradition encourages a cooperative environment in which the projects of
the one tradition find fruition in the other, in a strongly Hegelian sense.
However, if Honneth both maintains and encourages the deconstructive
attitudes of resilience and openness, he does not go far enough in
acknowledging what Derrida refers to as the theoretical limits of his
determination of justice (Derrida, 2002b, p. 248), with its own capacity to
overlook or reproduce injustice (Chapter 7). It is as if he thinks that
admitting to failure might undermine the commitment to cooperation that
he wishes to uphold. However, an attitude of humility with respect to the
finitude of ones project need not compromise ones pursuit. Indeed, such
humility might encourage Honneth to consider other forms of self-other
disruptions, bringing visibility not only to the ambivalent relation between
domination and emancipation, but also to the discomforting privilege
accorded to the role of the sociologist-critic (Chapter 7).
Habermas and Derrida: performative commitments

Like Rawls, Habermas partially acknowledges the need for civic attitudes of
openness, humility and resilience. Citizens, for example, are expected to
bring to their interactions an outwardly turned posture of solidarity; a

concern for the welfare of the other person. However, once again, this
acknowledgement is tamed, in a second step, by the idea of reciprocal
equality.
Like Rawlss duty of civility, the attitude of solidarity maintains the integrity
of intersubjective life itself (Habermas, 1990d, p. 244). Solidarity describes
a commitment to the welfare of ones fellow and an interest in the general
welfare (1990d, p. 244). Indeed, justice requires solidarity as its reverse
side (1990d, p. 244).
On the one hand, this other-directed attitude appears to reflect the
deconstructive attitude of openness to the other person, since it invokes the
willingness to challenge our inherited convictions with respect to the others
needs. The attitude of solidarity orients us away from ourselves,
demonstrating concern for fellow citizens as unique individuals. Indeed, it
also facilitates the commitment to the possibility of justice, which would not
be possible without the empathy of each person in the situation for
everyone else, which is derived from solidarity (Habermas, 1990d, p. 247).
The attitudes of solidarity and empathy, which allow egos to open their
perspectives to others in their lifeworlds, are of primary importance, such
that any deficit in solidarity constitutes a threat to justice. Such attitudes
reveal that the egocentric perspective is not something primary, but rather
something socially produced (1990d, p. 247). Consequently, inherited
convictions must always be subject to contestation with respect to the other
persons particular needs and interests. Indeed, Habermas even suggests
that solidarity seeks a cooperative regulation of the common life of different
individuals, producing positive attitudes of tolerance which manage to
avoid paternalism by conced[ing] to one another the right to remain
strangers (1996a, p. 308; see also 2006b).
On the other hand, Habermas qualifies the implied primacy afforded to
attitudes of solidarity by framing the orientation to the other with the ideal
of equal treatment (see also Aubert, 2012, pp. 188189). It now appears that
equal treatment and solidarity are two sides of the same coin: It is a question
not so much of two moments that supplement each other as of two aspects
of the same thing (Habermas, 1990d, p. 244). Framed by the orientation
towards mutual understanding, solidarity converges with equal treatment
(1990d, p. 245; 1996a, p. 35, p. 445), and this effectively excludes the sort of
privilege that the deconstructive attitude of openness ascribes to the
consideration of the other person. In spite of the implied acknowledgement
of the importance of empathy, openness and an orientation to the other
person, Habermas returns to the framework of symmetrical equality.
That said, even though Habermas does not explicitly acknowledge that
the deconstructive attitudes lie at the origin of solidarity, he nonetheless
commits to them performatively when he later sets in motion a congenial
and open-minded exchange with Derrida, establishing a new practice of
interaction (Habermas, 2009, p. 36). The deconstructive attitudes are visible
in the performative commitments that allow Derrida and Habermas to
transform their initially polemic divide into a relation of amicability, outward
interest and cooperation. I suggest that their attitudes are deconstructive
in their orientation to the other, because the type of encounters they allow
cannot easily or immediately be framed within the language of a deliberative
exchange, which seeks mutual understanding. As the later Habermas notes,
Derridas deconstruction, like Adornos negative dialectics, is essentially a
performative exercise, a Praxis (Habermas, 2006a, p. 307). It is an attempt
to practise, within determined contexts, an outwardly directed and inclusive
ethics, which nonetheless itself fails, since the event worthy of the name
cannot arise[, if] what arrives belongs to the horizon of the possible
(Derrida, 2001b, p. 54; see also Habermas, 2009, p. 18). Habermas begins
to see the affinities, with his own project, of a practice of ethics that posits
the present as an infinite learning process.
Derrida recalls that it was Habermass attitude of openness that marked
the onset of their own learning process (Derrida, 2006a, p. 301), when
with a friendly smile Habermas approached Derrida and proposed that
they have a discussion (Derrida, 2006a, p. 302). Without hesitation,
Derrida agreed. Habermas, too, recalls that Derrida belongs to those
authors who surprise their readers when they meet for the first time. He was
not what one expected (Habermas, 2006a, p. 308). This disposition of
openness allows Habermas to welcome the unexpected into the
intersubjective horizon, learning something new about Derrida: A person
of extraordinary kindness, almost elegant, he was certainly vulnerable and
sensitive, but had an easy manner and was likeable and friendly, and open
to friendship with those he trusted (Habermas, 2006a, p. 308). This
welcoming of another who exceeds ones expectations maps onto the
ethical opening of the self to the Other of which Levinas speaks. Moreover,
this outward gesture of openness, or the willingness to respond to the Other,
opens up a horizon of unheralded possibilities. Derrida explains that in
the course of a particularly amicable meal, Habermas, with exemplary
decency, for which I will always be grateful to him, did his utmost to get rid
of all traces of the former polemics (Derrida, 2006a, p. 302). Habermas
notes that, in turn, Derrida generously attempts to express his intellectual
affinity with Adorno, revealing the roots of performative commitment to
justice in a gesture [that] does not leave one unmoved (Habermas, 2009,
p. 35). This new beginning sets the ground for meetings in Paris, Frankfurt
and New York, where the two men sustained discussions in a labyrinth, in
which [their] philosophical or ethical-philosophical paths crossed now and
again, coincided sometimes, and sometimes were in opposite directions
(Derrida, 2006a, p. 302). Across such encounters, Derrida expresses the
hope that nothing should, nothing must I make this wish today
discourage us from continuing on such a path (Derrida, 2006a, p. 303). In
spite of continued failures to understand, the opening itself is now
experienced as productive, the exchange itself worthwhile.
In my view, Derrida and Habermas here display attitudes that express
forms of other-oriented solidarity which are not reducible to the framework
of deliberative exchange with its horizon of mutual understanding. With a
posture of openness or a willingness to learn from each other, Habermas
and Derrida take the risk of engaging in exchange across their initial divides,
each experiencing the opening itself as productive. Indeed, against all
expectations and in the face of deep differences, this opening allows for
unanticipated discoveries of new commonalities: shared hopes for Europe
and its future, outrage at the attacks of September 11, critical concern about
the reaction of the Bush administration and the majority American opinion,
commitment to the Enlightenment and to the Kantian project (Derrida,
2006a, pp. 302303; Derrida and Habermas, 2003 & 2006; Derrida, 2006a,
p.301; Habermas, 2009, p. 35). With a tone of humility, each philosopher
puts to one side their own convictions about the limits of each others
projects, admitting to the polemical nature of the initial exchange (Derrida,
2006a, p. 302) and implicitly retracting early errors (Habermas, 2006a,
p. 308). In a spirit of determination or resilience, both philosophers
performatively commit to continuing on such a path, across their
differences. Derrida appreciates the effort Habermas makes to maintain the
relationship: Out of exemplary politeness Habermas informs me each time
of the answers he has given in interviews on their cooperative work (Derrida,
2006a, p. 303). These are civic attitudes whereby citizens express concern for
one another across their differences; attitudes that should prevent the sort
of destructive war that once divided Derridas and Habermass supporters.
Although we noticed that Habermass concept of solidarity is firmly
located within the deliberative horizon, here he nonetheless performatively
acknowledges Derridas other-oriented solidarity, beyond the frame of
mutual understanding. Indeed, the cooperation of Habermas and Derrida
clearly depends on attitudes that exceed, facilitate and condition the
deliberative exchange. In contrast to his early combative work, in which,
as Peter Dews puts it, Habermas leaves the impression of having far less to
learn from his opponents (Dews, 1992, p. 3), we now see a performative
acknowledgement of the cooperative importance of the deconstructive
attitudes, which promise to leave a trace of ethics in a shared historical
learning process.
The Philosopher as a Citizen
I would like to indicate that I am presenting my defence of deconstructive

attitudes in the role of a citizen addressing her peers. Sharing Rawlss view
that the philosophers role is the work of a citizen, I will explain that citizens
do not simply need reasonable faith in the possibility of justice, the
condition for offering fair terms and conditions. Citizens also need attitudes
and postures of openness, humility and resilience that allow them to cultivate
the resources for maintaining their faith in spite of the challenges.
Rawls explicitly assumes the role of philosopher-citizen, as indicated by
his response to four questions on the topic (Rawls, 2007, pp. 17). To the
question, To whom is political philosophy addressed?, Rawls notes that in
a modern constitutional democracy, political philosophy addresses all
citizens generally (2007, p. 1). Those who produce political philosophy
should not be viewed as experts, but rather as citizens themselves, who,
through their study and reflection, help us clarify our judgements about
our norms and institutions. Consequently, the political philosopher
addresses her readers in the capacity of fellow citizen, subjecting her
proposals to the authority of the body of citizens.
This leads Rawls to his next question, What claim to authority does
political philosophy enjoy?, to which he replies that its sole credential is
the authority of human reason; the shared powers of reasoned thought,
judgement and inference that are exercised by rational citizens (2007,
p. 2). Political philosophers have no special access to fundamental truths
about justice, but rather strive to identify practical problems and clarify
resources to overcome them, encouraging others to judge the proposals
intelligently. In matters of justice, there is no institutional authority other
than the reflection of individuals themselves.
Such considerations inform Rawlss answer to a third question, How does
political philosophy enter into and affect the outcome of democratic
politics? Clearly, citizens of a democratic society can no longer reconcile
their conviction in their own authority with the model of Platos philosopher
king or Lenins revolutionary vanguard, which invokes an independent
criterion of truth and a paternal, forceful intervention (2007, p. 3). Liberal

philosophers are citizens, not kings. For Rawls, this means that political
philosophy can only produce effects through education or influence (2007,
p. 45). First, ideas about justice can play an educative role as part of the
background culture of a democratic society. Second, when a political
philosopher believes that the majority view does not accord with the reason
of the body of citizens, the only remaining option is to convince a legitimate
and constitutionally established political agent to override the majoritarian
will, by influencing, for example, the Supreme Court judges of a constitutional
regime. There are no other options available for liberal philosophers, since
any coercive attempts to institute just principles would effectively revoke the
very source of the authority to which political philosophy appeals, namely,
the reason of individuals themselves.
I have reflected on Rawlss account of the philosopher-citizen for the
following reason. If the work of Rawls, Habermas and Honneth is now
viewed as the judgements of citizens addressing their peers, then the
disagreement between them over the limits of the art of the possible now
presents itself as a disagreement between citizens themselves over the very
content of justice. Moreover, we have seen for ourselves that the proposals
each citizen provides for resolving this disagreement diverge in important
ways. It turns out that in spite of considerable resources of time, education,
similar intellectual reference points and shared commitments, not even
these constructive philosopher-citizens can come close to anything like an
agreement on the best way to conceptualize justices content. And yet, as
Honneth points out with his Hegelian premise, we continue to see citizens
struggling for justice all the time. In my view, the constructive commitment
to possibility is not a sufficient condition for this striving in the face of
failure. The continued effort of these philosopher-citizens cannot be fully
grasped without supplementing constructive confidence, optimism and
reasonable faith with those attitudes that assist such citizens to keep up
their effort namely, openness, humility and resilience. In spite of the
challenging difference in vocabulary, we recall that Levinass ethical
obligation is other-directed: we must listen to and learn from the Other,
orienting ourselves beyond the limits of the self. The contribution that I
would like to bring, as a citizen, to this shared constructive effort is an
encouragement to cultivate those attitudes of openness, humility and
resilience that demonstrate concern for fellow citizens by refusing to settle
for anything less than justice. These attitudes balance out our confidence,
preparing us to take part in a long, ongoing and often arduous learning
process whereby we attempt to respond anew to our continued failure.
I also wish to point out that my defence of the deconstructive civic

attitudes does not necessarily involve a commitment to a comprehensive
conception of the good life. If the sense of justice involves civic commitments
to the Reasonable, to the duty of civility and to public reason, then it also
requires commitments to those attitudes that allow citizens to take up their
responsibility for the failures of their shared institutions.
Rawls himself reflects on the value of such attitudes when posing his fourth
and final question of whether and how citizens become attached to the idea
of justice and of the sorts of resources they might draw on to support their
attachment. This question is of great interest to him, as he realizes that a
constitutional regime is not likely to endure unless its citizens uphold ideas
about themselves and others which also endorse and strengthen the culture
of a relatively just democratic regime (2007, p. 5). His answer is that resources
are found in our background culture, which teaches forms of political
conduct and political principles that have achieved great value over time and
that come to be experienced as a common good (2007, pp. 67). In my view,
this background culture includes resources in addition to those that Rawls
himself mentions, which also have the capacity to strengthen the commitment
to justice. Tracking back carefully through our history, we would find many
examples of the deconstructive attitudes a willingness to challenge our
convictions, an awareness of the limits of our reason and a continued effort
to overcome our failures. Such attitudes have contributed to outcomes that
provide us with increasing opportunities to achieve freedom for ourselves
and for others. Although it would take too much time to develop the idea
here, it could be shown that such attitudes played a crucial role during the
three periods that Rawls describes as the most innovative of his countrys
constitutional history: the [founding] constitution and its amendment
process, the Reconstruction amendments that sought to remove the curse of
slavery, and the modern activist so-called welfare state of the New Deal
(1996, p. 234). These moments would have been unthinkable had one relied
uniquely upon just those norms that citizens happened to affirm in
overlapping consensus. Instead, unthinkable possibilities become real
options when the link between the actual and the ideal is loosened, providing
the chance to transform the actual in view of the ever-illusive impossible.
The Risks and Limitations of Deconstructive Attitudes
I wish to clarify that to supplement the constructive orientation with the

deconstructive attitudes cannot itself guarantee justice in the present.
The deconstructive attitudes are themselves human practices and, as such,

are likely to misfire, overlooking or reproducing forms of injustice. Although
such attitudes promise to facilitate the development of cooperative relations
between Honneth and the contemporary French tradition, or between
Habermas and Derrida, or between Rawlsian majorities and minorities,
Derridas point is that the very perfectibility of justice is the condition for its
critical function. As I mentioned earlier, the complete determinability of
justice would undermine the practical possibility of revisiting its outcomes,
and this would spell the end of human history. This is what I understand
Chantal Mouffe to mean when she writes that Perfect democracy would
indeed destroy itself[, which] is why it should be conceived as a good only as
long as it cannot be reached (Mouffe, 2000, p. 137).1
In spite of the obvious differences in orientation, my defence of
deconstructive attitudes shares a number of traits with the arguments of the
constructive thinkers, while attempting to move beyond their framework.
First, the defence is historical, informed by an analysis of the types of
performative attitudes that appear to have improved those relations which
were originally strained. As such, the defence aspires not to necessity, but
rather to the status of hypothesis that Habermas and Honneth ascribe to
the findings of a reconstructive science (Chapters 5 and 7).
Second, my suggestion is itself a response to the failure of the constructive
orientation and is, in this sense, firmly located within the historical learning
process to which both Habermas and Honneth subscribe. Consequently,
my defence of deconstructive attitudes supports their own project, while
also extending the project beyond its original framework. In so doing, I
commit to the horizon of the possible, while attempting to include space
within it for an outwardly directed ethics that exceeds this horizon.
Third, and extending the two preceding points, to present deconstruction
in terms of a set of civic attitudes is again to risk the sort of error that Jean-
Michel Salanskis discovers in Honneths interpretation of Levinasian ethics
(Chapter 7) (Salanskis, 2012, p. 205206). When I ask citizens to cultivate
deconstructive civic attitudes, I am reformulating the asymmetrical imperative
to assist in terms of a symmetrical conception of selves, who are now
conceptualized as reciprocal bearers of attitudes of openness, humility and
resilience. However, while I agree that some reduction has taken place, I would
point out that at least my symmetrical presentation of moral personhood
nonetheless ascribes to the self an unconditional obligation that is more
consistent with Levinasian ethics than Honneths depiction of the self as
endowed with primitive needs for unconditional love. In this sense, I am
attempting to defend an account of moral personhood that nonetheless
includes the radicality of the Levinasian obligation, while also committing to

impartiality among persons, which Derrida adds into the equation.
Finally, like the constructive conceptions, the success of my defence of
deconstructive attitudes depends on its capacity to persuade citizens to take
up such postures. In this sense, Paul Patton is correct to point out that it is
too soon to judge the value of deconstructive approaches for normative
philosophy, because deconstructions value also depends, in a constructive
sense, on what it achieves (Patton, 2007a; 2007b). I hope to provide at least
some reason to believe that deconstructive political philosophy can yield
productive results for the constructive tradition, although I do not go as far
as to claim that deconstruction will produce such results.
In spite of these risks and tensions, my commitment to the constructive
effort of perfecting our inherited conceptions of justice is the very project
to which Derrida aspires, as expressed by his regret that he did not make
the effort that most of you are making, with moving good will, just to
produce the possibility of an argument ... an effort which could have
helped this discussion, this argument or dialogue (Derrida, 2001a, p. 36).
I hope that my own entry into this discussion, taking the role of a citizen
encouraging others to maintain attitudes of openness, humility and
resilience, will contribute, in some small way, to this project.
Transformative Possibilities
I would like to finish by suggesting that an explicit affirmation of the

inherent perfectibility of justice might encourage a more critical regard
towards the actual liberal-democratic tradition in view of uncovering
resources in our tradition to support ongoing efforts to make the impossible
ideal of justice a reality. We have seen that all three thinkers come to a
partial acknowledgement of justices perfectibility, but without carefully
reflecting on the implications of this for the content of their theories. That
the affirmation of perfectibility encourages a more critical regard is clarified
when we take a careful look at two of the four roles that Rawls ascribes to
political philosophy in his later work.
In addition to the first and practical role of uncovering a basis for resolving
divisive political conflict, and the second role of orienting citizens in their
world, Rawls ascribes to political philosophy the roles of reconciliation
and of probing the limits of practicable political possibility (2001, pp. 25;
2007, p. 10). It is the latter two roles that interest me here, since the
conciliatory orientation lies in tension with the question of practicable
limits. The role of reconciliation Rawls claims to have discovered in Hegel.

As Rawls writes:
Political philosophy may try to calm our frustration and rage against our
society and its history by showing us the way in which its institutions, when
properly understood, from a philosophical point of view, are rational,
and developed over time as they did to attain their present, rational form.
(Rawls, 2007, p. 10)
He immediately qualifies this by saying that we should not fall into the
trap of simply defending ideology in Marxs sense, which means that we
must guard against reproducing an unjust and unworthy status quo (2007,
p. 10).
The role of probing the limits of practicable political possibility concerns
determining principles and ideals that can actually be realized, given the
circumstances of justice in a democratic culture as we know them. These
circumstances are defined by the fact of reasonable pluralism, which
constitutes a real limit to the sorts of principles around which actual,
empirical agreement can obtain. Only those principles that are actually
achievable can realistically be expected to constitute the content of justice.
In order to satisfy the constraints of practicable possibility, Rawls weakens
his original theory, identifying justice with only those basic public values
that are actually the object of overlapping consensus between citizens. He
also insists that the duty of civility requires that we tame our expectations
and instead comply with a certain range of injustices, reconciling ourselves
to their rationality. However, as the analyses in Chapter 3 revealed, these
injustices can even include serious and long-lasting social and economic
injustices in income, housing, education and social mobility, since we
cannot realistically expect citizens to agree on the difference principle.
Rather than defending the duty to resist, Rawls believes that minorities
should place their hope for improvement in the near-justice of constitutional
procedure, and in the capacity of citizens to revisit the original position
procedure, adjusting public principles and procedures to take into account
new considered judgements.
This commitment to practicability and reconciliation prevents Rawls from
dealing with the most interesting of questions; namely, the deep question
concerning the extent to which justices content should be given by the
actual (Rawls, 2001, p. 5) that is, by those stable established values which
are already affirmed by everyone in overlapping consensus. When he finally
voices this question, our hearts begin to soar. At last, it looks like Rawls will
actually engage with the questions that have been troubling us from the
start. Why should the content of justice be so closely identified with actual
values? Does justice sometimes require that citizens strive for impractical
ends? Is it possible that striving for the impossible could yield productive
and unexpected results? What resources can we draw on for the
transformation of the actual, when it is so clearly imperfect? However, our
hope that Rawls will deal with such questions is swiftly dashed with his very
next sentence. Although he notes that we can to a greater or lesser extent
change political and social institutions, and much else (2001, p. 5), it
appears that the question is beyond the scope, and will not be pursued
(2001, p. 5).
The attentiveness to failure that marks the deconstructive perspective
encourages us to enter into such considerations. We begin to see that
political philosophy might produce better results when it does not attempt,
with Rawls, to tame expectations but rather inspires us to strive to make the
impossible a reality. The constitutive gap between actualized justice and its
idea permits, indeed encourages, the transformation and continued
perfection of the actual. With respect to Rawls, deconstruction bears the
potential to provoke efforts to correct our imperfect institutions, promoting
attitudes that prepare citizens to go beyond instituted justice to take
seriously other injustices, no less serious, which are unfortunately less visible
and not yet recognized by the majority. As Drucilla Cornell writes, engaging
with Rawlss deep question would require affirming the essential possibility
of transforming actualized justice in view of as yet unimaginable possibilities.
In this sense, it should be acknowledged that deconstructive justice is more
utopian (Cornell, 1992, p. 182) in aspiring to achieve outcomes that do not
always appear to be practically possible.
The role of political philosophy is not to tame our expectations or to
reconcile citizens to the rationality of their social world, as Rawls tends
to suggest. Rather, its task is to identify the demands of justice, refusing to
settle for anything less. By raising the stakes in this way, political philosophy
can provide us with reasons to demand more of one another, promoting
the effort to correct our imperfect institutions. By cultivating the deconstru-
ctive civic attitudes of openness, humility and resilience, we can aspire to a
political culture that is prepared to attempt the impossible, perfecting
justice in the course of its history.
Notes
Chapter 1
1
Rawls uses constructivist rather than constructive, Habermas prefers rational
reconstructionist to reconstructive, and Honneth seldom refers to normative
reconstruction with an adjective. For the sake of elegance and simplicity, I will
use the adjectives constructive, reconstructive and deconstructive.
2
As Derrida and John Caputo both remark, the impersonal il y a (there is) is not
equivalent to Heideggers es gibt. Il y a expresses, to use Jacques Rollands words, the
impossibility of being what one is (Rolland, 2003, p. 34), whereas es gibt gives itself
to the self in generosity (see Derrida, 1978, pp. 131151; Caputo, 1997, pp. 9495).
3
I focus here on Levinas use of the term justice in his later writing. In his early
work, Levinas identifies the term justice with pure ethical responsibility; that is,
with the self-Other relation, which means that his references to it are positive.
From Otherwise than Being onwards, he uses the term justice in the traditional
sense; that is, as also committed to the principles of impartiality, freedom and
equality.
4
I am aware that the rejection of the possibility of an ethical State is qualified, in
Levinass later work, by a defence of the State of Israel, modelled on social law of
Judaism, which emphasizes, he believes, the humanism of the suffering servant
(1990, pp. 170171; see also 1989, p. 271). The face of the Other, the particular
in the universal, is revealed at Sinai as a visitation and a transcendence (1998b,
p. 107), given form in the laws and in the Torah which nonetheless remain non-
deductive (1996b, p. 63). However, it is difficult to accept the premise of a spe-
cifically Judaic humanism as the basis for any defence of the possibility of a just
State. When Jewish exemplarity is ascribed the status of condition for and not
effect of the universally applicable, Levinas hierarchizes differences in absolute
terms, privileging Jewish difference over every other difference. The result is a
loss of the capacity to recognize the Third, the Jews other, leading Levinas not
only to refuse to criticize Israels relation to its neighbours in the 1967 Six-Day
War (Levinas, 1990, pp. 259264) and the Israeli armys complicity in the 1982
massacre of Palestinian refugees by Lebanese Christian Phalangist militants
(Levinas, 1989, p. 291), but also to fear the growing prominence of an Asiatic
civilization for whom Abraham, Isaac and Jacob no longer mean anything
(Levinas, 1990, p. 165; see also 1994b, p. 171). For further discussion of these
and other problems in Levinass account of Jewish exemplarity, see Bankovsky,
2006, pp. 357378. It is fair to say that when speaking about the state without his
222 Notes
problematic reference to Israel or the exemplarity of Judaic humanism, Levinas

emphasizes the failure of state-based justice to uphold ethics.
5
As is customary, I will provide page numbers for both the original and revised
editions of A Theory of Justice. For example (Rawls, 1971, pp. 454455/398399
rev.).
6
It is worth noting that Bernstein goes on to argue that, although irreconcilable,
reconstructive and deconstructive approaches can together account for the force-
field that constitutes the modern/post-modern condition (2006, p. 93).
7
This early interpretation continues to define the prevailing view among promi-
nent contemporary political philosophers. It has been defended, more recently,
by such writers as Richard Wolin (2004, p. 233), Mark Lilla (2001, p. 179 & 183
184), James Bohman (1999, p. 239) and Charles Taylor (1994, p. 70), to mention
just a few.
8
While it is true that from the late 90s onwards, the relations between Derrida and
Habermas took a turn for the better, with an agreement to co-sign a text defend-
ing Europe as a vehicle for international cooperation and with their sharing con-
cerns with economic and social inequality, terrorism and immigration, Derrida
and Habermas nevertheless continue to differ on key points, as will become clear
in the chapters that follow. In Chapter Eight, we will consider some of the atti-
tudes that finally made amicability possible. See Derrida and Habermas, 2006,
pp. 270277. See also their later comments on each others work: Derrida, 2006a,
pp. 300306; and Habermas, 2006a, pp. 307308.
9
In her more recent work, Nancy Fraser does not allow her sympathy for Haber-
mass framework to prevent her from discovering resources in deconstruction
to deepen her theory of participatory parity. Attempting to overcome what she
earlier describes as the apolitical nature of the deconstruction of the political,
Fraser instead politicizes deconstruction, identifying deconstructions main
political ideal as the rough social equality of all differences or the equal value
of different forms of identity (Fraser, 1997, p. 30). Fraser then reformulates this
radical egalitarian principle as a practical political strategy that she refers to as
transformative recognition, which plays a specific role within her broader theory
(Fraser, 1997, pp. 1140; 2004, pp. 125148; Fraser, 2001a). This interpretation
contrasts with Honneths, who believes that deconstruction describes the oppo-
site obligation to treat people unequally (Honneth, 1995b). See also Bankovsky,
2012.
10
The distinction which Fraser here draws between le politique (the conditions
of possibility of the political) and la politique (differences at the level of poli-
tics) originates in the work of Heidegger, not Derrida. Jean-Luc Nancy and
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe believe that the distinction is implied by Derridas
account of deconstructive analysis, which can be said to focus on the former
rather than the latter. However, Derrida himself does not refer to his own
project in such terms. For further details on Lacoue-Labarthes and Nancys
Heideggerian interpretation of Derridas project, see Simon Critchley, 1993,
p. 74.
11
I acknowledge discovering this particularly pertinent quote second-hand in con-
sulting Lasse Thomassens Deconstructing Habermas (2008).
Notes 223
Chapter 2
1
Rawlss early writings here describe the work up to, but not including, Justice
as fairness: political not metaphysical, first published in 1985, which defines
themes characteristic of Rawlss later work, presenting his theory as a public
political conception rather than a moral comprehensive doctrine. Although one
might instead argue that Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory, first pub-
lished in1980, marks the transition from Theory to Political Liberalism (insofar as
it takes into account, first, the public function of a conception of justice; second,
the normative character of the moral ideal of the person; and third, the concept
of the Reasonable which subordinates instrumental rationality), the 1985 text is
nonetheless the first to make explicit use of the vocabulary of the political; see
Rawls, 1999a, pp. 388414 & pp. 303358. For further clarification of the differ-
ences between the early and late Rawls, see also Catherine Audard, 1993a; 1993b,
p. 72 & 204; Anthony Simon Laden, 2003, p. 368.
2
Rawlss account of the difference between the moral law, the Categorical Impera-
tive, the categorical imperative procedure and particular categorical imperatives
will be explained in subsequent paragraphs of this section (see also Rawls, 2000,
p. 167).
3
I suggest that Christine Korsgaards interpretation of the constructivist method
of problem-solving in Rawls is correct. For her, constructivism determines its solu-
tion as a function of the practical problem to which it responds. For Rawls, the
problem concerns the principles that liberal democracy can itself determine as its
own, which thus requires that its principles be acceptable to free persons within
a liberal democracy (see Korsgaard, 1995, pp. 11691171; 2003, pp. 113115).
4
Gerald Doppelt and William Galston argue that Rawls does not offer criteria for
adjudicating between different competing personhood ideals; that is, for choos-
ing one personhood ideal over another. My own presentation demonstrates that
Rawls does offer such criteria: constructivist conceptions must cohere with non-
moral judgements about the person established by the human sciences and with
the considered moral judgements of the society in question (see Doppelt, 1988;
Galston, 1982). This is why I will later suggest that Axel Honneths personhood
ideal will make better sense of the demands of justice that Derrida identifies,
implied by our normative expectations (see Chapter Six).
5
The idea of coherentist justification is introduced in Theory via the notion of
reflective equilibrium, a method employed by individuals you and me when
assessing the public conception (Rawls, 1971, p. 20/1819 rev., 9, pp. 578
579/507508 rev.). First, we identify our considered judgements about justice.
Second, we formulate principles for these, which, if applied, would lead to the
same set of judgements. Finally, we respond to any divergence between principles
and considered judgements either by dropping or revising judgements that prin-
ciples fail to account for, by reformulating and expanding others, or by modifying
the principles themselves. An equilibrium exists when principles and judgements
coincide (1971, p. 20/18 rev.).
6
I agree with Burton Dreben (2003, p. 320) that the 1993 hardback version of
Political Liberalism is misleading without the new frame provided by the second
224 Notes
edition in the New Introduction to the paperback edition (Rawls, 1996, pp.
xxxviilxii) and the Reply to Habermas (pp. 373434). These, along with The
idea of public reason revisited, provide the best statement of Rawlss mature
views, contradicting his later and final statement of the bases of a well-ordered
society in Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, which returns to Theorys account,
affirming that everyone accepts, and knows that everyone else accepts, the very same
political conception of justice (Rawls, 2001, p. 8). Although the conception of the
well-ordered society in Justice as Fairness: A Restatement does not maintain Theorys
requirement that everyone accept the same conception for the same reasons, it nev-
ertheless surrenders the major insight of the second edition of Political Liberalism
namely, that overlapping consensus obtains only on those more basic political values
that a family of reasonable liberal political conceptions can together endorse
(Rawls, 1996, pp. xlviiixlix & 6).
7
When referring to the difference between the first and second editions of Political
Liberalism, I will nonetheless quote from the second edition alone (1996), which
includes both the original version and the subsequent additions, including the
new introduction (Introduction to the paperback edition) and the Reply to
Habermas.
Chapter 3
1
In Reply to Habermas, Rawls refers, instead, to procedurally just outcomes as
procedurally legitimate as opposed to just (Rawls, 1996, pp. 427430; see also
1999a, p. 578).
2
For a consideration of the need to return to the standpoint of the original posi-
tion procedure so as to reassess the legitimacy of the Australian constitution
against changing considered reflections on the status of the Indigenous Austra-
lians, see Patton, 2008.
Chapter 4
1
I will not deal with Habermass criticisms in the order in which he presents them,
but will rather isolate their importance for the three ideas impartiality, a moral
personhood ideal and practicability that together order my presentation of the
possibility of justice in Rawls, Habermas and Honneth.
2
For a similar version of the two primary roles which Habermas ascribes to Kants
publicity condition, see Jean-Marc Ferry, 1986, pp. 3346.
3
In explaining Habermass analysis of the pragmatic function of moral inter-
est, I draw on the writings completed after the 1968 publication of Knowledge
and Human Interests, because the later writings correct the earlier concern with
structures of consciousness and instead deal explicitly with intersubjective,
social interaction. This clear change in Habermass focus has been appropri-
ately described as the paradigmatic shift of the early 70s (see Roderick, 1986,
p. 73).
Notes 225
4
Habermas does include non-social purposive action in his action typology. Action
oriented to success consists of both non-social (instrumental) and social (strate-
gic) action and is distinguished from action oriented to reaching understand-
ing, which is uniquely social (communicative) action (Habermas, 1984, p. 285).
I choose, here, to deal uniquely with the analysis of social action, which informs
Habermass reconstruction of the principle of universalization implied in such
practice.
5
For Rawlss two-stage exposition of justice as fairness, see Political Liberalism,
p. 37, 6466, 133134 & 140144.
Chapter 5
1
I will not present Lyotards logical analysis of Kants formula of universal law
(which establishes a difference between the logical denotation required to render
two different parts of Kants formulation, i.e. Act and in such a way that ). Doing
so would take me away from my primary interest, here, in the pragmatic difference
between Levinasian ethical obligation and its reformulation by Kant in terms
of the categorical imperative. For the details of Lyotards logical analysis, see
Lyotard, 1986, pp. 135143. See also Salanskis, 1978; and Bankovsky, 2010.
2
By insisting that a Levinasian pragmatics of obligation is not equivalent to a prag-
matics of mutual understanding, I part company with Lawrence Burns, Robert
Gibbs and Stephen Hendley, who each suggest that Levinasian ethics inevitably
expresses the Habermasian demand that one justify ones enjoyment to the other.
Each writer suggests that the pragmatic force of Levinass account of communica-
tion is to possess the world in common with others. See Burns, 2008; Hendley,
2004 & 2000; and Gibbs, 1997.
3
Pessimism is replaced by optimism and hopelessness by faith in one case alone,
namely, when Levinas writes about the state of Israel. For Levinas, Israel offers the
chance to practice the social law of Judiasm or ethical obligation, because Jewish
ritual prepares the mind and body for the rigour of a life devoted to uphold-
ing ethical obligation towards the Other Jew (explicitly excluding, in troubling
fashion, the Palestinian Other). For further discussion of this vexing subject, see
Bankovsky, 2006.
4
In this section, I use Thomassens account as a skeleton structure.
5
For McCarthys general discussion of the problems with Habermass account of
interests and needs, see 1993, pp. 182187.
Chapter 6
1
My article Social justice: defending Rawlss theory of justice against Honneths
objections (Bankovsky, 2011; see also Bankovsky, 2009) finds that Honneths crit-
icisms of Rawls are not persuasive, because Honneth pays insufficient attention to
the ways in which Rawlss theory resembles his own, particularly in its basic inten-
tion of securing for all citizens the material and institutional conditions for the
226 Notes
actualization of otherwise merely formal liberties. This article was originally writ-
ten in late 2007, and while many of the specific, technical arguments still hold,
my article clearly does not display a firm grasp of Honneths essential difference
with Rawls. I now understand more clearly why Honneths decision to begin with
an immanent diagnosis of the emotive experiences of those who suffer the effects
of negative recognition relations allows his theory to respond to a larger set of
injustices than the mature Rawls, who grants too much privilege to those public
values that are already affirmed in overlapping consensus (see also Deranty and
Renault, 2007, p. 95).
2
On one occasion, Honneth does suggest that Rawls implicitly shares his own com-
mitment to the actualization of the social and psychological preconditions for
the realization of individual autonomy, which is implied by Rawlss list of basic
goods, since these express the conditions that, to the best of our knowledge,
are indispensable to giving every individual an equal chance to realize his or her
personality (Honneth, 2001, p. 177). He nonetheless concludes that by focusing
exclusively on distributive issues, Rawls does not follow this implied commitment
to its logical conclusion.
Chapter 8
1
As I indicated in Chapter One, while I share Mouffes celebration of justices
impossibility, I obviously do not share her denial of the practical need to assume
that we can, in fact, resolve our conflicts. This would constitute a rejection of the
constructive commitment, which remains an important component of the dual
deconstructive orientations of this book (see Mouffe, 1996, p. 254).
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Index
accountability see responsibility autonomy see freedom

action 810, 43, 45, 49, 67, 72, 934, 103, see also heteronomy
10910, 121, 134, 153, 1556, 158,
162, 171, 201 Badiou, A. 172
communicative 11516, 132 Baudrillard, J. 210
coordination of 114, 11618, 132, 160 Benhabib, S. 28, 301
interaction 3, 16, 22, 33, 57, 1056, Bennington, G. 144, 151
11122, 125, 128, 1313, 136, 139, Bernstein, R. 21, 31
1423, 146, 157, 161, 167, 175, Boltanski, L. 162, 201
185,188, 190, 197, 209, 21112, Bourdieu, P. 162, 201
224n.3 Butler, J. 195
norms of 3, 105, 11317, 119, 122, 132,
135, 157, 164, 177, 184 cannibalism see misrecognition
strategic 11617 care 15961, 1646, 175, 177, 1813,
see also constraints of action 191,217
Adorno, T. W. 28, 212 affective relations 710, 133, 155,
affaire du foulard see headscarf ban 157,1601
affective relations see care friendship 9, 1567, 160, 194, 21213
Algerian elections of 1992 26, 76 love 9, 15361, 1645, 177, 179, 1813,
Althusser, L. 195, 201 191, 195, 217
analytic-continental relations see see also self-confidence
French-Anglo Saxon or Castoriadis, C. 10
French-German relations civil disobedience 234, 33, 36, 43,
aporetic idea see paradox 46, 72, 779, 83, 89, 92, 94,
Aristotle 24, 74, 1289, 17980 98, 171
art of the possible 1, 203, 412, civility see duty of civility
45,54, 60,69, 72, 74, 78, 95, 98, class struggle 1735
1012, 119,122, 1245, 128, 138, coherentism 23, 45, 5560, 70, 168
152,154,215 communication 334, 1089, 115, 127,
the possible 1, 224, 47, 98, 101, 124, 1356, 142, 148, 152, 165, 168, 173,
212, 217 175, 199, 203
Rawls on 1, 203, 41, 456, 534, 60, 69, Derrida on 1620, 55, 124, 128, 146
956, 98, 101, 138 see also action (communicative); discourse;
asymmetry 56, 9, 324, 48, 70, rational reconstruction (pragmatic
153, 161, 163, 165, 173, 175, 177, presuppositions)
1823, 209, 217 see also ethical consensus 367, 619, 901, 101, 104, 109,
obligation 11519, 127, 130, 136
authenticity see self-realization mutual understanding 28, 33, 103,
autoimmunity see democracy 11417, 128, 134, 136, 1434, 151,
(autoimmunityof) 173, 204, 21113
242 Index
overlapping 223, 345, 615, 67, 701, Cornell, D. 335, 103, 220
78, 857, 90, 98, 1026, 11215, critical function of justice 2, 4, 35,
11819, 138, 140, 153, 166, 203, 207, 37, 73, 103, 125, 182, 1889,
216, 219 205, 217
rational 2, 15, 29, 34, 103, 119, 122, 125,
127, 129, 13745, 148, 1513, 156, deconstructive civic attitudes (openness,
1756, 2045 humility and resilience) 21, 27, 38,
simple 62, 64, 67, 70 1045, 1257, 137, 1467, 152, 177,
considered judgements or reflections 34, 193, 20018
20, 559, 78, 80, 85, 91, 958, 166, deliberation 26, 41, 44, 56, 1056, 110,
168, 173, 219 112, 12930, 145
constitution 26, 36, 47, 69, 72, 74, 802, 85, limits of deliberation or
90, 1223, 170, 216, 219 argumentation 3, 223, 334, 105,
constitutional convention 75, 77, 81, 85 130, 1458, 1513, 156, 164, 1745,
constitutional essentials or principles 1835, 1978, 201, 204, 21213
20,35, 43, 61, 635, 68, 71, rational argument 289, 31, 103, 108,
7881, 8591, 94, 1023, 115, 11719, 1289, 134, 138141,
11920, 171 161, 1756, 183
constitutional protection of liberties 26, see also consensus (rational); democracy
75, 1589, 161 (deliberative); discourse
constitutional system (regime) 26, 34, demands of justice 12, 4, 1113, 214,
43, 723, 76, 78, 847, 90, 958, 115, 4146, 60, 79, 90, 102, 108, 112,
119, 166, 216 11921, 125, 138, 1412, 152,166,
constraints of action 42, 53, 78, 151, 1923 16970, 1769, 184, 1913, 206, 220
constructivism 2, 22, 96 democracy 34, 37, 44, 65, 68, 82, 88,
constructive commitment 4, 102, 128, 104,106, 1389, 148, 1734, 176,
131, 152, 154, 178, 215 21419
constructive ideas 1321, 73, 102, anti-democratic tendency 246, 737,
137,164 12830, 17881
constructive orientation 13, 5, Aristotles concept of 24, 74, 1289,
1116,20, 27, 43, 96, 136, 145, 17980
163,216 autoimmunity of 246, 734, 1789
constructive theory 212, 24, 28, 72, 95, deliberative 26, 30, 33, 105, 12930, 141,
127, 163, 2039, 21718, 144, 148, 151, 205
221n. 1 democratic theory 24, 26, 36, 37
history of relation with democratic will 21, 1226, 190
deconstruction 2837 majority voting 24, 26, 53, 74, 77, 179
Rawlsian 2, 20, 41, 45, 47, 537, popular sovereignty 36, 105, 1223,
612, 66, 74, 79, 92, 123, 203, 180,200
223nn.23 dependency see interdependency
see also normative reconstruction; rational Deranty, J.-P. 173, 190
reconstruction Derrida, J., critical relation to other
cooperation 154, 1616, 169, 177, 181, philosophers,
206, 20914 Habermas on 56, 289, 31, 128, 148,
fair terms of 66, 92, 120, 146 209, 21214, 217
social 47, 52, 558, 153, 162, on Habermas 56, 127, 1468, 21214,
1701 21718
Index 243
Honneth on 31, 153, 15961, 1645, 11215, 121, 12537, 1512, 155,
175, 177, 179, 1813, 1913, 209, 15960, 165, 182, 210, 21718,
21718 221n. 3
on Kant 56, 48 individual consideration 1112, 42, 44,
on Levinas see Levinas, E. (Derridas 65, 912, 103, 107
critical interpretation of) see also Levinas, E.
liberal critique of 5, 2832, 128, 160, 181 exclusion see social pathology
on Rawls 42 expectations 82, 94, 101, 117, 1312,
diagnosis see social pathology 134, 136, 161, 165, 167, 171, 185,
diffrance 1719 190, 198201, 2078, 21213,
disadvantage see injustice 21920
discourse 30, 11719, 123, 130, 1357, 176, moral or mutual 3, 180, 200, 204
184, 203 normative 23, 14, 95, 158, 164, 174,
ethics 103, 105, 119, 121, 125, 129, 139, 180, 183, 192, 196, 197, 200, 208
141, 143 rational 212, 157, 184, 190, 209
public 27, 77, 174
rational 36, 117, 128, 138 failure 4, 1315, 23, 27, 43, 74, 104,
see also rational reconstruction 128,1478, 1767, 196, 202, 206,
(principle(D)) 212,215
disrespect 3, 23, 140, 153, 162, 1716, of communication 18, 20, 131, 135, 139,
200,204 see also injustice; social 145, 153, 175, 213
pathology; suffering condition for critique 33, 37, 61, 96, 103,
domination see social pathology 106, 200, 2045
duty of civility 69, 105, 2068, 211, of justice 5, 10, 214, 41, 47, 66, 72, 90,
216, 219 95, 102, 105, 125, 152, 154, 161, 163,
conflict of duties 81 178, 1834, 189, 203
duty to comply with injustice 7685, 92, overprivileging of 42, 1367
99, 112, 2068, 219 see also Levinas, E. (over-privileging of
duty to resist injustice 76, 789, 81, 834, impossibility)
88, 92, 219 resilience in the face of 21, 104, 1267,
137, 148, 201, 205, 208, 210, 215
equality 6, 9, 14, 1289, 137, 144, 147, 159, see also imperfection; impossibility;
166, 172, 17980 perfectibility of justice; undecidability
numerical 246, 74, 129 fairness 1112, 14, 51, 54, 657, 71, 76, 78,
of opportunity 54, 59, 69, 71, 81, 83, 88, 95, 119, 129, 171
8690, 945 fair bargaining 26, 12930, 13940, 199
reciprocity 3, 6, 15, 26, 33, 4450, 67, limits of 26, 60, 74, 76
129, 132, 153, 161, 164, 167 see also cooperation, fair terms of; equity
symmetry 5, 33, 48, 50, 53, 70, 117, 136, faith in justice's possibility 356, 445, 136,
165, 1823, 211, 217 154, 193, 204
see also impartiality faith in reason 289
equity 10, 26, 43, 524, 73, 7687, 92, leap of faith 193
95,166 problems with 334, 136, 146, 181, 201
ethical life 157, 180 reasonable faith 34, 72, 96, 115, 203,
ethical obligation, ethical responsibility or 205, 21415
ethics 1, 510, 1316, 22, 334, see also constructivism (constructive
4653, 58, 60, 70, 102, 1045, 107, commitment
244 Index
family, the 30, 94, 1578, 1689, 1978 Haksar, V. 84

Fichte, J. G. 195 harm see suffering
Foucault, M. 162, 201 Hart, H. L. A. 41
Fraser, N. 2832 headscarf ban 196200
freedom 20, 246, 30, 44, 4951, 54, 58, 60, Hegel, G. W. F. 156, 159, 183, 219
70, 74, 77, 103, 105, 11617, 123, 125, Honneth on 5, 21, 1538, 1601,
128, 140, 168, 174, 180, 18990, 204, 1647, 177, 17980, 1845,
209, 216 18890, 195, 203, 20910,
autonomy 26, 43, 122, 125, 12930, 137, 215,219
17980, 1867, 197 see also freedom (Hegelian); Kant
basic (civic and political) liberties 65, 75, (Honneths Hegelian critique of);
83, 86, 158, 187 normative reconstruction
Hegelian 15361, 164, 177, 183 Heidegger, M. 29
Kantian freedom or autonomy 56, 89, heteronomy 9 see also autonomy
434, 46, 50, 55, 63, 10810, 11314, historical or genealogical critique 59
1324, 1545, 1589 Hobbes, T. 58, 123
liberty 13, 20, 25, 66, 71, 834, 123, 129, Honig, B. 33, 356
167, 17980 hospitality 9, 48
liberty, priority of 534, 60, 737, 82 humiliation see suffering
mutual realization of 34, 21, 26, 152, humility see deconstructive civic attitudes
1634, 175, 180, 184, 193
positive, effective or real 152, 168, ideal theory 426, 55, 61
180,199 contrast with non-ideal theory 43, 456,
see also practical relations-to-self 723, 7880
French-Anglo Saxon or French-German Ikheimo, H. 186
relations 2731, 37, 1478, 154, 162, impartiality 1, 1316, 24, 30, 4651, 53,
181, 1946, 2012, 206, 20810 6970, 85, 10321, 136, 1646,
see also Derrida, J., critical relation to other 182,218
philosophers impartial consideration 1113, 44, 612,
French riots of 2005 1703 101, 1067, 12530, 138, 148, 1515,
friendship see care 176, 182, 208
priority of 42, 48, 60, 65, 71, 902, 124,
generalizable interest see interest 163, 17980, 193
German-French relations see French-Anglo see also constructivism (constructive ideas);
Saxon or French-German relations equality
gift, the 9, 38, 159, 210 imperfection 26, 37, 43, 723, 958, 141,
Gilligan, C. 159 146, 148, 176, 178, 204, 2078, 220
good, the 14, 53, 60, 93, 183 imperfect constitution 26, 757,
complementarity of just and good 180 958, 102
conceptions of 15, 22, 512, 54, 58, 67, of justice 4, 1112, 73, 757, 812, 102,
70, 120, 1656, 1689, 198, 207 141, 154
mutual (or public, cooperative or see also failure; impossibility; perfectibility
common) good 52, 67, 80, 169 of justice; undecidability
primary or material goods 168, 174 impossibility 1, 11, 37, 43, 102, 124, 161,
see also ethical life 165, 192, 194, 200, 216
guilt see moral sentiment attempt to achieve the impossible 38, 72,
Gutmann, A. 28, 301 126, 207, 218, 220
Index 245
in Habermas 102, 125, 127, 1301, 135, in the Other 6, 89, 4950, 135, 160
137, 141, 1436, 148, 151 the Others interests see the Other
in Honneth 102, 177, 179, 1834, reason and 6, 8, 11215
192,195 self-interest 69, 49, 67, 84,
of justice 2, 45, 1112, 212, 34, 103, 135,210
105, 2045, 208, 226n. 1 see also reason (interested)
in Rawls 41, 43, 45, 545, 601, internal critique see normative
724, 78, 90, 92, 958, 101 reconstruction
see also failure; imperfection; perfectibility
of justice; undecidability justice-to-come 12, 218, 43, 61, 86, 91,
incomprehensibility 11415, 1334 958, 141, 154, 176, 178, 204
indignation see moral sentiment
individual consideration see ethical Kant, I. 56, 140, 142, 145, 213
obligation categorical imperative 6, 8, 4750,
injury see suffering 11416, 134, 157
injustice 2, 27, 30, 41, 456, 74, 7798, Habermas on 5, 103, 10520, 122,
112, 137, 1456, 1523, 1634, 1324
17481, 196, 2034, 210, 217, Honneths Hegelian critique of 5, 1539,
21920 17980
burden of 76, 7880, 84, 87, 906, 119, Levinas on 510, 50, 1057, 11415,
141, 166 131,1335, 183, 225n. 1
disadvantage 54, 61, 656, 71, 90, 92, 94, philosophy of history 108, 112
102, 121, 1734, 203 Rawls on 1, 5, 4270, 96
inevitable injustice 43, 73, 7791, 166 see also Derrida, J., critical relation to the
invisibility of 24, 72, 79, 85 philosophers (on Kant)
see also disrespect; duty of civility (duty Kauppinen, A. 180, 185
to resist injustice); social pathology; Kierkegaard, S. 193
suffering
interdependency 1549, 161, 168 La Botie, . 194
dependency 156, 159 Lacan, J. 195
interest 1, 8, 23, 54, 58, 103, 105, 110, Lacoue-Labarthe, P. 32, 222n. 10
112, 115, 117, 134, 139, 1401, Laitinen, A. 186
144,1467, 151, 153, 176, 189, Latour, B. 210
199,201, 212 Le Goff, A. 163
dis-interest or disinterested 6, 89 Lefort, C. 210
empirical or material 8, 10714 legitimacy 26, 36, 64, 8990, 945, 119,
generalizable interest or mutual 1224, 130, 137, 199
satisfaction of 22, 103, 10721, 129, contrasted with justice 72, 7580, 834,
132, 135, 140, 153, 174 889, 123
group 23, 1401, 1746 Levinas, E. 1316, 33, 523, 58, 1034, 112,
ideological or unilateral 108, 11011, 121, 215, 225n. 2
115, 128 Derridas critical interpretation of 56,
instrumental or strategic 58, 121 9, 1114, 20, 33, 42, 47, 503, 70, 102,
moral feeling 9, 93, 11314, 104, 115, 131
132, 134 Honneths use of 153, 159, 1645,
moral or pure interest 9, 103, 1057, 175,177
11314, 1314 Jewish writings of 221n. 4, 225n. 3
246 Index
justice as betrayal 512, 48, 107, 115, moral sentiment 80, 904, 96, 102, 166,
131, 137, 221nn. 34 1702
on Kant 510, 50, 1057, 11415, 131, guilt 27, 93, 187
1335, 183, 225n. 1 indignation 8095
over-privileging of impossibility 10, resentment 73, 8095
1045, 131, 1367, 141, 1445 see also social pathology (excusable
see also ethical obligation generalenvy)
Lvi-Strauss, C. 162 Mouffe, C. 335, 217
liberty see freedom Mouvement anti-utilitariste dans les sciences
love see care sociales 210
Lyotard, J.-F. 30, 33, 133 mutual recognition see recognition
mutual understanding see consensus
McCarthy, T. 28, 301, 106, 13740,
151,173, 199 Nancy, J.-L. 32, 222n. 10
majority voting see democracy needs 1, 42, 445, 107, 117, 124,
de Mann, P. 194 13940, 151, 155, 15960, 177,
marginalization see social pathology 198201, 217
Marx, K. 219 negotiation 62, 77, 119, 127, 131, 136, 139,
marxism 32, 108 165, 181, 196
MAUSS see Mouvement anti-utilitariste dans les comparing the incomparable 14, 115
sciences sociales of demands of justice 22, 24, 423, 48,
Mauss, M. 159, 210 53, 734, 1018, 112, 120, 125, 1289,
Mead, G. H. 132 13641, 1512, 1545, 163, 166,
minorities 201, 43, 72, 769, 834, 87, 1779, 208
8996, 1016, 112, 118, 1227, of the non-negotiable 11, 90, 152
138,141, 151, 153, 155,1667, 203, neoliberalism 59, 71, 87, 89, 95
217, 219 critique of 59, 87
misrecognition 195 non-ideal theory see ideal theory
cannibalism 1935 normative expectations 34, 14, 95, 158,
misunderstanding 144, 146, 151 164, 174, 180, 183, 192, 1967,
objectification 78, 131, 162, 1945 200,208
reification 162, 195 normative reconstruction or internal
Montaigne, M. 194 critique 23, 180, 1835, 204,
moral personhood, ideal of 15, 195, 217 221n. 1
deconstructive commitment to 13, 15, hypothetical status of findings 1858,
20, 73, 104 217
Habermas on 15, 1024, 1201, 125 see also constructivism; rational
Honneth on 15, 1648, 217 reconstruction
Levinas on 121, 131, 137, 217 normative surplus see moral progress
Rawls on 15, 20, 426, 503, 57, 67, 70, normativity 1620, 57, 659, 95, 113,122,
77, 104, 1201, 1678 139, 1578, 160, 169, 175, 180, 1834,
see also constructivism 191, 2034
(constructive ideas) and deconstruction 45, 1620, 2833,
moral progress 2, 1838, 192, 194, 124, 218
2012,205, 208 and justice 1, 5, 28, 69, 101
normative surplus 184, 188 norms 3, 1635, 557, 61, 845, 98,
surplus validity 188 11422, 124, 133, 135, 1389, 145,
Index 247
148, 152, 156, 169, 176, 185, 18790, 1378, 1402, 148, 152, 155, 163, 167,
194, 197, 2048, 214, 216 169, 177, 1801, 184
de facto 22, 71, 1013, 106, 1245, 137 see also undecidability
historical 2, 55, 57, 67, 70, 107, 164, pathology see social pathology
176,178 Patton, P. 24, 26, 33, 35, 37, 59, 74,
of interaction 1620, 22, 70, 105, 114, 129,218
122, 125, 157, 164, 175, 177, 184 perfectibility of justice 10, 33, 61, 92,
intersubjective norms 22, 11416, 120, 102, 137, 142, 148, 152, 173, 1768,
151, 1245, 1778, 188 18890, 208, 218
valid 21, 61, 118, 120, 137, 175 condition for critique 2, 73, 205, 216
see also action (norms of) see also failure; imperfection; impossibility;
undecidability
openness see deconstructive civic attitudes performative 356, 128, 206, 21214
oppression see social pathology performative contradiction 29, 1478
original position 2, 42, 44, 4954, 59, 75, phenomenology 160, 175, 182
778, 801, 85, 91, 957, 104, 115, philosophy or political philosophy see
120, 1223, 1345, 141, 156, 167, 173, role of philosophy or of political
205, 219 philosophy
Other, the 8, 12, 1516, 34, 51, 53, 115, philosophy of the subject or of
1336, 183, 212, 215, 221n. 4, consciousness 11415, 1345
225nn. 23 see also reason (monological)
encounter with 79, 33 popular sovereignty see democracy
generalized other 1323, 135 possible, the see art of the possible
Hegelian 1523, 156, 183, 194, 210 practicability 12, 13, 16, 19, 201, 23, 102,
law or demand of 6, 9, 42, 52, 107, 133 131, 137, 219
the Others difference 6, 1314, in Habermas 1024, 1212, 124,
678, 160 1378, 140
the Others interests 6, 8, 13, 4950, 112 in Honneth 1645, 188, 191
the Others wellbeing or welfare 8, 13, in Rawls 42, 445, 50, 55, 60, 70, 86, 98,
47, 50, 135, 211 101, 1034, 107, 121, 1234, 138,
Sartrean 1623 21819
singularity 12, 50, 53 see also constructivism (constructive ideas);
the Third, or the Other in the plural 10, utopia (realistic)
42, 46, 48, 50, 60, 70, 117, 131 practical relations-to-self 152, 1578, 168
unique individual 1, 9, 1112, 15, 22, 36, progress see moral progress
424, 46, 51, 53, 65, 66, 701, 73, 79, 84, psychoanalysis 154, 194
90, 107, 112, 116, 1245, 161, 207, 211 public conception 20, 5764, 6970, 856,
see also asymmetry; ethical obligation; 95, 123, 139, 169
interest (in the Other) public or political values 2, 20, 23, 42, 61,
overlapping consensus see consensus 6470, 7881, 8591, 946, 102, 105,
11920, 122, 153, 166, 171, 173, 203,
paradox 12, 37, 127, 142, 144, 151 207, 219
aporetic idea or conceptual tension 128, priority of 63, 65, 71
178, 1814, 218 see also constitution (constitutional
tension between principles or essentials); freedom (basic liberties)
demands 6, 22, 423, 50, 73, 79, 91, public reason see reason
96, 102, 105, 107, 120, 1245, 12730, public sphere 30, 1089, 111, 122,
248 Index
138, 1401, 153, 1746, 1845, reasonable pluralism see value pluralism
1979, 204 reciprocity see equality
publicity 42, 44, 478, 50, 68, 10712, 115, recognition 16, 105, 116, 156, 159, 163,
118, 158 167, 169, 1712, 175, 178, 180, 182,
187, 188, 1912, 196, 200, 209,
rational argument see deliberation 222n.9, 226n. 1
rational reconstruction 3, 130, 221n. 1 attribution and response models 1867
conceptual impossibility of 1415 egalitarian 26, 1589
empirical implausibility of 13841 group 1613
hypothetical status of findings 1424, of individual particularity 159,
185, 217 177, 210
pragmatic presuppositions 34, mutual recognition 1415, 21,
11518, 121, 1334, 1379, 1524, 157, 162, 1645, 168,
1425, 185 177, 179, 1819, 193, 195,
principle of practical discourse (D) 116, 2045
11819, 129, 143, 148 as reification 162, 195
principle of universalisation (U) 11718, struggle for 152, 1623, 187,
1335 1936, 204
see also constructivism; normative transcultural standards of 1839, 204
reconstruction see also misrecognition; normative
rationality 31, 36, 512, 165, 167, 209, reconstruction
21920 reification see misrecognition
irrationality 31, 67, 144, 209 relativism see value relativism
rational will 89, 107 resentment see moral sentiment
reason 6, 8, 31, 46, 69, 54, 578, 109, resilience see deconstructive civic attitudes
1445, 167, 21415 respect 33, 53, 65, 113, 162, 171,
burdens of reason or judgement 61, 17980,209
667, 70, 86 for the unique individual 9, 334,
comprehensive or non-public 68, 207 43, 53,656, 71, 90, 1245,
defense of 289 136
fact of 134 see also disrespect; self-respect
finitude and frailty of 8, 21, 137, responsibility 2, 5, 21, 31, 36, 74,
146,205 77,85, 905, 102, 104, 128,
interested, empirical or instrumental 1478, 171, 184, 191, 199, 201,
6,8,42, 44, 4950, 55, 1125, 120, 208, 216
122, 167, 210, 223n. 1 accountability 8, 267, 77, 125, 128,
intersubjective or communicative 104, 130,158
107, 122, 132, 142 deconstructive 154, 173, 1768, 181,
monological 104, 11416, 1201, 132, 1923, 208
135, 156 revisability see perfectibility
moral 3, 42, 104 role of philosophy or of political
practical 6, 49, 107, 110, 11314, 139 philosophy 21820
public 3, 61, 669, 85, 91, 97, 207, 21516 Habermas on 29, 128
theoretical 109, 113, 139 Rawls on 20, 96, 98, 21415,
see also rationality 21820
reasonable faith see faith in justices role of philosopher-citizen 21415
possibility as therapy 181, 203
Index 249
Rorty, R. 37 Sorel, G. 162

Rousseau, J.-J. 123, 195 Spivak, G. C. 32
suffering 45, 10, 14, 30, 58, 61, 656,
Salanskis, J.-M. 1645, 183, 217 712, 76, 79, 824, 8991, 94, 98,
Sartre, J.-P. 1645, 183, 217 101,1067, 119, 128, 153, 163,
Honneth on 153, 1623 1667,1734, 1767, 208
self-confidence 1523, 157, 159, 168, 185, harm 93, 102, 110, 158, 160, 171,
18990 see also care 17781, 192, 196200
self-esteem or social esteem 3, 153, 156, humiliation 223, 923, 107, 140, 153,
158, 1613, 165, 169, 171, 185, 165, 172, 1746, 204
18990, 198 injury 223, 93, 102, 1401, 160, 170,
self-realization 155, 157, 163, 1678, 180, 1734, 1767, 203
1859, 226n. 2 shame 223, 140, 153, 172, 1745, 204
authenticity 158, 195, 203, 208 see also disrespect; injustice; social pathology
healthy subjectivity 3, 156, 158, 167 symmetry see equality
human integrity 159, 211
inauthenticity 1936 teleology 136
self-respect 26, 93, 153, 1568, 161, 168, Third, the see Other, the
171, 185, 18990 Thomassen, L. 33, 356, 141, 1434,
shame see suffering 1467, 184
singularity see Other, the totalitarianism 25
social inclusion 1834, 187 trace, the 1112, 102, 154, 214
social pathology 3, 85, 923, 95, 98, transformability see perfectibility
1534, 156, 1623, 169, 1712, tyranny of the majority 43, 75, 145
1756, 178, 181, 187, 196204,
2089 undecidability 16, 24, 31, 36, 127, 191
antisocial tendencies or behaviour 923, of decision 12, 181, 1923
95, 98, 102, 166, 194 and Habermas 125, 127, 12930
diagnosis of 4, 14, 176, 183, 226n. 1 and Honneth 1656, 179, 1812, 184,
disadvantage 54, 61, 66, 71, 90, 92, 94, 1913
102, 121, 174, 203 and Rawls 72, 77, 79, 88, 92
domination 22, 30, 111, 11314, 116, see also failure; imperfection; impossibility;
1401, 151, 167, 1734, 193, 1956,210 perfectibility of justice
exclusion 27, 34, 165, 181 utopia 35, 205, 220
excusable general envy 73, 80, 85, 926, realistic 20, 45, 60, 98
98, 102, 166, 1702
marginalization 77, 79, 92, 94, 102, validity 21, 29, 49, 106, 109, 116, 11820,
112,123 125, 129, 133, 137
oppression 155, 1979 surplus validity see moral progress
violence 10, 2934, 94, 102, validation 21, 94, 11516, 120, 1224,
166,170 1579, 1645, 1689, 176
see also disrespect; injustice; suffering validity claims 3, 28, 11618, 124, 1289,
sociologist-critic 2001, 210 131, 164, 203
solidarity 38, 105 see also legitimacy; norms (valid)
Habermas on 148, 1601, 206, value pluralism 2, 38, 85, 90, 13840, 151,
21114 164, 199, 203
Honneth on 158, 161 reasonable pluralism 20, 62, 867
250 Index
value relativism 2, 1867 Wellmer, A. 37, 142

problem of 183, 185, 204 Wood, A. 156
veil of ignorance 34, 49, 52, 75, 80, 104,
120, 1678 Young, I. M. 334, 136

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Perfecting Justice in Rawls, Habermas

Continuum Studies in Political Philosophy

Miriam Bankovsky 2012

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1. Perfecting Justice: An Art of the Im/Possible 1

Part One: Justice as Fairness: A Project to Pursue

Part Two: Rational Consensus: Open to Contestation

Part Three: Perfecting Recognition Relations

In preparing this work, I have received support and assistance from a

Perfecting Justice: An Art of the Im/Possible

It is true to say, provided it is rightly understood, that successful politics is always

Framed by a deconstructive approach to justice, this book examines the

to the pragmatic implications of the impossibility of exhausting justices

it must generate an appropriate public basis for justification, both cohering

defined using an empirically informed diagnosis of the age, isolating those

contribute to a culture more prepared to take upon itself the responsibility

Two Deconstructive Perspectives: Justice as Betrayal

Kant (2009, p. 35), who, as Derrida reiterates, means a great deal to

Impossibility: the betrayal of Levinasian ethics

experience is, in Kant, conditioned and personalized by the human

justify certain principles and procedures over others, we cannot begin to

Possibility: negotiating individual and impartial consideration

thus the demand for fairness no longer as individual consideration but as

The Art of the Possible and its Ideas

The dual orientations that characterize the deconstructive approach inform

Wanting to avoid the Levinasian error of over-privileging the failure of such

represented reciprocally as moral agents and no longer as unique Others.

An ideal of moral personhood

impartial action across their differences. Honneth likewise presents an ideal

A norm, in a general sense, is a standard of social behaviour that is accepted

meaning of a particular concept by determining its relation to other

The Possibility of the Unimaginable: Justice-To-Come

critical of the problems to which it inevitably gives rise. Conversely, although

Beyond constructivism and the limits of the possible

humiliation, disrespect or social shame are seldom expressed in the public

Rawls unfortunately decides not to pursue this deep question (Rawls,

Rawls deems unreasonable would not reap unforeseen rewards, cultivating

Beyond Derridas account of democracys undecidability

Without additional protection of the equal worth of individuals, the

seen in the act of determining the constituents of a demos. Although not

Although this regret should also be extended to include the contemporary

in the future, reflect[s] in a responsible fashion on these questions and

A philosopher, in our context, would demand accountability for the

Revisiting the History of

Rejecting the liberal critique

ideological nature of law, showing how it operates in the service of essentially

need for international institutions with effective coercive power (2001,

Rejecting the anti-normative endorsement

the constructive tradition. Following Drucilla Cornell, Chantal Mouffe and

the deconstructive idea of a constitutive outside, Mouffe argues that the

Mouffe rejects both Habermass ideal of rational consensus and Rawlss

other (1992, p. 182). Deconstructive justice, she claims, is more utopian

(Honig, 1993, pp. 104110). Honig refers to this moment as the

Deconstructive Civic Duties: A Culture Willing to

Rawls and the Possibility of Ideal Theory

In The Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority, Derrida

two demands. Justices first demand is for individual consideration, along

substantially weakens the content of his initial theory, limiting it to a set of

The Immodesty of Ideal Theory in Rawlss Early Work:

important injustices (violations of equal opportunity, followed by the

Part Two: Rational Consensus: Open to Contestation