The humbleness of the universal: Habermas in the mirror of Rawls

Abstract

Basic points of Habermas' intelectual trajectory are reconstructed from the standpoint of his debate with Rawls. The limits of Habermas ' claims to a greater universality of his theory as compared with Rawls' are pointed out. It is argued that already in his book of 1962 about the "structural transformations of the public sphere" may be found the questions to be further developed in his other works, including his "theory of communicative action" of 1981. The article aims at a critical reconstruction of some central problems of Habermas' research program.