Habermas, Rawls, and the Impossibility of Legitimacy

Jurgen Habermas and others have a new book: An Awareness of What is Missing: Faith and Reason in a Secular Age. Habermas has an essay with the same title as the book. Others respond. In an argument long of importance to Habermas (and to Rawls)(though of side importance in this essay), Habermas argues that it is not enough for a state to have a modus vivendi, it must have a "mode of legitimacy founded on convictions. . . . Instead of grudging accommodation to externally imposed constraints, the content of religion must open itself up to the normatively grounded expectation that it should recognize for reasons of its own the neutrality of the state toward worldviews."

I think this shows the impossibility of legitimation. Many religions are opposed to the neutrality of the state toward worldviews in the sense Habermas intends. They may even feel obligated to capture the state for religious purposes. Habermas' argument for legitimacy simply does not speak to their theology. Rawls tries to solve this problem by characterizing such religions as politically "unreasonable." In doing so, he adopts an external point of view in establishing legitimacy. I do not believe Rawls' argument succeeds either (to make it work he would have to be right about public reason) - although I agree that religions should not be entitled to capture the state.

Finally, as I argue in Dissent, Injustice, and the Meanings of America, in large scale societies, hierarchies are so inevitably self serving and corrupt that no government is likely to be legitimate even if they purport to operate on theoretical principle that would otherwise legitimate a state. In my view, the United States with its large population of poor people, its corporate power,  and its massive inequality (both economically and in forms of personal identity) can hardly be described as a legitimate government. This does not mean a revolution would make things better (I do not believe it would); it does mean that there are parts of American law that deserve to be obeyed, not out of respect, but out of prudence.

Comments

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They may even feel obligated to capture the state for religious purposes. Habermas' argument for legitimacy simply does not speak to their theology.