What is it about?
The paper is about the moral justification of our collective norms. How do we now that this or that law that governs our common lif is moral? Take the example of laws on immigration, abortion, homosexuality, etc. What makes them morally acceptable? Habermas claims that strcictly speaking a moral norm is universalizable and that this universalizability is implicit in argumentations. This paper shows that it is not. While I strongly believe that there exist universal moral norms and values, I do not think this universalizability can be rationally grounded. The paper is an illustration of this idea
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Why is it important?
My idea is important, because many thinkers believe that universal moral obligation can be rationaly justified. Kant claimed to provide such a justification and Habermas argues that Kant didn't succeed to that and claims to do it better. In this article, I show that even the justification of Habermas fails.
Perspectives
I am the only author of the article. While there is a debate between moral universalism and moral contextualism, the paper suggests to favor moral contextualim, at least some form of it.
Dr. Juvénal Ndayambaje
Universite catholique de Louvain
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: What Goes Wrong in Habermas’s Pragmatic Justification of (U)?, Dialogue, January 2017, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s001221731700004x.
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