Habermas versus Apel: acerca da interpretação da universalidade do contrato social

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the interpretations of Jürgen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel concerning the possible universality present in Rousseau's Social Contract. According to Habermas, Rousseau and Kant tried to articulate the practical union and sovereign will in the concept of autonomy, so that the idea of human rights and the principle of popular sovereignty could be mutually interpreted. Even so, for Habermas, they failed to symmetrically interweave the two concepts. Kant, according to Habermas, suggested a way of reading the political autonomy that would come closer to liberalism, while Rousseau's, on the other hand, would come closer to republicanism. Habermas defends a possible universality in Rousseau's thought, from a synthesis with Kant. This way, private and public autonomy presuppose each other, in a way that human rights are not able to claim a primacy over popular sovereignty, nor the latter over human rights. Both would be, for Habermas, complementary principles, and not necessarily antagonistic to each other. However, Karl-Otto Apel considers Habermas’s position as a synthesis between Kant and Rousseau, subject to serious criticism. He emphasizes that the sovereignty of Rousseau's Social Contract, as sovereignty of a particular state, can not be identified with the conception of general will. Rousseau's position, according to Apel, would inevitably lead us to nationalism, not to universalism, as in Kant. Apel considers that there is, in Rousseau, an intrinsic particularism of the principle of popular sovereignty incompatible with human rights, whereas Habermas defends the co-originality between human rights and popular sovereignty. This article intends to discuss, therefore, how the two representatives of the so-called Discourse Ethics interpret Rousseau's thinking.