Jürgen habermas sobre democracia constitucional: uma delimitação coerencial-sistemática da teoria pragmático-universal da política moderna

Abstract

I begin (in the first chapter) with the justification of the assumption that Jürgen Habermas’s political philosophy is, on the one side, relevant in view of the prevailing epistemic conditions and, on the other side, appropriate in light of the purposes of a critical political theory. In other words, it is a pragmatically enlightened political theory, as well as a political theory pessimism does not subdue, a political theory that does not fail to diagnose the emancipatory potentials embodied in available political practices. I undertake (in the second chapter), first, to make explicit that the systematic coherence (the articulation of the interconnections among all substantive contexts of a theory, therefore among all domains of universe it thematizes) is a structural (and thus essential) element of any theory. Secondly, I undertake an explanation of how Habermas does not divert his theoretical framework from a metatheoretical claim to systematic coherence. Thirdly, I undertake to outline the broad coherential tensions that, from the very beginning, underlie Habermas’s theoretical framework and derive from the adoption of epistemological principles traditionally interpreted as mutually incompatible. Finally (in the third chapter), I undertake a reconstruction of several coherential-systematic connections of Habermas’s political philosophy to other substantive contexts of his theoretical framework. Otherwise stated, I try to define the systematic place of political philosophy in Habermas’s theoretical project, clarifying the connections between politics and law, politics and ethics, politics and communicative reason, politics and justification, politics and oppression, politics and emancipation.