Morality, Law and Deliberative Democracy

Morality, Law and Deliberative Democracy - An Enquiry Concerning Jürgen Habermas’ and Karl-Otto Apel’s Discursive Programs of Justification

It is my overall critical thesis that neither Habermas ́s programs, nor Apel ́s program succeed in fully overcoming the major immanent problems of the discourse ethics. The first major immanent problem consists of the fact that the discourse ethics on the one hand reduces practical validity to be the outcome of a purely formal procedure, but on the other hand strives to give substance (moral relevance) to this formal procedure. The second problem concerns how these few transcendental fundamental norms can play a significant role in regard to all the substantial norms that are not transcendentally justified.


A thesis on Habermas and Apel by Sigurd Lauridsen can be downloaded from here