The Endorsements of Interpretation

Abstract

Support is given to Habermas's argument that we interpret thoughts only by seeing persons as actually justified in their circumstances. Habermas holds further that his argument extends to moral thinking, in that we understand it only by actually taking the moral point of view, and he thinks this is illustrated by Kohlberg's theory of moral development. While this illustration is denied here on the ground that Kohlberg's theory accepts Rawls's theory of justice, it is argued that the extension to morality can be made with a theory like Gewirth's, in which morality appears as a form of rationality.