What Scope for Ethics in the Public Sphere? Principled Autonomy and the Antinomy of Practical Reason

Abstract

Concepts of ‘public reason’ vary according to the underlying understandings of theoretical and practical reason; they make a difference to what can be argued for in the public sphere as justified expectations to oneself and fellow-citizens. What is the significance for the scope of ethics when two neo-Kantian theorists of public reason, John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, propose a reduced reading of the ‘antinomy’ highlighted in Kant’s analysis of practical reason? The desire for meaning, unrelinquishable for humans, is frustrated when moral initiatives are met with hostility. Kant resolves the antinomy between morality and happiness by invoking the concept of a creator God whose concern that our anticipatory moral actions should not fail encourages the hope on which human agency relies. Defining the scope of ethics by the unconditional character of reason (Vernunft) rules out the minimisation of ethics to what can safely be expected to be delivered.