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The Normative Grounds of Social Criticism: Kant, Rawls, and Habermas
This book is a comparative study of Kant, Rawls, and Habermas and a critical survey of recent theories of justice. It defends the thesis that the normative ground or basis of social criticism is found in a concept of the person as a free and equal moral being.
- GenresPhilosophy
Paperback
First published December 6, 1991
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May 9, 2019
Kenneth Baynes is among the top scholars of Frankfurt School critical theory, and his Normative Grounds of Social Criticism is a staple of English-language Habermas scholarship. I expected a lot from it, but couldn't help but find it just a little disappointing. Despite being clear, accessible, and well-written, Baynes' book lacks the ingenuity that propels landmark works of scholarship (e.g. William Rehg's Insight and Solidarity (1991) or Seyla Benhabib's Critique, Norm, and Utopia (1986) beyond exposition and clarification. If anything, I might say that it functions best as a very good introduction to Rawls and Habermas's political thought.
The book is a revised version of Baynes' doctoral dissertation (which he wrote at Frankfurt, and unless I am mistaken, under the direction of Habermas himself). Accordingly, it bears all the hallmarks of a dissertation: lots of long quotations, comparative analyses of relevant theories, and occasionally meandering exposition. For the same reason, it makes a somewhat limited contribution to an already overabundant secondary literature on Habermas's moral and political work, which in 1991 already counted dozens of volumes and hundreds of articles in English and German by world-class scholars, several of whom were also important political theorists in their own right (think Thomas McCarthy, Axel Honneth, Seyla Benahbib, Albrecht Wellmer, Charles Taylor, etc.).
The point of Baynes' book is to identify the democratic grounds of social criticism in Kant, Rawls, and Habermas and to evaluate their relative cogency. His grasp of all three thinkers is impressive. In particular, Baynes reveals himself to be an attentive and insightful reader of Kant's moral and political philosophy. If anything, the most interesting developments in the entire book are to be found in his opening chapter on Kant. His grasp of Rawls's work is similarly impressive, and though Baynes does not identify anything new here, he does convincingly weigh in on several crucial debates in the secondary literature. Paradoxically, while the better part of the book is devoted to Habermas's thought, it seems to me that Baynes brings less to the various debates around Habermas than he does to those around Kant and Rawls. This impression is probably largely due to his being much more favourable to Habermas than to the other two, but may be exacerbated by my own greater familiarity with Habermas's work than with Kant's and Rawls's.
Ultimately, Baynes argues that Habermas's discourse theory of morality and its emphasis on the democratic public sphere as the locus of normative insight offers a more promising model of social criticism than Kant or Rawls. It is difficult to argue with him on this point. What is interesting, however, is that in 1995, four years after the publication of Baynes' book, Habermas and Rawls engaged in an actual debate in the Journal of Philosophy. The debate pitted Rawls's revised theory of justice as fairness in Political Liberalism (1993) against Habermas' recently developed discourse theory of law and democracy in Between Facts and Norms (1992). Though interesting in certain respects, the debate was inarticulate, and each thinker largely ended up talking past the other. Despite being published years before this debate even took place—and before either thinker had published the definitive statement of his political theory!—Baynes' book arguably sheds more light on it than either of the participants managed to do. Even taking into account its occasional shortcomings, this alone makes The Normative Grounds of Social Criticism an indispensable read for anyone working on Habermas's political theory or more broadly on deliberative democracy.
The book is a revised version of Baynes' doctoral dissertation (which he wrote at Frankfurt, and unless I am mistaken, under the direction of Habermas himself). Accordingly, it bears all the hallmarks of a dissertation: lots of long quotations, comparative analyses of relevant theories, and occasionally meandering exposition. For the same reason, it makes a somewhat limited contribution to an already overabundant secondary literature on Habermas's moral and political work, which in 1991 already counted dozens of volumes and hundreds of articles in English and German by world-class scholars, several of whom were also important political theorists in their own right (think Thomas McCarthy, Axel Honneth, Seyla Benahbib, Albrecht Wellmer, Charles Taylor, etc.).
The point of Baynes' book is to identify the democratic grounds of social criticism in Kant, Rawls, and Habermas and to evaluate their relative cogency. His grasp of all three thinkers is impressive. In particular, Baynes reveals himself to be an attentive and insightful reader of Kant's moral and political philosophy. If anything, the most interesting developments in the entire book are to be found in his opening chapter on Kant. His grasp of Rawls's work is similarly impressive, and though Baynes does not identify anything new here, he does convincingly weigh in on several crucial debates in the secondary literature. Paradoxically, while the better part of the book is devoted to Habermas's thought, it seems to me that Baynes brings less to the various debates around Habermas than he does to those around Kant and Rawls. This impression is probably largely due to his being much more favourable to Habermas than to the other two, but may be exacerbated by my own greater familiarity with Habermas's work than with Kant's and Rawls's.
Ultimately, Baynes argues that Habermas's discourse theory of morality and its emphasis on the democratic public sphere as the locus of normative insight offers a more promising model of social criticism than Kant or Rawls. It is difficult to argue with him on this point. What is interesting, however, is that in 1995, four years after the publication of Baynes' book, Habermas and Rawls engaged in an actual debate in the Journal of Philosophy. The debate pitted Rawls's revised theory of justice as fairness in Political Liberalism (1993) against Habermas' recently developed discourse theory of law and democracy in Between Facts and Norms (1992). Though interesting in certain respects, the debate was inarticulate, and each thinker largely ended up talking past the other. Despite being published years before this debate even took place—and before either thinker had published the definitive statement of his political theory!—Baynes' book arguably sheds more light on it than either of the participants managed to do. Even taking into account its occasional shortcomings, this alone makes The Normative Grounds of Social Criticism an indispensable read for anyone working on Habermas's political theory or more broadly on deliberative democracy.
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