Beyond Struggle and Power: Heidegger's Secret ... - Interpretation

6 0 Interpretation
cal skepticism”) claim that no legal norms can be legitimately binding on the
individual. The resolution of this practical antinomy lies in demanding extralegal
justification of political coercion (against the positivists) while still
claiming as just some degree of institutional coercion (against the anarchists).
Seeking this middle way, Höffe is confronted with a second
problem: to respond to competing contemporary theories of the grounding of
the principles of political justice. He argues that the range of competing theories—from
utilitarianism to Rawls to Axelrod to Habermas and Apel—do not
adequately ground the principles of liberal justice. Rawls’s theory has become
“political, not metaphysical,” gleaning its basic principles from the empirical
political culture, whereas Habermas’s discourse ethics does not inquire into the
legitimacy of the discourse-oriented process itself (see Höffe 2002, chapter 11
on Rawls, chapter 13 on Habermas). At best, these theories develop rational
legal norms, which are perhaps efficient in resolving conflict, but they fail to
ground legal norms on the unconditional moral law, or in what is good without
qualification.
Höffe’s standard, then, for what counts as a legitimate grounding
is very high. Following Kant, he appeals to pure principles of reason, which
are universal and necessary, rather than impure empirical observations,
which are parochial and contingent. He finds in Kant a political philosopher
who is able to meet this high standard. Höffe begins, like Kant, with the
bedrock subjective moral law (part I), and follows Kant’s arguments out in detail
for the grounding of liberal justice (part II) and cosmopolitan law (part III).
The book does not aim comprehensively to map out the terrain
of Kant’s moral and political philosophy (xvii), so in the first part, Höffe
does not answer all the objections to Kant’s moral philosophy, but sagely
chooses two points of contention (see Höffe 1994, chapter 8, for a fuller
defense of Kant’s moral philosophy against the standard objections; his reading
of Kant’s view of “maxims,” pp. 149–51, is original and especially enlightening).
First, he argues that given the widespread acceptance of a caricature of Kant’s
moral philosophy and of its criticisms, as well as a pervasive naturalism in contemporary
philosophy, ethicists have come to accept Aristotle as the great
alternative to Kant (chapter 2). However, as Höffe points out, the stark alternative—Aristotle
or Kant?—masks deep continuities between the two
philosophers. Both put forth a separable discipline of philosophy, a practical
philosophy, whose end is not knowledge but action. Kant, like Aristotle, praises
habituation and virtue as essential to morality. Both argue for a view of the end
of human life, happiness, which requires moral excellence. Despite these simi-