Rights remain with the author, James Gordon Finlayson as per Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Licence 2.0.

Hegel’s Critique of Kant’s Moral Theory and Habermas’ Discourse Ethics.

by James Gordon Finlayson

And because we are born with the capacity to persuade
each other...not only have we escaped the life of beasts
but by coming together have founded cities, and made laws
and there is scarcely any institution devised by us which
speech has not helped us to establish.
				Isokrates

The disjunction ‘Kant or Hegel’ captures a debate which in one form or another has preoccupied normative moral and political philosophy for most of the last two centuries. On the one hand, Kant and his followers defend a version of the moral standpoint, that consists in formal and universally valid principles, which have their basis in rationality. On the other, Hegel and his followers claim that formally valid moral principles are themselves historically and socially situated; that they only accrue validity within a set of distinctively ‘modern’ cultural practices and political institutions, which are the product of an historical evolution, and are not in need of any further justification. Discourse Ethics, devised in the eighties by Jürgen Habermas in conjunction with K-O Apel represents arguably the most explicit and thoroughgoing attempt to overcome this disjunction and to define and defend a position in normative ethics between Kant and Hegel. Habermas openly acknowledges that discourse ethics, whilst it remains a recognisably Kantian moral theory, pays heed to Hegel’s critique of Kant on certain points. (MCC 201) Roughly speaking, Habermas immunises the moral standpoint against Hegel’s critique by weakening Kant’s conception of normative moral theory, or, in Habermas’ eyes, liberating Kant’s moral theory from its metaphysical presuppositions. To this end, unlike Kant’s ethics, discourse ethics does not require us to consider ourselves, both from the empirical standpoint, as finite, rational beings in the everyday world of appearances, and from the transcendental standpoint, as merely rational beings who are members of some notional “supersensible” community. In other words, Habermas jettisons the “two-worlds” theory that underpins Kant’s metaphysical view of freedom as a spontaneous cause that originates outside spatio-temporal ‘appearances’. 
	Consequently discourse ethics no longer need burden practical reason with the task Kant sets it of establishing the “reality” of freedom, a reality which speculative reason could only demonstrate was theoretically possible. Practical reason no longer makes good this deficit of theoretical reason. Thus Habermas rejects not just Kant’s questionable attempts to ‘deduce’ the reality of the moral law or to establish it as a “fact of reason”, he rejects the underlying assumptions - Kant’s two-worlds thesis and metaphysics of freedom - that required the reality of the moral law to  be demonstrated in the first place. Far from endorsing the primacy of practical reason, Habermas argues that theoretical and practical are isometric. They are different voices of one and the same reason. 
	The comparatively modest aim of discourse ethics, then, is to defend the moral standpoint by explicating and clarifying already existing moral intuitions. This approach reveals the moral standpoint to have a much more restrictive role than that which Kant assigned to it. For Habermas, it merely regulates moral conflicts by providing a procedure through which problematised moral norms can be  justified; the moral standpoint no longer even claims to provide determinate answers to the question of practical reason, posed by Kant, “what ought I to do?”. 
	In spite of these alterations I shall argue that, with certain minor modifications, Hegel’s criticism of the formalism of Kant’s moral standpoint still applies to discourse ethics. I shall for the most part ignore the question of the correctness of Habermas’ interpretation of Kant and Hegel and focus only on those objections to discourse ethics that are prefigured by Hegel’s criticisms of Kant. Section One, which deals with terminological and expository questions has three parts: (1.1) puts discourse ethics in the context of Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action; (1.2) provides a conspectus of the principles and the premises of discourse ethics; and (1.3) provides a brief comparison between the principles of discourse ethics and Kant’s first formulation of the Categorical Imperative, the ‘Formula of the Universal Law’. Section Two also has three parts; (2.1) reviews two of Hegel’s objections and shows that they apply neither Kant’s nor to Habermas’ account of the moral standpoint; (2.2) reconstructs a more pertinent criticism of the will as a tester of maxims that Hegel advances in the Philosophy of Right:; (2.3) shows how this criticism applies to discourse ethics.
1.1	The Transcendental Pragmatic Presuppositions of Discourse Ethics
The project of discourse ethics, as conceived by Habermas, grows out of his major work on social theory The Theory of Communicative Action. The Theory of Communicative Action is an attempt to explain “the ideas of freedom and reconciliation”, by removing them from the “spell of Hegelian thought.” (TKH II, 9) It aims to salvage the insights of Hegel’s social theory from his metaphysics, by rationally reconstructing “a potential for reason encapsulated in the very forms of social reproduction.” This rational potential resides in communicative action. Communicative action is characterised by its aim of Verständigung, or reaching agreement.† It is orientated towards reaching agreement because it is essentially linguistically mediated.   Habermas assumes as a fact of language that, “Verständigung inhabits human speech as its telos”. (TKH I 387). 
	In the picture of language that Habermas paints, agreement has two dimensions: the dimension of the propositional content of utterances, i.e., the plane of the objects and experiences about which subjects communicate and the performative dimension of utterances, i.e., the plane of intersubjectivity, on which subjects attempt to reach understanding with one another. Habermas conceives the performative dimension of speech as follows: it is a feature of every speech act that it implicitly raise three different claims to validity, with respect to the truth of the proposition, the rightness of the utterance, and the truthfulness of the speaker. Habermas contends that the interpreter of an utterance is always in principle free to take up a “yes” or “no” stance to the validity claims raised by it, and thus to accept or reject it. Concomitantly, every utterance carries with it the “guarantee” that the speaker could, if asked, redeem the validity claims it raises by providing the sufficient grounds of its truth or rightness. Just as speakers always implicitly raise validity claims to the truth and rightness of their utterances, so the addressees of their utterances cannot but assume that such claims have been raised.
	Habermas’ thesis on the validity basis of meaning is designed to complement truth-conditional semantics, according to which I understand the meaning of a proposition p, when I know what would count as the conditions under which p, would be true. Habermas extends what truth conditional semantics holds to be the single validity dimension of truth to the performative dimension of reaching agreement in general, which includes rightness and truthfulness. On his view I understand the meaning of a speech act , when I know what would make it acceptable, i.e. when I know the conditions under which the hearer could affirm with a “yes” the validity claim it raises.  Knowledge of the acceptability conditions of a speech act, is not a priori. It is empirical; it can be anticipated but not be known in advance of the actual acceptance of my utterance by my interlocutor. Consequently, unlike Humpty Dumpty, I do not enjoy the privilege of being able to fix the meaning of my utterances. The establishing of meaning devolves upon the performative dimension of speech and the process of reaching understanding. 
	Most of the time the implicit “guarantee” offered by the speaker for her utterance is accepted by the hearer and suffices to co-ordinate their interactions. This represents the everyday level of communicative action. To take a simple example, if I refrain from smoking in your office because you have threatened me with a fire extinguisher if I do not, the success of your action is purely strategic and depends on my fear of your threat and not on my acceptance of the legitimacy of your demand. But, say you ask me not to smoke, and I comply with your request, because I accept it as reasonable, this would be an example of communicative action or action oriented towards reaching agreement. 
	On occasions, however, a validity claim of an utterance will appear problematic to the hearer and he will question its truth, or, as in the above example, its rightness. This challenge transposes the participants from the “context of action” to the “context of discourse”, a higher plane of communication in which the speaker will attempt to justify the disputed validity claim by adducing grounds or reasons for its rightness (or truth). “Discourse”, in this sense, is not a synonym for language or speech. “Discourse” is nothing else than the attempt in speech to reach a rationally motivated consensus over disputed validity claims.  A rationally motivated consensus is the consensus that would be reached by participants, under ideal conditions, if they argued long enough and well-enough, and were constrained only by the unforced force of the better argument. Discourses are a “reflective form of agreement-oriented action that, so to speak, sit on top of the latter” that is, they form a higher plane of communicative action whit the aim of renewing or replacing a problematised consensus. To continue our example: say, I demur at your demand, for you yourself smoke. I ask you for the reasons behind your request. You may reply that you have recently given up smoking and do not wish to be tempted back into the habit once broken. At this point I might accept your reasons, and satisfy the acceptability conditions of your utterance by putting my cigarettes away. By Habermas lights we have, in this simple interaction, reached a discursive consensus. Habermas is, of course alive to the objection that the semantics of imperatives or requests is different to that of assertoric sentences. Habermas’ point is that, despite the differences, in neither case is the meaning of the utterance cannot be ferreted out from the propositional content of the sentence. To understand the meaning even of a simple assertoric sentence we need to know not just what would count as the fulfilment of its truth conditions, we need also to know why this is so; we need, that is, to be able to recognise the reasons on the basis of which a speaker can justifiably claim something to be true. 
	It is not my aim here to analyse the discourse theory of truth, nor even to criticise it. I just want to show that, and roughly speaking why, Habermas claims that to understand the meaning of any true statement I must be able to recognise the reasons which would ‘redeem’ the validity claim that its truth condition was fulfilled. For it is this aspect of his theory of truth that forms a bridge to his ‘weak’ ethical cognitivism. Habermas is not a ‘strong’ cognitivist, insofar as he does not think that normative statements are capable of being true or false, in the same way that descriptive statements are. However he does claim that validity claims to normative rightness are redeemed by good reasons in discourse, in just the same way that validity claims to truth are. Habermas weakens his cognitivism to the claim that “for normative statements a claim to validity is only analogous to a truth claim.” (MCC 76, 68 & 56) Habermas thus a salvages the cognitivist intuition, that normative statements can be wrong or right, but not at the price of any kind of moral realism. 
2	The Principles of Discourse Ethics
The idea that rational speech exerts a civilising influence on human beings goes back at least as far as 5th Century Athens. Discourse ethics refines and reshapes this ancient idea into a formal, and distinctively modern, normative moral theory. ‘Discourse’ as we have seen, is not speech, but the attempt in speech to reach rationally motivated consensus about disputed validity claims. ‘Practical discourse’ refers to the process of moral argumentation, the attempt in speech to reach a rationally motivated consensus over a disputed validity claim to normative rightness. If such disputes are successfully resolved then a consensus is reached that flows back into contexts of action and allows the participants confidently to base their actions on validity claims that have been redeemed in discourse. 
	What makes the theory of discourse attractive to the modern ethicist is that the conception of argumentation which it thematises already harbours a stock of normative rules and commitments that can serve as a non-moral premise of a normative moral theory. Habermas claims that, if one formally reconstructs the pragmatic conditions of discourse, one can identify a set of ideal conditions that every competent person who believes herself to be engaged in argumentation must suppose to be satisfied. Habermas identifies the following rules of discourse, an includes them within a more comprehensive theory of argumentation.
(a) 	Every subject with the competence to speak and act is allowed to take part in a discourse.
(b) i.  Everyone is allowed to question any assertion whatever.
     ii.	Everyone is allowed to introduce any assertion whatever into the discourse.
     iii.	Everyone is allowed to express his attitudes, desires and needs.
(c)	No speaker may be prevented by internal or external coercion, from exercising his rights as laid down in (a) and (b) above. (MCC 89)
	These rules of discourse formalise the intuitive know-how of participants in discourse. With regard to their content, they are supposed to show that argumentation in principle excludes no-one, renders no assertion immune from question and criticism, and prohibits the use of all coercion except the unforced force of the better argument. As regards their status these rules are idealising presuppositions that are necessarily made by all participants in discourse. The thought here is a little like Kant’s thought that, if you will the end you will the means to this end, that as soon as you are engaged in discourse or argumentation, the specialised form of communication oriented toward reaching agreement, you implicitly accept both the ideal aim of discourse - to reach a rationally motivated consensus - and the means of achieving this aim  - the rules of discourse. 
	It is important to note that the aim of discourse and its necessary presuppositions are ideal, and are invoked as ideals by participants in discourse. The rules are those that would be followed by a discourse conducted under ideal conditions. Of course real dialogue situations are limited in time and depend on the participants’ finite capacity for reasoning, and thus can only approximate the ideal conditions of discourse. Still, participants in real discourses must really, if only implicitly, take themselves to be aiming to reach a consensus that would be reached by participants in under ideal conditions. Indeed, even if their actual conduct falls short of this aim, and they flout the rules of discourse from within, say they exclude some participant, refuse to listen to their interlocutors, or threaten them with force, then, insofar as they believe themselves to be engaged in a process of rational argumentation they are committing a “performative contradiction”, by violating the very rules they implicitly enjoin.
	For present purposes we need only bear in mind the main idea, that there is a normative core to the conception of communicative action and to the reflective form which it takes in discourse. “The ideas of justice and solidarity are already implicit in the idealising presuppositions of communicative action, above all in the reciprocal recognition of person’s capable of orienting their actions to validity claims.” (JA 50) So Habermas’ modest conception of normative moral theory is partly premised, he concedes, on the “outrageously strong” claim that this “universal core of moral intuition” is germane to all forms of life in which action is co-ordinated by communication. (AS 201)
	However Habermas denies that fundamental moral norms follow directly from the presuppositions of argumentation. If they did, he suggests, it might be clear why these moral principles were binding within practical discourse but it would remain wholly obscure why they should be binding on actions outside the discourse situation. Hence he adduces a much richer premise about the level of cognitive competence that is possessed by participants in discourse. Participants in discourses must know “what it means to discuss hypothetically whether norms of action should be adopted” (DE 92 & 198). What this amounts to the ability to abstract from the contingencies of one’s values and beliefs and to achieve :
complete reversibility of the perspective from which participants produce their arguments; universality, understood as the inclusion of all concerned; and the reciprocity of equal recognition of the claims of each participant by all others.(MCC 121 & 163)
	This is not a description of the normative requirements placed by the rules of discourse; it is an empirical description of a capacity for ideal role taking that emerges as the culmination of an autonomous learning process or moral development, which is inherent in communication-based forms of life. Attainment of this capacity for rational reflection, which Habermas sometimes refers to with Kant’s term Mündigkeit [maturity], includes the acquisition of the requisite emotional dispositions such as love and empathy. (MCC 182-4) Habermas has recourse to Lawrence Kohlberg’s research into developmental moral psychology to corroborate these facts about moral agents that serve as his second premise. Roughly speaking to know what it means “to justify a norm of action” is to have attained the level of cognitive competence of a post-conventional moral agent. There is thus a nice fit between these ‘facts’ about moral agents and the normative requirements of discourse. But this is no more than we should have expected, since discourse ethics undertakes no more than to explicate and clarify everyday moral intuitions.
	Given both premises the pragmatic presuppositions of discourse on the one hand, and the participants’ capacity for moral reflection on the other, Habermas claims that it is possible to derive the principle of universalization (U)  which stipulates that the rationally motivated consensus can be reached only if
all affected can freely accept the consequences and the side effects the general observance of a controversial norm can be anticipated to have for the satisfaction of the interests of each individual. (MCC 65)
This is a very strong claim. (U) is not just a sufficient it is also a necessary condition of rationally motivated consensus. Although Habermas calls (U) a “moral principle” he does not mean by this that it is a duty, but that is a formal “rule of argumentation”. It is formal in the sense that it is a condition not an object of practical discourse - the objects of practical discourse are problematised norms (U) is a procedural principle setting out the conditions under which a moral norm can be tested for its validity. Neither is (U) a rule of argumentation in general like (a), (b) and (c). It is derived from the combination of these, plus the additional, more substantial premise about the cognitive competence required of a participant in practical discourse. (U) is a principle of moral argumentation, which is not identical to, nor a direct entailment of rules of argumentation in general, but with the same status, i.e. it is a necessary, idealising “presupposition of argumentation.”. (JA 56) (U) is a formal pragmatic rule of moral argumentation that captures procedural conditions under which alone participants in discourse can rationally agree to the general implementation of a norm. It does this by linking rationally motivated consensus about norms to the real or anticipated satisfaction of universalizable interests. When followed (U) prevents participants in discourse from reaching agreement on the implementation of a norm that only advances instrumental or strategic aims expressing the particular interests of a minority of those affected. (DE 66). 
	Most of my argument will concern principle (U). But (U) is not yet the principle of discourse ethics, it is the principle of moral argumentation that constitutes the transcendental pragmatic basis of discourse ethics. (D) is the fundamental principle of discourse ethics, that rests on this basis. Therefore (D) does not itself form part of the logic of argumentation. although it presupposes (U) which does. (MCC 93) Rather (D) is a principle linking the validity of norms to rationally motivated agreement in practical discourse.
(D) Only those norms can claim to be valid that meet (or could meet) with the approval of all affected in their capacity as participants in a practical discourse.

1.3	(U), (D) and the Categorical Imperative

In order to understand how discourse ethics pre-empts Hegel’s critique of Kant’s ethics we must review the chief differences between principles (D) and (U) and the first formulation of Kant’s general Categorical Imperative in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, the Formula of the Universal Law: 
Act only on that maxim, through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. (AA IV, 421)
	The first important difference is that, unlike the Categorical Imperative, principles (D) and (U) are not thought experiments that can be successfully undertaken by the individual, reflecting in isolation on the universalizability of her maxims. Habermas claims that, because of its individualist starting point, Kant’s ethics must assume a prior understanding about moral norms “among a plurality of empirical egos”. (MCC 203). The Categorical Imperative is a testing procedure through which an individual moral agent can discover for him or herself what a merely rational being (that is a being free from human sensibilities) would will. By definition merely rational beings, sometimes Kant calls them intelligible characters, will only what every other rational being could will. So long as those agents apply the procedure correctly, convergence on a set of universalizable moral principles follows a fortiori. Kantian moral agents reach agreement about moral norms, in the same way that a roomful of students doing a logic test might agree on the correct solution to a question. 
	By contrast, in discourse ethics “the shared understanding about the universalizability of interests” is understood “as the result of an intersubjectively mounted public discourse” (ibid.), among real human beings rather than as the unargued for presupposition of practical deliberation. The process of critical testing provided by a discourse conforming to (U) makes no use of hypotheses about what an intelligible character would will as a member of a community of supersensible beings. Discourse ethics recognises that the participants of practical discourse “are not Kant’s intelligible characters but real human beings driven by other motives in addition to the search for truth.” The critical test is provided for by the fact that, in practical discourse that conforms to principle (U), all other participants would be able to assert their interests. In such a context one’s distorted perception of one’s own interests and those of others are always open to correction. Hence participants in practical discourse are more likely to converge on a set of norms that reflect their shared interests than a community of lone deliberators. Moreover these interests on which they converge will be ones they have qua real human beings, not one’s they would have qua merely rational beings. Habermas puts a lot of weight on this ‘pragmatic’ feature of discourse ethics. He claims that (U) only applies in “real discourses” (MCC 94 & 92) and that the justification of norms “requires that a real discourse be carried out.” (MCC 68) Herein lies his claim to take a genuinely ‘intersubjective’ and not a ‘monological’ approach to philosophy. Herein lies also the basis of his defence against the charge of idealism, to which he thinks not only Kant’s Formula of the Universal Law but also Rawls’ ‘Original Position’ are susceptible - the charge that they rest on implausible metaphysical assumptions about persons.
	Thirdly, Habermas notes the difference between Kant’s justification of the moral law as a “fact of reason” and his own (proposed) derivation of (D) from the formal pragmatic presuppositions of argumentation, which I adumbrated above. Finally, there is an important difference that Habermas neglects to mention. For in applying the Categorical Imperative the moral will must abstract from all human needs, desires and interests, with the exception of the “purely moral interest” in the moral law, which arises, paradoxically, not from our sensible needs or desires, but from pure practical reason. Discourse ethics, however, justifies a norm of action by securing a consensus based on the anticipated satisfaction of general interests of all affected by its general implementation. Discourse regulates moral conflicts by co-ordinating the satisfaction of generalised interests through the observance of norms. 
*     *     *

2.1	Hegel’s First Critique of Formalism
Hegel’s charge of formalism is usually understood as an argument against the Categorical Imperative. In his 1802 essay on Natural Law, and again in the Phenomenology of Spirit, Hegel claims that Categorical Imperative is a merely logical test which yields only empty tautologies, for any maxim can be made to pass the test of universalization. 
The criterion of law which Reason possesses within itself, fits every case equally well, and is thus in fact no criterion at all. (3 319, Miller, p. 259)
But this charge does not stand up to scrutiny. At least some maxims can be made to fail the test, in particular those which contain what Kant calls a “contradiction in conception” (AA IV 424). A contradiction in conception occurs in those maxims, which, when universalised, contain a logical contradiction. Take the maxim; “I shall always make deceiving promises”. Breaking promises is a parasitic form of behaviour. In order that I am able to make deceiving promises, others must make and keep their promises, and therefore expect me to keep mine. If I try to universalise this maxim and will a world in which everyone were to break promises, then, as a consequence, I will a world in which no-one would make any promises. The maxim contains a contradiction in conception because, in order to universalise it, one must will both a world in which promises are generally made and a world in which promises are not generally made.
	Clearly maxims such as this, describing parasitic forms of behaviour, can be made to fail the test of universalizability. In which case it is not true that any maxim can be made to pass the test, and hence not true that the Categorical Imperative is empty. For if a maxim fails the test of universalizability, then Kant can at least show that the negative of that maxim that fails the test expresses a strict duty; “I ought not to make deceiving promises.”
	Hegel has a second, related objection to the Categorical Imperative, which is that valid moral principles emerge successfully from the test of universalizability, only because Kant presupposes substantive moral values against which the results of the test of universalizability can be weighed. He adduces Kant’s example of the man wondering whether he should keep hold of an unrecorded deposit that has been entrusted to his care. Kant declares that, in answering the question of whether or not the maxim, “I shall keep on a deposit entrusted to me whenever the opportunity presents” - can be universalised:
I become immediately aware that such a principle would destroy itself if made into a law, for it would entail that there would be no deposits. (V 27)
Hegel’s response is that there is no contradiction here. It is just as self-consistent to will a world in which no such deposits are made, because property does not exists, as it is to will a world in which deposits are made and property exists.
Property, simply as such, does not contradict itself; it is an isolated determinateness, or is posited as merely self-identical. Non-property, the non-ownership of things, or a common ownership of goods is just as little self-contradictory. (3 317, Miller, p.258; see also 2 460)
The contradiction arises, argues Hegel, only because Kant presupposes that the moral world should be a property owning world where deposits can be made and where deposits can be trusted. The maxim can be made self-consistent, but it conflicts with existing values, beliefs and institutions. But the Categorical Imperative was supposed to provide a critical test, through which we could reflectively endorse those of our moral intuitions which were contained in justifiable maxims. The resultant justified maxims, or strict duties, are supposed to be valid a priori, that is they are universal and necessary moral principle that obtain regardless of context. They cannot be rejected, just in case they conflict with our untested intuitions. That would compromise the autonomy of the moral law, by making it depend upon the heterogenous content of our beliefs, desires and practices.
	Hegel ‘s argument, such as it is, is hindered rather than helped by this example. Kant’s deposit example does contain contradiction in conception. This contradiction may only come to light because of the meaning of the concept of “deposit”, which is interwoven with a set of background assumptions about property rights and relations of trust. Nonetheless a contradiction in conception arises because, when I attempt to universalise my appropriation of the deposit I have at the same time to will the existence of world in which relations of trust obtain between the givers and receivers of deposits, and the existence of a world in which everyone would appropriate deposits if they could, and in which, therefore, such relations of trust would not obtain.
	Habermas, it seems, is right to reject Hegel’s knock-down argument that the formalism of the moral law entails emptiness. But that Hegel does not provide a convincing argument against Kant’s formalism does not mean that he has not correctly identified a problem. In fact, Hegel has identified a problem, one which is endemic in the attempt to settle the question of the validity of moral laws prior to and independent of their relation to a possible content. Furthermore this is an attempt that discourse ethics has in common with Kant. The whole point of Kant’s ‘transcendental’ approach in the Critique of Pure Reason is to investigate the a priori conditions that govern the application of rules of thought - concepts, categories and ideas - to possible content. Roughly the same plan can be found in his moral philosophy where the categorical imperative must be brought to bear on a set of extant moral maxims. Maxims, it should be noted, are not identical with the ‘raw materials’ of moral psychology namely, interests and their constituents - feelings, emotions, needs, wants, etc., rather maxims are first order principles of the will that shape this material into a human life.  “On the concept of an interest,” claims Kant in the second Critique, “rests that of a maxim”. (AA V 79) The Categorical Imperative is a second order principle of the will that selects maxims on the basis of their universalizability, and more importantly rejects those that are not universalizable. Maxims are, if you like, candidate moral principles, available for uptake into the moral will. 
	Likewise, discourse ethics resolves the moral standpoint into a formal, second order principle principle (D) and an extant set of first order norms or maxims. Furthermore, as with Kant, norms embody interests. Just like Kant then discourse ethics treats the question of validity of moral norms formally, i.e. in abstraction from their possible content possible content. Thus Habermas claims that the formalism of the moral principle does not entail that it can have no content, it entails only that it must be given content.  “This procedure [practical discourse GF] is not formal in the sense that it abstracts from content. Quite the contrary...practical discourse depends on contingent content being fed into to it from outside. In discourse this content is subjected to a process I which particular values are ultimately discarded as being not susceptible to consensus.” (MCC 103). If Hegel’s criticism can be more successfully formulated then, given the parallel between Kant and discourse ethics, then it should apply to both.
2.2	The Critique of Formalism Revisited

In Hegel’s Philosophy of Right one can find a more successful line of argument than the one he takes in the earlier works, one directed not at the categorical imperative itself, but at Kant’s conception of the will as a tester of maxims. To appreciate Hegel’s argument one must, unlike Habermas and many commentators before him, keep in view the degree to which the mature Hegel shares Kant’s moral psychology. 
	Hegel agrees with Kant that the moral will is autonomous (PR §133). He agrees that the autonomous will is one which gives itself a law or adopts a maxim (PR §135). He agrees that the law the will gives to itself or maxim it adopts is universal, not one which merely ministers to particular inclinations (PR §137R). He even agrees that the law or maxim be adopted in virtue of its universality, i.e. that the moral agent performs “duty for its own sake” (PR §133). And yet he claims that Kant reduces the moral standpoint to an “empty formalism” when he insists that the maxim be adopted only for the sake of its universal form and not also for the sake of any desires or interests the maxim may advance.
However essential it may be to emphasise the pure and unconditional self-determination of the will as the root of duty - for knowledge of the will first gained a firm foundation and point of departure in the philosophy of Kant, through the thought of its infinite autonomy - to cling on to a merely moral point of view without making the transition to the concept of ethics reduces this gain to an empty formalism...From this standpoint, no immanent doctrine of duties is possible. One may indeed bring in material from outside and thereby arrive at particular duties, but it is impossible to make the transition to the determination of particular duties from the above determination of duty as absence of contradiction, as formal correspondence with itself, which is no different from the specification of abstract indeterminacy; and even if such a particular content for action is taken into consideration, there is no criterion within that principle for deciding whether or not this content is a duty... A contradiction must be a contradiction with something, that is, with a content which is already fundamentally present as an established principle. Only to a principle does an action stand in a relation of agreement or contradiction. But if a duty is to be willed merely as a duty and not because of its content, it is a formal identity which necessarily excludes every content and determination. (7, 253, PR §135R my emphasis in bold)
	Hegel’s argument is that Kant fails to show how the moral will can give itself contentful moral principles whilst remaining truly self-determining and free. Hegel’s initial reproach, that Kant can give no “immanent doctrine of duties” cuts deeper than the familiar charge that Kantian morality is deficient in substantial, determinately action-guiding duties. Such an argument could be easily deflected by pointing out that the in the Groundwork and the second Critique, Kant’s principal aim is to justify the moral law, not to provide a doctrine of determinate duties; this is a task he undertakes later in the second part of the Metaphysics of Morals (the ‘Doctrine of Virtue’). Hegel’s deeper point is that, because Kant conceives the autonomy of the moral will as an a priori determination of itself, that is, a determination which is necessarily independent of the ends it adopts, he introduces an hiatus between the moral will, with its principle of maxim selection - the Categorical Imperative - and the empirical will, the bearer of the candidate maxims. On Kant’s view the moral will has roughly the following reflective structure. I morally will (on the basis of the Categorical Imperative) that I empirically will (on the basis of my maxim) not to make a deceiving promise. Kant claims that there is a partial identity between the moral and the empirical will, since the former is wholly rational and the latter both rational and sensible. Hegel denies there is even a partial identity, there is only a formal identity. Kant’s moral will is characterised by “formal correspondence with itself” and “abstract indeterminacy”. For the moral will incorporates maxims on the basis of their universal form alone, that is what it means to will a maxim not just in conformity with but for the sake of the moral law. The moral will is ultimately discontinuous with the “content” or the interest that is contained in the maxim. But the having a content is what distinguishes the empirical from the moral will. So the moral will is discontinuous with the empirical will, they remain different agencies. The content of the empirical will itself exerts no constraints on the moral will, in the adoption of the maxim, only the form of the content. In other words my desire to keep my promises, and my wanting not to let the person to whom I promise down, are not morally relevant considerations to the adoption of my maxim. Insofar as these desires form part of the content of the maxim, this content remains a moment of heteronomy within the will or, as Hegel writes elsewhere, “the last undigested lump in the stomach.” Hegel concludes that the discontinuity obscures the relation of the a priori principle of the will to its possible content: “there is no criterion within that principle for deciding whether this content is a duty.” Hence Kant cannot answer his own question: ‘how there can be an a priori determination of content?’
	One can now see the force behind Hegel’s precipitate claim that any maxim can be made to pass the test of universalizablity. The problem arises, Hegel suggests, because the relation of the form of the will to the content of the maxims is, if not arbitrary then indeterminate. Hegel’s earlier argument was that the relation between the will and the maxim was an arbitrary imposition of form on content with the result that no maxims really failed the test of universalizability. To make the charge of indeterminacy stick, Hegel need only show that so many maxims can be made to pass the test, that the application of the test alone is not sufficient to determine their moral worth. Consider one of the many familiar examples of ‘rogue’ maxims, that are plausible candidates for a principle of the will, at least as plausible as Kant’s own examples, but which produce counterintuitive, not to say absurd, results when subjected to the test of universalization. Take for example the maxim: “Always open doors for other people.” Given the fact that two people cannot open the same door for each other, the maxim clearly fails the test of universalization. But it would be absurd to conclude that it was therefore morally impermissible always to open doors for other people, or that one had a strict duty not to do so. 
	One possible response to the problem of rogue maxims would be to introduce a scope-restriction on what could count as a candidate maxim thereby ensuring that only ‘morally relevant’ maxims were available for testing by the moral will. This is the response that is usually offered in Kant’s defence. Onora O’Neill draws a distinction between “underlying  intentions”, e.g. to be hospitable to one’s guests, and “ancillary intentions”, e.g. offering them a cup of tea; she reserves the term maxim for the former. In the same spirit Otfried Höffe draws a distinction between maxims, which are general (subjective) principles of the will and capture the “fundamental normative pattern” of actions, and rules or precepts of action, which reflect more or less arbitrary decisions about how to order one’s life, such as to rise early in the morning. However, if one restricts the scope of what counts as a maxim sufficiently to rule out examples such as “always open doors for other people” one lays oneself open to the objection that, under the auspices of empirically describing the function of maxims, one is smuggling in normative moral considerations to determine candidature, considerations which, strictly speaking given Kant’s picture of the will, should only come into play at the next level of reflection, namely in the reflective testing of the candidate maxims.
2.3	 Hegel’s Critique of Formalism and Discourse Ethics
	Habermas denies that Hegel’s objection to formalism applies to discourse ethics. And he is right to maintain that Hegel’s woefully inadequate formulation of this objection in the Natural Law Essay and the Phenomenology does not apply to discourse ethics. Moreover the moral standpoint in discourse ethics cannot be accused of not generating a body of concrete duties, because it is not supposed to. It is merely a procedure for the regulation of moral conflicts through the justification of moral norms in discourse. Habermas does not need a counter-argument. He simply claims contra Hegel that a formal moral principle can claim some jurisdiction over “the substantive problems of daily life” (MCC 204) namely those that concern norms embodying “universalizable” interests.
	There are three respects in which discourse ethics might be said to resists the revised version of Hegel’s argument also. Firstly, Habermas agrees with Hegel, that the restrictions on what can count as a morally relevant candidate maxim are provided pre-philosophically by the situations in which moral conflicts arise in everyday life, and that philosophy cannot determine a priori what maxims are made available to practical discourse, i.e. what the content of a moral conflict should be. Secondly, Habermas, again like Hegel, explicitly rejects the two-worlds hypothesis - that we regard our finite (sensible) and rational nature in the empirical world from the standpoint of a merely rational being  - that gives rise to the hiatus between the moral and the empirical will. For Habermas principles (U) and (D) are second order principles that are binding on subjects qua participants in discourse, whilst norms of action are first order principles belong to the lifeworld those same subjects inhabit. It is not necessary that in discourse we ignore or override our interests, but only that we be able to reflect on them and to co-ordinate them with those of our interlocutors. Thirdly, for Kant moral worth is conferred on a maxim if it is universalizable and if it is adopted on the basis of a pure interest (that is on no empirical interest at all), whilst for Habermas rational assent is conferred on a norm if its general observance would satisfy everyone’s interests, (MCC 65).
	Nevertheless, it is worth exploring whether, given the analogy between Kant’s picture of the moral will as the tester of maxims and discourse ethics, the revised version of Hegel’s argument does not apply to the discourse ethical analogue to Kant’s conception of the moral will. The focus of the criticism will be the relation of form to content, the relation between moral principles and maxims or norms respectively. On Kant’s picture maxims rest on interests; moral maxims rest on pure interests, or “the mere interest in obedience to the law.” (AA V 79) What Kant means is that when we deliberate practically, we adopt a maxim, because it satisfies an interest we have. When we reason morally we adopt a maxim, because it conforms to the Categorical Imperative, because, that is, we believe it is our duty. On Habermas’ picture too norms rest on interests. A normative consensus rests on a shared interest.If your action thwarts my interest, it disrupts a tacit normative consensus. If I do not accept the rightness of your action, a norm becomes problematic and is fed into the discourse situation. In discourse we attempt to restore or repair the validity claim by adducing good reasons or to replace it with a new one for which we could adduce convincing reasons. (MCC 67) If we are successful we will have reached a rationally motivated consensus about a norm of action, which will therefore be justified.
	But there is a dangerous ambiguity in Habermas’ formulation and explanation of (U), the very principle that is supposed to give the condition sine qua non of the justifiability of a norm. 
(U) For a norm to be valid, the consequences and side effects of its general observance for the satisfaction of each person’s particular interests must be acceptable to all. (MCC 197)
This ambiguity is captured in the egregious translation of “für die Interessen eines jeden” (for the interests of each individual) as “for each person’s particular interests”. (U) leaves it open whether the interests at stake are themseves particular or universalizable. It could mean that assent is given to a norm only if everyone has an interest in its general observance, but not necessarily the same interest. I shall refer to this version as ‘unofficial’. Alternatively (U) could mean that assent is conferred on a norm only if everyone has one and the same interest in its general observance. I shall call version ‘official’. 
	The unofficial version of moral justification is supported by Habermas explanatory remark that: “(U) makes agreement in practical discourse possible, whenever matters of concern to all are open to regulation in the equal interest of everyone.” (MCC 65) Unofficially understood, (U) rules in the following case. Imagine a mixed community where everyone agrees, say, ‘that one should not eat pork’ but that they agree for different reasons, because the general observance of this ‘norm’ satisfies their different particular interests. Some members of a this community do not eat pork because they believe God has proscribed it, others because they are vegetarians. For argument’s sake let us assume that the believers are not vegetarian and the vegetarians are not believers. So everyone in this community can assent to the ‘norm’ that one should not eat pork since its general observance satisfies their different, albeit compatible, interests. Therefore it is valid. 
	However, a glance beyond (U) to Habermas’s wider theory suffices to show that Habermas’ official view is very different to the unofficial one. Habermas draws a “razor sharp” distinction between “evaluative” and “normative“ statements, and, by implication, between values and norms. (MCC 104 & 204) On this distinction rests another, between “ethics” and “ethical-life” which concern questions of “the good life”, i.e. questions concerning the values that inhere in a specific culture, and “morality” which concerns questions of “justice”, i.e. questions concerning strictly universalizable norms of right action, which lay claim to a validity, akin to truth, which transcends any particular culture. The fundamental distinction, underlying this series of further distinctions, is that between “particular” and “universalizable” interests. According to Habermas it is characteristic of particular interests that they are essentially bound to a specific form of life or “cultural heritage. Thus values that embody particular interests, Habermas contends, are not susceptible to rationally motivated agreement, are not justifiable and have no redeemable claim to normative validity. By contrast norms, which embody a “general” (MCC 104) or “universalizable” interest, (Habermas sometimes uses the actual, not the potential formulation) are susceptible to rationally motivated agreement, are justifiable and can claim normative validity that transcends the context of their cultural origin. For this reason Habermas describes the discursive process as one in which “particular values i.e. values embodying merely particular interests are ultimately discarded as being not susceptible to consensus”. (MCC 103)
	According to the official reading of (U) no norm is justified, because it happens to satisfy the different, but compatible particular interests of all affected. Hence our example is a “value”, embodying a serendipitous convergence of two particular interests, that props up a de facto consensus, rather than a “norm” embodying a universalizable interest, which can stand up to reflective scrutiny and is susceptible to rational consensus. Of course one might argue that there is a general interest in that community, namely in not eating pork, which therefore justifies the norm. I think this objection introduces a terminological confusion of the universalizable interest with the norm it justifies. Still, the point of the objection is to show that that there exist complex universal or universalizable interests comprising particular interests. In this case the universalizable interest in not eating pork is the reason that justifies the norm, but that interest is itself justified by the existence of further particular interests. 
	If interests are so structured, like an inverted tree, where an interest common to all, is supported by a variety of particular interests, then Habermas’ picture of justification threatens to collapse. For, in order to reach understanding about the rightness of a norm, participants in discourse must be able, if necessary to adduce and to recognise all the reasons that would justify the norm. And here, as the vegetarian are not believers and the believers are not vegetarians’ there are ex hypothesi no intersubjectively recognised reasons that could justify the general interest in not eating pork. At the very least, if interests are so structured the analogy between truth and validity, on which Habermas bases the ‘cognitivism’ of discourse ethics, breaks down. Newtonian and Einsteinian physicists agree that light consists of particles rather than waves, but they do so for very different reasons. Even if, because they can agree that light consists of particles, they can agree on something else, say, that light travels in straight lines, this agreement would not count as convergence, that is, it would not be “rationally motivated.” In science justifying reasons as well as the conclusions they warrant must converge, if we are to speak of convergence at all. If validity is analogous with truth, the same must hold of a normative consensus. 
	So it seems that Habermas does not, indeed cannot endorse the unofficial view which his own formulations sometimes suggest, that a norm is justified only if it satisfies an interest of all affected by its general observance, that is, only if everyone has one reason or other, to assent to it. Instead he is committed to the official line that a norm is justifiable only if it embodies a universalizable interest, that is, only if all affected can assent to it for one and the same reason. This puts a lot of strain on the notion of “universalizable interests”. A universalizable interest exists, if and only if participants in discourse can take themselves and all others affected to have one and the same interest. A universalizable interest is, at bottom, a common interest. Thus Habermas’ insists “one can universalize precisely those norms that can count on universal assent because they perceptibly embody an interest common to all affected.” (MCC 65)
	Roughly speaking two positions are available to Habermas. He might argue that human beings already have an set of extant basic interests (or interest interpretations) in common upon which a consensus concerning norms can be secured. This view would rest on anthropological premises. Despite its plausibility, as a warrant for the talk about “universalizable interests”, Habermas rejects this position. “There are no shared structures preceding the individual except the universals of language use.” (MCC 203) Instead he claims that, where necessary, practical discourse can create a universalizable interest that in turn secures a consensus about a norm. Why should this be so? 
	Habermas point out that even basic needs are not fixed must be interpreted, and that one’s need interpretations are “open to criticism by others”,(MCC 67) “public” and to this extent “negotiable”. (JA 88-96) This is true of one’s interpretation of one’s own needs, even though everybody enjoys a privileged access into their own inner nature. In brief, Habermas position is i) that interests are based on need-interpretations; ii) that the individual is sovereign with respect to the judgement of what is in her interest, but iii) not infallible, since one’s judgement of interests even in one’s own case are open to interpretation and criticism. There are no real surprises here. But none of this really explains why communicative subjects should tend to have universalizable interests. Particular interests, too, ar open to interpretation, can be shared and criticised. We do not expect people to tend to prefer brunettes to blondes, Haydn to Mozart.
	Much of the recent criticism directed against Habermas’ view that rationally motivated consensus rests on universalizable interests has been content to show how few norms there can actually be in modern multicultural societies. Some commentators endorse Habermas’ characterisation of the moral standpoint, but point out that it is virtually redundant in the face of modern value-pluralism, and that practical reason would be better occupied in finding procedures which would allow ethical subjects to find compromise solutions to the problems encountered by their attempts to satisfy their incompatible particular interests. Habermas simply bites the bullet in response to these criticisms. He concedes that, to the extent that the homogeneity of interests fragments in modern societies, so “the moral point of view shrinks”, but contends taht this only accentuates the need for morality regulation of the remaining moral issues, which are amenable to discursive resolution. Habermas’ rather limp reponse to the challenge of value-pluralism has hitherto not convinced even his supporters. Recently it has been suggested that the distinction between morality might provide the wherewithall to remedy the perceived deficit if discourse ethics, through the development of a complementary sphere of ethical validity. To my mind, however, Habermas’ distinction between morality and ethical-life, or rather that between particular and universalizable interests that underpins it, is the root of the problem, and not a propitious starting point for its solution.  
	A more damaging objection to discourse ethics is that its conception of moral justification is so demanding, that far from explaining or clarifying our moral intuitions, as Habermas claims, it conflicts with them. Remember the moral standpoint “allows consensus only through universalizable interests.” (LC p. 110) In discourse values embodying particular interests are discarded “as being not susceptible to consensus.” (MCC 103) Thus only if a norm rests on a universalizable interest, and not also on particular interest, everyone can assent to it for the same reason. And moral justification (on analogy with truth) requires that everyone assent to a norm for the same reason. Habermas’s position entails that agent-relative reasons, given by particular interest, can play no role whatsoever in moral justification. However, it is one thing to point out, correctly, that not all consensuses (not even all unanimous consensuses) are “rationally motivated” or justifiable, and quite another to infer that no particular interests enter into the justification of moral norms. Surely some particular interests do provide us with agent-relative reasons that can justify moral norms. 
	Recently newscasters seized on the story of a child who was left on a runway, clutching her passport, as the last Helicopter evacuating refugees from Sierra Leone, flew out of the airport. Suppose a parent was faced with the choice of taking their own child or that of a stranger with her onto that helicopter. That parent’s reason for looking after her child first, is given by her particular interest in protecting her own child. It does not follow that this reason can not justify her action to others, who do not share this interest. It is not the case that her particular interest exculpates an otherwise unjustifiable act. We do not feel that her act was wrong, but understand that it was too psychologically difficult for her to have acted otherwise. On the contrary, it would be reprehensible for her not to act on her particular interest.
	The most straightforward explanation of the intuition captured by this example, an intuition which is, I think, also germane to Hegel’s ethical theory, is that some particular interests, and some agent-relative reasons, can justify moral norms. Hence Habermas’s hard and fast distinction between universalizable and particular interests has to go. Another possible explanation is that some agent-relative reasons, based on particular interests, can also be universalized. In this case, say, every child has an interest in being the primary recipient of parental protection. (I shall speak about the interest of the child, since, while it is not true that everyone has an interest in protecting their own children above strangers, since not everyone is a parent of a child, it is true that every child has an interest in parental care, since everyone is (or has been) a child of a parent.) On this basis Habermas might draw a distinction between the justification of the act, which rests on the universalizable interest that all children have in receiving parental protection and its empirical motivation, which is given by the particular interest of each child in its own parent’s care. But, if Habermas does respond in this way to our example, look at the picture that emerges. Some agent-relative reasons, based on particular interests, justify moral norms because they can be universalised. They can be universalized because some universalizable interests just consist in particular interests, unique to those who have them. Once again, this makes the “razor-sharp” distinction between universal and particular interests nigh on impossible to draw. 
	What is distinctively Hegelian about the criticism of discourse ethics’ reliance on the notion of universalizable interest? We can answer this question by making the parallels between this critique and Hegel’s critique of the formalism of the moral standpoint salient.
1. Hegel descries and hiatus between the content of the moral will (or the interest contained in a maxim) and its form, the categorical imperative. The hiatus stems from the second-order nature of the categorical imperative. It comes into view when we ask, with Hegel, what interest does the moral will have in selecting maxims only in virtue of their universalizability? The same hiatus is in evidence in Habermas’ conception of universalizable interest. And if we pose an analogous question, what makes universalizable interests peculiarly reason giving for morality, we meet with a similar problem. Either the answer is that communicative subjects simply have an interest in truth and normative rightness, which is circular or discourse ethics is forced to say, as Habermas concedes, “something relevant about substance as well...about the hidden link between justice and the common good” (MCC 202). But what can be said that is not merely descriptive, value-laden and culturally parochial? If there is a link between morality and the good, and Hegel certainly thinks there is, Habermas’s taxonomic distinction between universalizable and particular interests, between norms and values, prevents him from shedding any light on it.
2. Hegel shows that Kant’s picture of the moral will as a tester of maxims cannot show how valid moral principles acquire determinate content. So Kant begs the question that Hegel considers to be most important; what makes this content, the interest the maxim embodies, worthy of universal recognition? A related question for discourse ethics is, why is it the case that the interests governing moral issues must be peculiarly amenable to universalisation? Habermas tries to answer this question by pointing out that need-interpretations are in principle open to rational negotiation. But this does not answer why, for instance, we do not expect the interests governing questions of cultural or aesthetic value to be universalizable and hence to provide an acceptable reason to all? 
3. Finally, Habermas’ “razor-sharp” distinction between universal and particular interests, and the related distinctions between norms and values, justice and the good life, morality and ethical -life, is open to a version of Hegel’s critique of “the fixed antithesis of the will in its spiritual universality to its sensuous, natural particularity.” Interestingly some of Habermas’s remarks on cultural values show signs of a suppressed Hegelian insight, beneath the Kantian surface, e.g. his comment that “cultural values “by their very nature are at best candidates for embodiment in norms that are designed to express a general interest.” (MCC 104) Due to his enforced silence on the relation of particular to universal interest, Habermas is at a loss to show how any cultural “values” can become candidate norms. On this issue, Hegel’s dialectical account of the good, as “the unity of the concept of the will and the particular will” (PR § 129) has manifest advantages. Unlike the moral theories of Kant and Habermas, Hegel’s philosophy of objective spirit, which culminates in the moment of “ethical life”, emphasises the continuity between the moral content - the interests embodied in the candidate maxims - and the moral form - the principle of the will. Roughly speaking, it does this in the form of a narrative, in which rational human subject reflectively revise, refine and realign the particular desires interests and ends they pursue in concert with other subjects within the framework of their social and political practices and institutions. The point is that, in this framework, the reflective pursuit of particular interests can advance and sustain more universal interests, in such a way that the formal consideration of fairness, reciprocity and universality come to accrue enduring recognition. 
	This summary may be too brief and too vague to be convincing. No doubt Habermas would object that Hegel’s picture of “ethical-life” reflects historically and geographically parochial considerations that vitiate its claim to be a universalist and cognitivist ethics, by undermining both the formal claim of the norms it endorses to universal validity, and their epistemic status as justifiable claims we can know to be right. It is true that Hegel’s conception of ethical life is, in some respects, parochial. Hegel’s dictum that philosophy is “its time comprehended in thought” applies to his own philosophy of objective spirit. But two features of Hegel’s theory of ethical-life, the insistence on the interplay between particular and universalizable interests, and the idea that moral justification is anchored in the whole body of beliefs and values of a community, are preferable to the alternative of an ethics of discourse, based on an untenable distinction between universalizable and particular interests, and a very demanding conception of moral justification.
	I have argued that in spite of Habermas’ asseverations to the contrary, Hegel’s criticism of Kant’s moral theory applies to discourse ethics. The criticism on which I have focussed concerns the point at which content is given to the formal moral principle. The crucial notion here for Habermas is that of ‘universalizable interest’. Habermas does not spell out at all the conditions of the universalizability of interests, so that the notion remains very obscure. He wants to claim that all and only those norms that embody a ‘universalizable interest’ can be justified, and that only justifiable norms are valid. Furthermore, he draws a strict distinction between universalizable and particular interests. This lands him in a dilemma. Either he must claim that no particular interests, (and thus also no agent-relative reasons) justify moral norms; but this is counter-intuitive, and thus should be rejected by a modest normative ethics which understands itself as an explication and clarification of everyday moral intuitions. Or he accepts that some agent-relative reasons, and thus some particular interests can justify moral norms, in which case his strict distinction between universalizable and particular interests falls away. I suggest that Habermas should grasp the latter horn of the dilemma, and that consequently his distinction between normative and evaluative questions, between the good and the right must be drawn considerably less strictly. But this would push him, away from Kant and towards Hegel.
	Why does Habermas resist such a move? I suspect that discourse ethics’ conception of moral justification and its peculiar brand “cognitivism” is not supported by the sound moral intuitions it thinks it is clarifying, rather it is required by a fundamental tenet of Habermas’ Theory of Communicative Action. That Hegelian criticism of discourse ethics should lead to a criticism of its transcendental pragmatic presuppositions is not that surprising. Hegel’s critique of Kant’s moral theory applies also to its methodological presupposition in the Critique of Pure Reason, to the assumption that reason can determine the validity of the categories a priori, independently of their relation to content. So an Hegelian critique of discourse ethics leads to a critique of transcendental-pragmatic presupposition that there is a thoroughgoing analogy between the validity claims of truth and rightness.