Cardozo Law Review
Abstract
It is a question that we have all considered: What is the function of critical theory after the implosion of Communism? More significantly, what can the basis of a critique of capitalist democracy be in the absence of a dogmatic alternative? Jurgen Habermas's answer is that the purpose of a critical theory of society is to provide a new basis of legitimacy for democracy. This issue-the provision of a new basis of legitimacy for democracy-is more significant after the collapse of Communism, not less; the demise of Socialism erodes the basis for the existence of liberal democracy, since liberal democracy had been justified as providing the best defense against totalitarianism. Moreover, in the Cold War era, liberal democracy had a further advantage: it combined the forces of right and center against the alleged left. On the one hand, liberal democracy could be viewed as protecting the entire inheritance of the West, and not as the critical and subversive enterprise it had appeared to be when it first entered into history in the eighteenth century. On the other hand, the forces of the right could be tamed by a center committed to an open and infinitely evolving society; tradition was taken away from the weakened right and installed as a showpiece of the center.
Keywords
Constitutional Law, Democracy, Political Systems and Governments, Political Science, Politics (General), Globalization, Foreign Affairs
Disciplines
Constitutional Law | Law
Recommended Citation
Gabriel Motzkin,
Habermas's Ideal Paradigm of Law,
17
Cardozo L. Rev.
1431
(1996).
Available at:
https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/clr/vol17/iss4/25