John Rawls-Jürgen Habermas: A normative and procedural solution to the tension between the democratic state and the ethnic, cultural and religious plurality

Abstract

This article explains how John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas offer away out of the conflicts that occur in the tension between the state and political pluralism, ethnicity, and culture. This solution involves, in the first place, overcoming the deficiencies of individual liberalism regarding the consolidation of civic ties, solidarity and equity among citizens, and secondly, finding a bond that enables social cohesion, democratic political processes, and the solution of governance by consensus. For John Rawls, the solution implies the idea of overlapping consensus and public reasoning, and for Jürgen Habermas the concept of constitutional patriotism. The key idea is that both solutions involve the construction of a moral bond based on political values and on the principles of modern constitutionalism, which are deep-rooted in the political culture of democratic regimes with a constitutional review. Such bond implies going beyond a modus vivendior the mere tolerance between the ethnic, religious, cultural and sexual plurality in a political community.