Kant’s Anthropological Pragmatism and the Anthropological Foundations of Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of Deliberative Democracy

This paper explores the relationship between Kant’s pragmatic anthropology and the anthropological foundations of Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy. I will show that Kant influenced Habermas not only in the realm of ethics and legal philosophy, but they also share similar ideas about the rational and social nature of a human being. I will argue that Kant’s pragmatic anthropology had an indirect rather than a direct influence on Habermas’s concept of communicative rationality and his theory of deliberative democracy.