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

1. Introduction

Kant was definitely one of most important thinkers for Habermas, along with Hegel, Marx, Heidegger, and the theorists of the Frankfurt School. For Habermas Kant served both as a source of inspiration and as an object of criticism. This is evidenced in multiple mentions and references to Kant in most of Habermas’s writings, and a number of his works directly devoted to Kant. An especially close relationship between Kant and Habermas can be found in the field of political thought. This applies primarily to Kant’s ideas of universalism, cosmopolitanism, international and civil rights, and the public use of reason. Here Habermas appears in many respects as one of the successors of the Kantian tradition, who more than many other thinkers came “to demonstrate the continuing importance and relevance of Kant’s political thought for the contemporary world” (Delahunty and Yoo 2010, 438). Habermas was essentially one of the main modern thinkers to whom Kant’s political philosophy owes its revival of interest at the turn of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

However, despite clear and obvious evidence of the direct influence of Kant’s socio-political ideas on Habermas, the question arises as to whether this similarity is accidental or based on a deeper anthropological level, that is on the fundamental similarity of the anthropological ideas of both thinkers. This question still remains virtually unexplored. ¹ Especially promising here is the establishment of a possible connection between Kant’s pragmatic anthropology and Habermas’s anthropological ideas underlying his theory of deliberative politics and communicative rationality. Existing numerous parallels and points of contact between the political ideas of Kant and Habermas suggest their deep genetic kinship, in that they are based on similar anthropological ideas and a similar image of human. Particularly important is the conceptual similarity and the number of important parallels between Kant’s and Habermas’s understanding of social rationality. They both see it as a kind of human rationality that enables people to interact optimally with each other and ultimately achieve a perfect socio-political order (cf. AA V, 432; AA VI, 58; AA VIII, 28, 37; Habermas 1981a [1984], 335-343, 397-399; Habermas 1981b [1987], 86-87). ² These parallels suggest a possible significant influence of Kant’s anthropology and his model of social (pragmatic) rationality, on Habermas’s political theory in general and on his concept of deliberative democracy in particular. Confirming or disproving this hypothesis is the purpose of this paper.

In my paper, I will prove the hypothesis that these overlaps are not accidental, as we see actual traces of Kant’s anthropological ideas in Habermas’s model of social rationality. I will do this by considering the anthropological foundations of Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy and his model of communicative rationality. I will show that Habermas shares with Kant a set of ideas about humans, their rational and social nature, and the relationship between individual and social progress. In doing so, I will argue that there is a close similarity between Kant’s model of pragmatic rationality and Habermas’s model of communicative rationality. I will demonstrate, how this closeness can be explained even taking into account that Habermas does not directly borrow from Kant’s pragmatic anthropology.

2. Jurgen Habermas’s Theory of Deliberative Democracy and Its Anthropological Foundations

The theory of deliberative democracy is one of the peaks of Habermas’s social theory and occupies a special place in the modern political science. In its final form, the concept of deliberative democracy was formulated by Habermas in his book Between Facts and Norms (Habermas 1992 [1996]). However, its fundamental principles were laid down in his even earlier works, in particular in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Habermas 1962 [1989]) and in Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas 1981a [1984], 1981b [1987]). Habermas defines deliberative democracy as political decision making based on the interaction between state power and civil society. This can be achieved through discussion between equal political actors and the consideration of proposed political alternatives. In this way, the essence of Habermas’s theory of deliberative democracy is situated in the formation of free and unforced political communication. He understands deliberative politics as “a syndrome that depends on a network of fairly regulated bargaining processes and of various forms of argumentation, including pragmatic, ethical and moral discourses, each of which relies on different communicative presuppositions and procedures” (Habermas 1994, 6). The process of permanent discussion and self-criticism pushes society and the state to correct errors and to search for new ways of development.

The specific features of the theory of deliberative democracy, its focus on understanding and dialogue are rooted in certain anthropological ideas that underlie Habermas’s social theory. The most important of these ideas consist of the following fundamental anthropological presuppositions. First, human beings are by their nature beings capable of reason, gifted with the ability to weigh arguments and able to set practical goals and find ways to achieve them. Second, humans are social creatures capable of interacting and cooperating with other members of their species. Third, human is a being capable of free action. The concept of deliberative democracy is based on the idea of realizing human freedom through the search for an optimal balance between personal and public interests, which is achieved through rational discourse and compromise. This means, the most rational behavior of free actors it to communicate and to deliberate with other members of society in order to optimize and harmonize individual and public interests. The ability for reasonable dialogue and interaction with other members of society is characterized by Habermas as communicative rationality. This is one of the key rational abilities for Habermas, but human rationality in his theory is not limited to this type.

In his Theory of Communicative Action (Habermas 1981a [1984], 384-385), Habermas differentiates human rationality into three types: instrumental (non-social, success-oriented), strategic (social, success-oriented), and communicative one (social, understanding-oriented). Habermas also calls instrumental rationality “cognitive-instrumental” rationality, and describes instrumental and strategic rationality together as “purposive,” “means-ends,” and “subject-centered” rationality. Communicative rationality is opposed to “means-ends” rationality (with its two types, instrumental and strategic rationalities): according to Habermas, communicative rationality cannot be reduced to “purposive” rationality (cf. Habermas 1981a [1984], 239-252). “Means-ends” rationality is monological, just focusing on the reaching of own goals and does not take into account the goals and interests of other people, at least fully. Despite the fact that strategic and communicative rationality are similar to each other in that they are aimed at achieving certain goals in society, there is one important and significant difference between them. They dominate different areas of human activity. As a crucial point for delineating boundaries between them serves Habermas’s essential difference between the social realm (the lifeworld) and the system (political realm). The social sphere is governed by communicative rationality. According to Habermas, common understandings, customs, and daily interactions occur in the lifeworld (“Lebenswelt”), which is the primary characteristic of the social sphere. People converse with one other in an effort to reach understanding and consensus through communicative reason. As a result, the foundation of the social realm is formed on the basis of the norms and values that develop from interpersonal contact and group activity. For Habermas, “the lifeworld forms a reservoir of taken-for-granted certainties, a complex of background assumptions that relieve the members of a communication community from the need to keep everything always in question” (Habermas 1981a [1984], 124).

Strategic and instrumental thinking, focusing not on dialogue and consensus but on achieving individual goals and maintaining order through administrative and legal mechanisms, dominate the political sphere. Unlike the lifeworld, the political sphere has completely different mechanisms of coordination between people—such as money and power, which function fundamentally differently from communicative action focused on mutual understanding. They are guided through “a non-normative type of integration that comes about via the objectively functioning interconnections among the consequences of actions” (Habermas 1981b [1987], 154). The political domain, as conceptualized by Habermas, includes the formal structures and institutions of government and law. It is the area where power is exercised and decisions are made regarding the organization and direction of society. “Means-ends” rationality is less concerned with deliberation and consensus-building and more with securing personal objectives and upholding the rule of law. In Habermas’s view, the different rationalities and functions are what primarily separate the social domain from the political sphere. In the social realm, communication and consensus-building based on shared meanings are the primary focus, whereas the political sphere deals with the exercise of authority and decision-making through legal and administrative procedures. In so far as instrumental rationality guarantees the effectiveness and stability of the political system, communicative rationality ensures inclusivity and democratic participation in the lifeworld. While strategic rationality operates within a social framework and so necessitates a comprehension of other people’s behavior and intentions, it is centered on exploiting or even manipulating other people in order to further one’s own objectives. Conversely, communicative rationality emphasizes discussion and viewpoint sharing. Here, actors are less focused on their personal achievement and more focused on coordinating and harmonizing their goals and actions with other participants (cf. Habermas 1981a [1984]; Huttunen and Heikkinen 1998; Schaefer et al. 2013). This model of rationality is based on mutual understanding and common values of the citizens as well as norms and should ensure more coherence in society.

All types of rationality are necessary and complementary, since each of them has its own goals and tasks to deal with. However, it is important that there is a balance between them and that they do not interfere in the areas of each other. A democratic society must have a healthy balance between the political and social spheres as well as between instrumental (strategic) and communicative rationalities, as suggested by Habermas. The political domain is ontologically inferior to the social realm, which is derived directly from the intellectual, communicative, and social essence of human. Since the lifeworld gives birth to common values and public opinion which shapes political processes, communicative rationality’s action in the social realm offers an essential normative and anthropological basis, the very validity of political judgments. In contrast, the political sphere utilizes laws and regulations to institutionalize and enforce these standards, guaranteeing the preservation the values of society within the confines of government: “Law functions as a hinge between facticity and validity, between the socially integrated lifeworld and the system-integrated realms of administrative power and economic transactions” (Habermas 1992 [1996], 38). Simultaneously, it is vitally crucial that these political and social domains not only interact with each other but also remain distinct from one another. The intervention of one type of rationality into a sphere originally intended for action within the framework of another type of rationality can have dramatic consequences. According to Habermas, the proliferation of instrumental rationality in all spheres of human activities leads to disruption in areas of social life that require dialogue and consensus. For example, state power, guided by instrumental rationality, does not coordinate its decisions with civil society and does not take into account opinion of its own citizens. This is precisely why Habermas argues that a citizen-oriented and responsible politics should not be based on instrumental but on communicative rationality, since it regards the points of view and interests of other people, and does not simply use them as a means to achieve its own goals. In this logic a perfect society should be based on the idea of the interaction between state power and civil society by applying citizens’ participation in public communication and inclusion of public deliberation within political decision-making process. In other words, Habermas sees in the deliberative procedure, the necessary mechanism that could provide a solution to the most problematic aspects of representative democracy.

3. The Political Dimension of Kant’s Anthropology and His Model of Pragmatic Rationality

Kant’s teachings on state and society and his socio-political ideas are certainly based on a number of fundamental anthropological attitudes, a Kantian specific image of human and human nature. In Kant’s view, human is by nature contradictory and ambivalent. On the one hand, he or she is subject to animal instincts and natural needs (AA VII, 321-322; Kant 1798 [2007], 417; AA XVII, 320; Kant 1775 [2007], 91-92). On the other hand, human is an “animal rationabile,” an “animal gifted with reason,” which is supposed to make of themselves an “animal rationale” (AA VII, 321; Kant 1798 [2007], 417; cf. AA VIII, 111-112; Kant 1786 [1991], 223-224). The ability of human beings to reason, not only distinguishes them from the animal world and weakens the grip of natural instincts, it also “makes him dangerous not only to other animals, which he may hunt, tame and devour, but also to his own kind” (Zöller 2011, 139). However, from the complete extermination of their own kind, humans are protected by their other important characteristic, by their social nature. According to Kant, human beings have an antagonism of “social” and “unsocial” inclinations in their nature which is why people wage wars but also seek to live in peace (cf. AA VI, 471; Kant 1797 [1996], 586; AA VIII, 20, 24; Kant 1784b [2007], 111, 114). Due to their social nature, human beings are forced to interact with other people and can fully realize themselves and reveal their inclinations only in society: “The human being is destined by his reason to live in a society with human beings and in it to cultivate himself, to civilize himself, and to moralize himself by means of the arts and sciences” (AA VII, 324-325; Kant 1798 [2007], 420; cf. AA VIII, 26; Kant 1784b [2007], 116). Furthermore, only as a part of humanity as a whole—that is, “only through progress in a series of innumerably many generations” (AA VII, 324; Kant 1798 [2007], 419)—can human beings fully develop all of their potential as a member of a society that is defined by the rule of law combined with wealth, the proportionality of each person’s moral desert and well-being, and the predominance of ethical motivations in the vast majority of individual citizens. But in order to do this, they require a unique form of reasoning that will enable them to function well in social situations and communicate with other members of the community. This special kind of rationality can be described by Kant’s idea of the pragmatic use of reason that denotes a special kind of practical rationality used by a person to achieve their goals in a social context (cf. AA VII, 200-201, 321-325; Kant 1798 [2007], 307-308, 416-421).

At the very core of Kant’s model of pragmatic rationality is the setting of the right goals in social life. “Pragmatic” in Kant’s understanding differs significantly from what is understood by this word in modern everyday language. Kant’s use of the word “pragmatic” covers not only the focus on achieving one’s own goals through other people (i.e., strategic rationality in Habermas’s terms). It must also take into account the points of view and goals of other people, and have an orientation toward public goals, common concerns and societal well-being. For Kant, this harmony between the goals and needs of an individual and of humanity is a purpose of the socio-political progress of mankind with a society consisting entirely of socially responsible “world citizens” (Weltbürger) on the top (cf. AA VIII, 28, 37; Kant 1784a [1991], 55-56; Kant 1784b [2007], 117). World citizens do not merely obey social norms or “merely” enjoy political, moral, and other global rights. Rather, if and to the extent that they are able to participate (mitspielen) in society, they can and often do actively participate in the creation of new social norms and rights. Without it, there can be no “pluralism” that overcomes one’s innate “egoism” (cf. once more AA VII, 128-130). Pluralism is a prerequisite for moral and political cosmopolitanism from an anthropological perspective. Thus, the goal of humanity according to Kant is “the achievement of a civil society universally administering right” in which “there is a thoroughgoing antagonism of its members and yet the most precise determination and security of the boundaries of this freedom so that the latter can coexist with the freedom of others” (AA VIII, 22; Kant 1784b [2007]). Each individual human being is capable of making his or her own contribution to this process of human social evolution. In doing so, the most rational action in a social context is, therefore, such an individual action that not only focuses on the achievement of one’s own personal goals but also contributes to the greatest possible progress of humanity as a whole.

Another side of the Kantian model of pragmatic rationality is the notion of the most rational and therefore best social structure. This thought complements the idea of individual pragmatic rationality of a person in society, since the rational action of an individual in a social context will be the most optimal, only if society itself is arranged in the most rational way. From a pragmatic point of view, the most rational and therefore ideal political constitution of a society should be the kind of constitution which guarantees the conditions under which not only “everyone will be able to make himself more perfect,” but even “the whole of society will be perfect” (AA XXV, V-Anth/Fried, 690-691; Kant 1775-76 [2012], 224). According to Kant, a republican form of government solely can provide such conditions for civil society, since it is a form where the executive and the legislative powers are separated (AA VIII, 349-353). Because only a republican form of government is based on the rational principles of freedom, equality, and independence of each member of the commonwealth (see AA VIII, 290; Kant 1793 [1991], 74; AA VI, 314; Kant 1797 [1996], 457-458; cf. the preliminary work to the Doctrine of Right, AA XXIII, 136, 293). Therefore, it allows people not only to follow the norms, rules, and laws, as passive subjects but to engage as citizens or even as world citizens, that is, to play an active role in society, participating (mitspielen) in its formation and development. In his Perpetual Peace (first definitive article), Kant formulates this idea as a demand: “The civil constitution of each state shall be republican” (AA VIII, 349; Kant 1795 [1991], 99). For Kant, the republican constitution is the only constitution that “which can be derived from the idea of an original contract, upon which all rightful legislation of a people must be founded” (AA VIII, 350; Kant 1795 [1991], 99-100). By the republic, Kant understands the representative form of government with a separation of powers between executive and legislative power.

Considering the republican form of government to be the most reasonable and optimal for unlocking the potential of both an individual person and for the development of all humankind, Kant differentiates it from a democratic form of government. Kant views democracy as a despotic form of the state and regards it as an imperfect form of government since in a democracy there is no separation of powers and also “because everyone under it wants to be a ruler” (AA VIII, 353; Kant 1795 [1991], 101). However, this does not mean that Kant is against democracy in general. Most likely, Kant rather denies democracy in only one specific understanding of this concept. Apparently, by the term “democracy” Kant understands direct democracy in its classical form, in which it existed in the ancient Greek city-states during the time of Plato and Aristotle. Modern representative democracies thoroughly fit the criteria of the Kantian “republic” with its separation of powers and an elected head of state (cf. Reiss 1970 [1991], 25). They are in harmony with Kant’s rational a priori principles (“freedom of people,” “equality of subjects,” “independence of citizens”) and can be completely consistent with the Kantian model of pragmatic rationality. All this means that the political form of government that Kant’s anthropology proposes as optimal for human progress is perfectly compatible with various models of modern representative democracy, including the model of deliberative democracy described by Habermas. This statement will be confirmed in the next section with the example of the fundamental similarities and semantic parallels between the Kantian and Habermasian models of social rationality, that underlie their normative models of political order.

4. Kant’s Pragmatic Anthropology and Habermas’s Model of Communicative Rationality: A Genetic Connection or Just a Coincidental Similarity?

The anthropological views of Kant and Habermas have much in common, and they share many similar concepts and notions. At the same time, there are practically no apparent traces of the direct influence of Kant’s anthropology in the published works of Habermas. As a former German philosophy student and later the author of an article on anthropology in Fischer-Lexikon Philosophie, a popular philosophical lexicon (Habermas 1958 [1973]), Habermas was in all likelihood familiar with Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. However, he most likely did not attach much importance to it, since Kant’s Anthropology was barely discussed and almost completely ignored for a long time even among Kant scholars. This was at least until Foucault’s translation in 1964 and especially until the second part of 1990s, when Kant’s anthropological lectures were published in the XXV volume of the German Academy edition (AA) in 1997 and moreover after Reinhard Brandt’s commentary to Kant’s Anthropology from the Pragmatic Point of View appeared in 1999 (Zhavoronkov and Salikov 2018, 275). In other words, when anthropology interested Habermas, and it was not Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View or Kant’s other anthropological works. ³ The absence of evident signs of Habermas’s interest in Kant’s anthropology, in the form of direct quotes, references, or mentions, does not mean a complete absence of the influence of Kant’s pragmatic ideas on his work. This influence may manifest itself at a deeper level and in less obvious forms, since Habermas, according to Dirk Jörke, at least implicitly adopts Kant’s idea of human (cf. Jörke 2005, 315), emphasizing his rational and social nature. Jörke claims that even though Habermas eventually applied the idea of human received from Kant to the philosophy of language, he kept the rationalism-focused aspect of it (Jörke 2005, 315). This thesis is at least partially confirmed by the fact that Habermas in Truth and Justification directly calls himself a follower of Kantian pragmatism. Literally Habermas says the following: “Kantian pragmatism—an orientation I share with Hilary Putnam—relies on the transcendental fact that subjects capable of speech and action, who can be affected by reasons, can learn—and in the long run even ‘cannot not learn.’ And they learn just as much in the moral-cognitive dimension of interacting with one another as they do in the cognitive dimension of interacting with the world” (Habermas 1999 [2003], 8). Nevertheless, to regard this as a direct reference to Kant’s pragmatic anthropology would be rash. Сertainly, Habermas’s linguistic and hermeneutical ideas can be interpreted in the sense of Kant’s pragmatic anthropology, as a unique approach to understanding the world through communication with other people. In this sense, there are certain points of contact between Kantian anthropology and Habermas’s linguistic pragmatism. However, does Habermas’s “Kantian pragmatism” have anything in common with the genuine pragmatism of Kantian anthropology, or do they have only a distant or even purely nominal relationship? This is not as simple a question since even American pragmatism comes in very different varieties. To answer this, we need to compare the main anthropological attitudes of both thinkers and what they understand as pragmatic.

First, Kant and Habermas are united by a similar, but not identical, idea of the rational nature of human. Kant is characterized by a more dualistic and evolutionary view, while in Habermas it is not present in such a pronounced form. Secondly, both consider a person to be a social being, which is fully revealed in interaction with other members of society. In this sense, Kant and Habermas share, although not completely, a certain vision of human history, a kind of social evolutionism in which the use of human rationality in relationships with each other plays a key role (for more details on this topic, see Mejía Fernández and Romero 2022). Both of these anthropological attitudes result in the idea of a special kind of social rationality that sets the optimal goals of a person in society, and the means to achieve them. Kant’s model of pragmatic rationality and Habermas’s model of communicative rationality have much in common. Both understand rational action not as an instrumental and egocentric action focusing just on one’s own personal goals, but as an action contributing to the well-being of the whole society and to societal progress. Both models are based on the interaction with other people as a means to achieve individual and common goals. However, the model of communicative action is built to a much greater extent on real dialogue and consensus. For the Kantian pragmatic model, dialogue serves rather to acquire world cognition, and only to a lesser extent to convey their own point of view to others. Both models consider as the optimum of rational human behavior in society the politically active and socially responsible conduct of a citizen, even if their understanding of what exactly is meant by politically active and responsible behavior in society obviously differs from each other. Nevertheless, both models are so close in their fundamental premises that the question arises whether the model of communicative rationality was the result of the reception of Kant’s pragmatic anthropology.

The answer is very much on the negative side, because this hypothesis is not confirmed by the analysis of Habermas’s writings. At least in any explicit form, there are no direct references to Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View and to the network of key concepts of Kant’s pragmatic anthropology. More convincing could be the assumption that Habermas came to a concept of social rationality similar to Kant’s. He was probably starting from the main ideas of the Kant’s philosophical system, aiming to significantly weaken this transcendentalism in his own philosophy (Habermas 1976-96 [1998], 42). As Melissa Yates rightly points out, “for Habermas, the aprioristic transcendental approach to philosophy has not been viable in post-Hegelian philosophy, and much of Habermas’s work addresses the implications of the necessary shift from metaphysical to postmetaphysical thinking about the self, knowledge, and rationality” (Yates 2019, 98; See also Habermas 1976a [1979], 24-25). This focus on overcoming the metaphysical, the desire to “detranscendentalize” human rationality, explains why Habermas eventually comes to the idea of communicative rationality. Hence, while completely ignoring Kant’s anthropological writings, Habermas curiously arrives at a point of view very similar to the ideas of Kant’s pragmatic anthropology. It is much more difficult to explain why Habermas strangely overlooks or underestimates Kant’s concept of pragmatic rationality, paying attention first and foremost to his epistemological and practical types of rationality. Moreover, his notion of the pragmatic with its focus on deliberation and rational consensus bears significant traces of the American pragmatists. Here we are primarily thinking of Peirce and Mead and of their consensus theories of truth and communicative theories of society. Essentially, Habermas’s aim to “reconcile Kant with Darwin” by overcoming his transcendentalism in everyday communication practices can be traced back to Mead and Dewey (Habermas 1988 [1992], 20). In their view, the detranscendentalized conditions of behavior during problem solving are embodied in practices (Mejía Fernández and Romero 2022, 621). Habermas probably turns to the American pragmatists in order to “excavate the consensus-making power of reason—an intersubjective outcome that emerges from problems detected in concrete situations” (Bookman 2002, 77). So, for example, discussing his own account of communicative reason in The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Habermas suggests that his theory of communicative action is based on the pragmatic tradition (Habermas 1985, 378).

This suggestion by Habermas, as in the case of his statement about his “Kantian pragmatism,” produces a rather ambiguous impression since his notion of the pragmatic (see, for instance, Habermas’s concept of universal or formal pragmatics) is definitely not a directly continuation and development of Kant’s pragmatic anthropology, even if it is also related to social action. The origins of Habermasian pragmatics go back for the most part to a completely different source of inspiration, not to pragmatic anthropology, and it is called pragmatic “because it focuses on the use of language rather than being empirical, which is concerned with just the description of specific language elements” (Knight 2010, 1). It can be rather seen “as a semi-transcendental analysis in the Kantian sense that reconstructs the universal pre-theoretical, implicit knowledge that enables practical processes of understanding” (Knight 2010, 1). In this sense, there is a considerable amount of truth in the words of Fred Dallmayr, who believes that the very concept of “communicative reason,” and therefore the explicit part of Habermas’s so called “Kantian pragmatism” can be viewed even as “a curious amalgam of linguistic formalism and empirical (or quasi-empirical) knowledge” (Dallmayr 1988, 553-554). All this testifies in favor of the thesis that despite the significant similarity between the Kantian model of pragmatic rationality and the Habermasian model of communicative rationality, the latter obviously did not develop under the direct, but rather only indirect influence of the former, through the ideas of American pragmatists, especially the early ones. The influence from the side of American pragmatist, first of all from Peirce and Mead, is confirmed by Habermas himself, arguing that “The anti-elitist, democratic, and thoroughly egalitarian attitude that shapes and penetrates the work of all the pragmatists was far more important than the contents of any particular essay on politics or democracy” (Habermas 2002, 228). Traces of Kant’s pragmatic anthropology are visible here primarily in the fact that the very concept of “pragmatism,” used by Peirce and the American pragmatists, goes back to Kant’s use of the term “pragmatic” (pragmatisch) (Rydenfelt 2019, 30). Charles Peirce was the first to turn to the Kant’s concept of the pragmatic. He explained the reason for this as follows: “[...] for one who had learned philosophy out of Kant [...], praktisch and pragmatisch were as far apart as the two poles, the former belonging in a region of thought where no mind of the experimentalist type can ever make sure of solid ground under his feet, the latter expressing relation to some definite human purpose” (Peirce 1905 [1998], 332-333). Therefore, it will not be wrong to say that anthropological motives, human needs and goals, and, ultimately, the question “What is [hu]man?” has been one of “the main axes ‘around’ which pragmatists have been working while assimilating Kantian ideas” (Boronat 2019, 307; cf. McGiffert 1910; Pihlström 2010; Henschen 2013). However, as the quote above demonstrates, it was probably Peirce who became the source of the somewhat simplified and distorted interpretation of Kant’s pragmatic rationality as rationality, although oriented toward communication with other people, but aimed exclusively at achieving one’s own goals. At the same time, the communicative and social elements of Kant’s pragmatic rationality were also undoubtedly embraced by pragmatists, and this interpretation of the “pragmatic” was crucial in shaping Habermas’s universal pragmatics and his notion of communicative rationality. Apparently, it was the pragmatist interpretation and rethinking of the actual pragmatic ideas of Kant’s anthropology that became the main source of Habermas’s “Kantian pragmatism.” This argument is supported primarily by the very meaning that Habermas explicitly puts into his notion of pragmatism. The context in which he uses this concept and its cognates is not the same meaning and is not the same context in which the concept of “pragmatic” is used by Kant. Unlike Kant’s pragmatic anthropology, which examines human as a free being, Habermas’s pragmatic doctrine (see also his “universal pragmatics” or “formal pragmatics”) is more of a philosophical-linguistic and epistemic theory that explores the necessary conditions for achieving mutual understanding through communication (Habermas 1976b). Remarkably, in his concept of communicative rationality, in the principles of his theory of deliberative democracy, Habermas comes quite close to the ideas of Kant’s pragmatic anthropology not directly, through Kant’s pragmatic anthropology, but in a completely different and roundabout way. Surprisingly, he almost completely ignores Kant’s pragmatic theory and overlooks Kant’s real “pragmatism,” his pragmatic anthropology with its complex of pragmatic concepts and the concept of pragmatic rationality. This is curious given Habermas’s vast erudition and apparent familiarity with Kant’s Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view. At the same time, despite the difference in focus between Kant’s and Habermas’s pragmatism, they are united by similar goals toward which their underlying models of rationality are aimed. The understanding between people should lead to a reduction in social conflict, promoting enlightenment, harmony, and goodwill, ultimately establishing socially beneficial norms. At this point, Kant’s anthropological pragmatism and Habermas’s “Kantian pragmatism” completely converge.

However, the influence of American pragmatism does not fully explain the similarities between the Kantian and Habermasian models of social rationality, which go beyond the scope of hermeneutic or epistemological interpretation. It is obvious that American pragmatism was not the only source that influenced his interpretation of Kant’s ideas. Habermas was well aware of all of Kant’s major works and was certainly familiar not only with Kant’s critics, but also with his anthropological, political, legal, and ethical works. Therefore, even if the influence of Kant’s pragmatic anthropology is not directly traceable in Habermas, it is obvious at the level of fundamental anthropological ideas and the image of human. Habermas clearly shares with Kant a common set of ideas about humans, their rational and social nature, and the idea of the relationship between individual and social progress. This set of ideas is characteristic of all Enlightenment thought and could have been borrowed by Habermas not only from Kant. However, it is Kant who embodies the ideal of the Enlightenment philosopher for Habermas, and it is through Kant that he perceives the main ideas of this era, its rationalism and humanism.

5. Conclusion

As illustrated in the previous analysis, Kant is certainly one of the key figures who inspired the socio-political thought of Jürgen Habermas, his theory of deliberative democracy, in which many similar ideas and surprising parallels are revealed. This similarity is not accidental and is the result of similar fundamental anthropological ideas about the rational and social nature of humans, as well as the indirect influence of Kant’s pragmatic anthropology. First, Habermas shares with Kant a common set of ideas about humans, their rational and social nature, and the idea of the relationship between individual and social progress. Secondly, there is a close similarity between the models of social rationality of Kant and Habermas. The many striking parallels between the models of social rationality and the fundamental anthropological ideas underlying these models certainly explain the considerable affinity in the political theory of both thinkers. This closeness of pragmatic and communicative rationality cannot be explained by direct borrowing from Kant’s pragmatic anthropology, rather it is about the indirect and multilateral influence of Kant’s philosophy. This can be understood as a result of Habermas’s attempt to detranscend the apriorism of Kant’s practical rationality, or as a consequence of the impact of American pragmatism, or the upshot of the general influence of Kant’s ideas about human nature and enlightenment ideals.