Private and public autonomy must mutually enable each other in a self-stabilizing cycle

Evidence

The private liberties of the constitutional state can only correspond to their own interests if citizens confer their rights on themselves. Legislation oriented to the common good must strike a balance between conflicting social interests and seek to compensate for the social inequalities that continually arise in a quasi-natural way in capitalist societies, to such an extent that all citizens receive the same opportunities to lead a self-determined life in accordance with their individual conceptions of themselves. All private citizens want a fair opportunity to use their subjective rights to shape their lives. Only in that case will they be motivated and able to make any use of their democratic rights at all, specifically one which is not motivated exclusively by self-interest. In this way, a self-stabilizing cycle can become established in which, on the one hand, the autonomous use of civic rights generates, through the legislative process, those subjective rights that (as John Rawls requires) have the same value for all, so that the enjoyment of these rights in turn ensures all citizens the social independence that first enables and enjoins them to make active use of political autonomy. In this way, private and public autonomy must enable and promote each other. — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 86

Categorization

• XREF: This mutual-enabling thesis is Habermas’s co-originality argument; connects to Rawls’s fair-value-of-liberty requirement and to deliberative-democratic theory. — connects to: Genuine authority and freedom are mutually dependent, not opposed — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 572; Private liberties avoid heteronomy only when citizens act as democratic co-legislators — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 86; Individual autonomy presupposes shared norms, accountability, and public trust. — Adelin-Costin Dumitru, Forging the Resistive Republic: Social…, 72 (+3 more)

Related

• Private liberties avoid heteronomy only when citizens act as democratic co-legislators (similarity 0.86)
• Individual autonomy presupposes shared norms, accountability, and public trust. (similarity 0.81)
• The legal form of subjective rights fits private liberties but not political obligations (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Private liberties avoid heteronomy only when citizens act as democratic co-legislators #expands (0.88) — Jürgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of the…, 86
• Genuine authority and freedom are mutually dependent, not opposed #corroborates (0.85) — Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 572