Private liberties avoid heteronomy only when citizens act as democratic co-legislators
Evidence
Even if the liberal purpose of the constitutional state is to guarantee equal private liberties to freely associated private citizens in the form of subjective rights, these liberties remain free from paternalistic heteronomy only if these same citizens, in their role as public citizens and democratic co-legislators, make use of the rights of communication and participation, which are granted simultaneously, in the spirit of an intersubjective exercise of political autonomy. The private liberties of the constitutional state can only correspond to their own interests if citizens confer their rights on themselves. ā JĆ¼rgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of theā¦, 86
Categorization
- XREF: The rejection of paternalistic heteronomy here forms a clear counterpoint to the Frankfurt School tradition the reader is tracking against Adorno. ā connects to: Private and public autonomy must mutually enable each other in a self-stabilizing cycle ā JĆ¼rgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of theā¦, 86; The legal form of subjective rights fits private liberties but not political obligations ā JĆ¼rgen Habermas, A New Structural Transformation of theā¦, 87; Republican liberty is a protected status, with democracy merely instrumental to it ā Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom andā¦, 161