Social Integration without Exclusion

Rawls and Habermas on Reciprocity and Mutual Recognition

Abstract

  In referring the arguments of John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas, this paper tries to explore some exclusive elements of the present social policies aiming at “Inclusion.” Rawls and Habermas find one of the major difficulties of the existing welfare state in the point that it reproduces the so called underclass. According to them, it lacks the principle of reciprocity or mutual recognition. If the least advantaged people would see themselves as being abandoned by the society they belong or being treated differently from other citizens, then the social integration should be deemed as failed.
  The first section of the paper outlines how Rawls and Habermas criticized the welfare-state capitalism or the existing social state. In their views, the existing welfare systems have been provided only social protections of life ex post and failed to give fair opportunities ex ante. The second section focuses on the more positive ideas of the social integration, especially on the idea of property-owning democracy shown by Rawls and of the promotion of both private and public freedoms argued by Habermas. Both of these are suggestive for the possible social integration without exclusion in that the former requires the improvement of life prospects of people in advance and the latter tries to avoid paternalistic interventions by the social state.
  In the concluding section, the paper argues that the principle of mutual recognition among citizens should include not only the mutual respect for autonomous ways of life but also the recognition of contingencies and vulnerabilities of our lives at its core. Otherwise, the social cooperation regulated by the principle of reciprocity would require the mutual contribution and exclude some people as useless.