The influence of Immanuel Kant on contemporary political phlosophy in the context of rationalism: Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas

This study aims to put forth the place of the Kantian rationality within contemporary political theory by considering the approaches of two important contemporary political thinkers such as Hannah Arendt and Jürgen Habermas. With this purpose in mind, the study investigates whether Kantian rational theory, which is, beyond questioning its validity, launched as the cause of major social problems, can provide the appropriate intellectual ground and theoretical tools to offer solutions to the problems discussed in contemporary political philosophy. In this context, it is analyzed what kind of theoretical tools Arendt and Habermas, who returned to Kantian rational theses in order to produce solutions to political problems peculiar to the contemporary period, acquired from Kant's thought. In this return, thinkers interpret certain original Kantian assumptions, which they deem to be incomplete or problematic for various reasons, within the framework of the pluralistic character of the contemporary social structure and their own intellectual political visions. In the study, it is revealed that the interpretations in question are also a restructuring attempt. Arendt resorts to Kantian concepts such as 'reflecting judgement', 'broad-minded' in order to find solutions to contemporary problems that she sees such as totalitarianism, the blurred of the borderline between the public and private spheres, apolitical individualism, the problem of the banalization and massification of evil, thoughtlessness, the extinction of the ability to make political judgments and, most importantly, the disappearance of 'common sense' that enabled public political concert and harmony. In this resorting, as a result of the originality of the concept of politics she developed, Arendt, instead of Kant's works in which he specifically puts forward his political theory, turns to the section of Kant's Critique of Judgment, in which Kant presents his reflections on the beautiful, agreeable, and aesthetic taste, from which she seeks to provide conceptual tools for her political theory. On the other hand, it is seen that, throughout his intellectual career, Habermas's contact with Kant and the modern rational project, despite it's transformation in parallel with his own changing views, has continued. In other words, although his theoretical approaches show differences in the theses he has put forward in early, maturity and late periods, the thinker's favor towards the modern Enlightenment ideal and Kantian rationalist theses continues steadily. Although Habermas considers existence of pathologies caused by the widespread use of instrumental reason in the modern period, he still sees the possibility of overcoming these pathologies the reason, through it's communicative normative dimension. This attitude is a reflection of the thinker's belief in the liberating potential of the modern rational project. In consequence, Habermas bases his thoughts on politics, law, democratic citizenship, legitimate national, international and cosmopolitan law, which he developed in different periods, in a multifaceted relationship with Kantian rational theses. As a result, the Kantian rational approach, by being transformed or restructured, provides an significant source of reference for two important contemporary politics thinkers.