[Editors’ Note: Due to its large size, the HTML version (this version) is published in two parts. This is Part I / II]

A.  Introduction

Social order is the telos of law and politics. This study will present Jürgen Habermas’ thought on this topic as one of the most important of the last forty years. By collocating it within the broader discussion on social order, we will highlight the potential, but also some problems of his universalistic proposal in light of challenges at the outset of the 21st century. This article argues that Habermas’ communicative paradigm provides a conceptual framework for a universal public law protecting peace and human rights in an effective and legitimate way. It can be understood as a regulative idea, guiding transformative work of scholars, politicians and lawyers, rather than as a theoretical instrument that conceptualises international law in its current institutional setting.

The first part of the analysis consists in developing paradigms for mapping the discussion on social order in which Habermas’ proposal will later be embedded (B.). It comprehends a brief consideration of the most important “paradigms of order” that have developed during the centuries as well as of the “paradigmatic revolutions” which have led, from time to time, to renewal in the field. This outline will end on the paradigm of universalistic individualism as it was developed by Immanuel Kant, the classic author to whose legacy Habermas is most bound.

The tensions within Kant’s conception of order reveal the difficulties common to many conceptions of order. Part C. will start dealing with these difficulties and with the attempts in Western thought to overcome them. Systems theory and postmodernism as the perhaps most significant ways of thinking order beyond the Kantian paradigm of universalistic individualism are characterised, however, by a certain scepticism towards universal institutions. In contrast, Habermas asserts the viability of universalism on the basis of a new conceptual structure. His “communicative paradigm” aims at conserving and even developing central tenets of...