Realizing the Noumenal Republic: Forst and Kant on Representation and Institutional Design

Abstract

In The Noumenal Republic , Rainer Forst understands democracy as a demand for justice grounded in the ‘right to justification’. This right stipulates that justificatory reasons must be (i) reciprocally and generally justifiable in their content/form and (ii) generated through procedures in which all affected figure as co-authors. Despite the numerous strengths of this theory, I argue that Forst’s account encounters a problem when addressing the justification of commonplace cases of representation: although each dimension independently provides normative space for justifying representative practices, their simultaneous application generates mutually undermining outcomes. After showing how Kant deals with this issue, I invite Forst to further elaborate on how his Kantian democratic theory plays out at an institutional level.