Autonomy and enlightenment: the critical project as political project

Abstract

Using the concepts of enlightenment and autonomy, the aim of this article
is to build a question in the kantian philosophy about the necessity to
comprehend the critical project also as a political project. However, to do so it is
required to confront the contemporary tradition that begins with Hegel and
persist until Habermas, in which the idea of Critique is regarded as an empty and
passive element (since grounded in the abstraction of the moral law). The article
will point out an interpretation in which the practical faculty of judgment, in its
reflexive and determining activity, would unify the political and juridical elements
that find its counterpart in the so called “critical epoch”.