Just as the same city viewed from different perspectives

It is well known that Leibniz was a major target of the Kantian project; in this paper, I argue that an unorthodox reconciliation between Kantian conception of reason and elements of Leibniz’s philosophy informs a pluralist and relational version of a constructivist theory of pluralism. If taking the fact of pluralism seriously means renouncing the idea that philosophy can single out a favoured way of life or provide a universally valid response to the question “How should I (we) live?”, it does not preclude a theory that gives the due weight of difference inside and outside politics. One in which the multiple and multiform spaces for defining and discussing the problems of society serve as the basis for political self-government. My own proposal starts from the idea that the most genuine expression of ourselves as law-giving individuals is the poietic moment in which the subject reconciles the moral point of view with public questions. This means to shift the normative focus from the exchange of reasons to the moment in which the subject translates her worldview into an action that aims at modelling collective decision in the light of her will. At that moment, I argue, a combination between Kant and Leibniz is particularly promising. What distinguishes Leibniz’s version of perspectivism is fundamentally this: it recognizes the singularity of the monads and the partiality of their perspectives as the starting point for a collective construction of the world. As it comes up from the Discourse on Metaphysics and the Monadology, perspectives are taken together as peculiar accounts of the same object, equally influential and necessary to full representation. Under these lenses, law-giving people enter into a community of first-person points of view that, through the specific connection with the object of concern, are all making manifest the importance of being the author of the laws to which are subjected. A look at the connection between law-giving subjects and an object of concern emphasizes the significance of participation for the full realization of the subject. If we reflect on the potential connection between an agent and an object of disagreement, as I argue, accessing the relevant decision-making procedure becomes a non-negotiable imperative. It is, therefore, the suggestion of this paper that the right for everyone to have a say (each person with a moral concern is equally entitled to express her authority in public) informs a pluralistic conception of justice in which decision-making procedures must be organized in order to ensure full access for all the affected members. The article is geared like Kant’s ethics, but shifts the frame of reference from Kant’s solitary subject to the experience of disagreement where a number of moral subjects challenge and compare their law-giving nature. The argument proceeds as follows. In the first part, I outline why and how a combination of Kant’s conception of reason with insights from Leibnizian perspectivism helps to develop a relational and pluralist version of constructivism. Once the theoretical framework is made explicit, in the second section, I construct the right for everyone to have a say through the ideal interaction of several autonomous wills vis-à-vis an object of communal concern – a situation of perspectival disagreement. In the third part of the paper, I explain in detail the right for everyone to have a say and its implication for a pluralistic conception of justice. Eventually, as a way of conclusion, I highlight the tension between the subjective and the intersubjective, a tension that is inherent in the right for everyone to have a say.