This dissertation has as hypothesis to explain the idea that, beyond other social
emancipations, it is possible to speak about the possibility of a perspective of the procedural
social emancipation, in the critical theory of Jürgen Habermas, through the inextricable link
established between democracy and law. In this endeavor, the intention is to clarify how
Habermas will reconstruct a de-substantialized critical model of emancipation from the
defense of the democratic self-organization of a legal community. To do so, we will deal with
the principles that underlie critical theory and how Habermas fits into this line of thought. In
this regard, we start with the fundamental thesis of Max Horkheimer's Dialectic of
Enlightenment, in which he presents a conception that reason is reduced to its instrumental
technique and that Habermas, using his own model of a society and social evolution, strives to
overcome this one-sidedness. In light of the liberation of the potential of the rationality of
communicative understanding, Habermas wants to characterize human reason on two sides:
communicative and instrumental. In the second part of our text, we will present, with
Habermas, his reconstruction of the relation between law and morals, as well as the question
that makes the law valid and its implications for the understanding of its emancipatory critical
project. Finally, we will seek to clarify the nexus between human rights and popular
sovereignty, which points to the production of the legitimacy of law through a democratic
process. We conclude, therefore, that the architectonic constructed by the philosopher brings
constituent elements that justify by their procedural democratic nature, without appealing to a
substantial axiological instance, projects of life forms in a continuous emancipatory process,
within the framework of three fundamental questions, namely: first, in the framework of the
linguistic structure that presents itself as normative condition of emancipatory procedures,
possible in social reality; second, within the framework of the relationship of cooriginality
and complementarity, at a functional level, of law and morality; third, within the framework
of the nexus between human rights and democracy, clarified by the thesis of equiprimordiality
between these two legal magnitudes, which points to the need for democratic legitimacy of
the law, insofar as it constitutes a reflex and discursive production free of opinion and of the
will of the members of a legal community.
Keywords: Emancipation. Regulation. Law. Moral. Democracy.
