Comparing Kant And Rawls's Anthropological Position

There is another anthropological position which I want to define as an "extreme" one. This position is expressed in the works of Kant and Rawls. In their conceptions the political sphere cannot be separated from any moral standpoints and the question of justice. Nonetheless, their positions presuppose anthropology that is way more "positive" than the one of Machiavelli and Schmitt. For them, humans are necessarily rational and reasonable beings, and these human characteristics are primary in their anthropologies and political theories. Rawls, for instance, calls both rationality and reasonableness human "moral powers".
Let us first consider Kant's position. He does not deny the fact that the social field is full of various antagonisms. But antagonism does not equal an enmity, as in Schmitt. In "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" this term denotes humans' 'tendency to come together in society, coupled, however, with a continual resistance which constantly threatens to break this society up' (Kant 1991, 44). In other words, people necessarily form a social whole, but keep on pursuing their own specific interests.
Nonetheless, man is 'the only rational creature on earth' who is endowed with the 'natural capacities which are directed towards the use of his reason' which 'are such that they could be fully developed only in
But, again, without the presupposition that humans can be reasonable and rational when it comes to the political issues this Rawlsian scheme is hardly