My goal in the first half of this article will be to examine the relationship between the normative presuppositions of democratic deliberation and the idealized content of practical rationality. The approach I follow is consonant with what John Rawls has called “Kantian constructivism,” and what Jurgen Habermas refers to as “reconstruction.” In this context, the differences in their methodologies are less significant than their shared assumption that the institutions of liberal democracies embody the idealized content can be elucidated and philosophically articulated; in fact, the task of a philosophical theory of democracy wouldconsist in the clarification and articulation of the form of practical rationality represented by democratic rule.