Between Facts and Norms - Contributions to a ... - Blogs Unpad

61The Sociology of Law vs. the Philosophy of justicereasonable answers only within the horizon of a life project alreadypresupposed as valid. Now, a theory of justice tailored to modernliving conditions must reckon with a variety of equally entitled,coexisting forms of life and life plans; from the perspective ofdifferent traditions and life histories, disagreement over these isreasonable.28 As a result, the theory ofjustice must limit itself to thenarrow circle of political-moral questions of principle for which an"overlapping consensus" may reasonably be expected, for these areprecisely the questions that concern values included in each of thecompeting comprehensive doctrines. What one seeks are principlesor norms that incorporate generalizable interests.According to what Rawls has in mind, a postmetaphysical theoryof justice that rests on a weak, that is, merely formally defined,concept of the good represents a set of intersecting normative ·statements. In this set the more comprehensive but context-dependentinterpretations of self and world-be they ethical or evenreligious and metaphysical-"overlap." These competingworldviewsmust acknowledge the conditions of postmetaphysical thinking atleast to the extent that they give themselves over without reservationto public argumentative exchange:The hope is that, by this method of avoidance, as we might call it, existingdifferences between contending political views can at least be moderated,even if not entirely removed, so that social cooperation on the basis ofmutual respect can be maintained. Or if this is expecting too much, thismethod may enable us to conceive how, given a desire for free anduncoerced agreement, a public understanding could arise consistentwith the historical conditions and constraints of our social world.29It is not entirely clear what Rawls has actually gained with thesereflections-and what he has not. He has certainly shown that anormative theory of justice of the sort he proposes can gain entryto a culture in which basic liberal convictions are already rootedthrough tradition and political socialization in everyday practicesand in the intuitions of individual citizens. Rawls not only believesthat a milieu with this character can be found today in the pluralistculture of the United States; he also realizes that this pluralismwould have to develop and even intensifY if the postulated principlesof justice assumed a concrete shape in the basic institutions