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

62Chapter 2of society. In my view, however, the correspondence between thepostmetaphysical theory ofjustice and the American context inwhich it arose does not mean that Rawls is "simply trying tosystematize the principles and intuitions typical of American liberals."30Richard Rorty attributes to Rawls "a thoroughly historicistand antiuniversalistic" attitude.31 According to Rorty, Rawls has inno way provided a procedural explanation of the impartial judgmentof moral-political questions but rather "a historical-sociologicaldescription" of the intuitions ofjustice prevalent in the Americanpopulation today.Rorty's contextualistic appropriation of Rawls is not plausible,because such a modest goal would not explain the considerableeffort ofjustification that Rawls has invested in his theory of justice.Rorty collapses the two stages of argument distinguished by Rawls.Moreover, he misses the reconstructive meaning that reflectiveequilibrium has in the context ofjustification, mistaking it for anattempt to achieve an existential or ethical self-understanding. Thetheory ofjustice could prove suitable for this task, too, once it is ableto shed light on its own context of emergence. But if the theorywere set up from the start as this kind of ethical-existential selfreflection,if it were intended to articulate only specific political. traditions reflecting the self-image of liberals who have grown upin them, then there would be no need to take a further step beyondthe business of theoretical justification-namely, the step in whicha reflection on the "fact of pluralism" assures the theory of thenecessary conditions for its own acceptability. On Rorty'scon textualist reading, Rawls would have avoided the con tractarian' schasm between normative theory and reformist practice from thevery beginning, albeit at the price of taking back the universalistclaim to validity. Then he would have to admit that the twoprinciples ofjustice do not claim to be valid for, say, Germans,because formative equivalents to the American constitutional traditioncannot be found in German culture and history.32 I see noindication of such an admission. The lack of an accommodatingpolitical culture (which now exists in the Federal Republic ofGermany as well) must not be taken to falsifY principles ofjusticethat are valid according to the well-considered judgment of partiesin the original position. Everyone, even those notamongjefferson's