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

98Chapter 3--- - ------ -action by the idea of self-determination. What self-legislation ormoral autonomy signifies in the sphere of personal life correspondsto the rational natural-law interpretations of political freedom,that is, interpretations of democratic self-legislation in theconstitution of a just society.To the extent that the transmission of culture and processes ofsocialization become reflexive, there is a growing awareness of thelogic of ethical and moral questions. Without the backing ofreligious or metaphysical worldviews that are immune to criticism,practical orientations can in the final analysis be gained only fromrational discourse, that is, from the reflexive forms of communicativeaction itself. The rationalization of a lifeworld is measured bythe extent to which the rationality potentials built into communicativeaction and released in discourse penetrate lifeworld structuresand set them aflow. Processes of individual formation andcultural knowledge-systems offer less resistance to this whirlpool ofproblematization than does the institutional framework. It is here,at the level of personality and knowledge, that the logic of ethicaland moral questions first asserted itself, such that alternatives to thenormative ideas dominating modernity could no longer be justifiedin the long run. The conscious life conduct of the individualperson finds its standards in the expressivist ideal of self-realization,the deontological idea offreedom, and the utilitarian maximof expanding one's life opportunities. The ethical substance ofcollective forms of life takes its standards, on the one hand, fromutopias of nonalienated, solidary social life within the horizon oftraditions that have been self-consciously appropriated and criticallypassed on. On the other hand, it looks to models of a justsociety whose institutions are so constituted as to regulate expectationsand conflicts in the equal interest of all; the social-welfareideas of the progressive increase and just distribution of socialwealth are just further variants of this.One consequence of the foregoing considerations is of particularinterest in the present context: to the extent that "culture" and"personality structures" are charged with ideals of the above sort, alaw robbed of its sacred foundation also comes under duress; as wehave seen, the third component of the lifeworld, "society" as thetotality of legitimate orders, is more intensely concentrated in thelegal system the more the latter must bear the burden of fulfilling