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

160Chapter 4and effects according to value preferences and chosen ends. Thesedirectives have the semantic form of conditional imperatives.Ultimately, they borrow their validity from the empirical knowledgethey take in. They are justified in pragmatic discourses. In these,the outcome turns on arguments that relate empirical knowledgeto given preferences and ends and that assess the (usually uncertain)consequences of alternative choices according to previouslyaccepted maxims or decision rules.Of course, as soon as the orienting values themselves becomeproblematic, the question "What ought we to do?" takes onebeyond the horizon of purposive rationality. Sometimes conflictingpreferences express oppositions between interests that cannotbe defused at the level of discourse. At other times, however, thecontested interest positions and value orientations are so interwovenwith a community's intersubjectively shared form of life thatserious decisions about values touch on an unclarified collectiveself-understanding. Ethical-political questions pose themselves fromthe perspective of members who, in the face ofimportantlife issues,want to gain clarity about their shared form of life and about theideals they feel should shape their common life. The "existential"question of who I am and would like to be, which is posed in thesingular, is repeated in the plural-and is thus given a differentmeaning. 28 The identity of a group refers to the situations in whichthe members can utter an emphatic "we"; it is not an ego identitywrit large but rather supplements the individual's identity. How wemake our native traditions and forms of life our own by selectivelydeveloping them determines who we recognize ourselves to be inthese cultural transmissions-who we are and would like to be ascitizens. Serious value decisions result from, and change with, thepoliticocultural self-understanding of a historical community. Enlightenmentover this self-understanding is achieved through ahermeneutics that critically appropriates traditions and therebyassists in the intersubjective reassurance or renovation of authenticlife orientations and deeply held values.29Ethical questions are answered with clinical advice based on areconstruction of the form of life that has been brought to awarenesswhile being critically probed and appropriated. This advicecombines descriptive and normative components. That is, the