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

161------A Reconstructive Approach to Law II---- -- ----------------description of identity-shaping traditions is combined with thenormative projection of an exemplary way of life justified throughreflection on, and evaluation of, its formative processes. Theimperative sense of this advice can be understood as an "ought"that does not depend on subjective ends or preferences but stateswhich value orientations and practices are in the long run and onthe whole "good for us." Advice of this sort is grounded in ethicaldiscourses. In these, the outcome turns on arguments based on ahermeneutic explication of the self-understanding of our historicallytransmitted form of life. Such arguments weigh value decisionsin this context with a view toward an authentic conduct oflife,a goal that is absolute for us.Up to now we have examined processes of rational political willformationunder two aspects. On the one hand, deliberative pro- ·cesses serve to specify and weigh collective goals as well as toconstruct and select programs and strategies suitable for achievingthese goals. On the other hand, the value horizon in which thesetasks of goal attainment are posed can in turn be included in theprocess of rational will-formation inasmuch as this process involvesachieving self·understanding through the critical appropriation oftradition. In pragmatic discourses, we test the expediency of strategiesunder the presupposition that we know what we want. Inethical-political discourses, we reassure ourselves of a configurationo£ values under the presupposition that we do not yet knowwhat we really want. In this kind of discourse, we can justifYprograms insofar as they are expedient and, taken as a whole, goodfor us. An adequate justification o£policies and laws must, however,consider yet a further aspect, that of justice. Whether we shouldwant and accept a program also depends on whether the correspondingpractice is equally good for all. This shifts the meaning ofthe question "What ought we to do?" yet again.In moral questions, the teleological point of view from which wehandle problems through goal-oriented cooperation gives wayentirely to the normative pointofviewfrom which we examine howwe can regulate our common life in the equal interest of all. A normis just only if all can will that it be obeyed by each in comparablesituations. Moral precepts have the semantic form o£categorical orunconditional imperatives. The imperative sense of these precepts