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

180Chapter 4argumentation process meant to ground the reasonable presumptionthat fallible decisions are right. Note, too, that it is appropriateto qualifY the majority, depending on the matter at issue. Moritydecisions are generally constrained by basic rights protecting theminority, for in exercising their political autonomy citizens mustnot violate the system of rights that first constitutes this autonomy.47Majority rule plays a different role in compromises; in bargaining,voting results provide indicators for a given distribution of power.48The democratic procedure that institutionalizes the forms of communicationnecessary for a rational political will-formation musttake various conditions of communication into account at the sametime. Legislation is carried out in a complex network that includesprocesses of reaching understanding as well as bargaining. Herepragmatic and legal discourses, which open and conclude ourprocess model,49 are best understood as matters requiring expertopinion. If we disregard how the input and processing of suchinformation is organized, then the rational character of parliamentarydeliberations is to be sought primarily in the fair balancing ofinterests, the clarification of ethical self-understanding, and themoral justification of regulations. Beyond the pragmatic questionof what we can do with regard to programs and strategies whosegoals are already settled, political opinion- and will-formation mustfirst of all respond to three questions: the question underlyingcompromise formation, that is, how we can reconcile competingpreferences; the ethical-political question of who we are and whowe seriously want to be; and the moral-practical question of howwe ought to act in accordance with principles of justice. In negotiationsthat involve the balancing of interests, an aggregated will candevelop from the coordination and adaptation of different preferences;in hermeneutical discourses of self-understanding, an authenticwill can arise from shared value orientations; and in moraldiscourses of justification and application, an autonomous will canemerge from shared insights. In each of these negotiations anddiscourses, respectively different kinds of arguments count. Theprocess of argumentation in each case is in turn carried out in adifferent form of communication, at least insofar as forms ofcommunication reflect the required patterns of argumentation. Atfirst glance, all of these communicative forms display similarnamely,egalitarian-surface structures. Only a differentiated ex-