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

280Chapter 6an interpretation and elaboration of a system of rights in whichprivate and public autonomy are internally related (and must besimultaneously enhanced), then a rather bold constitutional adjudicationis even required in cases that concern the implementationof democratic procedure and the deliberative form of politicalopinion- and will-formation. To be sure, we have to free the conceptof deliberative politics from overly strenuous connotations thatwould put the constitutional court under permanent pressure toact. The court may not assume the role of a regent who takes theplace of an underage successor to the throne. Under the criticalgaze of a robust legal public sphere-a citizenry that has grown tobecome a "community of constitutional interpreters"75-the constitutionalcourt can at best play the role of a tutor. There is no needto idealize this role, as self-assured constitutional scholars havedone, unless one is seeking a trustee for an idealistically depictedpolitical process. This temptation seems to follow from an ethicalconstriction of political discourses that is often but by no meansnecessarily linked with the concept of deliberative politics. Thisequating of political deliberation with processes of collective selfunderstandingis neither sound argumentation theory nor necessaryfor defending an intersubjective approach.According to the communitarian view, there is a necessary connectionbetween the deliberative concept of democracy and thereference to a concrete, substantively integrated ethical community.Otherwise, one supposedly cannot explain how the citizens'orientation to the common good is at all possible. 76 The individual,so the argument goes, can become aware of his membership in acollective form oflife, and therewith become aware of a prior socialbond not at his disposition, only in a practice exercised with othersin common: "Actual participation in political action, deliberationand conflict may make us aware of our more remote and indirectconnections with others, the long-range and large-scale significanceof what we want and are doing."77 In this view, the individualcan get a clear sense of commonalities and differences, and hencea sense of who he is and would like to be, only in the publicexchange with others who owe their identities to the same traditionsand similar socialization processes. In this collective effort toachieve self-understanding, a motive for overcoming egoism and