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

282Chapter 6internal to, or constitutive of, the judgment, not merely contingent orexternal to it. ... This follows from the object of deliberation, which isdirected to the very fo rm of our relating together. ... I can express thisno better than by saying that what is at issue here is not "what should I do?"or "how should I conduct myself?" but "how are we to be together, andwhat is to be the institutional setting for that being-together?"79However, this assimilation of political discourses to the clarificationof collective identity does not sit well with the function of thelegislative process that issues from such discourses. Legal statutescertainly contain teleological elements, but these involve morethan just the hermeneutic explication of shared value orientations.By their very structure, laws are defined by the question of whichnorms citizens want to adopt for regulating their common life. Tobe sure, discourses aimed at achieving self-understanding are alsoan importantcomponentofpolitics. In such discourses, the participantswant to get a clear understanding of themselves as membersof a specific nation, as members of a local community, as inhabitantsof a region, and so on; they want to determine which traditionsthey will continue; they strive to determine how they will treat oneanother and how they will treat minorities and marginal groups; inshort, participants in such discourses (or in identity politics) hopeto become clear about the kind of society in which they want to live.But as we have seen, these questions are subordinate to moralquestions and connected with pragmatic questions. The questionthat has priority in legislative politics is how a matter can beregulated in the equal interest of all. The making of norms isprimarily a justice issue, subject to principles that state what isequally good for all. Unlike ethical questions, questions of justiceare not inherently related to a specific collectivity and its form oflife. The law of a concrete legal community must, if it is to belegitimate, at least be compatible with moral standards that claimuniversal validity beyond the legal community.Compromises make up the bulk of political decision-makingprocesses in any case. Under conditions of cultural and societalpluralism, politically relevant goals often embody interests andvalue orientations that are by no means constitutive for the identityof the community at large, and hence are not constitutive for thewhole of an intersubjectively shared form oflife. The interests and