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

408Chapter 9what shatters the expectation of justice. Both views are fixated onthe normative implications of how a legally protected negativestatus functions in a given social context. This means that both arefixated on the question of whether it suffices to guarantee privateautonomy through individual liberties, or whether on the contrarythe conditions for the genesis of private autonomy must be secured bygranting welfare entitlements. Both views lose sight of the internalrelation between private and political autonomy, and thus lose sightof the democratic meaning of a community's self-organization.The still-unresolved dispute between these two parties is focused onspecifying the material preconditions for the equal status of legalpersons as addressees of the legal order. These persons are autonomous,however, only insofar as they can at the same time understandthemselves as authors of the law to which they are subject asaddressees.In justifying the system of rights, we saw that the autonomy ofcitizens and the legitimacy of law refer to each other. Underpostmetaphysical conditions, the only legitimate law is one thatemerges from the discursive opinion- and will-formation of equallyenfranchised citizens. The latter can in turn adequately exercisetheir public autonomy, guaranteed by rights of communicationand participation, only insofar as their private autonomy is guaranteed.A well-secured private autonomy helps "secure the conditions"of public autonomy just as much as, conversely, theappropriate exercise of public autonomy helps "secure the conditions"of private autonomy. This mutual dependency, or circularreinforcement, is manifested in the genesis of valid law. This isbecause legitimate law reproduces itself only in the forms of aconstitutionally regulated circulation of power, which should benourished by the communications of an unsubverted public sphererooted in the core private spheres of an undisturbed lifeworld viathe networks of civil society. With this conception, the burden ofnormative expectations in general shifts from the level of actors'qualities, competences, and opportunities to the forms of communicationin which an informal and noninstitutionalized opinion- andwill-formation can develop and interact with the institutionalizeddeliberation and decision making inside the political system. Inplace of the zero-sum game between the competing initiatives of