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

418Chapter 9natural talents, capaCities, and capabilities . . . . Not only does eachindividual have an interest in this, . .. but democratic society as a wholedepends on the citizens' decisions having a certain quality, however thatquality is defined. For this reason society also has an interest in the goodquality of enfranchised citizens: specifically, it has an interest in theirbeing informed, in their capacity to reflect and to consider the consequencesof their politically relevant decisions, in their will to formulateand assert their interests in view of the interests of their fellow citizens aswell as future generations. In short, it has an interest in their "communicativecompetence" . . . . The unequal distribution of basic goodsdiminishes the quality of civic virtues and thus, as a result, the rationalitythat can be attained by collective decisions as well. For this reason, a policyof compensating for the unequal distribution of social goods can bejustified as a "politics of qualifications for citizenship."49Of course, this interpretation must not end up functionalizing allbasic rights for the democratic process, since negative liberties alsohave an intrinsic value.509.2.3The welfare paradigm of law is oriented exclusively toward theproblem of the just distribution of socially produced life opportunities.By reducing justice to distributive justice, it misses the freedom-guaranteeingmeaning oflegitimate rights: indeed, the systemof rights only spells out what those who participate in the selforganizationof a community of free and equal citizens must alwaysalready implicitly presuppose. The idea of a just society is connectedwith the promise of emancipation and human dignity. Thedistributive aspect of equal legal status and equal treatment-thejust distribution of social benefits-is simply what results from theuniversalistic character of a law in tended to guarantee the freedom ,and integrity of each. The normative key is autonomy, not wellbeing.In a legal community, no one is free as long as the freedomof one person must be purchased with another's oppression. Thedistribution of compensations only follows from an equal distributionof rights, which in turn results from the mutuality of recognizingall as free and equal members. Under this aspect of equalrespect, subjects have a claim to equal rights. The complementarymistake of the liberal paradigm lies in reducingjustice to an equal