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

467-Popular Sovereignty as Procedure------------ ----veals to the world one of the foundational postures of conscioushistorical action."9 Our current posture has two features: we stillappeal to the readiness to act and to the political-moral orientationto the future, on the part of those who want to rebuild the existingorder; at the same time, however, we have lost our confidence thatconditions can be changed by revolution.1.2The revolutionary consciousness gave birth to a new mentality,which was shaped by a new time consciousness, a new concept ofpolitical practice, and a new notion oflegitimation. The historicalconsciousness that broke with the traditionalism of nature-likecontinuities; the understanding of political practice in terms ofself-determination and self.-realization; and the trust in rationaldiscourse, through which all political authority was supposed tolegitimate itself-each of these is specifically modern. Under thesethree aspects, a radically this-worldly, postmetaphysical concept ofthe political penetrated the consciousness of a mobilized population.Of course, looking back over the last two hundred years canarouse the suspicion that this understanding of politics has becomeso far removed from its intellectual and cultural origins that therevolutionary consciousness has ceased to be relevant at all. Is it notprecisely the revolutionary signature, specifically inscribed on theyears between 1789 and 1794, that has faded?(a) The revolutionary consciousness was expressed in the convictionthat a new beginning could be made. This reflected a changein historical consciousness.10 Drawn together into a single process,world history became the abstract system of reference for a futureorientedaction considered capable of uncoupling the presentfrom the past. In the background lay the experience of a break withtradition: the threshold to dealing reflexively with cultural transmissionsand social institutions was crossed. The process of modernizationwas experienced as the acceleration of events that wereopen, as it were, to single-minded collective intervention. Thecurrent generation saw itself burdened with responsibility for thefate of future generations, while the example of past generations