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

473-Popular Sovereignty as Procedure--- -- --------·----The point of this reflection is the unification of practical reasonand sovereign will, of human rights and democracy. A rationalstructure is inscribed in the autonomy of the legislative practiceitself, so that the reason that legitimates political authority nolonger has to rush ahead of the sovereign will of the people andanchor human rights in a imaginary state of nature, as it did inLocke. Because it can express itself only in general and abstractlaws, the united will of the citizens must perforce exclude allnongeneralizable interests and admit only those regulations thatguarantee equal liberties to all. The exercise of popular sovereigntysimultaneously secures human rights.Through Rousseau's J acobin disciples, this idea kindled practicalenthusiasm and provoked liberal opposition. The critics insistedthat the fiction of the unified popular will could be realized only at ·the cost of masking or suppressing the heterogeneity of individualwills. In fact, Rousseau had already imagined the constitution of thepopular sovereign as something like an existential act of sociationthrough which isolated individuals were transformed into citizensoriented toward the common good. These citizens comprise themembers of a collective body; they are the subject of a legislativepractice that has been freed from the individual interests of privatepersons who are merely passively subjected to legal statutes. All theradical varieties ofRousseauianism labor under this moral overburdeningof the virtuous citizen. The assumption of republicanvirtues is realistic only for a polity with a normative consensus thathas been secured in advance through tradition and ethos: "Now theless the individual wills relate to the general will, that is to saycustomary conduct to the laws, the mo ' re repressive force has to beincreased."15 Liberal objections to Rousseauianism can thus drawon Rousseau himself: modern societies are not homogeneous.2.2The opponents emphasize the diversity of interests that must bebrought into balance and the pluralism of opinions that must bebrought into a majority consensus. In fact, the critique leveledagainst the "tyranny of the majority" appears in two differentvariants. The classical liberalism ofTocqueville understands popu-