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

9Law as Social Mediation between Facts and Normsexplains, on the one hand, the structure and meaning of individualrights and, on the other hand, the idealist connotations of a legalcommunity-as an association of free and equal citizens, thiscommunity determines for itself what rules should govern socialinteractions (section 1.3).1.1 Meaning and Truth: On the Immanent Tension betweenFacticity and ValidityRecasting the basic concepts of "practical reason" in terms of a"communicative rationality" has the advantage of not cutting socialtheory off from the issues and answers developed in practicalphilosophy from Aristotle to Hegel. In fact, it is far from clear thatthe price we have to pay for the premises of postmetaphysical ·thinking must be an indifference to such questions, which in anycase continue to be felt within the lifeworld. As long as theory doesnot itself block its access to the fund of everyday intuitions availableto laypersons, methodological grounds are enough to prohibit itfrom ignoring the problems that objectively impose themselves onparticipants. To be sure, practical philosophy has taken its basicquestions ("What ought I do?" or "What is good for us in the longrun and on the whole?") from everyday life in an unmediated way,treating these questions without the objectivating filter of socialscience. The renunciation of the basic concept of practical reasonsignals a break with this naive normativism. But even the successorconcept, that of communicative reason, still retains portions of theidealist heritage. In the context of an explanatory theory, theseidealist elements are by no means an unmixed blessing.However far removed today's concept of reason is from itsPlatonic origins, and however much it may have been changed byparadigm shifts, it is still constituted by a reference, if not to idealcontents (let alone to Ideas), then to idealizing, limit conceptions.No idealization remains satisfied with concepts that are merelymimetic adaptations to reality as given. When this operation withthe concept of communicative reason is even ascribed to socialreality itself-incorporated in it, as it were-the empiricist's suspicionsagainst any kind of confounding of reason and reality perkup. In what sense could something like communicative reason be