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

25Law as Social Mediation between Facts and NormsAbove that threshold, validity retains the force of the factual. Thisis true whether such validity takes the form of lifeworld certaintiesthat remain in the background of explicit communication orwhether it appears in the form of communicatively available valueorientations that are nevertheless subject to the rigid communicationpatterns of a bewitching authority and withdrawn from challenge.1.2.5Only with the third step in this reconstruction do we arrive at thecategory of law. The embeddedness of communicative action inlifeworld contexts and the regulation of behavior through strongarchaic institutions explain how social integration in small and ·relatively undifferentiated groups is at all possible on the improbablebasis of processes of reaching understanding. Naturally, in thecourse of social evolution the risk of dissension increases with thescope for taking yes/no positions on criticizable validity claims.The more societal complexity increases and originally ethnocentricperspectives widen, the more there develops a pluralization offorms of life accompanied by an individualization of life histories,while the zones of overlapping lifeworlds and shared backgroundassumptions shrink. In proportion to their disenchantment,sacralized belief complexes fall apart, under differentiated validityaspects, into the more or less freely thematizable contents of atradition set communicatively aflow. Above all, however, processesof social differentiation necessitate a multiplication and variation offunctionally specified tasks, social roles, and interest positions. Onthe one hand, this allows communicative action to escape itsnarrowly circumscribed institutional boundaries for a wider rangeof opportunities. On the other hand, in a growing number ofspheres social differentiation not only unshackles but requires theself-interested pursuit of one's own success.This brief outline should suffice to indicate the problem thatemerges in modern societies: how the validity and acceptance of asocial order can be stabilized once communicative actions becomeautonomous and clearly begin to differ, in the view of the actorsthemselves, from strategic interactions. Naturally, self-interestedaction has always been fused with, or limited by, a normative order.