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

36Chapter 1of reasons). The ideal tension breaking into social reality stemsfrom the fact that the acceptance of validity claims, which generatesand perpetuates social facts, rests on the context-dependent acceptabilityof reasons that are constantly exposed to the risk ofbeing invalidated by better reasons and context-altering learningprocesses.These properties of communicative action explain why the symbolicallystructured lifeworld, mediated by interpretations andbeliefs, is shot through with fallible suppositions of validity. Theyhelp us see why behavioral expectations that depend on suchfallible suppositions acquire at best a precarious kind of stability.This stability depends on achievements of social integration thatward off the ever-present danger of destabilization resulting fromrationally motivated dissent. To be sure, reasons count only againstthe background of context-dependent standards of rationality;28but reasons that express the results of context-altering learningprocesses can also undermine established standards of rationality.We have dealt with two strategies that counter the risk of dissensionand therewith the risk of instability built into the communicativemode of social reproduction in general: on the one hand,circumscribing the communicative mechanism and, on the other,giving this mechanism unhindered play. The risk built into communicativeaction is circumscribed by those intuitive backgroundcertainties that are accepted without question because they areuncoupled from any communicatively accessible reasons that onecould deliberately mobilize. Entrenched below the threshold ofpossible thematization, these behavior-stabilizing certainties thatmake up the lifeworld background are cut off from that dimension-openedup only in communicative action-in which we candistinguish between the justified acceptability and the mere acceptanceof beliefs and reasons. We have observed a similar fusion offacticity and validity in those value orientations that were bound tosacred worldviews and to the spellbinding authority of stronginstitutions. This archaic form of authority was not based on thefact that normative beliefs remained in the background, that theycould not be thematized and connected with reasons; it was basedrather on a prescriptive choice of themes and the rigid patterningof reasons. By putting a hold on the communicative flux of reasons,