Between Fact and Norm: On the Discourse Theory of Law and a Rule of Law State

Author: Habermas
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: The Life·Reading·New Press has always attached great importance to introducing foreign academic thought, which has been highly beneficial for the development of China's own intellectual and cultural traditions. Since the mid-1980s, thanks to the strong support of friends in the fields of translation and publishing, our press has successively published several comprehensive libraries and thematic translation series, which have had a positive impact on a broad readership. I propose to clarify the paradigmatic background understanding of law and constitution, which targets the increasingly prevalent legal skepticism in the legal academia, particularly what I call pseudo-realism, which undervalues the empirical utility of the normative presuppositions of existing legal practices. In our ongoing discussions since the 17th century about the legal constitution of political communities, a reflection on the moral self-understanding of the entire modern society has also been revealed. This self-understanding is not only evident in the various manifestations of universalist moral consciousness but also in the free institutions of the democratic and rule-of-law state. The task of the discourse ethics is to reconstruct this self-understanding in a way that maintains its normative core, resisting both scientistic reduction and aesthetic assimilation. This is an extraordinary work. In a sense, it may be Habermas's best work.