8/2/2019 438427

1/17

Truth, Contingency, and ModernityAuthor(s): Albrecht WellmerSource: Modern Philology, Vol. 90, Supplement (May, 1993), pp. S109-S124Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/438427

Accessed: 09/09/2010 17:33

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to

Modern Philology.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpresshttp://www.jstor.org/stable/438427?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpresshttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpresshttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/438427?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress

8/2/2019 438427

2/17

Truth, Contingency, and ModernityALBRECHT WELLMER

Freie Universitdt Berlin

IIn talking with each other, in lecturing, or in writing, we constantlyraise truth claims of different sorts or, to put it more cautiously-since there might be objections to talking about 'truth' in the case ofmoral or aesthetic claims- validity claims of different sorts. I just didit myself. If I raise a validity claim seriously, I expect everybody else tohave good reasons to agree with what I said-provided he or she un-derstands what I said and has sufficient information, competence,judgment, and so on. In this sense I suppose that my validity claimwould be the right candidate for an intersubjective agreement, basedon good reasons. If, however, somebody with good arguments objectsto what I am saying, I ought to withdraw my validity claim or at leastadmit that some doubt is justified. These things seem trivial but, asyou know, it is trivialities like these which are at the center of the mostexciting philosophical controversies. If I begin to reflect on what agood argument or compelling evidence is, or on the basis of whichcriteria it might be decided what a good argument or compelling evi-dence is (given the fact that people tend to disagree upon these mat-ters), I might easily lose ground from under my feet. One might ask,for instance: If th re is irresolvable disagreement about the possibilityof justifying truth claims, about standards of argumentation or evi-dential support-for example, between members of different linguis-tic, scientific, or cultural communities-can I still suppose that thereare, somewhere, correct standards, right criteria, in short, an objec-tive truth of the matter? Or should I rather think that truth is 'rela-tive' to cultures, languages, communities, or even persons? Whilerelativism (the second alternative) appears to be inconsistent, absolut-ism (the first alternative) seems to imply metaphysical assumptions. Iwill call this the antinomy of truth.? 1993 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0026-8232/93/9004-2009$01.00

S109

8/2/2019 438427

3/17

MODERN PHILOLOGYMuch important philosophical work has been done in recent de-cades to resolve this antinomy of truth, either by trying to show that

absolutism need not be metaphysical or by trying to show that the cri-tique of absolutism need not lead to relativism. Important propo-nents of the first position have been Hilary Putnam, Karl-Otto Apel,and Jurgen Habermas; perhaps the most important proponent of thesecond position has been Richard Rorty. I shall not at this point con-sider the position of Jacques Derrida, according to whom truth is ahopelessly metaphysical notion, but since we cannot do without it,there is no straight route of escape from metaphysics. The philoso-phers I have first mentioned all agree that the idea of truth can beunderstood in a nonmetaphysical and nonrelativistic way. However,while Putnam, Apel, and Habermas charge Rorty with being a relativ-ist, Rorty charges them with remaining metaphysical. This is a highlyinteresting constellation which, I think, once more shows that the an-tinomy of truth is not so easily resolved.In what follows I want to suggest-by questioning the terms of thedebate between Putnam, Apel, and Habermas on the one side, andRorty on the other-my own solution to the antinomy. Naturally, it isimpossible to place Putnam, Apel, and Habermas in one and thesame camp without ignoring tremendous differences between theirrespective philosophical positions. However, all three share a certainconceptual strategy-the strategy of explicating truth in terms ofsome necessary 'idealizations'-which for Rorty is the basic point ofdisagreement. My argument in what follows is an attempt to reinter-pret the disagreement.Putnam has explained truth as rational acceptability under epis-temically ideal conditions: Habermas has explained it as the contentof a rational consensus which is achieved under conditions of an idealspeech situation.1 Putnam's and Habermas's explanations are com-plementary, as Apel has recognized; for while the idea of "epistemi-cally ideal conditions" must refer to a linguistic community in ordernot to become empty or metaphysical, an ideal structure of communi-cation cannot suffice alone to guarantee truth: there must be some1. Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History(Cambridge, 1981), p. 55. Jurgen Haber-mas, "Wahrheitstheorien," in Wirklichkeit nd Reflexion,ed. Helmut Fahrenbach (Pful-lingen, 1973). Reprinted in Jurgen Habermas, Vorstudienund Ergdnzungenzur TheoriedeskommunikativenHandelns (Frankfurt, 1984), esp. pp. 174-83. Below I shall distinguishbetween "strong" and "weak"interpretations of the idea of "necessary idealizations."When Habermas first introduced the idea of an ideal speech situation, he tended towarda strong interpretation; today I think he would more or less agree with the weak inter-pretation for which I am arguing. Putnam, in contrast, has emphasized that he has neveradvocated a "strong" interpretation (in my sense) of his idealization concept. See, e.g.,his preface to Realismwith a Human Face(Cambridge, Mass., 1990), p. viii.

S110

8/2/2019 438427

4/17

Albrecht Wellmer o Truth, Contingency, and Modernityproviso that all the relevant arguments and evidence are available tothe participants in such a situation. Apel consequently has tried tocombine Putnam's and Habermas's basic intuitions and to explaintruth as the ultimate consensus of an ideal communication commu-nity. In this idea the consensus principle of truth is combined with aPeircean principle of convergence concerning not only scientificknowledge but also moral and hermeneutic truth claims.2 What char-acterizes all three attempts to explain truth as rational acceptabilityunder ideal conditions is this: the idealizations which are supposed toexplicate the idea of truth must be supposed to operate already as"necessary presuppositions" on the level of ordinary communicationand discourse.The idea of necessary idealizations involved in the idea of truth is,of course, meant to secure the difference between rational accept-ability (or rational consensus) here and now and rational acceptabil-ity (or rational consensus) simpliciter.This is the difference betweentruth simpliciter(truth in an absolute sense) and what we think (oragree) to be true on the basis of arguments, criteria, and evidence atour disposal here and now. I think that, in fact, some difference likethis is involved in the logical grammar of our notion of truth. For, onthe one hand, we cannot justify truth claims except on the basis ofarguments and evidence available to us and, on the other, our argu-ments or evidence may always prove to be insufficient, forcing us torevise our truth claims. The idea of truth contains a necessary rela-tionship to possible arguments or evidence on which truth claimsmay be based, and it contains a necessary surplus beyond all the par-ticular arguments and evidence which might be available at any giventime and for any particular community of speakers.Now it is precisely the interpretation of this difference betweentruth and rational acceptability by Putnam, Apel, and Habermas towhich Rorty objects.3 In particular, Rorty objects to the idea of "nec-essary idealizations" involved in the notion of truth, and he objects tothe idea that we necessarily must assume some sort of "convergence"in our search for truth. As far as the second objection is concerned, Ibelieve that Rorty is right; however, I think that it is only by restatinghis first objection that we can get beyond the bad alternative of 'ob-jectivism' versus 'relativism' that actually defines what I have calledthe "antinomy of truth."

2. See Karl-Otto Apel, "Fallibilismus, Konsenstheorie der Wahrheit und Letztbe-grundung," in Philosophieund Begrundung,ed. Forum fur Philosophic Bad Homburg(Frankfurt, 1986), pp. 139-63. See also n. 4 below.3. Richard Rorty, "Solidarity or Objectivity?"and "Pragmatism, Davidson and Truth,"both in Objectivism,Relativism,and Truth,vol. 1, PhilosophicalPapers(Cambridge, 1991).

SIll

8/2/2019 438427

5/17

MODERN PHILOLOGYI want to argue that the idea of "necessary idealizations" involved inraising truth claims may be understood in two different ways: in a

strong or "totalizing" and in a weak or "localizing" sense. If the idea isunderstood in its strong sense, it becomes "metaphysical" (taking'metaphysical' in a Derridean way). If the idea is understood in itsweak sense, it becomes innocuous-and, as I shall argue, not only im-mune to Rorty's objections but also crucial to a solution of the anti-nomy that would be superior to Rorty's "ethnocentric" solution. Letme take Putnam's idealization as a first example.On a presupposition of convergencen the search for truth, the ideaof "epistemically ideal conditions" seems to signify epistemic condi-tions under which the full truth, the wholetruth, would be accessible.Even if understood only as a regulative idea, this is still the idea of ab-solute knowledge-of seeing the world as it is seen with God's eyes.Now I believe that Apel is completely right when he insists that theregulative idea involved in the idea of truth (if there is any) cannot bemerely understood in an epistemic sense-that is, as referring merelyto the progress of scientific knowledge.4 If all the different dimen-sions of truth or validity are taken into account, and if it is also takeninto account that truth refers to a linguistic community and the possi-bility of a rational consensus achieved in such a community, then theregulative idea involved in the idea of truth must refer to cognitively,morally, and linguistically ideal conditions all at the same time. Theregulative idea involved in the idea of truth consequently becomesthe idea of an ultimate consensus within an ideal communicationcommunity. Here the idea of full, of 'absolute', truth is combinedwith that of a perfect moral order and a fully transparent situation ofcommunication. It is obvious that this idea of an ideal communica-tion community is metaphysical precisely in a Derridean sense, for itis-if spelled out in all its consequences-the idea of a communica-tion community which would have "escape [d] play and the order ofthe sign."5 This would be a state of full transparency, of absoluteknowledge, of moral perfection-in short, a situation of communica-tion which would transcend the constraints, the opacity, the fragility,and the corporeality of finite human communication. It is Derridawho has pointed out that, in such idealizations, the conditions of the

4. See, e.g., Karl-Otto Apel, "Szientismus oder transzendentale Hermeneutik? ZurFrage nach dem Subjekt der Zeicheninterpretation in der Semiotik des Pragmatismus,"pp. 215-19, and "Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft," pp. 429-31, both inTransformationder Philosophie,vol. 2, Das Apriori der KommunikationsgemeinschaftFrank-furt, 1973).5. Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sci-ences," in Writing and Difference Chicago, 1978),p. 292.

S112

8/2/2019 438427

6/17

AlbrechtWellmer o Truth, Contingency,and Modernitypossibility of what is idealized are negated. Ideal communicationwould be communication beyond the condition of "differance," touse Derrida's term and, therefore, communication outside and be-yond the conditions of the possibility of communication. Inasmuch asthe idea of an ideal communication community, however, implies anegation of the conditions of finite human communication, it impliesa negation of the natural and historical conditions of human life, ofhuman finitude. I think that Nietzsche was the first to point out thatsuch ideas in the end become indistinguishable from that of Nirvana;ideal communication would be the death of communication. Even ifthe idea of an ideal communication community is only a regulativeidea to which nothing can ever really correspond on earth, it remainsparadoxical; for it is part of the force of such regulative ideas thatthey oblige us to work for or toward the realization of this idea. Theparadox is that we should be obliged to strive to realize an idealwhose realization would be the end of human history. The telos is theend; this paradoxical structure marks Apel's explanation of truth asstill metaphysical.It should be noted in passing that Derrida agrees with Apel on thenecessary idealizations involved in the idea of truth. Unlike Apel, how-ever, he recognizes the metaphysical character of these idealizations.Where Apel sees an ultimate foundation of our commitment to Truth(with a capital T), Derrida sees a necessarily metaphysical, logocentricinfection of even our ordinary language, and this has motivated histurn from transcendental foundationalism to deconstruction. AgainI do not find this alternative compelling; let me therefore come backto the "antinomy of truth" and suggest an alternative reading ofthose "necessary idealizations" which, according to Putnam, Apel,and Habermas, are involved in the respective ideas of truth and oftruth-oriented communication.Let me begin again with Putnam. If the idea of "epistemically idealconditions" cannot be understood in the totalizing futuristic sensewhich I have suggested, the only acceptable reading would be thefollowing one. Whenever we raise a truth claim on the basis of whatwe take to be good arguments or compelling evidence, we take theepistemic conditions prevailing here and now as ideal in the follow-ing sense: we presuppose that no arguments or evidence will come upin the future which would put our truth claim into question. This isjust a different way of saying that we take our truth claim to be wellfounded, our arguments to be good arguments, our evidence to beclear evidence. If we want to call it an idealization, it is, as it were, a"performative" idealization-an idealization, that is, which consists inour relyingupon our reasons or evidence as good or compelling. And

S113

8/2/2019 438427

7/17

MODERN PHILOLOGY

relying upon reasons as good or evidence as compelling means ex-cluding the possibility of being proven wrong as time goes on.Reflecting upon our practice of truth-oriented communication anddiscourse we must, of course, grant that we can never exclude the pos-sibility that new arguments or new experiences may force us to reviseour truth claims. This reflective awareness of the fallibility of ourtruth claims might then also be understood as an awareness that whatwe take to be "epistemically ideal conditions" might turn out not to beideal conditions after all. By reflecting upon the different ways inwhich our truth claims may be put into question, we may now also dis-tinguish between different aspects of the "idealization" involved inraising truth claims. What we say may, for example, be criticized asunclear, vague, or confused; the corresponding idealization consistsin our reliance upon the language we use as being clear, understand-able, "transparent." Or our vocabulary as a whole, our theory, our lan-guage game, some of our basic conceptual distinctions might be putinto question; the corresponding "idealization" would consist in ourreliance upon the language we speak as being "in order" as it is.If we understand the "necessary idealizations" involved in the rais-ing of truth claims in this performative sense, these idealizations implyno ideal limit, no totalizing conception of ideal conditions of knowl-edge or communication to be realized (or approximated) in the fu-ture. I would argue, rather, that totalizing conceptions of an ideallimit of knowledge or communication result from an objectivistic mis-reading of idealizations which are essentially performative. The ques-tion, then, is whether we should talk about idealizations at all. Thevery term seems to suggest an ideal standard or an ideal limit, and it isprecisely here that the confusion arises. I want to discuss the question

I have just raised by turning now to the "pragmatic" idealization fo-cused upon by Apel and Habermas-that is, an idealization concern-ing the intersubjective structure of communication and/or discourse.Let me focus on Habermas's notion of an ideal speech situation,which I take to be familiar. The idea of truth, according to Haber-mas, cannot be separated from the idea of rational agreement, and arational agreement would be one that is brought about under theconditions of an ideal speech situation.6 I have already mentionedApel's argument that rational agreement in Habermas's sense is notsufficient to guarantee truth, so I shall discuss Habermas's idea onlyas signifying a necessary idealization involved in any situation of(serious) argumentation. Now, I think that what I said about Put-nam's idealization can be applied to Habermas's idealization as well.

6. See, however, n. 1 above.

S114

8/2/2019 438427

8/17

AlbrechtWellmer o Truth, Contingency,and ModernitySuppose we reach an agreement which we think is based on goodreasons. Then we take for granted that no arguments have been sup-pressed and that none of the participants in the discourse have beenprevented from putting forward their good counterarguments. This,again, is a performative idealization which may always turn out to bewrong, since retrospectively we might discover some external or in-ternal constraints which prevented some (or all) of the speakers fromsaying what otherwise they could have said. And again we would mis-understand this idealization if we understood it as anticipating anideal situation of communication (Apel's misreading) or if we under-stood it as an ideal standard of rational argumentation which couldbe used to 'measure' the rationality of agreements.There is, however, one important difference between Putnam'sand Habermas's idealizations: to suppress arguments in situations ofdiscourse is to suppress people. Accordingly, the idealization which,according to Habermas, is involved in the practice of argumentationforms a kind of bridge between the demands of rationality and thedemands of morality. It carries a normative potential which shows it-self in the interconnection between the modern idea of democracyand that of a public space of political and moral discourse. Even ifthere is, contrary to what Habermas has always assumed, no directlink between universal-pragmatic structures of communication and auniversalist idea of democracy and human rights, there is most cer-tainly a series of links by which the interconnection between truthand rational argumentation is linked with the democratic and liberalideas of modernity.However, it is precisely at this point that it can be shown why the veryterm 'idealization' is misleading. The term as applied to structures ofcommunication or argumentation almost unavoidably signifies anideal structure which we might use as a norm for evaluating real struc-tures of communication and which we might hope to (at least approx-imately) realize in the world at some future point in history. However,the idea of such an ideal structure of intersubjectivity does not makesense. This, I think, is what gives real weight to Nietzsche's, Derrida's,and Rorty's objections to the idealizing constructions of philosophy.It is, however, in interpreting the performative presuppositions ofspeech and argumentation in terms of "necessary idealizations" thatthe apparently innocuous step toward an objectification of those pre-suppositions is taken. Even Derrida still takes this step-only to de-clare that the idealizations are as necessary as they are impossible.Against Derrida, Apel, Putnam, and Habermas I would argue, perhapssomewhat paradoxically, that those idealizations are in fact necessarybut that they are, strictly speaking, no idealizations.

S115

8/2/2019 438427

9/17

MODERN PHILOLOGYII

Having defended a weak interpretation of attempts to explain a non-relativist concept of truth in terms of "necessary idealizations," I nowwant to reconsider some of Rorty's "ethnocentric" tenets in the light ofmy weak defense of what I want to call the "strategy of idealizations."Obviously, my weak and, as it were, contextualist defense of this strat-egy brings me, at least in some respects, close to Rorty's ethnocentrism.Still, I believe that contingency is less dramatic than Rorty wants us tobelieve. I want to show this by reflecting upon what Rorty has called the"contingency of a liberal community," in particular, and upon the re-lationship between contingency and modernity in general.Earlier I distinguished those performative presuppositions that cor-respond to what some philosophers have called "necessary idealiza-tions" from our reflective awareness that all our validity claims as wellas all our performative presuppositions might be called into questionat some point. Now, I think that Rorty would not disagree that thisreflective awareness let me call it a "fallibilistic consciousness" ispart of what he describes as a modern liberal culture. This fallibilisticconsciousness relates closely to what Rorty describes as the "recogni-tion of contingency"-the contingency of our language, our valueorientations, our culture, our institutions. It seems obvious that sucha recognition of contingency will affect our way of dealing with valid-ity claims of all sorts; in particular, it will "infect" the performativesphere of speech and argumentation itself.If we have no access to ultimate foundations and no hope for an ul-timate reconciliation-and this is what Rorty correctly claims to beimplied in the recognition of contingency-then all forms of dogma-tism or foundationalism lose their support. Moreover, the recognitionof contingency implies that in matters which remain doubtful or con-troversial because no compelling arguments or evidence is at hand(think of moral conflicts, court decisions, the Gulf War, historical ex-planations, etc.) we can no longer take it for granted that there neces-sarily is an absolute truth to the matter-somewhere, at the end ofhistory, in God's eyes, in the ultimate consensus-even if we cannotbe sure about it yet. But if this is true, the recognition of contingencymust have consequences for our way of dealing with such doubtful orcontroversial issues: for example, by increasing tolerance and readi-ness to revise judgments, to live with pluralities, to look for new de-scriptions or new interpretations of old problems, or to listen to whatother people have to say. If, finally, the recognition of contingency

7. Richard Rorty, "The Contingency of a Liberal Community," chap. 3 in Contingency,Irony,and Solidarity Cambridge, 1989), pp. 44-69.

S116

8/2/2019 438427

10/17

AlbrechtWellmer o Truth, Contingency,and Modernityimplies the recognition that "finite, mortal, contingently existinghuman beings" cannot "derive the meanings of their lives from any-thing except other finite, mortal, contingently existing human be-ings,"8 then any attempt to impose a theologically, metaphysically, orscientifically determined meaning of life or history on human beingsmust appear deeply discredited. But if the recognition of contin-gency-that is, the destruction of metaphysics, including the meta-physical residues of some modern forms of rationalism-implies thedestruction of the intellectual bases of dogmatism, fundamentalism,intolerance, and fanaticism, then there is a deep and interesting rela-tionship between the arguments for contingency and the argumentsfor a liberal culture. This relationship I want to explore.First of all, it is obvious that the critique of foundationalism andmetaphysics that leads to the recognition of contingency must affectour understanding of the democratic and liberal principles of moder-nity as well. For we can no longer assume that there is someArchimedean point-for example, an idea of reason-in which theseprinciples might be grounded. Thus far one might agree with Rortythat the only possibility of 'justifying' the principles, practices, andinstitutions of a liberal society consists in coherently reconstructingour deepest value attachments, moral orientations, and conceptualdistinctions. This kind of 'justification' will always be circular in somesense, since it will not take us out of the political and moral 'gram-mar' of our own culture; in this sense it will remain an "ethnocentric"justification. What Rorty wants to emphasize is that the language, thepolitical and moral grammar, the practices and institutions of a cul-ture cannot be justified as a whole (and from the outside, as it were),since the "justification game" has a clear sense only within a particularlanguage game but not with respect to language games as a whole.While this thesis seems to be obviously true in somesense-obviouslytrue, that is, if we acknowledge that there is no Archimedean pointoutside our own language and culture-it is not so clear what its im-plications really are. First, it seems to be obvious that we cannot 'jus-tify' a language game, a set of practices, institutions, principles, andconceptual distinctions except by clarifying, reconstructing, trying tomake them coherent from within. This is true even for mathematics,since nobody who has not been 'socialized' into this practice couldpossibly understand the point of it-the meaning of mathematicalconcepts or the force of certain arguments and demonstrations.Something similar is obviously true about justifying a set of politicalprinciples, practices, and institutions like those of a democratic and

8. Ibid., p. 45.

S117

8/2/2019 438427

11/17

MODERN PHILOLOGYliberal tradition. In this case the problem of 'socialization' is evenmore dramatic than in the case of mathematics, since the practicalknowledge that goes into understanding the point of the principles,institutions, and practices of a liberal culture involves "habits of theheart"-that is, moral judgments, emotional responses, and an inter-twining of moral judgment with emotional reactions and patterns ofinterpretation. Again the internal clarification or reconstruction ofthe political 'grammar' of a liberal culture cannot possibly provide ajustification of its principles and practices for somebody who has notin some sense been socialized into its practices.The question remains whether all this implies that democratic andliberal principles define just one possible political language gameamong others, perhaps with the difference that our moral principleswould commit us to respecting the otherness of other cultures, whilethis may not be true the other way around. This question is deeplyperplexing, and I think that no unqualified yes or no can be de-fended. I believe, however, that a qualifiedno can be justified-and byjustification I now mean not justification for us but justification, period.I want to show this by gradually enriching the picture I have sketched.First of all, it should be clear that the internal "reconstructions,""clarifications," or "justifications" of which I have talked may berather different from one another. Internal reconstructions of lib-eral and democratic principles may be conservative or radical, andbetween a "radical" (i.e., a critical) reconstruction of liberal princi-ples and their communitarian critique there may not be a clear-cutboundary. What this shows is that the kind of culture to which we arereferring is not a closed language game but one which, on the basisof its own principles, can relate to itself in a critical and revisionistway. Where I speak about liberal and democratic principles in whatfollows, I always refer to this critical potential which is built into thecorresponding institutions and practices as a tension between what isand what ought to be. Since I have given a more systematic accountof my own understanding of liberal and democratic principles else-where,9 at this point it should be sufficient to emphasize that I un-derstand these principles, taken as a whole, to be directed againstsocial injustice, discrimination against minorities, sexism, culturalimperialism (or "hegemonism"), manipulation of the public, or so-cial violence-that is, like Rorty I do not take these principles asjus-tifying the status quo in our societies. In so doing I suppose thatthere are good arguments, arguments internal to our culture, for un-derstanding those principles in a critical way.

9. Albrecht Wellmer, "Models of Freedom in the Modern World," PhilosophicalForum21 (Fall, Winter 1989/90): 227-52.

S118

8/2/2019 438427

12/17

AlbrechtWellmer o Truth, Contingency,and ModernityThe second step I wish to take-a step which has been already pre-pared by my short reflections on different ways of reconstructing the

political grammar of a liberal culture-concerns the abstraction in-volved in distinguishing between our language (or culture) and theirlanguage (or culture). This abstraction has a suggestive force which, atthe same time, makes it highly misleading. Of course, it is true that Icannot justify my language vis-a-vis somebody who 'plays' an entirelydifferent language game: there are no 'metastandards', there is nometalanguage by reference to which either of us could possibly con-vince the other. This is as obvious as it is trivial. However, the interest-ing cases are obviously not those where somebody would try to justifythe use of a particular language vis-a-vis somebody else who speaks anentirely different language (a rather artificial, not to say absurd, con-struction), but those cases where different, partly overlapping vo-cabularies confront each other and, in particular, cases where newvocabularies are emerging in confrontation with old problems (andwith the language in which these problems had previously beenformulated).Now I would claim that any interesting ordinary situation of argu-mentation contains elements of such a constellation. For, even in ourown language, arguments do not come piece by piece; and the moreinteresting and significant they are, the less the practice of argumen-tation conforms to a formal conception of rationality, according towhich rational argument would correspond to something like amodel of deductive proof. More particularly, there is an element ofholism, an element of innovation, and an element of "difference" in-volved even in our ordinary practice of argumentation. While argu-ing, we often have to make up the contextual setting through whicharguments alone can win the force they may have; argumentation of-ten involves the attempt to set an old problem or a familiar situationin a new light. Consequently, a holistic element of redescription andinnovation is part of most interesting forms of ordinary argumenta-tion. Moreover, the speaking of a 'common language'-if by this wedo not merely mean the most elementary forms of linguistic agree-ment-often is not the starting point of argumentation but only, ifthings go well, its end point. This might be called the element of"difference" involved in our ordinary practice of argumentation.

We would miss, therefore, the point of this practice if we interpretedit in terms of a shared system of fixed rules and criteria which is seman-tically closed. Only if we interpreted the scope of rational argument interms of this limiting case could the distinction between justificationwithin a language and justification of a language become equivalent toa distinction between a sphere of possible arguments and a spherewhere no arguments are possible anymore. Most interesting cases,

Sll9

8/2/2019 438427

13/17

MODERN PHILOLOGY

however, fall in between, as it were. That this is possible at all is, obvi-ously, due to the fact that we can always try to see things from the pointof view of the other, that we can try to get inside a new vocabulary,speaking two languages at the same time and trying to find outwhether the new vocabulary or the new description might illuminateour old experience or solve our old problems. This 'trying out' mighttake time; argumentation always refers back to a context of experi-ence, practice, and reflection; new arguments may lead to new expe-riences, as new experiences may make us accessible to new argumentsor affect our understanding of old arguments.If all this is, approximately, true, rationality in any relevant sense ofthe word cannot end at the borderline of closed language games(since there is no such thing); but then the ethnocentric contextualityof all argumentation proves quite compatible with the raising of truthclaims which transcend the local or cultural context in which they areraised and in which they can be justified. That is, it does in fact makesense to suppose, as I did in the first part of this paper, that the per-formative presuppositions involved in the raising of truth claims donot merely refer to the local context within which these truth claimsare raised and that truth claims transcend any particular context. Pre-cisely in this sense I would defend Habermas's thesis concerning thedialectics of context-immanence and context-transcendence involvedin the practice of truth-oriented speech and argumentation.10 I thinkit is this dialectics which, if correctly understood, gives us the truthcontent of those "strategies of idealization" which I discussed in thefirst part of this paper.If we apply what I have said to Rorty's thesis concerning the contin-gency of a liberal community, this contingency, I think, will appear ina new light; it will not appear quite so dramatic as Rorty wants us tobelieve, since a liberal culture (even less than other cultures) is not aclosed language game. First of all, in terms of temporal verticality, thisculture has a history; and in terms of temporal horizontality, it has anoutside. With respect to both dimensions of otherness-which areboth in some sense accessible to us-there are quite a number ofgood and interesting arguments for democratic and liberal principlesand institutions: think of the history of modern revolutions; the worksof Locke, Kant, Tocqueville, Mill, or Paine; the FederalistPapers;theexperiences of totalitarianism, nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, orreligious and political fundamentalism. Additional arguments maycome from an internal critical reconstruction of the deepest value at-tachments, principles, and self-interpretations of present liberal so-

10. Jiirgen Habermas, "Die Einheit der Vernunft in der Vielfalt ihrer Stimmen," inhis Nachmetaphysischesenken(Frankfurt, 1988), esp. pp. 174-79.

S120

8/2/2019 438427

14/17

Albrecht Wellmer o Truth, Contingency, and Modernitycieties. If we give up the idea of an ultimate foundation of democraticand liberal principles that would not in some sense already make useof the grammar of democratic and liberal politics, and if we allow ex-perience-historical and other-to enter into argumentation, thenthere seems to be a rich network of arguments for supporting andcritically developing democratic-liberal principles and institutions.These arguments may not convince the fanatic nationalist or the re-ligious fundamentalist, but the mere fact that my arguments do notconvince everybody does not imply that they are not good argu-ments. This triviality, I think, should not be forgotten, even thoughit makes a tremendous difference whether it is invoked in a fallibilis-tic spirit or not.Now, it is a characteristic feature of democratic-liberal societies, aslong as their political culture is still alive, that an ongoing public de-bate about the interpretation of constitutional principles-for ex-ample, about civil liberties, civil disobedience, or the relationshipbetween individual liberties and social justice-is an important partof the political culture itself. Democratic and liberal principles andinstitutions seem to have the peculiarity that they can be kept aliveonly by being constantly reinterpreted and redefined in a medium ofpublic discourse and political struggle. Thus a liberal culture appearsas one in which principles and institutions of public discourse haveassumed a constitutive role with respect to the political process itself.In this sense, liberal principles are self-reflexive: in granting equalrights and liberties they grant, at the same time, equal rights and lib-erties with respect to participating in the public process of determin-ing what the content of these equal rights and liberties should be.Now it seems to me rather obvious that there is a noncontingent linkbetween this self-reflexivity of liberal principles-that is, the consti-tutive role of public discourse for democratic-liberal societies-onthe one hand, and the "recognition of contingency" in Rorty's sense,on the other.Rorty himself points to this link when he makes the interesting and,I think, valid point that the "destructive" consequences of theprogress of enlightenment-in particular those which have led to the"recognition of contingency"-should not be seen as underminingbut as strengthening the case for liberal institutions.1' His claim is, inparticular, that the collapse of all attempts to find ultimate founda-tions-including those for a liberal community-makes the case forliberal institutions stronger than weaker. I think this implies the rec-ognition that there are arguments for democratic and liberal princi-ples and institutions which are not ethnocentric in any interesting

11. Rorty, Contingency, rony,and Solidarity,pp. 56-57.

S121

8/2/2019 438427

15/17

MODERN PHILOLOGYsense of the word. For obviously the thesis of contingency cannot beunderstood as applying only to a modern liberal culture; it is, rather,a philosophical thesis concerning the conditions of the possibility ofraising and defending truth claims in general.12 However, while therecognition of contingency must have a deeply subversive effect onany culture that is built upon religious foundations or centeredaround a mythological or even a "scientific" worldview, its subversiveeffect on any attempt at ultimate or total grounding instead providesadditional arguments for the democratic and liberal principles of mo-dernity. Perhaps one might speak of a negativejustification of thoseprinciples. This negative justification will not be an ultimate justifica-tion either. It will be a negative justification, rather, in the sense thatit destroys the intellectual bases of dogmatism, foundationalism, au-thoritarianism, and moral and legal inequality. Yet, by the same to-ken, it singles out democratic and liberal institutions as the only oneswhich could possibly coexist with the recognition of contingency andstill reproduce their own legitimacy. Why should this be so?I think there is a whole complex of reasons for this, from which Ishall single out three important ones. First, democratic and liberalprinciples, if understood in a universalist sense (as they should be, paceRorty) are the only ones compatible with the recognition of irreducibleotherness with respect to basic convictions, life forms, forms of identity,and the like, and which therefore allow (at least conceptually) equalrights to be combined with a respect for otherness, for difference. Thuseven a "politics of difference" presupposes the moral universalismwhich is implicit in the democratic and liberal principles of modernity.Second, democratic and liberal principles, self-reflexive as they are inthe sense mentioned above, demand the institutionalization of a public

12. This claim seems to have some affinity to Apel's thesis that a general principle offallibilism cannot be understood as self-applying (see his "Fallibilismus, Konsenstheorieder Wahrheit und Letztbegrundung" [n. 2 above] pp. 174-84). I do not believe, how-ever, that either a principle of fallibilism or the "recognition of contingency" belongs tothe necessary presuppositions of argumentation as such. My claim, i.e., is more modestthan Apel's: what I want to say is that a thesis of contingency, if seriously entertained,can only be meant to apply to all possible language games and therefore is bound tocome into conflict not only with foundationalist self-interpretations of our own culturebut with those of other cultures as well. If this is true, however, there obviously existsome arguments whose use does not make sense without raising a universal validityclaim, whose scope of applicability cannot be at will "ethnocentrically" restricted. Itthen follows that f the "recognition of contingency" provides arguments for a liberalculture, there are arguments for a liberal culture which are not ethnocentric-in anyinteresting sense of the word-even if one may still claim that it is a matter of contin-gency which arguments are available or understandable at any given point in time. If allthis is true, however, liberal and democratic principles appear much less contingentthan Rorty would assume.

S122

8/2/2019 438427

16/17

AlbrechtWellmer o Truth, Contingency,and Modernityspace-or a space of public spaces-where the very content of theseprinciples, their application and institutionalization, can be deter-mined and redetermined in the medium of political and cultural dis-course and struggle, and thereby can also become a matter of commonconcern. Such a space of 'communal' public freedom, moreover,seems to be the only possible substitute for those forms of substantivelygrounded social solidarity which were characteristic of traditional so-cieties-the only possible substitute, that is, once the traditional basesof social solidarity were destroyed by an Enlightenment that finally ledto the "recognition of contingency."Finally, these democratic and liberal principles are, in some sense,metaprinciples. After the evaporation of substantive common "con-tents" as bases of social solidarity, these principles do not simplydefine a new substantive consensus to replace, for example, a reli-gious one; rather, they design a way of nonviolent dealing with irrec-oncilable dissent in substantive matters and thus restore consensusand solidarity on a more abstract level, demanding "procedural"rather than substantive consensus. The distinction, I admit, is a rela-tive and misleading one, since the "procedure" of dialogue is not aprocedure in any proper sense of the word, and since the "proce-dural" value of dialogue is related to the substantive values of free-dom, solidarity, and justice. What I have in mind, then, is a dynamicinterlocking of formal procedures and institutions, on the one hand,and informal political and cultural discourse and praxis, on theother-an interlocking through which those substantive values canbecome public concerns as well as public projects. So what I havecalled a 'procedural'-in contrast to a 'substantive'-consensus ischaracteristic of a society that can reproduce its own legitimacy onlyby constantly transforming and reforming itself in the medium ofpolitical and cultural discourse.While the recognition of contingency provides, as I have tried toshow, new arguments for democratic and liberal principles and theinstitutions built around them, it still remains a recognition of con-tingency. However, the contingency which cannot be eliminated doesnot indicate a lack of good arguments for democratic and liberalprinciples but, rather, the contingency of their being successfullyinstitutionalized, kept alive, and translated into a form of ethicallife.13 Moreover, democratic and liberal societies might collapse ordisintegrate under the onslaught of social or ecological devastation,racial or ethnic tension, the growth of violence, economic decline,

13. The term "ethical life" is, of course, meant as a translation of Hegel's concept ofSittlichkeit. think there is nothing inherently paradoxical if we take the formal principles

S123

8/2/2019 438427

17/17

MODERN PHILOLOGYor the consequences of economic imperialism. If this happened, themoral substance of democratic and liberal practices and institutionswould disintegrate as well. This is where the force of argumentsends; arguments can only show us why we should not want this tohappen.

and procedural values I have mentioned above (in the sense I have explained them) asthe "substance" of a truly modern form of "substantielle Sittlichkeit." Although specifictraditions, histories, and projects will alwaysbe important for making an individual andcommunal identity possible, these particular bases of identity cannot form the substan-tial core of a democratic and liberal form of ethical life. Inasmuch as such a form ofethical life demands a recognition of difference, of "otherness," it demands, at thesame time, a reflexive distance from any particular tradition, history, and project-i.e.,a recognition of contingency. See Wellmer (n. 9 above).

S124