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/438427Accessed: 29/10/2010 10:31

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Truth, Contingency, and Modernity

ALBRECHT WELLMER

Freie Universitdt Berlin

I

In talking with each other, in lecturing, or in writing, we constantly raise truth claims of different sorts or, to put it more cautiously- since there might be objections to talking about 'truth' in the case of moral or aesthetic claims- validity claims of different sorts. I just did it myself. If I raise a validity claim seriously, I expect everybody else to have 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 claim would be the right candidate for an intersubjective agreement, based on good reasons. If, however, somebody with good arguments objects to what I am saying, I ought to withdraw my validity claim or at least admit that some doubt is justified. These things seem trivial but, as you know, it is trivialities like these which are at the center of the most exciting philosophical controversies. If I begin to reflect on what a good argument or compelling evidence is, or on the basis of which criteria 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 possibility of 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 there are, 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? While relativism (the second alternative) appears to be inconsistent, absolut- ism (the first alternative) seems to imply metaphysical assumptions. I will call this the antinomy of truth.

? 1993 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0026-8232/93/9004-2009$01.00

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Much 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 the second position has been Richard Rorty. I shall not at this point con- sider the position of Jacques Derrida, according to whom truth is a hopelessly 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 be understood 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 highly interesting 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 the debate between Putnam, Apel, and Habermas on the one side, and Rorty on the other-my own solution to the antinomy. Naturally, it is impossible to place Putnam, Apel, and Habermas in one and the same camp without ignoring tremendous differences between their respective philosophical positions. However, all three share a certain conceptual strategy-the strategy of explicating truth in terms of some necessary 'idealizations'-which for Rorty is the basic point of disagreement. 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 content of a rational consensus which is achieved under conditions of an ideal speech 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 order not to become empty or metaphysical, an ideal structure of communi- cation cannot suffice alone to guarantee truth: there must be some

1. Hilary Putnam, Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge, 1981), p. 55. Jurgen Haber- mas, "Wahrheitstheorien," in Wirklichkeit und Reflexion, ed. Helmut Fahrenbach (Pful- lingen, 1973). Reprinted in Jurgen Habermas, Vorstudien und Ergdnzungen zur Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Frankfurt, 1984), esp. pp. 174-83. Below I shall distinguish between "strong" and "weak" interpretations of the idea of "necessary idealizations." When Habermas first introduced the idea of an ideal speech situation, he tended toward a 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 never advocated a "strong" interpretation (in my sense) of his idealization concept. See, e.g., his preface to Realism with a Human Face (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), p. viii.

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proviso that all the relevant arguments and evidence are available to the participants in such a situation. Apel consequently has tried to combine Putnam's and Habermas's basic intuitions and to explain truth as the ultimate consensus of an ideal communication commu- nity. In this idea the consensus principle of truth is combined with a Peircean principle of convergence concerning not only scientific knowledge but also moral and hermeneutic truth claims.2 What char- acterizes all three attempts to explain truth as rational acceptability under ideal conditions is this: the idealizations which are supposed to explicate the idea of truth must be supposed to operate already as "necessary presuppositions" on the level of ordinary communication and 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 between truth simpliciter (truth in an absolute sense) and what we think (or agree) to be true on the basis of arguments, criteria, and evidence at our disposal here and now. I think that, in fact, some difference like this is involved in the logical grammar of our notion of truth. For, on the one hand, we cannot justify truth claims except on the basis of arguments and evidence available to us and, on the other, our argu- ments or evidence may always prove to be insufficient, forcing us to revise our truth claims. The idea of truth contains a necessary rela- tionship to possible arguments or evidence on which truth claims may be based, and it contains a necessary surplus beyond all the par- ticular arguments and evidence which might be available at any given time and for any particular community of speakers.

Now it is precisely the interpretation of this difference between truth and rational acceptability by Putnam, Apel, and Habermas to which Rorty objects.3 In particular, Rorty objects to the idea of "nec- essary idealizations" involved in the notion of truth, and he objects to the idea that we necessarily must assume some sort of "convergence" in our search for truth. As far as the second objection is concerned, I believe that Rorty is right; however, I think that it is only by restating his first objection that we can get beyond the bad alternative of 'ob- jectivism' versus 'relativism' that actually defines what I have called the "antinomy of truth."

2. See Karl-Otto Apel, "Fallibilismus, Konsenstheorie der Wahrheit und Letztbe- grundung," in Philosophie und 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, Philosophical Papers (Cambridge, 1991).

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I want to argue that the idea of "necessary idealizations" involved in raising truth claims may be understood in two different ways: in a strong or "totalizing" and in a weak or "localizing" sense. If the idea is understood in its strong sense, it becomes "metaphysical" (taking 'metaphysical' in a Derridean way). If the idea is understood in its weak 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. Let me take Putnam's idealization as a first example.

On a presupposition of convergence in the search for truth, the idea of "epistemically ideal conditions" seems to signify epistemic condi- tions under which the full truth, the whole truth, 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 the regulative idea involved in the idea of truth (if there is any) cannot be merely understood in an epistemic sense-that is, as referring merely to 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 taken into account that truth refers to a linguistic community and the possi- bility of a rational consensus achieved in such a community, then the regulative idea involved in the idea of truth must refer to cognitively, morally, and linguistically ideal conditions all at the same time. The regulative idea involved in the idea of truth consequently becomes the idea of an ultimate consensus within an ideal communication community. Here the idea of full, of 'absolute', truth is combined with that of a perfect moral order and a fully transparent situation of communication. It is obvious that this idea of an ideal communica- tion community is metaphysical precisely in a Derridean sense, for it is-if spelled out in all its consequences-the idea of a communica- tion community which would have "escape [d] play and the order of the sign."5 This would be a state of full transparency, of absolute knowledge, 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 Derrida who has pointed out that, in such idealizations, the conditions of the

4. See, e.g., Karl-Otto Apel, "Szientismus oder transzendentale Hermeneutik? Zur Frage nach dem Subjekt der Zeicheninterpretation in der Semiotik des Pragmatismus," pp. 215-19, and "Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft," pp. 429-31, both in Transformation der Philosophie, vol. 2, Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft (Frank- 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.

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possibility of what is idealized are negated. Ideal communication would be communication beyond the condition of "differance," to use Derrida's term and, therefore, communication outside and be- yond the conditions of the possibility of communication. Inasmuch as the idea of an ideal communication community, however, implies a negation of the conditions of finite human communication, it implies a negation of the natural and historical conditions of human life, of human finitude. I think that Nietzsche was the first to point out that such ideas in the end become indistinguishable from that of Nirvana; ideal communication would be the death of communication. Even if the idea of an ideal communication community is only a regulative idea to which nothing can ever really correspond on earth, it remains paradoxical; for it is part of the force of such regulative ideas that they oblige us to work for or toward the realization of this idea. The paradox is that we should be obliged to strive to realize an ideal whose realization would be the end of human history. The telos is the end; this paradoxical structure marks Apel's explanation of truth as still metaphysical.

It should be noted in passing that Derrida agrees with Apel on the necessary 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, logocentric infection of even our ordinary language, and this has motivated his turn from transcendental foundationalism to deconstruction. Again I do not find this alternative compelling; let me therefore come back to the "antinomy of truth" and suggest an alternative reading of those "necessary idealizations" which, according to Putnam, Apel, and Habermas, are involved in the respective ideas of truth and of truth-oriented communication.

Let me begin again with Putnam. If the idea of "epistemically ideal conditions" cannot be understood in the totalizing futuristic sense which I have suggested, the only acceptable reading would be the following one. Whenever we raise a truth claim on the basis of what we take to be good arguments or compelling evidence, we take the epistemic conditions prevailing here and now as ideal in the follow- ing sense: we presuppose that no arguments or evidence will come up in the future which would put our truth claim into question. This is just a different way of saying that we take our truth claim to be well founded, our arguments to be good arguments, our evidence to be clear evidence. If we want to call it an idealization, it is, as it were, a "performative" idealization-an idealization, that is, which consists in our relying upon our reasons or evidence as good or compelling. And

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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 and discourse we must, of course, grant that we can never exclude the pos- sibility that new arguments or new experiences may force us to revise our truth claims. This reflective awareness of the fallibility of our truth claims might then also be understood as an awareness that what we take to be "epistemically ideal conditions" might turn out not to be ideal conditions after all. By reflecting upon the different ways in which our truth claims may be put into question, we may now also dis- tinguish between different aspects of the "idealization" involved in raising truth claims. What we say may, for example, be criticized as unclear, vague, or confused; the corresponding idealization consists in 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 put into question; the corresponding "idealization" would consist in our reliance 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 imply no 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 ideal limit 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. The very term seems to suggest an ideal standard or an ideal limit, and it is precisely 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 a rational agreement would be one that is brought about under the conditions of an ideal speech situation.6 I have already mentioned Apel's argument that rational agreement in Habermas's sense is not sufficient to guarantee truth, so I shall discuss Habermas's idea only as 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.

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Suppose we reach an agreement which we think is based on good reasons. Then we take for granted that no arguments have been sup- pressed and that none of the participants in the discourse have been prevented from putting forward their good counterarguments. This, again, is a performative idealization which may always turn out to be wrong, since retrospectively we might discover some external or in- ternal constraints which prevented some (or all) of the speakers from saying what otherwise they could have said. And again we would mis- understand this idealization if we understood it as anticipating an ideal situation of communication (Apel's misreading) or if we under- stood it as an ideal standard of rational argumentation which could be used to 'measure' the rationality of agreements.

There is, however, one important difference between Putnam's and Habermas's idealizations: to suppress arguments in situations of discourse is to suppress people. Accordingly, the idealization which, according to Habermas, is involved in the practice of argumentation forms a kind of bridge between the demands of rationality and the demands of morality. It carries a normative potential which shows it- self in the interconnection between the modern idea of democracy and that of a public space of political and moral discourse. Even if there is, contrary to what Habermas has always assumed, no direct link between universal-pragmatic structures of communication and a universalist idea of democracy and human rights, there is most cer- tainly a series of links by which the interconnection between truth and rational argumentation is linked with the democratic and liberal ideas of modernity.

However, it is precisely at this point that it can be shown why the very term 'idealization' is misleading. The term as applied to structures of communication or argumentation almost unavoidably signifies an ideal 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 make sense. 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 of speech and argumentation in terms of "necessary idealizations" that the 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, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, that those idealizations are in fact necessary but that they are, strictly speaking, no idealizations.

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II

Having defended a weak interpretation of attempts to explain a non- relativist concept of truth in terms of "necessary idealizations," I now want to reconsider some of Rorty's "ethnocentric" tenets in the light of my 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 to believe. 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 well as all our performative presuppositions might be called into question at some point. Now, I think that Rorty would not disagree that this reflective awareness let me call it a "fallibilistic consciousness" is part of what he describes as a modern liberal culture. This fallibilistic consciousness relates closely to what Rorty describes as the "recogni- tion of contingency"-the contingency of our language, our value orientations, our culture, our institutions. It seems obvious that such a recognition of contingency will affect our way of dealing with valid- ity claims of all sorts; in particular, it will "infect" the performative sphere 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 be implied in the recognition of contingency-then all forms of dogma- tism or foundationalism lose their support. Moreover, the recognition of 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 of history, in God's eyes, in the ultimate consensus-even if we cannot be sure about it yet. But if this is true, the recognition of contingency must have consequences for our way of dealing with such doubtful or controversial 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 what other 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.

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implies the recognition that "finite, mortal, contingently existing human 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, or scientifically determined meaning of life or history on human beings must 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 the destruction 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 arguments for a liberal culture. This relationship I want to explore.

First of all, it is obvious that the critique of foundationalism and metaphysics that leads to the recognition of contingency must affect our understanding of the democratic and liberal principles of moder- nity as well. For we can no longer assume that there is some Archimedean point-for example, an idea of reason-in which these principles might be grounded. Thus far one might agree with Rorty that the only possibility of 'justifying' the principles, practices, and institutions of a liberal society consists in coherently reconstructing our deepest value attachments, moral orientations, and conceptual distinctions. This kind of 'justification' will always be circular in some sense, 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, the political 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 particular language game but not with respect to language games as a whole.

While this thesis seems to be obviously true in some sense-obviously true, that is, if we acknowledge that there is no Archimedean point outside 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, and conceptual distinctions except by clarifying, reconstructing, trying to make them coherent from within. This is true even for mathematics, since nobody who has not been 'socialized' into this practice could possibly understand the point of it-the meaning of mathematical concepts or the force of certain arguments and demonstrations. Something similar is obviously true about justifying a set of political principles, practices, and institutions like those of a democratic and

8. Ibid., p. 45.

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liberal tradition. In this case the problem of 'socialization' is even more dramatic than in the case of mathematics, since the practical knowledge that goes into understanding the point of the principles, institutions, and practices of a liberal culture involves "habits of the heart"-that is, moral judgments, emotional responses, and an inter- twining of moral judgment with emotional reactions and patterns of interpretation. Again the internal clarification or reconstruction of the political 'grammar' of a liberal culture cannot possibly provide a justification of its principles and practices for somebody who has not in some sense been socialized into its practices.

The question remains whether all this implies that democratic and liberal principles define just one possible political language game among others, perhaps with the difference that our moral principles would commit us to respecting the otherness of other cultures, while this may not be true the other way around. This question is deeply perplexing, and I think that no unqualified yes or no can be de- fended. I believe, however, that a qualified no can be justified-and by justification 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 be rather different from one another. Internal reconstructions of lib- eral and democratic principles may be conservative or radical, and between a "radical" (i.e., a critical) reconstruction of liberal princi- ples and their communitarian critique there may not be a clear-cut boundary. What this shows is that the kind of culture to which we are referring is not a closed language game but one which, on the basis of its own principles, can relate to itself in a critical and revisionist way. Where I speak about liberal and democratic principles in what follows, I always refer to this critical potential which is built into the corresponding institutions and practices as a tension between what is and what ought to be. Since I have given a more systematic account of 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 against social injustice, discrimination against minorities, sexism, cultural imperialism (or "hegemonism"), manipulation of the public, or so- cial violence-that is, like Rorty I do not take these principles as jus- tifying the status quo in our societies. In so doing I suppose that there 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," PhilosophicalForum 21 (Fall, Winter 1989/90): 227-52.

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The 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 their language (or culture). This abstraction has a suggestive force which, at the same time, makes it highly misleading. Of course, it is true that I cannot justify my language vis-a-vis somebody who 'plays' an entirely different language game: there are no 'metastandards', there is no metalanguage 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 justify the use of a particular language vis-a-vis somebody else who speaks an entirely 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 new vocabularies are emerging in confrontation with old problems (and with the language in which these problems had previously been formulated).

Now I would claim that any interesting ordinary situation of argu- mentation contains elements of such a constellation. For, even in our own language, arguments do not come piece by piece; and the more interesting and significant they are, the less the practice of argumen- tation conforms to a formal conception of rationality, according to which rational argument would correspond to something like a model of deductive proof. More particularly, there is an element of holism, 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 which arguments alone can win the force they may have; argumentation of- ten involves the attempt to set an old problem or a familiar situation in a new light. Consequently, a holistic element of redescription and innovation is part of most interesting forms of ordinary argumenta- tion. Moreover, the speaking of a 'common language'-if by this we do not merely mean the most elementary forms of linguistic agree- ment-often is not the starting point of argumentation but only, if things 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 interpreted it 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 in terms of this limiting case could the distinction between justification within a language and justification of a language become equivalent to a distinction between a sphere of possible arguments and a sphere where no arguments are possible anymore. Most interesting cases,

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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 point of 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 out whether the new vocabulary or the new description might illuminate our old experience or solve our old problems. This 'trying out' might take 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 arguments or affect our understanding of old arguments.

If all this is, approximately, true, rationality in any relevant sense of the word cannot end at the borderline of closed language games (since there is no such thing); but then the ethnocentric contextuality of all argumentation proves quite compatible with the raising of truth claims which transcend the local or cultural context in which they are raised and in which they can be justified. That is, it does in fact make sense to suppose, as I did in the first part of this paper, that the per- formative presuppositions involved in the raising of truth claims do not merely refer to the local context within which these truth claims are raised and that truth claims transcend any particular context. Pre- cisely in this sense I would defend Habermas's thesis concerning the dialectics of context-immanence and context-transcendence involved in the practice of truth-oriented speech and argumentation.10 I think it is this dialectics which, if correctly understood, gives us the truth content of those "strategies of idealization" which I discussed in the first 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 in a new light; it will not appear quite so dramatic as Rorty wants us to believe, since a liberal culture (even less than other cultures) is not a closed language game. First of all, in terms of temporal verticality, this culture has a history; and in terms of temporal horizontality, it has an outside. With respect to both dimensions of otherness-which are both in some sense accessible to us-there are quite a number of good and interesting arguments for democratic and liberal principles and institutions: think of the history of modern revolutions; the works of Locke, Kant, Tocqueville, Mill, or Paine; the Federalist Papers; the experiences of totalitarianism, nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, or religious and political fundamentalism. Additional arguments may come 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," in his Nachmetaphysisches Denken (Frankfurt, 1988), esp. pp. 174-79.

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cieties. If we give up the idea of an ultimate foundation of democratic and liberal principles that would not in some sense already make use of the grammar of democratic and liberal politics, and if we allow ex- perience-historical and other-to enter into argumentation, then there seems to be a rich network of arguments for supporting and critically 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 not convince everybody does not imply that they are not good argu- ments. This triviality, I think, should not be forgotten, even though it 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, as long 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 relationship between individual liberties and social justice-is an important part of the political culture itself. Democratic and liberal principles and institutions seem to have the peculiarity that they can be kept alive only by being constantly reinterpreted and redefined in a medium of public discourse and political struggle. Thus a liberal culture appears as one in which principles and institutions of public discourse have assumed a constitutive role with respect to the political process itself. In this sense, liberal principles are self-reflexive: in granting equal rights 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 link between this self-reflexivity of liberal principles-that is, the consti- tutive role of public discourse for democratic-liberal societies-on the 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 the progress of enlightenment-in particular those which have led to the "recognition of contingency"-should not be seen as undermining but as strengthening the case for liberal institutions.1' His claim is, in particular, that the collapse of all attempts to find ultimate founda- tions-including those for a liberal community-makes the case for liberal 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, Irony, and Solidarity, pp. 56-57.

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sense of the word. For obviously the thesis of contingency cannot be understood as applying only to a modern liberal culture; it is, rather, a philosophical thesis concerning the conditions of the possibility of raising and defending truth claims in general.12 However, while the recognition of contingency must have a deeply subversive effect on any culture that is built upon religious foundations or centered around a mythological or even a "scientific" worldview, its subversive effect on any attempt at ultimate or total grounding instead provides additional arguments for the democratic and liberal principles of mo- dernity. Perhaps one might speak of a negative justification of those principles. This negative justification will not be an ultimate justifica- tion either. It will be a negative justification, rather, in the sense that it 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 ones which could possibly coexist with the recognition of contingency and still reproduce their own legitimacy. Why should this be so?

I think there is a whole complex of reasons for this, from which I shall single out three important ones. First, democratic and liberal principles, if understood in a universalist sense (as they should be, pace Rorty) are the only ones compatible with the recognition of irreducible otherness with respect to basic convictions, life forms, forms of identity, and the like, and which therefore allow (at least conceptually) equal rights to be combined with a respect for otherness, for difference. Thus even a "politics of difference" presupposes the moral universalism which is implicit in the democratic and liberal principles of modernity. Second, democratic and liberal principles, self-reflexive as they are in the 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 of fallibilism cannot be understood as self-applying (see his "Fallibilismus, Konsenstheorie der 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 to the necessary presuppositions of argumentation as such. My claim, i.e., is more modest than 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 to come into conflict not only with foundationalist self-interpretations of our own culture but with those of other cultures as well. If this is true, however, there obviously exist some arguments whose use does not make sense without raising a universal validity claim, whose scope of applicability cannot be at will "ethnocentrically" restricted. It then follows that if the "recognition of contingency" provides arguments for a liberal culture, there are arguments for a liberal culture which are not ethnocentric-in any interesting 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 all this is true, however, liberal and democratic principles appear much less contingent than Rorty would assume.

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space-or a space of public spaces-where the very content of these principles, 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 common concern. Such a space of 'communal' public freedom, moreover, seems to be the only possible substitute for those forms of substantively grounded social solidarity which were characteristic of traditional so- cieties-the only possible substitute, that is, once the traditional bases of social solidarity were destroyed by an Enlightenment that finally led to 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 simply define 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 consensus and 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 a procedure 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 dynamic interlocking of formal procedures and institutions, on the one hand, and informal political and cultural discourse and praxis, on the other-an interlocking through which those substantive values can become public concerns as well as public projects. So what I have called a 'procedural'-in contrast to a 'substantive'-consensus is characteristic of a society that can reproduce its own legitimacy only by constantly transforming and reforming itself in the medium of political and cultural discourse.

While the recognition of contingency provides, as I have tried to show, new arguments for democratic and liberal principles and the institutions built around them, it still remains a recognition of con- tingency. However, the contingency which cannot be eliminated does not indicate a lack of good arguments for democratic and liberal principles but, rather, the contingency of their being successfully institutionalized, kept alive, and translated into a form of ethical life.13 Moreover, democratic and liberal societies might collapse or disintegrate 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 of Sittlichkeit. I think there is nothing inherently paradoxical if we take the formal principles

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or the consequences of economic imperialism. If this happened, the moral substance of democratic and liberal practices and institutions would disintegrate as well. This is where the force of arguments ends; arguments can only show us why we should not want this to happen.

and procedural values I have mentioned above (in the sense I have explained them) as the "substance" of a truly modern form of "substantielle Sittlichkeit." Although specific traditions, histories, and projects will always be important for making an individual and communal 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 of ethical life demands a recognition of difference, of "otherness," it demands, at the same time, a reflexive distance from any particular tradition, history, and project-i.e., a recognition of contingency. See Wellmer (n. 9 above).

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