Rationality and kinds of normative grounds

The paper discusses problems related to possible gaps between the requirements of rationality and normativity. It shows that the analysis of a practical action from the point of view of instrumental rationality cannot be done without supplementing the context with the requirements of epistemic rationality. Only taking into account the demands of both types of rationality gives us hope to expect that the resulting rational grounds will have normative force. It is also shown that even this normative validity doesn’t always lead to the performance of the rational action. The author analyses the promising distinction of rational grounds offered by J. Gert and notes the strong and weak points of this approach.

Legitimacy, Democracy, and Justice

This chapter attempts to provide a reflexive answer to the question of the relationship between the three basic concepts of political normativity. These concepts are: legitimacy, democracy, and justice. It is commonly assumed that these three concepts are arranged in order of increasing normative content: the concept of legitimacy is thought to involve less extensive normative investments than that of democracy, whereas justice, by contrast, is not only regarded as the highest political good but also seems to be in rivalry with the concept of democracy and to go beyond legitimacy. In addition, “reflexivity” here is taken as the ability to ascertain the ultimate justifying reasons for the claim to normative validity. This is not only a theoretical but also a practical virtue, since practices and institutions can exhibit reflexivity insofar as they adopt a critical stance on their justifiability.

The Theory of EU Constitutional Pluralism: A Crisis in a Crisis?

The paper deals with the validity of constitutional pluralism as a constitutional theory for the European Union and a paradigm for the understanding of EU law in the current times of crisis. It reconstructs the way in which constitutional pluralism came to the fore, the different ways in which the theory was presented, and considers historical criticism it has faced. It then looks at the anomalies that, allegedly, cannot be explained today by constitutional pluralism as a paradigm, linked to the current economic and political crises in the Union. The reconstruction of the debate is complemented with reflections on both the descriptive and normative validity of EU constitutional pluralism’s claims.

Arguments for the Normative Validity of Human Rights. Philosophical Predecessors and Contemporary Criticisms of the 1789 French Declaration of Human and Civic Rights

The paper highlights clashes between different conceptions of right, law and justice crystalizing in the French Declaration of Human and Civic Rights from 1789 and the criticisms it aroused. Hobbes’ Leviathan (1651) and Rousseau’s Social Contract (1762) are discussed as important predecessors. The philosophical conceptions of law, justice and right stated by Hobbes and Rousseau and in the Declaration will be discussed in connection with two seminal criticisms. By excluding women from politics, Olympe de Gouge objected, the Declaration contradicted the universal understanding of human rights. Jeremy Bentham protested against the Declaration’s core idea of inalienable human rights.

Norm und Wahrheit

The article approaches »truth« from a situational point of view, arguing that truth claims are characterized by a certain type of validity claim that is in the last instance of a moral nature. In scenes of truth, a normative type of validity claim, which in Durkheim’s sense refers to the maintenance of a norm even when it is trespassed by an individual, is suspended. As a consequence, scenes of truth cannot tolerate the mismatch between reality construction and empirical observation that is characteristic of normative validity claims. Instead, they tend to eliminate any distance between construction and observation, radicalizing the norm to a quasi-natural law with a moral inflection.