The Reconstruction Of The Validity Of Law

As long as human beings are to coordinate their actions with the help of law,those questions as to what law is and what valid law is should not be deserted.For leaving those questions pending indicates that we have forsake the right of fighting against the coercion force of law by questioning the legitimacy and validity of it.In a modern democratic state under the rule of law,every citizen has been promised the right of self-determination as a member of the legal community.However,facing the overlap of more and more diverse social characters,this promise is now undertaking heavier and heavier burden of argumentation and persuasion.Nevertheless,voice of the divergence is without doubt becoming louder and louder since the numbers of the specific group members with whom we share consensus are decreasing beacause of the increasement of social characters.But if we choose to cut the feet to fit the shoes facing the need of social integration and compel the integration,then it is unavoidable that we will put the cart before the horse.Democracy and the rule of law shall be the constitution serving free and equal subjects instead of the purpose itself.As the most prestigious social theorist,Habermas is a rare interdisciplinary theorist in contemporary society who has set his foot in sociology,philosophy,politics,jurisprudence and other fields.Growing up in the shadow of Nazi,Habermas chose to become a responsible public intellectual after he had witnessed Martin Heidegger's attitude towards Nazi and has been passionate about the society ever since.His theory of communicative action insists to sustain modernity and reason in the storm of postmodernity while absorbing all kinds of ideas from other schools.In the presence of the criticism of the Enlightment from his predecessors in Frankurt school,he claims that the cause of Enlightment can only be finished by even more radical enlightment;similarly,he believes that the cause of democracy shall only be finished by even more radical democracy in the field of politics.In his old age,Habermas switched his horizon to the field of jurisprudence and his book,Between Facts and Norms-Contributions to a Discourese Theory of Law and Democracy,had become a jurisprudence masterpiece since it was published.His encyclopedical knowledge has brought us a new angle to look at the classic question,what is valid law.His proceduralist paradigm of law realized the old promise of democratic state under the rule of law by accomplishing the goal to return both the right and the obligation of argumentation for legitimacy to the members of the legal community from a perspective of discourse theory.