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205 Legitimation Problems in the Modern State

of the legitimacy that is believed in. Nor does comparison of the
belief in legitimacy with the institutional system justified take
us much further. Assuming that idea and reality do not split apart,
what is needed is rather an evaluation of the reconstructed justifi-
catory system itself. This brings us back to the fundamental ques-
tion of practical philosophy. In modern times it has been taken
up reflectively as a question of the procedures and presuppositions
under which justifications can have the power to produce con-
sensus. I have mentioned the theory of justice of John Rawls,
who examines how the original situation would have to be con-
stituted so that a rational consensus about the basic decisions and
basic institutions of a society could come to pass. Paul Lorenzen
examines the methodic norms of the speech practice that makes
rational consensus possible in such practical questions. Finally
Karl-Orto Apel radicalizes this question with regard to the uni-
versal and necessary—that 1s, transcendental—presuppositions of
practical discourse; the normative content of the universal pre-
suppositions of communication is supposed thereby to form the
core of a universal ethics of speech.®* This is the point of con-
vergence toward which the attempts to renew practical philosophy
today seem to strive.
Even if we assent to this thesis, an objection comes readily to
mind. Every general theory of justification remains peculiarly
abstract in relation to the historical forms of legitimate domina-
tion. If one brings standards of discursive justification to bear on
traditional societies, one behaves in an historically ‘‘unjust’’ man-
ner. Is there an alternative to this historical injustice of general
theories, on the one hand, and the standardlessness of mere his-
torical understanding, on the other? The only promising program
I can see is a theory that structurally clarifies the historically ob-
servable sequence of different levels of justification and recon-
structs it as a developmental-logical nexus.°® Cognitive develop-
mental psychology, which is well corroborated and which has
reconstructed ontogenetic stages of moral consciousness in this
way, can be understood at least as a heuristic guide and an
encouragement.