1. The paper on which this chapter is based started out as a critique of Habermasian thought, and made several detours in political philosophy before receiving Habermas’s most appreciated and illuminating direct reply at the 1994 Tilburg symposium on Faktizität and Geltung. Parts of it were already submitted on prior occasions, in particular at the meeting of the working group on Critical Theory (Utrecht, 19–4–1991), at a seminar on Carl Schmitt (Leiden, 15–12–1992), at a public lecture on the Claude Lefort’s ideas at the eve of his honorary doctorate (Tilburg, 18–9–1992) and at the 1993 IVR World Congress in Reykjavik. I thank all who made comments and asked questions. I am also indebted to my colleague Dr. Mogobe Ramose at Tilburg for his incisive remarks.
2. I am reluctant to call it a principle of discourse,as, for one thing, discourse and Diskurs are far from identical in meaning and, for another, I am not sure whether or not Habennas’s principle is meant to serve both meanings.
3. eine Solidarität unter Fremden - unter Fremden die auf Gewalt verzichten und die sich, bei der kooperativen Regelung ihres Zusammenlebens, auch das Recht zugestehen, für einander Fremden zu bleiben.’ (my translation, offered with the caveat that `Fremden’ is ambiguous between `strangers’ and `foreigners’. I chose the more political term. The italics are Habermas’s.) Cf. Habermas ( 1992: 374 ).
4. Though it is quite conceivable to `intersubjectively enlarge’ this first person plural (Habermas (1992: 280)), the enlarged `we’ will still be a `we’ distinct from `others’. In order to ground that distinction, this `we’ will have to refer to a realm that transcends what is, for that `we’, social reality. By hypothesis it cannot find such a point of reference, in social reality itself, since reference to this point is what constitutes social reality in the first place.
5. This section is indebted to both Weyembergh’s (1988) and Claude Lefort’s insights, to which I shall turn within a few paragraphs.