Between Différance and Intersubjectivity: The Concept of Limited Rationality in Constitutional Democracy

Abstract

By placing side by side Jacque’s Derrida differance and Jurgen Habermas’s intersubjectivity, it seems that a productive and invaluable dialogue between them is possible, for they show, through distinct views, how limited rationality is for the dilemmas of constitutional democracy and constitutional adjudication. This limited rationality, in turn, is the result of the perception of the fallible character of knowledge, of its incapacity to completely recollect and gather the complexities and tensions of history, and of its impossibility of entirely doing justice to the other’s otherness. In the theme of justice in particular, these two views result in a tense but productive relationship between the idea of symmetrical justice, as equal treatment, and asymmetrical justice, as the “infinite heterogeneity”. This agony, which has implications in theories such as Chantal Mouffe’s agonism and Christoph Menke’s paradoxical dualism at the very core of equality, leads, finally, to the perception that any resolution in this matter is a non-resolution. In this case, the resolution as a non-resolution inscribes in the practices of constitutional democracy an agony to do justice here and now while negotiating with a history that is always insufficiently recollected and gathered. It is in this dualism, this negotiation where the concept of limited rationality is unfolded, revealing how the tensions and dilemmas of constitutional democracy, either in the question of history or in the question of justice, are complex and cannot be reduced to the idea that a methodology, as long as filled with arguments, can provide rationality.