First of all, people for tens of thousands of years *have* communicated with a normative foundation: the sacred, coagulated communication congealed through ritual praxis. A community is a community *because* there is a normative foundation... and conflict occurs *because* this comes to be contested in one way or another. The reason why, in a democratic society, there is conflict has to do with the norms and rules that constitute this particular kind of society. If you think something is wrong with capitalism, you are disputing a) the norms that underlie it b) the application of those norms or c) the 'coherency' of the translation of normative rules to the execution of power. Whenever someone enacts a social criticism, the normative is precisely what is at stake. In the case of science, like the distance to the moon or something, the normative element at stake is truth. We expect one another to be truthful... and when we suspect that a claim is false, we challenge it. This is not so different in matters of law. Habermas argues that in modernity there is a normative ground that is universal: communicative action. It is a ground that anyone could agree to - in a theoretical sense. In practice, we run awry of the normative ideal that is presupposed whenever we argue, but that's ok - until we dispute this normative ground to begin with. The disputation of the normative ground of democracy is *always* a deferral of autonomy and solidarity and a self-contradictory defense of authoritarian norms: we should do this because it was the way it was done. That's fine, but this alternative to 'autonomy and solidarity' requires that certain people are excluded from politics. Habermas's model generates an inclusive politics. This isn't to say that all arguments are equal, they are not. But it is not up to any one individual to decide this, it is the task of a political community, and a community can only be political if there is the possibility of contestation.
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