Coping in Politics with Indeterminate Norms

Download or read book Coping in Politics with Indeterminate Norms written by Benjamin Gregg and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are social equity, political fairness, and legal justice possible within a liberal political order, even if norms are indeterminate? The modern world is distinguished by both its complexity and the absence of a single theory, principle, or tradition with the authority to constrain us. Coping in Politics with Indeterminate Norms demonstrates that while moral validity is relative rather than absolute, and cultural meanings local rather than universal, social integration and democratic politics are still attainable goals. Benjamin Gregg fashions a theory that combines proceduralism with pragmatism—an "enlightened localism"—that adjudicates among competing normative commitments and interpretations using local criteria in the absence of universal standards. The theory is applied to three empirical domains: social criticism, public policy, and law and morality.