Abstract

This article provides a general, theoretical reflection on the decline of the normative dimension in postmodern societies. Modern societies were the first to recognize themselves as societies, that is, to reflect explicitly on the normative basis of their constitution. With the decline of modernity, societal integration, which was based in part on the collective solidarity borne of an idea of Justice, has dissolved into merely `social' forms of integration, legitimized in terms of a claim to operational perfection. At a purely epistemological level, this results in a profound misunderstanding of the subjective and unitary character of society and social action. The article ends in a plea for the recovery of a reflection on values, understood not just as a change in values, but as a change in the relation to values, necessary to confront the irreducible plurality of the world.