now consider justiWed may not be so before diVerent audiences in the future.
In the same way, for Derrida, the irreducible gap between the conditioned
and unconditioned forms of the concept removes any basis for good con-
science about present instantiations of our political virtues. The unavoidable
reference to the unconditioned form of the concept ensures the question of
the conditions under which it Wnds institutional and political expression
remains open. 3
In turn, the relationship that he discerns between the conditioned and
unconditioned poles of a given concept parallels the relationship between the
two heterogenous but equally indissociable movements of absolute and
relative deterritorialization that we saw above in Deleuze and Guattari’s
political ontology. Just as their ontology of deterritorializing assemblages
represents a world in which processes of transformation or deconstruction
are immanent in any present state of aVairs, so for Derrida the gap between
conditioned and unconditioned, along with the inevitable reference to the
unconditioned within the conditioned forms, remind us of both the possi-
bility and the importance of departing from existing forms of thought or
practice. In this manner, there is a common critical impulse at the heart of
aYrmative deconstruction, Deleuze and Guattari’s constructivism and
Foucault’s genealogical work on the limits of the possible. They each share
the orientation towards a future deWned by its potential diVerence from the
present, but which nevertheless acts in the present to ensure the possibility of
criticism and resistance. Their reliance upon democratic and egalitarian
principles as the basis for such criticism is reason to include them among
the contemporary heirs of the liberal tradition. While their non-teleological
historicism aligns them in certain respects with Rorty’s pragmatism,
their commitment to criticism of present institutions, practices, concepts,
and considered convictions diVerentiates them from all forms of uncritical
liberalism.
3 From the perspective of his own agonistic and practice-based conception of liberal democracy,
and with reference to the Rawlsian thesis of the ubiquity of reasonable disagreement, James Tully
defends a similar position in suggesting that ‘‘the orientation of practical philosophy should not be to
reachingWnal agreements on universal principles or procedures, but to ensuring that constitutional
democracies are always open to the democratic freedom of calling into question and presenting
reasons for the renegotiation of the prevailing rules of law, principles of justice and practices of
deliberation’’ (Tully 2002 , 218 ).
post-structuralism and liberal pragmatism 139