171

But moods – and philosophies in a melancholic “mood” – do not

justify the defeatist surrender of the radical content of democratic

ideals... If defeatism were justified, I would have had to choose

a different literary genre, for example, the diary of a Hellenistic

writer who merely documents, for subsequent generations, the

unfulfilled promises of his waning culture.^1

On this proudly defiant note, Jurgen Habermas prefaced his
magnum opus in political and legal theory, Between Facts and
Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Democracy (1992). The
tone provides a useful clue for situating and contextualizing his
mature political thought. Because Habermas began the work in
1985 but completed it only in 1991 , the work sits astride a histori-
cal chasm – represented by the collapse of the East German state
in 1989 and the reunification of the East with West Germany in
1990 – making contextual interpretation of the work difficult. But
keeping both eras in mind – both pre- and post-1989 – makes it
possible to fundamentally reinterpret the work. Between Facts and
Norms (BFN hereafter) wears a Janus face: Facing backwards, it
culls the constitutional history of the Bonn Republic in search of its
lessons; facing forward, it inaugurates a new chapter in left political
theorizing after the end of the Cold War. It is therefore both epitaph
and manifesto: epitaph for the Bonn Republic – a résumé of the
achievements and limits of West German constitutionalism – and
manifesto for the Berlin Republic.
The most common critiques of BFN suggest that it is an expres-
sion of a post-1989 European mood, that is, a document of a left that

5

Learning from the Bonn

Republic: Recasting Democratic

Theory, 1984–1996

(^1) Jürgen Habermas, “Preface,” Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a
Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge,
MA: MIT Press, 1996 ), xliii (BFN hereafter).