ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Mannheim's outline of modernity as the state of societal, political and value plurality. Social imaginaries are defined as background power communicating the common good in functionally differentiated society. They have the capacity to operationalise and productively use the paradox of socially immanent values self-validated as transcendental legitimation tools. They constitute the transcendental apparatus of values to normalise societal power. However, they do not constitute a unifying ideological framework legitimising the existing structure of domination because their operations are not dependent on political and legal institutions. This chapter, therefore, explains how constitutional imaginaries determine evaluations and transvaluations of different values in contemporary constitutional law within and beyond the nation state. Furthermore, it explains why constitutional values cannot be considered society's transcendental foundations normatively constituting it from its outside. Finally, it analyses constitutional values as internally generated expectations defining the difference between legitimacy and illegitimacies in both politics and law.
