ABSTRACT
As the crisis of liberalism, long and exquisitely observed by intellectuals, penetrates into everyday consciousness, the future shape of common human life remains unclear. Ideal liberal theory, the reigning paradigm of political philosophy in the most humane, wealthy, and technologically advanced countries throughout world, is characterized above all by the idea that, despite the presence of a great variety of visions of the good life, all reasonable people can at least agree on certain basic universal political principles. The systematic incorporation of a significant degree of disagreement (as insisted upon by the realists) into a vision of politics based solidly on the necessity of an intersubjective constitution of a common life-world in fact comports well with Husserl’s position that communalization and objectivity are achievements which, as such, can always degenerate. The connection between the loss of a common “world” and the radical disagreement spoken of by Sleat should be easy to see.
