ABSTRACT
The legal jurisdiction asserted by political regimes never corresponds perfectly to any unified intersubjective community. Moreover, because of the complexity of various social groupings, roles, identifications, “lower” communities, and so forth, there are many shadings, levels, and perspectives one can assume with regard to what is, precisely, any given person’s intersubjective community. Now, the purely objective “world” of modern science, economics, and liberal political theory, existing as it does as a “garb of ideas” and not in reality, is in conflict with, and corrosive of, the life-world. Moreover, as purely “rational” (in the geometric sense), it amounts to an idealization to be implemented to the extent practically possible by all concrete communities. The intelligibility of the life-world is the actual source of legitimacy that imbues the political horizon with authority.
