ABSTRACT
A pragmatic attitude comes in handy, many feel, when we confront a problem that defies easy solutions and calls for a novel, experimental approach. Others see pragmatism as a slippery slope that will lead astray undisciplined minds unwilling to fortify their judgment with firm principles. While morality and law are mutually constitutive in a perfectly rational state—the former asserts the dignity and universal rights of every human being, the latter backs the dictates of reason with administrative power—the relationship between the two is not symmetrical. Communicative practices embedded in democratic deliberation are to be carried out by the agents whose embodied habits have already met the demands of the democratic process. This circular, untheorized premise exposes the Achilles heel of the deontological tradition in moral philosophy and the theory of democratic justice that takes its cue from ethical formalism. The promise of legal pragmatism will not be fulfilled until its proponents grasp democratic justice as an embodied process.
