ABSTRACT
Suchanek's contribution advances a radical critique to the enterprise of political justification, maintaining that consent theory should not be concerned with the search for 'compelling reasons for obligations of what should be done' but rather with 'those empirical conditions that are prerequisites for a better realization of social cooperation' (p. 170). He argues that consent theories cannot play ajustificatory role because they commit what he calls the normativistic fallacy: consent theories generally advance moral demands that are completely devoid of relevant empirical considerations, fail to be self-enforcing,3 and consequently render them-
selves impractical and effectively futile. Suchanek proposes that, instead, we regard consent theory chiefly as a heuristic device that provides us with essential insight in the conditions under which individuals consent to a rule as well as the conditions necessary for changing a rule. On this view, taking a heuristic tum would allow us to vindicate the central role of consent in social theory without committing ourselves to an inherently fallacious position.
