Constructing Community MORAL PLURALISM AND TRAGIC CONFLICTS - J. Donald Moon - PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

“THE FARTHEST I WOULD GO,” Foucault has said, “is to say that perhaps
one must not be for consensuality, but one must be against nonconsensu­
ality.”

To be for consensuality would be to “grant that it is indeed under its governance that the phenomenon has to be organized” (Foucault 1984:379). In this brief interview Foucault does not tell us what is prob­
lematic about taking consensus as a regulatory ideal, nor how we can be against nonconsensuality without being for consensuality. In this book I have tried to explore and sometimes even to answer these questions. I
have been concerned with the ways in which consensuality as a regulative ideal can turn into nonconsensuality as a political reality (or, to put it somewhat more precisely, how nonconsensuality can be rationalized by
an appeal to consensuality). There are many different versions of this story; the one that I have been interested in presupposes a morally plural
ist society—a society in which there are significant differences in the fun­
damental moral commitments and beliefs of different individuals and groups. Although the problem of nonconsensuality exists in all societies, it is exacerbated by moral and cultural pluralism. In pluralist societies,
the problem of nonconsensuality cannot be avoided, though it can per
haps be minimized. I have argued that minimizing nonconsensuality requires that we adopt what I have called “political liberalism.” Political
liberalism is a variant of traditional consensus theories of legitimation, but one that does not share their faith in supposing that nonconsensuality can be overcome.

Of course, no “actually existing” politics is based upon consensus in the sense of full and free agreement with all the laws, policies, and actions of the collectivity. But Foucault questions whether consensus should even be
taken as a regulative ideal, irrespective of whether it is or even could be fully realized. The real difficulty with consensuality does not involve its realizability, but its apparently circular, even paradoxical nature. The
problem arises when we ask what consensuality requires, for any under
standing of consensus must specify the conditions that must be satisfied if

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