Introduction

As we suggested earlier, the failure of the contractarian–constitutionalist argument to gain adherents in the broad community of scholarship in social science and social philosophy does not stem primarily from disagreement at the level of scientific analysis. Nor does it arise from basic ideological discord, in the proper meaning of this term, although the rhetoric of nonjoined debate often employs ideological charges to mask the absence of understanding. The problem is one of communication and understanding, at least in important part, rather than one of divergence in fundamental ethical norms. The anticonstitutionalist does not know what we are talking about, quite literally, because he approaches the subject matter of social interaction from an alternative vision.

In Chapter 2, we tried to define and describe the contractarian vision or paradigm. But such a definition-description is not enough. We must also try to understand, as best we can, the opposing vision, the mind-set of the anticonstitutionalist, the foundations on which the same actual and potential world of social interaction is conceptualized. In the Nietzschean metaphor, we must try to look at the world through the other window in order to understand what it is that makes our own contractarian interpretation be so stubbornly rejected by so many of our peers. And we must do so as sympathetically as possible, forswearing the introduction of easy charges of analytic error or subversive intent.