ABSTRACT
The problem of explaining and defending a conception of Eunomic social order as distinct from some condition of ‘natural’ anarchy or a pathological state of Anomia, is a longstanding and highly developed preoccupation of political philosophy and social theory, although not always under that name. But the problem of accounting for a legitimate and inclusive or integrated social order, that is, the problem of conceptualizing and justifying the idea of the legitimacy of law and politics in the modern (or perhaps post-modern), pluralist state, is a project of more recent provenance and presents an exponentially more complex theoretical challenge. Perhaps it is a project that has run its course; for contemporary notions of Pluralism and those mutations of it referred to as Multiculturalism, or more precisely, Cultural Autonomy Theory, demand solutions that go well beyond even the refinements of the ideas of inclusion and integration. Thus optimism about creating and defending the legitimacy of public legal norms, procedures and political processes is difficult to maintain when faced with equally emphatic claims for the ‘legitimacy’, ‘validity’ or desirability of each component social grouping, as well as the overall condition of intensely diverse cultural and ethical pluralism that characterize contemporary ‘civil society’.
