Abstract

The article asks how valid arguments can be identified in legal reasoning if one assumes neither that an answer to this question can be found within the law itself nor that one is required to adopt a purely historical perspective. By combining discourse theory with Wittgenstein’s thoughts, a relativistic approach to discourse is developed. According to this, a general discourse on the legal means of argumentation is to be conducted, in which different positions emerge with regard to respective world pictures. All of these can claim the normative correctness of their results with equal force, even if this must always remain only a temporary state.