Years ago one of my uncle argued with me: “In every war, there is torture. In WWII, even, soldiers were known to torture captives. You are acting like this situation is something new.”

The whole problem with this argument is confusing a normative ideal with actual behavior. The difference is not in the behavior of soldiers, it is in the behavior of citizens in evaluating that behavior. And really, isn’t the purpose of a norm to influence actual behavior toward one actuality over another? And if that norm is not perfectly actualizable, is that even relevant to the value of the norm?

In our “realist” and intellectually lax society, we’ve lost this distinction in far too many places.

For instance, when reporting the news, a reporter’s bias is bound to creep in. However, when the norm in journalism is complete and undistorted reporting of the facts of a situation — however impossible this ideal is in actuality — to dispense with the norm on the basis of the continuing existence of distortion is to remove all restraint and to begin a slide from factual news, from which disagreeing parties can begin dialogue, to competing propagandas from which nothing but wholesale rejection of competing perspectives as such — facts and opinion alike — ad hominem — can result. This is a dangerous situation. Where dialogue ends, coercion begins, then violence.

Another case: “Change is inevitable.” Sure, change will happen no matter what we do. Nothing will last forever. But between instant and eternity is a vast range of durations. When we resist change — for instance, when we wish to preserve a favorable state of affairs, or when we try to stabilize our lives for the sake of our sanity and happiness — is it really a futile pursuit simply because that duration isn’t permanent? Does it really make sense to remove the brakes altogether simply because we can’t (and don’t want to) bring progress to a full halt? When we observe that change is inevitable and adjust our norm to fit the facts, we change the fact of our situation and change loses its moderation.

Another case: In hermeneutics, we will never perfectly understand what the author meant and we will always bring our own understanding to what we read, so — the author is dead. The author should not be “privileged”…

Another case: Nobody is perfect. So, let’s accept that and not even try…

Fact is, we are happy to reason this way only when justifies our own ends. But the entire point of reasoning is to reach agreements with others, to be able to make an appeal, and in exchange, we are required to respond to appeals. Only if these standards are applied consistently from case to case, from party to party, from I to you, from you to me, now and in the future are these reasons functioning as reason. Without this principle, reasons are rationalizations, justice is mere justification.

Now, obviously, in actuality we’re never entirely reasonable, but this is precisely why reason is so necessary as a normative ideal.