What Does It Mean to Be Objective? Outlining an Objective Approach to Public Emergencies and Natural Disasters

Abstract

The present paper is devoted to coping with the problem of objectivity in political justification and legal reasoning when it comes to assessing the occurrence of public emergencies and natural disasters. After shedding some light on the pragmatics of objectivity in representative speech, I will try to demonstrate why there might be reasons to believe that Schmitt-inspired approaches to legal emergencies, very much in fashion today, would owe a great part of their appeal to a refusal to see all that might be involved when we talk about objectivity in morals as well as in politics. To do that, a constructivist notion of “human welfare” will offer the interpretive key.