First, thanks for a brilliantly interesting and informative article.

I accept much of Derrida's/Postmodernism's critique of modernity. What they fail to recognize, as I see it, is the necessary distinction between knowledge of material existence and beliefs, as assertions of immaterial, transcendent, a priori, spiritual, etc. 'truths' that cannot be evaluated within the context of material existence. Concepts and perceptions related to material existence, on the other hand, can be judged to be valid or accurate, respectively.

As a result, postmodernists have done humanity a grave disservice, bringing into doubt the very possibility of arriving at valid/legitimate knowledge--conceptual products of our beings--that are necessary for successfully negotiating material existence. That existence necessarily includes relations with other human beings, which makes legitimate governance of those relations, whatever form it might take--even if it were 'anything goes'--a fact of that existence.

Beliefs are the foundations of all theologies and ideologies, but both Moderns and Postmoderns have characterized ideologies as manifestations of ‘the rational’, whereas, being based on extra-rational beliefs, no ideology is any more ‘rational’ than any theology is. Heretofore, one or the other has been taken to be the only means of arriving at an approach to governing the governance of society with legitimacy.

I'm saying that the oppositions of fact/fiction and knowledge/ignorance are necessary for mere physical survival, much less negotiating material existence more successfully than that. The two have a given, intrinsic relationship. To the extent that they are employed in reference to material existence (which might in the end be their only valid, legitimate employment), both are integral to human being in its material manifestation.

Given that we humans are social beings, that we live together in groups we call societies, the governance of the governance of society is an aspect of material existence. If we accept that relations among people bring into existence 'society', and not the other way around, we can see that whatever is valid for governing the governance of any society must be valid for the governance of all societies.

Seen in that light, 'a' society is actually an artificial construct. If society is the formal organization of relations among human beings, the existence of society, which necessarily entails the concept of 'governance', is an integral material fact of human existence.

So there can only be the valid/legitimate governance of human relations. To make governing the governance of 'a society' anything other than that is to falsify it at the outset. Whatever that governor of human relations might be, it applies to all relations among human beings--or, better, it discriminates between relations subject to it, relations it legitimately governs, and any it would not.

The only conceptual oppositions that can legitimately meet that given need for governing the governance of human relations are fact/fiction and knowledge/ignorance related to material existence, which are thereby valid or not: verifiable/falsifiable within the context of that existence. The upshot is that the valid governor of the governance of society--of formally organized human relations--the 'ethic of justice', to give it a label--can only be legitimately informed by one or more facts of material existence.

That human beings have no choice but to effect choices is one such fact (which I got from Warren J. Samuels). That makes choosing integral to being human. That makes respecting the capacity of one another to choose integral to our relations as fellow human beings--in all actions involving other people in any way, at any time, in any place. To act otherwise is to act inhumanly. Mutual respect of that kind is the ethic of justice. Since the political process is the process of effecting choices for the community as a whole and the economy is nothing but people effecting choices, that ethic must apply as well to the governance of both--i.e., determining the structure and sanctioned functioning of those ubiquitous societal processes--while explicitly recognizing that that all forms of actions of individuals acting within those processes continue to be subject to the ethic of mutual respect.

If curious: "The Ethic of Justice" focuses on the derivation of the ethic; "Beyond Liberalism" focuses on the application of that process to the political process and the economy. Both are here in Medium but neither is behind the paywall.