The population of Bulgaria is ethnically quite heterogeneous. According to the data of the latest census (1992), ethnic minorities comprise 14.3 percent of the population, the most numerous being the Turks (9.4 percent of the total number) and the Roma (3.7 percent). However, these data should not be considered as absolutely precise in that they refer to ethnic affiliation as declared by the individuals themselves. It is a well-known fact, for example, that a large number of the Roma population identified themselves as Bulgarians or Turks for various reasons. This uncertainty in respect to data has provoked ardent discussion among activists in the minority movements concerning the total number and composition of the latter. A quite special issue is the number of Pomaks (ethnic Bulgarians who were converted to Islam during 1394-1878, when the Bulgarian lands were controlled by the Turks). According to the census, they number about 70,000, but there are reasons to believe that their actual number is much higher (up to 200,000). The situation is even more complicated when religious affiliation is taken into account. About 60 percent of the Roma people identify themselves as Christians and 40 percent as Muslims. And not only are there Muslims who are ethnic Bulgarians, there are also Christians who are ethnic Turks (Alexandrov, 1995).

At present, the ethnocultural situation in Bulgaria can be described as being in a state of "unstable equilibrium." Even a slight disturbance can generate dynamic processes — in either a constructive or destructive direction. This instability is a consequence of the gap between, on the one hand, the various political programs for regulating ethnic relations and, on the other, prevailing socio-psychological attitudes.

The mass media and the various political party platforms in fact offer only two basic alternatives in this respect, namely, either simplistically liberal or extremely nationalistic policies on ethnic issues. Both of these are confronted, however, by such traditional qualities of the Bulgarian people as political realism and ethnic tolerance. On the one hand, overlooking the actual grounds of ethnic antagonisms is not welcomed, and claims that ethnic differences should not be a significant factor in society are not taken seriously. On the other hand, ethnic conflicts do not escalate easily. There are practically no cases of ethnic violence or persecution in the history of the independent Bulgarian state from 1878 to 1984. And all this in spite of the considerable ethnic heterogeneity, the "memories" of five centuries of Turkish dominance, and the notorious conflicts between Balkan nations that have led to a number of wars. An important example of ethnic tolerance was the mass reaction against the attempt to deport Bulgarian Jews to German concentration camps during World War II, which saved tens of thousands of lives.

Consequently, neither of the two extreme alternatives finds much support on behalf of the population. Yet the overall growth of social discontent as well as conflicts in neighboring countries could bring about a dramatic change in the situation at any moment, and this might possibly include a turn to nationalism.

The theoretical dimensions of the two political trends in question involve the well-known rival paradigms in Western political philosophy known as liberalism (various forms of which are also called individualism, universalism or social atomism) and communitarianism. The former applies universal standards of freedom and justice directly to individual cases, while the latter keeps to particular values and norms. The term "communitarianism" is a neologism. Although the school which identifies itself in this way dates only from the early 1980s, it follows an old tradition that prioritizes the communal element of social life, including German Romanticism, Hegelianism, the various socialist teachings and so forth.

We shall now briefly review the controversy arguments "pro" and "con" between these two theoretical schools to help us understand why the methods they represent are not very useful in resolving Balkan ethnic conflicts. We may thereby also uncover other prospects for conceptualizing the ethnocultural situation in Bulgaria and finding a way to rationalize it.

First of all, discussions between liberals and communitarians address fundamental issues of social science and praxis. They concentrate, however, on the relationships between the individual and the community to which one belongs, such as state, religious congregation or family. In contrast, ethnic and national antagonisms in the Balkans originate from confrontations between different communities, each with its own cultural identity. In some cases, these communities conceive of themselves as outposts of different civilizations, competing to share a finite geopolitical and cultural space. The Bosnian Serbs, for example, have claimed in this vein that they are carrying out the historic mission of preventing the establishment of an Islamic state in the heart of Europe.

What should the attitude of the individual be towards the other community when it is "other" for him not only in the sense of "not-his-own" but also as culturally alien? This is the case when the other community confronts the individual not only as something strange and incomprehensible, but also as a threat to one’s cultural identity. Furthermore, although the individual must not forget that the alien community consists of human beings who have the same universal rights as oneself, the exercise of such rights on their part is viewed as a threat.

If the basic principle of liberalism is to be applied in this case, namely, that one’s rights should not contradict the rights of the others, an arbiter is needed, i.e., someone who can take an impartial, absolute stand, and judge whether or not given actions infringe upon other people’s interests. Such a position is impossible, however, in a conflict between communities that have basically different value systems. The arbiter cannot belong to either of them, but the communities in question do not recognize the same outside authorities. Since the "demarcation line" between culturally different communities divides the entire world, everything that is accepted by the one is alien for the other, and vice versa.

Of course, the logic of both liberalism and communitarianism is not totally irrelevant to the realities of the ethnic and national antagonisms in the Balkans. Here, too, it is the individual who must choose between freedom and loyalty to one’s own community. The specific point, however, is that when the cultural identity of the latter is threatened by external factors, the individual’s loyalty to one’s community becomes incompatible with certain universal values. If one would take such values as valid, one would have to "betray" one’s own community. On the other hand, to ignore absolutely universal standards of behavior would mean to accept even the most disgusting forms of discrimination towards the alien individuals. How can we resolve such difficulties in applying the political strategies of liberalism and communitarianism to ethnic issues in the Balkans?

In 1887, Ferdinand Toennies defined two types of social relations in his famous book Community and Society (Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft). Toennies understands "All intimate, private, and exclusive living together" as life in Gemeinschaft (Toennies 1957:33), while Gesellschaft comprises public life. There are communities of kinship, neighborhood, language, folk customs, mores and beliefs, while Gesellschaft exists in the realms of business, politics and the sciences. The individual lives from birth in certain communities that form one as a personality, but "one goes into Gesellschaft (society) as one goes into a strange country" (ibid.). Unity with other members of the same community is an end in itself, while the individual’s associations with other agents in society is a means to achieve one’s ends. The concept of Gemeinschaft refers to real and organic life; the concept of Gesellschaft refers to imaginary and mechanical structures.

We can draw a clear distinction between the methodologies of liberalism and communitarianism in reference to Toennies’s typology. In his terms, the former theory prioritizes the relations of society, and the latter, the relations of community. Insofar as liberalism is concerned, one should bear in mind another important differentiation, namely, that between the naive liberalism of Hobbes, Locke and the French Enlightenment on the one hand, and the sophisticated theories of authors such as Kant and Rawls on the other. In the first case, the frame of reference is human nature as such and the natural rights of human beings, such as the rights to life, freedom, property, security, and freedom of speech, thought and religion. These concrete rights are valid under all circumstances for all human beings, and to deny them would mean to contradict the generally accepted view of human dignity. They are stated in such documents as the "Habeas Corpus Akte" of 1679, the "Bill of Rights" in the American Constitution of 1787, the French "Declaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen" of 1789, and so forth.

Universalism, rationalism, individualism and egalitarianism are features common to all varieties of liberalism. Traditional forms of liberalism, however, typically base their views upon the assumption that there are certain universal and fundamental human qualities. Consequently, free action turns out to be the functioning of a mechanism (human nature), morality is interpreted in the terms of ethical naturalism, and all social relationships turn out to be Gesellschaft relations.

Moreover, this commitment to concrete features of human nature contradicts the basic rationalistic orientation of liberalism, which amounts to a logical inconsistency. Even though norms of behavior are declared that claim universal validity, these universal rules are nevertheless formulated with a view to a set of empirical, contingent qualities and rights, such as the "right to property," "freedom of speech," "inviolability of the home," and so forth. One could easily ask what are the criteria of selection, and why exactly these rights should be put forward and not others. Is it not possible to err and include in the list a human right that is only apparently fundamental?

This last question refers to the danger of grounding a universal norm on some particular feature of a specific cultural tradition. The given culture would eo ipso assume a dominant position with respect to others, who would have to adapt themselves to its particularities for the sake of humanity itself. The reality of this culture’s customs would thus come to coincide with the ideal that was normatively prescribed by international agreements. In such a case, certain nations could unjustly represent themselves as a model to be followed by the rest of the world.

This is a very real possibility in respect to the influence that individualism and collectivism should have on defining universal human rights insofar as the manner in which these rights have been formulated in the most respected international documents seems to be an expression of the Western value system. If the group-oriented values that dominate societies outside the Western cultural sphere are opposed to the latter’s individualism, one could justify even the chopping off of hands as a punishment for theft (Kühnhardt 1991:136). Given the relevant cultural context, such an act could pretend not only to juridical, but also to moral legitimacy insofar as respecting the inviolability of the human body could then be interpreted as giving priority to individualistic values that contradict the Islamic cultural tradition. The latter’s standards attribute more importance to the common good than to the rights of the individual.

These shortcomings of traditional liberalism are overcome in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, who introduces the idea of freedom by locating human existence outside of the empirical world. Empirical conditions determine the subject only within the field of appearance (as an "empirical character") because one exists as a thing-in-itself. "In its intelligible character this same subject must be considered to be free from all influence of sensibility and from all determination through appearances" (Kant 1987:469). In that one of these empirical circumstances is time, the intelligible character turns out to be free from all natural necessity. "No action begins in this active being itself; but we may yet quite correctly say that the active being of itself begins its effects in the sensible world" (ibid.). However, the subject ought to act only in conformity with the rule prescribed by his/her reason. Reformulated from Kantian language into the language of common sense, this basic moral law is equivalent to the maxim "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you."

Kant’s ethics is formalistic. In order to be both universal and rational (not self-contradictory), its basic law implies no concrete moral requirements and attributes moral value to no contingent standards of human behavior. Different persons can have different notions of happiness. It might suit a given individual’s ends when morality prescribes a specific orientation to activity, but this would surely contradict the ideals of others: hence, according to Kantian liberalism, the priority of the right over the good, whereby everyone should be free to decide what is good from one’s own point of view. Morality should not represent any concrete requirement as a universal norm, but must rather guarantee only that individuals not stand in each other’s way in the course of realizing their personal, freely chosen ends. Liberalism thus claims the priority of freedom and rights over any particular program for achieving general welfare.

Kant’s ideas greatly contribute to making liberalism a consistent theory, but his transcendental philosophy seems too complicated and obscure to serve as a conceptual basis for modern liberal politics. Working in the same general tradition, John Rawls has attempted to formulate an exoteric argumentation for the priority of right. Instead of representing the subject of free will as a Ding an sich, he has advanced the theory of "the unencumbered self" who does not identify one with any particular personal quality nor any social role. "The unencumbered self" is rather the one to whom such qualities and roles belong. One is the agent who makes one’s free choice without conforming to any momentary empirical state. No role or commitment could define the unencumbered self so completely that one could not understand oneself without it, and no project could be so essential that turning away from it would call into question the person one is (Sandel 1984:18).

The theory of the "unencumbered self" refers to self-reflexivity, which is a feature of intelligent, self-conscious behavior. In order for a person to wonder how s/he ought to act in a given situation, it is first necessary that one have already distanced oneself from one’s own empirical condition. In trying to make such a choice, one juxtaposes what one feels like doing with what ought to be done, i.e., one somehow observes oneself from the outside and does not act automatically. It is this type of "observer" who can be called an "unencumbered self."

This idealization is typical for modern liberalism, and it is one of the favorite targets of communitarian criticism. First of all, no one exists as an abstract subject insofar as our personalities are formed by the communities in which we have been brought up. "The only way to understand human behavior is to refer to individuals in their social, cultural and historical contexts" (Avineri and de-Shalit 1992:2). And no one can choose one’s "mother community."

However, liberalism does not claim that the autonomous subject constitutes himself ex nihilo. D. Gauthier admits that "it would be absurd to identify an individual with the formal process of reflection and choice in which autonomy is manifest." The liberal view of man does not refer to the causal grounds of her/his individuality since what matters instead here is self-consciousness. But even though the latter is itself a product of some type of socialization, it can assume a critical attitude towards social reality, including its own background. "In producing a self-conscious being, human society thus finds itself called into question" (Gauthier 1992:157).

The process of self-reflection and free choice requires some kind of material, certain preferences and capacities, from which to proceed. Gauthier does not see a threat to autonomy in the recognition that this frame of reference has not been itself freely chosen. He writes that, "What makes a being autonomous is his capacity to alter given preferences by a rational self-critical, reflective procedure, not a capacity to produce preferences with no prior basis" (Gauthier 1992:157).

We can assume that the very ability to reflect critically on one’s own capacities and preferences is socially determined. We can even generalize that "human beings are socialized into autonomy" (Gauthier 1992:157). But the result of this socialization is not that one’s personality is formed as "hardware," but rather that it is formed as a sort of "software" that can be changed and, indeed, itself can change the manner in which it is constituted (Gauthier 1992:158).

This evolution of liberalism, however, does not make it more plausible in respect to moral intuitions that concern solidarity, loyalty and unity with a finite group of people. These values give content to one’s identity and designate a given place in the boundless world as the place to which one belongs. In "The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self," M. Sandel questions our ability to view ourselves as autonomous such that our identity is not based on our ends and commitments. We cannot do this without sacrificing our loyalties, "whose moral force consists partly in the fact that living by them is inseparable from understanding ourselves as the particular persons we are — as members of this family or community or nation or people, as bearers of that history, as citizens of this republic" (Sandel 1984:87). Such commitments are more than values I merely happen to have, i.e., values with which I do not identify myself.

A person incapable of this type of constitutive attachments would not be an ideally free and rational agent, but rather someone without character and without moral depth. "For to have character is to know that I move in a history I neither summon nor command, which carries consequences nonetheless for my choices and conduct. It draws me closer to some and more distant from others; it makes some aims more appropriate, others less so" (Sandel 1984:87). Whenever I reflect on my history, I undoubtedly distance myself from it in some way, but this distance is always relative and the point of reflection is never outside the history itself.

In fact, the Kantian type of liberalism does not oppose the communal element in social life absolutely. The autonomy of the subject does not isolate her/him from everyone else and, from Kant’s point of view, the relationships on which morality rests are relationships of community. But this is a special kind of community that does not exclude the individual in that its dimensions coincide with humankind as a whole. The position of the self-critical, rational and free subject is the position of humanity as such. This is the "material" (in Gauthier’s sense) from which the subject can never distance oneself — even in the most subtle procedures of self-reflection — without losing one’s human identity.

However, one could still ask why we should break the bonds with our particular communities at all. Do we not lose the meaning of life when we alienate ourselves from the needs and values of our communities? Even liberals sometimes admit that "the value or goodness of any individual citizen’s life is only a reflection and function of the value of the life of the community in which he lives" (Dworkin 1992:206).

There is yet another question that sophisticated liberalism finds quite difficult to answer: How can it be possible to universalize the relations of community and speak meaningfully about loyalty to the whole of mankind? Is not the formulation "loyal to everybody" a contradiction in terms? Apparently loyalty is a necessarily asymmetric relation in which one is closer to someone at the expense of being more distant from others. From this perspective, the fundamental assumptions of liberalism contradict certain important moral intuitions.

It is another matter that the methodology of liberalism cannot be applied directly to the national and ethnic confrontations on the Balkans. The fact is that liberalism cannot help in regulating relations between communities that have different cultural identities. Liberal strategies ignore the meaning that identity has for a community confronted by an alien cultural "environment." The restrictions on the activity of individuals that the community imposes in order to defend its "physiognomy" — and they are perceived as restrictions only by aliens — are regarded as unjustifiable violations of human rights from a liberal point of view. But to demand that the community equally respect the rights of both its own members and the aliens means to demand that it give up its "defense mechanisms." Liberalism recognizes only individual rights, not collective rights, and eroding a community’s cultural identity is not regarded as damaging the rights of the individuals who comprise it. It is only natural that this approach is not taken seriously in the Balkans.

Communitarianism, on the other hand, justifies the discriminative treatment of aliens. From the communitarian perspective, we owe only minimal solidarity to the person who does not belong to our community. An illustration of this attitude can be found in Walzer’s "Spheres of Justice." If, for example, I find an injured stranger on my way, it would be my moral duty to help him, as in the story of the Good Samaritan. But ought I to take him into my home and care for him to the end of my days? Although Walzer declares that, "My life cannot be shaped and determined by such chance encounters" (Walzer 1983:98), is it unjust to refuse to the stranger what I readily grant to my relatives and friends?

To uphold communal values and grant priority to one’s own good over the rights of aliens does not attract sympathy within the Western cultural tradition. One who maintains the communal position is taken to have such narrow mental horizons that s/he is incapable of imagining more than one way of life. Consequently, such a person is judged as not taking the effort to understand the alien, to put her/himself in the latter’s place.

Philosophically, communitarianism cannot justify degrading "freedom" for the sake of "the good." Even if the restrictions imposed on one’s freedom are for the sake of her/his own good or for the common good, one’s dignity suffers from them. This is undoubtedly the case when the restrictions come from one’s own community, while the effects are certainly magnified in respect to an ethnic or national minority within an alien cultural environment.

The position of another fundamental value, rationality, is not much different. To be loyal to the community means to accept its customs uncritically, whatever they might be, but the latter are contingent forms of sociality. What if we find elements among them that are obviously unreasonable, and what if those elements are necessarily associated with the community’s identity? In such a case, a true communitarian would by no means resort to a self-reflexive, self-critical procedure since to do so might initiate a series of transformations that would result in the end of community as such. Communitarianism seems to present, therefore, a quite apologetic social methodology.

As far as ethics is concerned, it has been argued that communitarianism tends towards moral relativism. If one contends that morality cannot be conceived in universal terms, that universal and absolute justice is but another illusion of individualism (Avineri and de-Shalit 1992:4), then what reasons can one give for the objective validity of moral standards? Today no one would take seriously the naive claim that only the values of a given community are absolute, all the rest being merely conventional rules of behavior. But if so, can there be any morality at all?

If all moral values and norms are relative, no room is left for ethical discussion between different communities and cultures since everyone then remains with her/his own regulations, as if those of the alien do not matter. But what could we then say about, for example, stoning to death as a legal punishment for adultery insofar as it might be an organic part of the cultural traditions of a given civilization that, practiced within its boundaries, somehow does not concern us? However, since a punishment of this type seems inhuman in the absolute meaning of the word, liberalism, with its norms that claim universal validity, would appear to be a better moral philosophy in such cases.

Moreover, the theoretical prestige of communitarianism has suffered a great deal from spontaneous "communitarian" practices in countries like Bosnia, which demonstrate the absurdity of a persistent adherence to communal values. The absolute denial of a moral commitment to the alien results here in a bellum omnia contra omnis, the place of individuals having been taken by ethnic communities.

Our review of the controversy between liberalism and communitarianism has brought us to the conclusion that neither of these paradigms can alone serve as a basis for regulating ethnic relations in the Balkans. As mentioned above, their major conflicting values involve the rights of the individual and the good of the community, and it seems impossible to respect both of them in certain situations. It appears that when recognizing the alien’s rights threatens the community’s identity, then at least one of the parties must give in.

Our assertion is that dialogue may be regarded as a possible synthesis of two approaches of liberalism and communitarianism.

Let us evaluate an idealized notion of dialogue from the standpoints of both the right and the good, i.e., let us see whether the results of a successful dialogue can be considered "right," "good," or perhaps neither of these qualities. Later we shall return to the issue of the relation between an ideal dialogue and reality.

Imagine a communication community that corresponds to the ideals of discourse ethics, in which relations are regulated only by norms everyone accepts without manipulation or coercion. The process of discussing these norms can be regarded as dialogue if: 1) it is open for participation on behalf of all concerned; 2) all participants have equal rights to propose claims, ask questions and provide answers; and 3) the discussion is free from any influences and motives other than the collective pursuit of norms acceptable to all involved (Habermas 1983:65). Would the order in such a community correspond to criteria pertinent to right or rather to those of the good?

There could be no doubt about the former in that the autonomy and interests of each individual are to be guaranteed within this particular type of community. However, are not questions concerning the good life also relevant to this type of discussion?

As was stated above, the priority of right over the good means that morality should not convert any concrete requirement into a universal norm since to do so would amount to depriving the individual of choice and responsibility in determining her/his line of behavior. This would "expel" issues concerning the good from the sphere of intersubjectivity since they could then be reflected upon and resolved only within the "territory" of the self. But this would not be the case with the communication community insofar as its primary aim is precisely the discussing of those concrete norms that should legitimately regulate relations within the community. And a norm with any particular content could be adopted provided that it receives the consensual support of the participants. Stated otherwise, standards for the good life could be intersubjectively approved, which would mean that a synthesis of the basic values of liberalism and communitarianism, the right and the good, can be found in dialogical "mechanisms" for regulating intersubjective relations.

Let us illustrate this by an example in respect to the Turkish ethnic minority in Bulgaria. Prior to 1989, the dominant attitude towards Turks on the part of the authorities who represented (or rather claimed to represent) the position held by the majority of the population was one of assimilation. The rationale which they offered was that assimilation would have a positive effect on the Turks themselves because it would eliminate any grounds for discrimination and improve their career opportunities and overall economic status. It was even claimed that the majority of "Bulgarian Turks" were actually of Bulgarian descent, their distant ancestors having been moslemized centuries ago and gradually ethnically assimilated. Empirical evidence was supplied concerning the anthropological features, mores, folklore and traditional material culture of large groups of "Bulgarian Turks" that supposedly demonstrated their similarities with Bulgarians and dissimilarities with "actual Turks." The message was that these people should restore their original ethnic identity and reunite with their ethnic Bulgarian brothers and sisters. That is why the campaign to replace their Turkish names with Bulgarian ones was officially called the "Rebirth Process."

Behaving as an ethnic Bulgarian, i.e., speaking Bulgarian, wearing European-style clothing, listening to European-style music, accepting a modern type of family life and so forth, was highly valued by the authorities and rewarded in various ways. This policy constitutes a classic case of imposing upon a minority a concrete standard of the good life held by the community as a whole (the Bulgarian nation represented by state institutions), that is, to abandon one’s "otherness" and absolutely join the majority.

What has happened in this respect after the democratic transition? In spite of certain inconsistencies in official policy due to changes in government, the general line has promoted the liberal priority of rights, especially the right of ethnic self-determination of the individual. As a result, ethnic Turks can now more or less freely practice their culture, and to the extent that individual behavior does not conflict with the laws and the constitution of the country, one may choose how to shape one’s life. However, the actual exercise of these rights has given rise to certain tendencies that seem to endanger the integrity of society.

For example, a certain number of rural Turkish parents maintain a traditional family model and prefer their grown children to live in the same village or not far away. This minimizes the secular education of the children. Such parents are concerned that if their children pursue modern professions, they would be motivated to leave their families and move to industrial centers. Now, traditional parents are not unaware that children will be significantly isolated from social life if they attend state schools only for the compulsory minimum. They seek compensation for this through far-reaching integration into Islamic culture, such as by sending children to orthodox Islamic religious schools (Alexandrov 1995). Unfortunately, such practices increase the cleavage between modern and traditional culture in Bulgaria.

Here we have a clear contradiction between the rights of individuals and the good of the community. What could be changed in this respect by resorting to dialogue? It must be noted that the main source of conflict between right and good in the situation under discussion is the monological way in which the concrete realization of the rights is determined. Even if we take for granted the good will of individuals and assume that no one wishes to endanger the rights and interests of anyone else, their viewpoints are very limited. Each of them judges the consequences of her/his actions by looking forth, to use Bacon’s metaphor, from her/his own "cave."

The elderly people in our example probably see nothing wrong in reproducing their traditional mode of family life. And they undoubtedly do not perceive the consequent movement in present conditions towards fundamentalist-Islamic cultural patterns as a threat to Bulgarian society, i.e., to the community as a whole. It is necessary that they get the message — and get it in a proper way, not through coercion or indoctrination — that there are other interests relevant to this development. Someone must present to them the present concerns about the possible expansion of Islamic fundamentalism to Bulgaria and do so in a comprehensible and plausible way. Of course, the parties of the consequent discussion should have equal conditions for articulating their claims and receiving replies to them. In addition, the discourse must be open to anyone who would like to express and defend her/his position on this matter.

Suppose that as a result of such dialogue some novel solution is reached, or at least a compromise, that wins the approval of all parties involved. This might involve, for example, changing the norms for distributing modern production units within the territory of the country so that integrating young people into modern society does not necessarily disrupt traditional family ties. We could certainly regard such a solution as both right for the individuals and good for the community. Generally speaking, when the dialogical procedure for resolving these clashes of positions is successful, it apparently pays tribute to both the right and the good.

The norms that should regulate relations among participants are the subject matter of discourse within the communication community. Discourse ethics proposes a set of rules for discussion that guarantee the legitimacy of norms accepted by the participants as a result of the rational exchange of proposals, claims and arguments. This ethical theory does not prescribe any norms prior to the discussion, nor does it deal with the justification of moral norms in general. This is the sense in which it is strictly formal in character. But it does not follow that discourse within the communi-cation community should not deal with the issues of the good life. The only restriction in this respect is that the norms that pass the test of discussion are valid only within the given community. Since their legitimacy rests upon the consensus of the participants in the discourse, they cannot pretend to absolute validity. It is true that Habermas claims that the only justifiable norms are those which incorporate "generalizable interests" (Habermas 1983:75-77), but this means only that the norms satisfy the interests of each participant in the actual argument.

However, the most problematic issue concerning the relevance of the discourse ethics model of dialogue to relations between ethnocultural communities is clearly whether or not it can be applied in reality. Indeed, many authors consider the idealized notion of a communication community to be utopian because not only must the participants in discourse have radically abandoned all strategic attitudes towards their partners, they must also be communicatively competent. The latter is especially important in that it involves certain intellectual "skills" in addition to good will. Within this context, the validity of norms depends exclusively on consensus among the members of the communication community, but what would be the worth of such "validity" if it were based on someone’s misconceptions about her/his interests or on the eloquence of a supporter of some contending norm? It is not without reason that Thomas McCarthy has introduced the issue of "the distinction between arguments and rhetoric, between convincing and persuading," into the controversies concerning discourse ethics (McCarthy 1991:194).

Furthermore, since the regulative idea of discourse within an ideal communication community refers to relationships among intelligent individuals in Western-type modern societies, is it not absurd to apply this model to the relationships between ethnocultural communities, including those belonging to traditional cultures? But however paradoxical it may sound, perhaps this model of dialogue can be made more realistic precisely by modifying its original design in an effort to make it applicable to mediation among ethnocultural communities in Balkan conditions. The community members who would be the immediate subjects of discourse would represent community interests that could be reflected upon in terms more definite than the interests of individuals. This by itself would make it much more probable that the discourse positions assumed be of a serious nature.

But, of course, a number of difficult questions remain in respect to this interpretation of dialogue as envisaged by discourse ethics. For example, how would such discourse differ from ordinary political negotiations, i.e., what would guarantee that individuals acting for the communities adequately represent the interests of the latter? Secondly, how would it be possible to ensure against repression of individuals or groups within the community such that their voices would not be heard at all? In addition, how could strategic attitudes be eliminated from relations among the parties in dialogue? Another problematic point concerns how it may be possible for traditional value systems and religious beliefs to participate in the rational exchange of arguments that is the heart of dialogue.

All of these questions are difficult, but they are not impossible to answer. Indeed, the immediate positive effect of introducing the methodology of discourse ethics and, more generally, the paradigm of dialogue into the sphere of ethnocultural relations in Bulgaria would be precisely the formulation of problems in a new way. Hopefully, this might open up prospects for escaping from at least some of the vicious circles that continue to make the theory and practice of these relations so depressing.

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