Performative Contradiction as Ontological Revelation: Elenctic Normativity and the Grounds of Reason after Discourse Ethics

Abstract

Discourse ethics promises universality without substantive metaphysics by grounding validity in the presuppositions of rational argumentation. Its familiar vulnerability is justificatory: the procedural norms that are meant to underwrite validity are presupposed whenever they are questioned. This paper argues that the aporia is best addressed by shifting the locus of ‘unavoidability’ from participation in a procedure to the conditions of determinate signification. I reconstrue performative contradiction as a failure of signification, not merely a pragmatic inconsistency, and retrieve Aristotle’s elenctic defence of the Principle of Non-Contradiction (PNC) in Metaphysics ? as a model of non-demonstrative grounding. Whoever denies non-contradiction must nonetheless mean something determinate, thereby relying on the differentiations their denial attempts to dissolve. On this basis, I propose ‘elenctic normativity’: a minimal criterion of rational answerability according to which claims, norms, and institutions are defective when they negate the conditions that make their own justificatory language intelligible. I then address the strongest contemporary challenge—paraconsistent logic, dialetheism, and logical pluralism—arguing that revising consequence relations does not eliminate the semantic role of negation required for determinate assertion. A worked application to ‘transparency’ in automated welfare administration, read alongside contemporary regulatory vocabulary, shows how elenctic critique can diagnose performative self-undermining without appeal to an external moral foundation.