After having introduced Goodman’s concept of exemplification I discuss his general argument that exemplification would be the best for comprehensible the expressive phenomena of art. But there will arise problems when making differences between features of works of art which are exemplified and which are not, and when reconstructing the variable forms of autoreflexive expressions. I try to demonstrate that Goodman’s concept of exemplification therefore ist too limited: 1. Goodman doesn’t take into account that the caracteristics of works such as colours, form etc. also can be interpreted as materials of artistic expressions. 2. He doesn’t give any idea to solve the question what would make an exemplification work effectively. Therefore I suggest to reformulate the concept of exemplification.

For the last 30 years there have been debates in philosophy about the concept of rationality. In anglo-american circles they have been primary characterized as discussions about “justified beliefs.” By contrast, the debate in Germany among discourse-theorists (Habermas, Apel) has been linked to the problem of justification of communicative speech-acts (within the concept of the entire communicative situation). Herbert Schnädelbach has modified the discours-theoretical account. His concept can be regarded along a number of dimensions. He has developed a linguistic analysis of the validity claims made in various speech-act situations (following Paul Taylor). In Schnädelbach’s view, normative characterizations of speech acts can be used descriptively, too. Furthermore, the hierarchy of justifications ends on the level of rational choice.My starting point here is: there is a fundamental distinction between justifications in everyday-life and a theoretical level of justification (discoursive justifications). Thus, I discuss the hierarchy of justifications developed by Schnädelbach.Furthermore, I evaluate Schnädelbach’s concept in a semantic perspective. I will show that Schnädelbach’s pragmatical account requires a semantic analysis. Without recourse to such analysis, we cannot understand the universe of normative language.

The ongoing discussion about a notion of pragmatic rationality has evolved in a variety of different approaches, mainly because every author tries to combine his genuine philosophical point of view with the interpretation of “rationality”. Nevertheless there is an agreement of sorts that rationality cannot proceed mereley descriptively but has also normative implications.The paper investigates the proposals of Nicholas Rescher and Herbert Schnädelbach concerning the question of a normativity of rationality. Moreover it deals with the problem of “unity of reason” and its interconnectedness with the inherent normativity of rationality.