If the philosophical movement of postmodernism was, in its beginnings, apparently strictly directed against every kind of normative theory, then this initial reticence has since given way to a dramatically changed attitude. Writers like Derrida and Lyotard, at first primarily concerned with a radical perpetuation of the critique of reason, turn today to questions of ethics and justice to such a degree that commentators are already speaking of an ethical turn. The field of moral theory, which until recently had constituted for all representatives of poststructuralism a particularly salient example of modernity's compulsive universalism, has now become the true medium for the further development of postmodern theories. The change of attitude accompanying such a reorientation can be understood in part as a reaction to a critique that had been harbored for some time among philosophers and political theorists.