„The relationship between a foundation and what it founds is quite different from a symbolic representation and that which is symbolized. In foundational logic there is a necessary, determining relation between the founding agency and the founded entity; in symbolic representation, on the other hand, no such internal motivation exists and the chain of equivalent signifieds can be extended indefinitely. The former is a relation of delimitation and determination, i.e., fixation. The latter is an open-ended horizon. 

It is the contraposition between foundation and horizon that I think enables us to understand the change in the ontological status of emancipatory discourses and, in general, of metanarratives, in the transition from modernity to postmodernity. A formation that is unified or totalized in relation to a horizon is a formation without foundation; it constitutes itself as a unity only as it delimits itself from that which it negates. The discourses of equality and rights, for example, need not rely on a common human essence as their foundation; it suffices to posit an egalitarian logic whose limits of operation are given by the concrete argumentative practices existing in a society. A horizon, then, is an empty locus, a point in which society symbolizes its very groundlessness, in which concrete argumentative practices operate over a backdrop of radical freedom, of radical contingency.“

„The relationship between a foundation and what it founds is quite different from a symbolic representation and that which is symbolized. In foundational logic there is a necessary, determining relation between the founding agency and the founded entity; in symbolic representation, on the other hand, no such internal motivation exists and the chain of equivalent signifieds can be extended indefinitely. The former is a relation of delimitation and determination, i.e., fixation. The latter is an open-ended horizon. 

It is the contraposition between foundation and horizon that I think enables us to understand the change in the ontological status of emancipatory discourses and, in general, of metanarratives, in the transition from modernity to postmodernity. A formation that is unified or totalized in relation to a horizon is a formation without foundation; it constitutes itself as a unity only as it delimits itself from that which it negates. The discourses of equality and rights, for example, need not rely on a common human essence as their foundation; it suffices to posit an egalitarian logic whose limits of operation are given by the concrete argumentative practices existing in a society. A horizon, then, is an empty locus, a point in which society symbolizes its very groundlessness, in which concrete argumentative practices operate over a backdrop of radical freedom, of radical contingency.“