  To bring such strong idealizations down to earth, one must connect them with conscientious judgment in everyday moral practice. One way to do this is through an account of the appropriate application of moral rules in concrete circumstances. In response to ethics-of-care objections (and following Günther 1993), Habermas has acknowledged the need for such an account (1993, 35–39). In moral discourses of application, one must test alternative normative interpretations of the particular situation for their acceptability before the limited audience of those immediately involved, on the assumption that one is applying valid general norms. But even at the level of application, discourse cannot always include all the affected parties (e.g., when the issue concerns the fate of a comatose patient).  Habermas's discourse ethics thus implies that for many, if not most, of our moral rules and choices, the best we can achieve are partial justifications: arguments that are not conclusively convincing for all, but also are not conclusively defeated, in limited discourses with interlocutors we regard as reasonable (cf. Rehg 2003, 2004). 