Page 108 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

85 . Moral Development and Ego Identity

point at which there emerge corresponding indications for the
perception and self-perception of actors, that is, of the subjects
sustaining the interaction. When the child leaves its symbiotic
phase and becomes sensitive to moral points of view—at first
from the perspective of punishment and obedience—it has al-
ready learned to distinguish itself and its body from the environ-
ment, even though it does not yet strictly distinguish between
physical and social objects in this environment. The child has
thereby gained a ‘“‘natural” identity, as it were, which it owes to
the capacity of its body—as an organism that maintains bound-
aries—to conquer time. Plants and animals are already systems in
an environment that possess not only an identity for us (the
identifying observers), as do bodies-in-motion, but also an
identity for themselves.“ At the first level actors are thus not
yet drawn into the symbolic world; there are natural agents to
whom comprehensible intentions are ascribed, but not yet sub-
jects whom one could hold responsible for actions with a view
to generalized behavioral expectations. Only at the second level
is identity detached from the bodily appearance of the actors. To
the extent that the child assimilates the symbolic generalities of
a few fundamental roles in his family environment, and later the
norms of action of expanded groups, his natural identity is re-
formed through a symbolically supported role identity. Corporeal
features such as sex, physical endowments, age, and so on, are
absorbed into symbolic definitions. At this level actors appear as
role-dependent reference persons and, later also, as anonymous
role bearers. Only at the third level are the role bearers trans-
formed into persons who can assert their identities independent
of concrete roles and particular systems of norms. We are sup-
posing here that the youth has acquired the important distinction
between norms, on the one hand, and principles according to
which we can generate norms, on the other—and thus the ability
to judge according to principles. He takes into account that tra-
ditionally settled forms of life can prove to be mere conventions,
to be irrational. Thus he has to retract his ego behind the line
of all particular roles and norms and stabilize it only through the
abstract ability to present himself credibly in any situation as
someone who can satisfy the requirements of consistency even