Page 128 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

105 The Development of Normative Structures

cosmological world views, philosophies, and the higher religions,
which replace the narrative explanations of mythological accounts
with argumentative foundations. The traditions going back to
the great founders are an explicitly teachable knowledge that can
be dogmatized, that is, professionally rationalized. In their articu-
lated forms rationalized world views are an expression of formal-
operational thought and of a moral consciousness guided by
principles. The cosmologically or monotheistically conceived
totality of the world corresponds formally to the unity that the
youth can establish at the stage of universalism. Of course, the
universalistic structures of world views have to be made com-
patible with the traditionalistic attitude toward the political order
that predominates in the ancient empires. This is possible above
all because the highest principles, to which all argumentation
recurs, are themselves removed from argumentation and immu-
nized against objections. In the ontological tradition of thought,
this finality is guaranteed through the concept of the absolute (or
)
of complete self-sufficiency .
In the course of the establishment of universalistic forms of
intercourse in the capitalist economy and in the modern state
the attitude toward the Judaeo-Christian and Greek-ontological
heritage was refracted in a subjectivistic direction (the Reforma-
tion and modern philosophy). The highest principles lost their
unquestionable character; religious faith and the theoretical atti-
tude became reflective. The advance of the modern sciences and
the development of moral-practical will-formation were no longer
prejudiced by an order that—although grounded—was posited
absolutely. For the first time, the universalistic potential already
contained in the rationalized world views could be set free. The
unity of the world could no longer be secured objectively, through
hypostasizing unifying principles (God, Being, or Nature);
henceforth it could be asserted only reflectively, through the unity
of reason (or through a rational organization of the world, the
actualization of reason). The unity of theoretical and practical
reason then became the key problem for modern world interpre-
tations, which have lost their character as world views.
These fleeting allusions are meant only to render plausible the
heuristic fruitfulness of the conjecture that there are homologies