Page 139 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

116 Communication and Evolution of Society

velopment of the individual as a key to the change of collective
identities. In both dimensions identity projections apparently
become more and more general and abstract, until finally the
projection mechanism as such becomes conscious, and identity
formation takes on a reflective form, in the knowledge that to a
certain extent individuals and societies themselves establish their
identities.*°

IV
The [preceding] two excurses were meant to make plausible
the search for homologous structures of consciousness in ego
development and social evolution in two areas [viz. world views
and collective identities} that are not nearly as well researched
as the structures of legal and moral representations. All three
complexes lead back to structures of linguistically established
intersubjectivity. (a) Law and morality serve to regulate action
conflicts consensually and thus to maintain an endangered inter-
subjectivity of understanding among speaking and acting sub-
jects. (b) The demarcation of different universal object domains
—one of which appears in the propositional attitude of the ob-
server as external nature, a second in the performative attitude of
the participant in interaction as normative social reality, and a
third in the expressive attitude of one who expresses an intention
as his own subjective nature—makes possible the differentiation
(and if necessary thematization) of those validity claims (truth,
rightness, truthfulness) that we implicitly tie to all speech ac-
tions. (c) Finally, the construction of personal and correspond-
ing collective identities is a necessary presupposition for taking
on the general communicative roles, which are provided for in
every speaking and acting situation and which find their expres-
sion in the employment of personal pronouns.
To be sure, the communication theory I have in mind is not
yet developed to a point at which we could adequately analyze the
symbolic structures that underlie law and morality, an intersub-
jectively constituted world, and the identities of persons and col-
lectives. And we are really far from being able to provide con-
vincing reconstructions of the patterns of development of these