Page 16 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

xvii Translator’s Introduction

adequately judged. Nevertheless, its main outlines have taken on
a definite shape in recent years. It might best be described as a
three-tiered research program. The ground level consists of a
general theory of communication—as Habermas calls it, a uni-
versal pragmatics—at the next level this theory serves as the
foundation for a general theory of socialization in the form of a
theory of the acquisition of communicative competence; finally,
at the highest level, which builds on those below it, Habermas
sketches a theory of social evolution which he views as a recon-
struction of historical materialism. In the remainder of this in-
troduction, I shall make a few general remarks about each of
these subprograms and about Habermas’ application of the ideas
developed in them to the analysis of contemporary society.

1. As mentioned above, one of the conclusions of Habermas’
examination of psychoanalysis was that, as a theory and therapy
of systematically distorted communication, it necessarily presup-
posed a general theory of (nondistorted) communication. This
is only a particular instance of a more general conclusion he had
reached earlier: that the normative-theoretical foundations of
critical theory would have to be sought in that distinctive and
pervasive medium of life at the human level, viz. language. In
his inaugural lecture of June 1965 at Frankfurt University, he
had declared: “What raises us out of nature is the only thing
whose nature we can know: language. Through its structure
autonomy and responsibility are posited for us. Our first sentence
expresses unequivocally the intention of universal and uncon-
strained consensus. Autonomy and responsibility together (Ménd-
igkeit) comprise the only idea we possess a priori in the sense
of the philosophical tradition.” * Of course at that time this was
little more than a declaration—that the normative-theoretical
foundations of critical theory were badly in need of renewal, that
neither dialectical materialism nor a retreat to pure philosophy
was adequate to this task, that earlier attempts by the members
of the Frankfurt School to articulate and ground a conception of
rationality that essentially transcended the narrow confines of
“instrumental” thought had not in the end succeeded, and that
the solution was to be found in a theory of language.