Page 178 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

155 Historical Materialism

are reciprocally defined. The participants suppose that in inter-
personal relations they could in principle exchange places; but
they remain bound to their performative attitudes.
At the stage of proposztionally differentiated speech, speaking
and acting separate for the first time. A and B can connect the
performative attitude of the participant with the propositional
attitude of an observer; each can not only adopt the perspective
of the other but can exchange the perspective of participant for
that of observer. Thus two reciprocal behavioral expectations
can be coordinated in such a way that they constitute a system of
reciprocal motivation or, as we can also say, a social role. At this
stage actions are separated from norms.
At the third stage, that of argumentative speech, the validity
claims we connect with speech acts can be made thematic. In
grounding assertions or justifying actions in discourse, we treat
statements or norms (underlying the actions) hypothetically, that
is, in such a way that they might or might not be the case, that
they might be legitimate or illegitimate. Norms and roles appear
as in need of justification; their validity can be contested or
grounded with reference to principles.
‘I shall not deal with the cognitive aspects of this communica-
tive development, but merely point out the step-by-step differenti-
ation of a social reality graduated in itself. At first actions,
motives (or behavioral expectations), and acting subjects are
perceived on a single plane of reality. At the next stage actions
and norms separate; norms draw together with actors and their
motives on a plane that lies behind, so to speak, the reality plane
of actions. At the last stage, principles with which norms of ac-
tion can be generated are distinguished from these norms them-
selves; the principles, together with actors and their motives, are
placed behind even the line of norms, that is, the existing system
of action.
In this way we can obtain basic concepts for a genetic theory
of action. These concepts can be read in two ways: either as con-
cepts of the competences—acquired in stages—of speaking and
acting subjects who grow into a symbolic universe or as concepts
of the infrastructure of the action system itself. I would like to
use them in this latter sense to characterize different forms of