Page 20 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

XXi Translator’s Introduction

ment and Ego Identity,” focuses on one strand of this complex:
the development of moral consciousness. Using Kohlberg’s hier-
archical schema for the ability to make moral judgments, Haber-
mas places it in a larger action-theoretic framework by coordi-
nating the stages of this ability with stages in the development of
interactive competence: ‘‘I shall proceed on the assumption that
‘moral consciousness’ signifies the ability to make use of inter-
active competence for consciously dealing with morally relevant
conflicts.”” He then goes on (in part IV of the essay) to consider
the motivational (as distinguished from the structural or ‘‘cog-
nitive’) side of moral consciousness, that is, the psychodynamics
of developmental processes (formation of superego, defense
mechanisms). This perspective makes it possible to comprehend
the frequent discrepancies between moral judgment and moral
action. The essay as a whole provides an example of how new
perspectives are opened by viewing the separate domains of de-
velopmental studies in an integrated framework with both struc-
tural and affective-motivational aspects.

3. The third and fourth essays delineate the properly socio-
logical level of Habermas’ program: the theory of social evolu-
tion. He understands this as a reconstruction of historical ma-
terialism, which turns on the thesis that developments in the
sphere of social integration have their own logic: “I am convinced
that normative structures do not simply follow the path of de-
velopment of reproductive processes . . . but have an internal his-
tory.”” This is obviously the fruit of his long-standing insistence
that praxis cannot be reduced to techne, nor rationality to pur-
posive or instrumental rationality, that rationalization processes
in the sphere of communicative action or interaction are neither
identical with nor an immediate consequence of rationalization
processes in the sphere of productive forces. In working out the
logic of development of normative structures, Habermas’ strategy
is to employ structural comparisons with the developmental logic
worked out for ontogenetic processes in the framework of his
theory of communicative competence. This is, of course, a new
version of an old strategy, and there is no lack of historical ex-
ample for the pitfalls that attend drawing parallels between in-