Page 208 - Communication and the Evolution of Society

185 Legitimation Problems in the Modern State

legitimations of a superseded stage, no matter what their content,
are depreciated with the transition to the next higher stage; it is
not this or that reason which is no longer convincing but the
kind of reason. Such depreciation of the legitimation potential of
entire blocks of tradition occurred in civilizations with the re-
trenchment of mythological thought, and in modern times with
the retrenchment of cosmological, religious, and ontological
modes of thought. My conjecture is that these depreciatory shifts
are connected with social-evolutionary transitions to new learning
levels, learning levels that lay down the conditions of possibility
for learning processes in the dimensions of both objectivating
thought and practical insight. I cannot go into that here. In any
case, for the legitimation problems of the modern period, whats
decisive is that the level of justification has become reflective. The
procedures and presuppositions of justification are themselves
now the legitimating grounds on which the validity of legitima-
tions is based. The idea of an agreement that comes to pass amofig
all parties, as free and equal, determines the procedural type of
legitimacy of modern times. (By contrast, the classical type of
legitimacy was determined by the idea of teachable knowledge
of an ordered world.) Corresponding to this is an alteration of
the position of the subject. Myth was taken for true in a naive
attitude. The ordo-knowledge of God, the Cosmos, and the world
of man was recognizable as the handed-down teachings of wise
men or prophets. Those who make agreements under idealized
conditions have taken the competence to interpret into their own
hands.1*
The procedural type of legitimacy was first worked out by
Rousseau. The contrat social that seals the break with nature
means a new principle of regulating behavior: the social. It shows
by what path “justice can replace instinct in (human) behavior.”
That situation in which every individual totally gives himself and
all his quasi-natural rights over to the community sums up the
conditions under which only those regulations count as legitimate
which express a common interest, that is, the general will: ‘For
if each gives himself over completely, the situation is the same
for all; and if the situation is the same for all, no one has an
interest in making it difficult for others.” #8 Of course, Rousseau