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On Social Identity

by Jiirgen Habermas

The question: Can Complex Societies Form a Rational Identity?

already indicates how I wish to use the term 'identity.' A society does not

just have an identity ascribed to it in the trivial sense an object does, which

can be identified by various observers as being the same 'thing,' although

they may apprehend and describe it in different ways. In a certain sense a

society achieves or, let me say, produces its identity; and it is by virtue of its

own efforts that it does not lose it. To speak, moreover, of the 'rational'

identity of society reveals that the concept has a normative content. The use

of the term is premissed on the assumption that a society may fail to find its

'proper' or its 'true' identity. Hegel speaks of a 'false identity' when the

unity of a social world which is disintegrating into its component parts can

be preserved only by force. Whether we could still speak in the same way

today is at least doubtful.

I shall, nonetheless, refer repeatedly to Hegel since Hegel's philosophy is

essentially designed to solve the question I am concerned with. To delineate

the problem of collective identity I intend to discuss, let me begin with a

brief historical account.

We can trace the relation of ego and group identity through four stages

of social evolution. In the archaic societies whose structure was determined

by kinship ties there emerge mythical world images. Here the social

relationships of the family and the tribe can serve as the interpretative

schema according to which the mythical image forms analogies between all

the natural and cultural phenomena. Nothing is so different as not to exist

in universal interdependence; everything depends upon everything else in an

evident manner. By its systematic inquiry into all the possibilities of

analogical comparisons of nature and culture (mythical) thought constructs

a vast hall of mirrors in which the image of man and the world endlessly

reflect each other and in which it is, through the prism of the relations

between nature and culture, always dispersed to be again reconstituted.

The mythical world image assigns a meaningful place to every perceptible

element; in so doing it absorbs the insecurities threatening a society which,

due to its under-developed productive forces, is barely able to bring its

environment under control. Almost every contingency can be dealt with

through the medium of interpretation: it can be 'interpreted away.' The

mythical world comprehends all its entities as analogues, men are

substances in the same way as are stones, plants, animals, and gods. Thus,

the tribe is not a reality which stands out in contrast to its individual

members or to nature. One is tempted to compare the individual's identity

Telos, Spring 1974 1974:91-103


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in archaic society to the natural identity of the child, which Hegel has

characterized as the immediate and hence non-spiritual, the merely

natural unity of the individual with his species and with the world as such.

At this stage there cannot arise problems of identity. The condition for this

is the differentiation between individuality, particularity and universality

which we can first observe in the world of the polytheistic religions of the

early civilizations.

In the state, the kingdom or the city-state the early civilizations dispose of

a form of centralized political organization which requires legitimation and

must hence be assimilated into the religious narratives and secured by

ritual.

The gods of the polytheistic religions assume human shape; they are

conceived as actively and sometimes arbitrarily controlling specific realms

of life and as themselves being subjected to the necessity of an abstract

destiny. The beginning desacralization of the natural environment and the

fact that the political institutions for the first time get a certain autonomy

relative to the cosmic order point to the emergence of a sphere of

contingencies, in which the individual can no longer deal with the fortuitous

by interpreting it away, but in which he must learn to bring contingency

under control by his own actions. New forms of religious action and thereby

patterns of interaction between gods and men are formed: prayer, sacrifice

and worship. These indicate the process of a self emerging from the

universal complex of the given order of substances and forces and the

forming of self-identity. Since at this stage the adherence to religion and

cult still coincides in a particularistic manner with the respective

community, a clear-cut group identity becomes possible. The concrete

community can be distinguished as the particular from the universality of

the cosmic order on the one side and from the singular individuals on the

other, without endangering the identity-preserving coherence of a world

centered in the polity. That is why Hegel exalts the mature form of Greek

polytheism as religion in which a free political morality finds exemplary

expression. In Athens the individual seems to have found an identity which

allows him to feel at one with the life process of the Polis as a free person:

Athene is the City of Athens and at the same time the spirit of its people,

not an external, protective spirit, but a vital spirit actually alive in the

people, immanent to the individual, who is represented by Pallas in his

essential features.

1

Thus Hegel calls the people of Greece the most human

people, although he remarks that here the infinite subjectivity of man, the

absolute right of the individual

himself

has not as yet been realized, so at

this stage takes place what is in essence slavery.

2

It is only the major universal religions, of which Judaism and Christianity

1.

G.W .F. Hegel,

Forlesungen zur Philosophie der Religion,

II, p. 126.

2. Ibid.

p. 128 f.


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ON SOCIAL IDENTITY / 93

are perhaps the most rationally structured, which raise a general or

universalistic claim to validity. The one, the other-worldly, all-knowing and

wholly just and gracious God of Christendom leads to the forming of an

ego-identity severed from all concrete roles and norm s. This T can know

itself as a completely individuated being. The idea of the immortal soul in

the face of God opens up the path to the idea of freedom according to

which the individual has infinite wo rth .

3

Here the carrier of the religious

system is no longer the state or the polis but the community of believers to

which potentially all men belong; for the commands of God are universal.

To be sure, the highly developed civilizations are class societies with

extreme inequalities in the distribution of power and wealth. On the one

side, therefore, the political system needs legitimation to a high degree. On

the other, the potential of monotheistic religions to provide universalistic

justifications is not designed to satisfy that particularistic demand for

legitimation. At this stage the religious meaning systems and the political

imperatives of self-maintenance become structurally incompatible. Hence a

counter-factual and yet illuminating nexus must be formed between the

legitimacy potential of universal religions and the existing political order.

This is the function of ideology. Ideology functions as the counterweight to

the structural dissimilarity between collective identity tied to the concrete

state and ego identities formed within the framework of the universalistic

associations. This problem of identity inheres to all the developed

civilizations; yet it does not definitely come to consciousness before the

modern era because until then a series of mediating mechanisms had been

operative. Of these I shall mention only some:

In the first place, while it is true, that those structures emerging with

the monotheistic religions made possible the forming of a not merely

conventional, but of a highly individualistic ego-identity; nonetheless earlier

identity formations and conventional consciousness remained widespread,

as can be seen from the fact that all the monotheistic religions incorporate

symbols and practices of a pagan, that is of a mythical or magic origin.

Further, in the universal religions a distinction is made between the

members of the community of believers and its addressees still held in the

sway of pagan beliefs. Temporary demarcations established against external

enemies can therefore be justified by the missionary function.

Finally, and above all, it was possible to put to use the dualism of divine

transcendence and an almost wholly secular world. To preserve a

sacramental dimension to the ruler or to his office was enough to legitimize

the secularized realm of civil law and politics with its profane exercise of

power. In the western civilizations the two-empires-doctrine was to become

the foundation of an however tension-charged but long-lasting coalition

between the Church and the worldly regime.

With the modern era, that is, with the fourth stage (that Hegel saw

3.

G.W .F. Hegel, Encyclopedia, par. 482.


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himself confronted with) these and other mediating mechanisms had

evidently become ineffective:

With Protestantism many of the previously assimilated pre-Christian

elements are discarded; this in turn reinforces the demand for strongly

universalistic commitments and the corresponding individualistic ego

structures.

As the Catholic Church split up into several confessions and a

multiplicity of denominations, the membership of the individual in a

community of believers lost not only its exclusiveness but also its rigid

institutional ties. The principle of tolerance and of the voluntary nature of

religious association finally won general acceptance.

Last, it must be recognized that lately there has taken place a significant

shift in the direction of theological currents giving a radical this-worldly

interpretation to the message of salvation and tending to obliterate the

traditional dualism; God has come to signify little more than a structure of

communication which compels the participants to rise above the

contingency of a merely external existence on the basis of mutual

recognition of each other's identity.

These trends characterize a development in which what is left of universal

religions is but the core of universalistic moral systems, and this in greater

proportion, the more transparent the infrastructure of monotheistic belief

systems has become. Hegel had clearly seen the initial phase of this

development as well as its consequence: the inevitable cleavage between

ego-identity derived from universalistic structures and collective identity

bound up with a particular community. For on the basis of universalistic

norms no particular entity possessing an identity-forming power (such as

the family, the tribe, the city, state or nation) can set up bounds to

demarcate itself from alien groups. Rather, the 'own' group is here replaced

by the category of 'the other,' who is no longer conceived as an outsider

because of his non-membership, but becomes for the ego two things in one:

absolutely identical and absolutely different, the closest, and the most

distant, both in one person. Accordingly, citizenship or national identity

would have to be enlarged to become a cosmopolitan or universal identity.

Yet can this design of a new identity be conceived without contradiction?

The whole of mankind is an abstraction, it is not just another group which

on a global scale could form its identity, similarly as did tribes or states,

until such a time as mankind were again to coalesce into a particular entity,

let us say, in defence against other populations in outer space. But what else

except the whole of mankind or a world society can take the place of an

all-embracing collective identity from which individualistic ego identities

could be formed? If this place is not filled, universalistic morality, in the

same way as the ego structures consistent with it, would remain a mere

postulate in that they could be actualized only occasionally and this within

the private sphere, without substantially grounding social life.


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I hold this problem of identity to have been the actual impetus to

Hegelian philosophy and it is precisely because he gave the impulse to

reflection upon these questions that Hegel remains a contemporary thinker.

Hegel evidently conceived the alienation of the subject from society as

related to the subject's alienation from nature. There is, to be exact, a

threefold diremption of the modern T : from external nature, from society

and from internal nature; these diremptions signalize the context in which

Hegel himself s w the motive force of philosophy: The need for philosophy

arises when the unifying power has disappeared from the life of man, when

the contradictions have lost their living interrelation and interdependence

and assumed an independent form. Perhaps the following consideration

may serve to advance our understand ing of the fundamental problem

Hegel's philosophy sought to answer.

Monotheism, especially Christianity, was the last system of ideas which

provided a unifying interpretation acknowledged by more or less all the

members of the community. However, once it was confronted with the rival

claims of science and profane morality, Christianity could no longer satisfy

this demand. Here, then, philosophy must step in its place. Yet even if with

the conceptual means at its disposal, philosophy were able to substitute for

the unifying power of the universal religions, the problem itself remains

unsolved. For, as we have see, monotheism already had been an expression

of the opposition between universalistic ego structures on the one side and

the particularistic identity of the state on the other. This opposition resides

both in the fact that the state is the organizational form of a class society,

the unequalitarian character of which cannot find universalistic

justification, and in the fact that precisely this organizational form opposes

sovereign states to one another in the struggle for existence, which again is

not reconcilable with universalistic principles. If, then, philosophy is to

accomplish the task of unification it must prove capable of passing even

beyond religion's claim to a unificatory interpretation; that means

philosophy, in Hegel's design, had to reconstitute the unity which so far

only the myth has been able to provide. This explains why Hegel, again and

again, returned to the example of the morality embodied in the Polis; for it

is here within Greek polytheism that in Hegel's opinion the individual could

find an identity of self that was in harmony with the identity of the

city-state. Stated in these terms, philosophy must create anew the same

integration of the individual beings with their particular political

community within the horizon of a universal cosmic order, as was effected

by the myth. (The concrete unity of the universal, the particular and the

individual.) This time, however, it must accomplish this task under the

extreme conditions meanwhile posited by the modern ideas of the freedom

and of the complete individuality of the human subject.

This, however, signifies that the modern problem of identity, namely the

problem of the diremption of the T from society, cannot be solved unless


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the absolute identity of the T or of the mind with the whole of natu re is

rendered comprehensible. What must be made intelligible is that the world

of nature and the world of history are held together by a unifying power

which in unfolding itself produces these diremptions, which it can also

overcome.

I must confine myself to this loose reference to the strategy Hegel chose

for solving the problem of identity. Hegel has undertaken the attempt of

producing for modern consciousness a system of knowledge guaranteeing

identity in a similar manner as 'the concrete science' of mythical thought

must long ago have created for archaic consciousness. In principle Hegel is

able to locate all the phenomena within the process of the self-mediation of

the absolute spirit so that each can illuminate the point at which the

modern T finds its place; the structure which renders comprehensible both

nature and history in their essential manifoldedness is at the same time the

structure in which the T can find and preserve its identity. To render

comprehensible or to understand means: to eradicate all contingencies

which threaten the identity of the T , for it is through the very acts of

understanding th at the T identifies itself with the spirit which Hegel says

that it in itself produces the annihilation of what is night and noth ing

and renders futile that which is futility .

4

This universal self-movement of the absolute spirit is made intelligible

precisely by the state, notwithstanding its particularity, in that the state is

the embodiment and the realization of the ethical idea. Modern society has

found its rational identity in the sovereign constitutional state and it is the

task of philosophy to show this identity to be rational.

Approaching Hegel more from the outside, I shall indicate some of the

difficulties this thesis is confronted with in the light of contemporary

experience.

It is beyond my scope here to trace in any detail the immanent difficulties

of the Hegelian construction especially in his Ph ilosophy of R ight. Let me

instead mention four arguments against the assertion that the modern state

continues to be the plane within which societies form their identity.

1) If the presupposition that the modern state develops a rational identity

within the form of the constitutional state were correct, the interests of the

whole would have to manifest themselves in the institutions of the state and

be realized in particular ends. In so far as this unity is absent, no thing is

real, though it may exist. A bad state is one which merely exists. A sick

body also exists, bu t it has no reality. Yet, ever since Marx 's critique of the

Hegelian philosophy of the state it has been argued time and again that the

bourgeois constitutional state not only in its Hegelian derivation, i.e., in the

form of the status-stratified constitutional monarchy {Stiindestaat , but even

in its liberal mass democratic cast is no 'real' state (in the emphatic sense of

4. Encyclopedia, op.cit.. par. 396.


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Hegel's logic), but one which 'merely exists.' As long as the society exhibits

class structures the organization of the state must give effect to particular

interests, privileging them vis

vis universal interests. However much the

capitalistic economic system may have developed and undergone change

within the frame of competitive democracy, one fundam ental state of things

has remained unchanged: The social priorities by no means express the

generalizable interests of the total population; they are mainly the result of

unintended consequences of decentralized private decisions. A similar

situation obtains in the states of bureaucratic socialism where the power of

disposition over the means of production rests with a political elite.

2) Even if the sovereignty of the state were not internally restricted by the

class structure and undermined by economically imposed limitations of

planning capacities, the sovereignty of the national state has in any event

become an anachronism.

Hegel could still take his departure from the contemporary system of the

European powers and, as opposed to this reality, treat the projective unity

of international law merely as an abstract idea of morality. Only the state

that is sovereign in its relations to other states, and Hegel calls this the

absolute power on earth,

5

can achieve the degree of autonomy which

enables society to form its identity within its framework.

And even today, within the new horizon created for a global society by

the worldwide network of communications, no supra-state form of

organization capable of exercising statelike authority has come into being.

This might, at first sight, be taken as a confirmation of Hegel's view. Yet,

the inexistence of a world state alone does not allow the conclusion that the

sovereignty of the national state is continual. The range of the sovereignty

of national states is limited by at least three factors: First, by the develop-

ment of modern weapons technology which has made the avoidance of

major war the imperative for the survival at least of the superpowers;

second, by the supra-state organization of the multinational corporations

with their control over internationalized capital and labor (only seventeen

countries have a budget that exceeds the annual turn-over of General

Motors); and third, by the moral instance of a world public opinion whose

frontiers run across the boundaries of states.

3) While the second argument raises the question whether the reality of

an as yet nascent world society is consonant with an identity tied to national

territories, the third argument leads to the question whether it is under

present conditions at all possible to form a world identity. Identity problems

can present themselves meaningfully only for as long as societies are as a

whole integrated into a symbolic life world.

It was in the course of the development of capitalism that the economy

broke out of the limits set by household production, and in general, out of

the boundaries of normative regulation. The private sphere of 'bourgeois

5.

G.W .F. Hegel, The Philosophy of Right, par. 331.


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society' separated from the state as well as the family is primarily under the

control of the imperatives of the market, i.e., of systemic mechanisms and

not of norms of action and the value-orientations of the actors; that is why

for Hegel this sphere represents the 'loss of morality.'

Hegel, of course, was convinced that the economic system—'the system of

needs'—notwithstanding its internal conflicts, would

retain

its connection

with ethical life through the mediation of the legal system. Meanwhile,

however, as society has attained increasing complexity, the problems of co-

ordination and steering have won such predominance that the state is no

longer capable of guaranteeing systems integration by norms alone. Rather,

administrative action itself has come to be dependent upon steering

problems generated and defined primarily by the subsystems of economy,

technology and science, which have come to dominate the system

itself.

Social integration increasingly seems to get substituted by systems

integration. And the more this happens, the more identity problems become

obsolete.

4) The last argument is substantiated by an historical development which

does not fit into Hegel's conceptual scheme. In the last one hundred and

fifty years two formations of collective identity have come into being— the

nation and the party. The nationalist movements of the nineteenth century

can probably still be related to the patriotism which for Hegel too was a

constitutive moment of the rational identity of the constitutional state. But

the nation was only the foundation for a stable identity, and not from the

start incompatible with rational goals to the extent that it served the reali-

zation of the democratic state, i.e., the realization of a fundamentally uni-

versalistic program. Similarly, nationalism in the developing countries has

acquired substance only through its relation to the goals of social

revolution. In the absence of such universalistic infrastructures national

consciousness unfailingly regresses to renewed particularism; it then

signifies either a dangerous phenomenon of regression on the part of highly

developed societies, as in fascism, or, as in the case of Gaullism, a virtually

ineffective program.

Yet another historically important form of collective identity took shape,

largely under Marxist influence, within the European working-class

movement of the nineteenth and of the early twentieth century. Its vehicle is

the revolutionary party, whose role is determined by class struggle and the

global civil war. The communist party was designed to represent parti-

sanship for reason, that is for a universal rationality of social life which as

yet awaits realization. To put it in another way: The party can lay claim to

rationality to the extent that its actual practice is capable of bringing about

the conditions in which the party itself becomes superfluous. Yet, the lesson

of history is that since the October Revolution the communist parties which

have seized power did establish themselves permanently as highly bureau-

cratized statist parties, and that in those cases where they have not come to


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ON SOCIAL IDEN TITY / 99

power they have abandoned their revolutionary mission to integrate them-

selves into multi-party systems. These examples rather lend support to the

assumption that today the identity of a society no longer fits an organi-

zational framework—be it the national state or the para-state party.

Do the difficulties indicated imply that the question of whether and how

complex societies can form a rational identity is meaningless? I would say

that they should not make us discard the concepts of group and ego identity

themselves. True enough, these difficulties are sufficient reason to recognize

that an identity concept derived from the context of civilization, centered

around the state, and articulated as well as fixated in particular traditions

and world images has become outdated and thereby irrelevant. In con-

clusion, I shall outline the characteristics of a new identity which is at least

possible in complex societies and at the same time compatible with univer-

salistic ego structures. I shall discuss it from two perspectives:

1) The new identity of a society which extends beyond state boundaries

can neither be related to a specific territory nor rest upon any specific

organization. The distinguishing characteristic of this new identity can also

no longer be that of association or membership. Collective identity, and this

is the thesis I intend to advance, can today only be grounded in the

consciousness of universal and equal chances to participate in the kind of

communication processes by which identity formation becomes a

continuous learning process. Here the individual is no longer confronted by

collective identity as a traditional authority, as a fixed objectivity on the

basis of which self-identity can be built. Rather, individuals are the

participants in the shaping of the collective will underlying the design of a

common identity.

Admittedly, norm and value-forming communications do not always take

the precise form of discourse: they are not in all cases institutionalized, but

rather they are often diffuse and appear under a variety of definitions.

Emanating from 'the base,' they penetrate into the pores of spheres of life

which are formally organized. In this sense, they are a sub-political process

operating below the threshold of political decision-making: nonetheless,

they affect the political system, albeit indirectly, through their impact on

the normative frame of political decisions. The current debate concerning

the 'quality of life' is an indication of transformations of public issues

effected, as it were, sub-cutaneously.

Such processes are observable also in the de-differentiation of previously

autonomous life spheres. Modern art provides a striking example. On the

one hand, modern art has become increasingly esoteric and recommends

itself as a non-scientific alternative to cognition; on the other, it has tended

to abandon the museums, the theaters, concert halls and libraries as if to

divest itself of the autonomy of art and in order to enter practical life, i.e.,

in order to enhance sensibility, to alter the routines of language, to

stimulate perception, and, yes, to become incorporated into paradigmatic


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life forms. Another example is both mental illness and crime. The former is

less and less conceived from the perspective of pathology, the latter from

that of traditional canons of morality. Other phenomena of this type point

to the weakening of state control over politics, illustrated by the weakening

made by planning administrations to enter into communication with those

potentially affected, or conversely, by the citizens' initiatives and the

activities of

civic

and community groups which in turn impose this conduct

upon the bureaucracies. This is at least a tendency towards the dissolution

of the autonomy that bureaucracy has come to assert over politics. The

concept of 'democratization' is not adequate to what is at issue here,

because, except in rare cases, the initiatives and movements referred to are

not likely to enlarge the scope for effective participation in political

decisions: they do, nonetheless, have the less evident but long-lasting effect

of altering the interpretations given to publicly recognized needs and wants.

When a municipal theater company, the members of a university, or the

members of church organization realize their demand for codetermination

this also has a political bearing. What is of interest here, however, is not the

shift in power, but rather a circumstance which tends to be obscured by the

connotations of participatory democracy: To refer to our examples, what I

have in mind is that the routines of play-acting, of academic training and of

religious consolation, i.e., of the normative contents and values embodied

by the norms of everyday life institutions, are thereby thematized and

rendered accessible to communication. This, however, relates to another

aspect of the problem.

2) The new identity of an as yet emergent global society cannot find arti-

culation in world images, although it must, of course, presuppose the

validity of universalistic moral systems. The latter, however, can be linked

with the basic norms of rational discourse. This in itself is a step in the

direction of a collective type of identity which, as I have indicated, is

grounded in the consciousness of universal' and equal opportunity to

participate in value and norm-forming learning processes. Such an identity

no longer requires fixed contents. Those interpretations which make man's

situation in today's world comprehensible are distinguished from the

traditional world images not so much in that they are more limited in scope,

but in that their status is open to counter-arguments and revisions at any

time.

In part, such interpretations are infused by the critical appropriations of

the tradition. In part, they can also be traced back to basic scientific ideas

which have lent themselves to popularization and which concern the

self-

understanding of

men:

Class struggle, the origin of the species and the sub-

conscious are three such basic words, stemming from theories which have

since the nineteenth century been assimilated by the vocabulary of popular

knowledge. Today, this is due also to popular syntheses of available scien-

tific data which are intentionally construed to serve the purpose of global


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ON SOCI L IDENTITY 101

interpretations: I have in mind, for instance, the image of man as provided

by ethnologists; e.g., Konrad Lorenz.

If one were to look for identity projections of a scientific origin, at the

present time one would discover at least three , let us call them, strategies of

interpretation. Global interpretations inspired by the systems-theory

approach contest the possibility and substance of identity formation at the

macro-social level: As a result of the growing complexities of developed

social systems identity problems are eclipsed by steering problems and

retain at best a parochial significance. Other interpretations drawing on

ethnology bring us back to a fixed and narrowly circumscribed identity set

up as a natural substratum: Identity problems, on these terms, spring from

misdevelopments within the process of civilization which over-demand the

endogenous capacities of personality systems. Finally, those interpretations

leading back to Marx and Hegel, of which my paper is an illustration, do

not in any direct way rely on the universal faculty of reason, bu t nonetheless

adhere to those universal and inevitable presuppositions which, however

counterfactually, are so much an inherent part of language, and thereby of

the sociocultural life form, that they establish a link between the process of

socialization and the imperatives for the formation of ego and group

identities.

Such identity projections do not have the status of scientific theory,

rather they have the character of practical hypotheses, which can prove

successful or fail only when they have gained significant influence on how

the members of society understand themselves and how they comprehend

the world in which they are living. They are fallible in an extremely painful

way, if they further a false identity, they hurt in the same way as does the

course of a disease.

3) We have seen that a new identity cannot be retrospectively fixed to

traditional values, but neither can it just mean an orientation towards the

tasks of planning. The radical kind of future-orientedness which also enters

into the process of identity formation encounters its limits in the consti-

tutive elements of the new identity

itself.

For if we would look at our present

only in the light of alternative futures, where everything is placed at our

disposal, nothing like an identity could be formed. We have said that we see

the foundation for a new identity in the consciousness of universal and

equal opportunity to participate in value and norm-forming learning

processes. The consciousness itself cannot be a mere projection of the

future. The question then arises as to the credentials of our assumption that

universal communication structures can acquire the significance and the

effectiveness of a basis for identity. Apparently, this is not yet the case

today.

There is no simple answer to this question, yet I should like to conclude

with the following consideration. I shall take the example of curriculum

planning. Hitherto, new curricula could be prescribed without causing any


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disturbance. They gave rise to discussions among the experts, but as far as

students, parents, and the political public sphere were concerned, inno-

vations almost passed unnoticed. The sobering impact the natural sciences

had on educational humanism has today been followed by another shift

away from the humanistic creed, which has received its impulse from the

social sciences. Yet, this shift is no longer actualized in the medium of

tradition. Cultural tradition is highly selective and in this selectivity is at the

same time taken for granted. In countries with a centralized public school

system, like Western Germany, we therefore observe an interesting field

experiment. Roughly, the administrations must plan the curriculum without

a strong backing by tradition. In part, things that were culturally taken for

granted have been worn out and the traditional claims to validity have been

undermined, in part, the administrations cannot find in the traditional

canons the requisite niches within which to place changed or new functions

to which the school system must get adapted. So the planning of the curri-

culum is mainly based on the premise that orientations within a rich range

of options, can be entirely different. The school administration thus substi-

tutes one of the essential functions of tradition, i.e., to make a justifiable

selection of the mass of traditional contents.

Moreover (and here I draw on recent experiences in Germany), in this

attempt one typical thing happens: the administrative legitimacy is insuffi-

cient for the new task of making an argumentatively justifiable selection of

cultural options. The widespread and agitated reactions to new curricula

bring to consciousness that there is no administrative creation of cultural

legitimacy. Rather, cultural legitimacy presupposes value and norm-

forming communication of a type that has started among parents, teachers

and students and which underlies the demonstrations, citizens' initiatives,

and so on, which have increasingly brought these issues to the attention of

the general public. Here, the communicative structures of universal

practical discourse obtains because the formation of tradition has been

forced out if its natural conditions and because basic consensus on

value-systems can be reached only through the medium of general

discourses. In the absence of an undoubted tradition you have, in these

matters, to choose between violence and grass-root communication.

I should like to draw one lesson from this example for our purpose. The

limits of administrative interference with tradition and the compulsion to

communicative mobilization of tradition reveal that very structure around

which alone a new collective identity, if it ever comes into being, could

crystallize

itself.

Its form would be an identity, non-prejudiced in its content

and independent of particular organizational types, of the community of

those who engage in the discursive and experimental formation of an

identity-related knowledge on the basis of a critical appropriation of

tradition as well as of the inputs from science, philosophy and the arts.


13/13


The temporal structure of a future-oriented remem brance would more-

over allow the formation of universalistic ego structures on the basis of

partisanship for particular identity-projections; for every position can come

to agreement with the other positions it is confronted with in the present

precisely in its partisanship for a universality to be realized in the future.

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