Historico-genetic Theory of Culture: On the Processual Logic of Cultural Change [1. Aufl.] 9783839415139

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Günter Dux Historico-genetic Theory of Culture

Sociology

Günter Dux teaches Sociology and Social Philosophy at the University of Freiburg (Germany).

Günter Dux

Historico-genetic Theory of Culture On the Processual Logic of Cultural Change

The book was originally published in German as Historisch-genetische Theorie der Kultur

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de © 2011 transcript Verlag, Bielefeld

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Cover layout: Kordula Röckenhaus, Bielefeld Translated by Neil Solomon Typeset by Justine Haida, Bielefeld Printed by Majuskel Medienproduktion GmbH, Wetzlar ISBN 978-3-8376-1513-5 Global distribution outside Germany, Austria and Switzerland:

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Content

I. O N THE T RACKS OF M ODERNIT Y 1. The Search for the Reestablished Unity of the World | 15 1. 2. 3. 4.

The Whole Story: History in its Entirety | 15 The Link to Natural History | 16 The Cognitive Presuppositions of Modernity | 17 The Problem of Historical Understanding | 18

2. The Radical Change in Modernity’s Understanding of the World | 23 1. The Change in the Structure of the Understanding of Nature | 23 2. The Machine Model as Paradigm | 24 3. Machina Mundi: The Process of Secularization | 25 4. The Removal of Mind from Nature | 27 5. Mind as Successor Organization | 28

3. The Copernican Turn: The Consciousness of Convergence, Constructivism, and Historicity | 33 1. The Dimension of Epistemological Critique | 33 2. Sociocultural Life-Forms as Construct | 35 3. The Consciousness of Historicity | 36

4. The Anthropological Constitution as a Condition of Enculturation: The Structures of Mind in Culture | 41 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

The Difference Between Media | 41 Anthropology as a Basic Science | 41 From Philosophical to Biological Anthropology | 42 The Reductionism of Sociobiology | 43 Constructive Autonomy | 45 The Key to Enculturation: Ontogenesis | 49 Mind and Culture in Historico-Genetic Theory | 55

5. The Three Worlds | 61 1. 2. 3. 4.

World | 61 Nature | 65 Society | 70 Inner World and Inner Nature | 75

6. Misunderstood Modernity: Résumé I | 83 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Intermediate Reflections | 83 Constructive Autonomy | 85 Pointed Toward History | 85 Worlds Not World | 85 The Change in Logic in Modernity’s Understanding of the World | 86

II. T HE S CHISM OF L OGICS : T HE P ERSTISTENCE OF A BSOLUTE L OGIC 7. The Subject Logic of Premodern Thought: The Logical Priority of Mind | 91 1. Material Logic in the Organization of the World | 91 2. Material Logic in Early Thought | 92 3. Structural Moments of Subjectivist Logic | 95

8. The Reflexiveness of Logic in the Semantics of Philosophical Understandings of the World | 101 1. The One, Commonly Shared Logic | 101 2. The World in the Logic of Absolute Mind | 102

9. Holding its Own: Absolutist Logic in the Modern Understanding of Convergence and Constructivism | 109 1. Towards an Understanding of Transcendentalism | 109 2. The Invective Against the Absolute in Philosophy | 111 3. The Persistence of Absolutist Logic in the Linguistic and Communicative Turn | 112 4. The Persistence of Absolutist Logic in Systems Theory | 114 5. The Mental Blockade to the Understanding of Constructivism | 116

10. The Loss of History | 117 1. 2. 3. 4.

On Historical Understanding | 117 Heretical Comments on the Enterprise of Science | 121 Development and Developmental Logic | 122 Understanding Foreign Worlds: The Cognitive Opportunities of Modernity | 128

11. Processual Logic in the Thought of Modernity | 131 1. Thought Based on the Priority of Nature | 131 2. From Absolute to Systemic-Processual Logic | 132 3. Overcoming the Schism of Logic | 136

12. Reconstruction as Critique of Knowledge and Method of Historical Understanding | 139 1. Reconstruction as Construct from Conditions | 139 2. The Problem of the Presupposition | 141 3. Transforming the Knowable into Knowledge | 143

13. The Old Logic and the New: Résumé II | 147 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

The Reality of the World | 147 The Reality of the System-Environment Relationship | 147 Constructive Realism—Realistic Constructivism | 148 The Indisputability of Processual Logic | 149 Ontogenesis and History | 150

III. T HE R EVOLUTION IN C OGINITIVE T HEORY : O NTOGENESIS AND H ISTORY 14. The Ontogenetic Turn in P IAGET ’ S Genetic Theory: Its Significance for History | 155 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

The Discovery of Ontogenesis | 155 A Genuine Revolution | 157 Naturalism | 158 The Development of Operationalism | 162 Constructive Realism | 165 Pragmatism and Constructive Realism | 166 Requirements of a Genetic Theory | 172

15. Piaget in the Face of History | 175 1. Links Between Ontogenetic and Historical Thought | 175 2. Attempts to Explain the Connection Between Ontogenesis and History | 182 3. Irritations | 189 4. Manifest Doubts About the Universality of Developmental Stages | 192 5. Psychogenesis, History, and Science | 195

16. From a Genetic to Historico-Genetic Theory | 199 1. The Instability of the World | 199 2. The Subject as Constructor of the Demiurgic Process | 202 3. Operational and Categorical Structures in the Formational and Developmental Process of Cognition | 206 4. Ontogenesis and History | 212

17. The Genesis of Communication and Language | 217 1. The End of the Mental Barrier | 217 2. Language as Medium in the Process of Constructing the World | 218

3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

The Naturalism of Generative Transformational Grammar  |â•–219 The Genesis of Language in the Ontogenesis of the Members of the Species  |â•–223 The Development of Language in the Context of the Acquisition Process of the Competence to Act  |â•–225 Construct, not “copy”  |â•–234 Language and society  |â•–236

18. Society and the Pragmatics of Language  |â•–2 41 The Ontic Difference  |â•–241 Locution, Illocution, Perlocution  |â•–242 The Intentionality of Illocutionary Acts  |â•–244 Normative Demands  |â•–245

1. 2. 3. 4.

19. A Theory of Cognition with Systematic Intent: Résumé III  |â•–249 1. Advantages of a Reconstructive Strategy  |â•–249 2. The Universality of Early Structures  |â•–250 3. Nature and Mind  |â•–250 4. The Reconstruction of Language  |â•–251 5. The Entry into History  |â•–252

IV. R egaining H istory 20. The History of Society and the History of Culture  |â•–2 57 1. The Discovery of the Link Between Society and Culture  |â•–257 2. The Systemic Organization of Society and Culture in a Historico-Genetic Theory  |â•–260 21. T he Development of Societal Structures:  From the Early Societies to Archaic Civilization  |â•–2 63 1. 2. 3.

The Organization of the Early Societies of Hunters and Gatherers  |â•–263 The Neolithic Revolution and the Transition to Simple Agrarian Societies  |â•–266 The Rise of Archaic Civilizations and the Formation of Domination and the State  |â•–269

22. The Development of Logico-Arithmetical Structures  |â•–275 1. 2. 3. 4.

The Universality of the Early Phases of Cognitive Development  |â•–275 The Limits of Operational Competence or: The Mental Block   |â•–283 Practice and Judgment  |â•–288 Cross-Cultural Research and the Theory of Cognition  |â•–292

23. Worldview and Material Logic from Early Times to the Time of Archaic Civilizations | 297 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Material Logic and Categorical Structures | 297 The Genesis of the Material Logic of Premodernity | 298 The Structure of Action as Material Logic | 299 The Advance in Knowledge | 302 The Reflexive Achievement of Archaic Civilizations: The Consciousness of Culture | 307

24. Greek Antiquity as a Precursor to Modernity: Societal Development and Philosophical Reflection | 313 1. The Development of the Athenian Polis to Democracy | 313 2. The Genesis of Greek Philosophy as an Ontology of Reason | 317 3. Ontologization as the Beginning of the Deontologization of Reason | 328

25. The Process of Secularization in the Middle Ages: Urban Organizational Form as the Form of Thought of Modernity | 333 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

The Feudal Organization of Medieval Societies | 333 The Organizational Form of the Town as Form of Thought | 340 The Autarkic World of the Atomists | 345 World Time: The Time of the Town | 347 The Significance of Impetus Theory | 350

26. In Conclusion: How Modernity Views Itself— In the Perspective of the Historical Developmental Logic of Mind | 353 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

A Different History | 353 The Genesis of Mind in Processual Logic | 357 Ontogenesis and History | 359 Media as Organizing Forms of Society | 361 The Developmental Logic of Society | 366 On the Developmental Logic of Thought | 369

Literature | 377 Index of Names | 397 Index of Subjects | 403

I recognize my debt to two institutions that made the following study possible: Ň The Center for Advanced Studies of the University of Leipzig (Zentrum für Höhere Studien der Universität Leipzig), which appointed me as Leibniz Professor in the 1994/1995 academic year. Ň The Center for Interdisciplinary Studies of the University of Bielefeld (Zentrum für interdiziplinäre Studien der Universität Bielefeld), which, in the 1997/1998 academic year, financed and provided me with the organizational framework for a research project on the “Theory of Social and Cultural Change.” Names are concealed behind institutions. For this reason, my gratitude is also meant as a very personal form of thanks.

I. On the Tracks of Modernity

Certainly I drew the conclusion, but now it draws me. Nietzsche

1. The Search for the Reestablished Unity of the World

1. THE W HOLE S TORY : H ISTORY IN ITS E NTIRE T Y The historical consciousness of modernity provides us with a unique opportunity for understanding the world and our place in it: we have all of history in view. Regardless when we allow historical development to begin, history in its entirety is the history of our species. Our century may well be regarded as the first in history in that it has become possible to construct a truly empirical, testable science of the world as a whole.1 If this is the case, then it has also become possible for the first time to incorporate within this understanding of the world an understanding of ourselves as species. We are hot on our own tracks. Hegel and the Romantics, and Schlegel in particular, also had history in its entirety in mind.2 It meant something radically different for them, though, from what it means for us. For Hegel as for Schlegel, history had an origin and a goal. For us, it has a beginning and its preliminary end in the present. The totality of history from its origin to its goal meant understanding history as a story of fulfillment. For us, history in its entirety from its beginning up until our time refers to the tracks of its development. Tracks one can follow and examine them. And this also holds for the tracks left by history. One can ask how the tracks of history were created, which conditions and possibilities allowed humanity to enter into history. One can also ask what enabled man to leave behind his beginnings. And finally, and ultimately, one can ask why history developed in terms of those sociocultural forms of organization that we actually discover in it. Whatever the answer may be, no matter how labyrinthine the course may be that we are forced to follow, no matter how many breaks and disconti1 | S. Hawking, A Short History of Time; B. Kanitscheider, “Singularitäten, Horizonte und das Ende der Zeit,” p. 482. 2 | G.W.F. Hegel, Enzyklopädie; H EGEL , Die Vernunft in der Geschichte; Schlegel, Vorlesungen zur Universalgeschichte.

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nuities we are compelled to establish, the tracks can be uncovered. And following these tracks will ultimately allow us to catch up with ourselves.

2. THE L INK TO N ATUR AL H ISTORY The history of the species encompasses, on the one hand, its natural history. It is the history of the hominids from their beginnings approximately 1.8 million years ago until we appeared, the Homo sapiens sapiens. On the other hand, it encompasses the ensuing history, the history in a stricter sense, the one we are concerned with. This latter history is the history in which humanity organizes its existence in sociocultural forms. We can determine what a sociocultural form of existence means. The concept is clearly distinguishable from the concept of culture found in biology.3 Sociocultural forms of organization are symbolically mediated forms, mediated by thought and language, and, as such, organizational forms defined by meaning. History in the unrestricted sense of a sociocultural form of human existence organized around meaning begins, if one follows the most recent dating of the evolution of Homo sapiens sapiens in Africa, around 120,000 years ago, or if one starts from the findings in Europe, around 35,000 years ago. The long phase of the hominization of Homo rudolfensis from ca. 2.5 million years ago up until Homo sapiens sapiens can be understood, if one wishes, as prehistory. It already has protocultural forms of organization in which the ensuing organizational forms develop. Biology and above all sociobiology have concerned themselves with the study of the natural foundations as well of thinking as with the normative rules. That prehistory already discloses certain cognitive and pragmatic structures in the runup to man need not disturb us; it is in keeping with our understanding of the processuality of history, which is also inherent to natural history. We will not be concerned with it here. Decisive for our understanding of history is that we grasp the mind-based sociocultural mode of human existence as the organization that has been developed out of natural history and succeeds it. Its beginning is the transition to the cultural mode of human existence, a transition made definitive by the anthropological constitution of man. The time frame established for this transition is of only secondary importance in the understanding of this mode of existence. It is only when history, qua the sociocultural forms in which human existence is organized, is understood as the successor organization to an evolutionary natural history that the cognitive opportunity of our time, the chance to gain an understanding of ourselves, cited at the outset of this chapter, comes into view. For each of the questions history raises can be posed in a strictly empirical sense, since it goes without saying: the tran3 | This is something rarely perceived in biology itself. Cf., most recently, the report entitled “Culture club” in: The Economist, 19 June 1999, p. 102.

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sition from natural to cultural history occurs under highly real, empirical conditions. It is precisely in these terms that we seek to reconstruct and understand it. There may be limits to any reconstruction; the gaps in the understanding of earliest history will always be considerable. However, that changes nothing about the nature of the knowledge we seek to acquire: we are attempting to follow the tracks of the real processes of man’s becoming. And this remains the case even if the empiricism is one that can only be founded on a theoretical reconstruction within the limits of our empirical knowledge. In other words, the cognitive aim is to reconstruct the historical processes in terms of the conditions under which actors actually acted. This is the aim pursued by the cognitive approach only alluded to above: By understanding history as the organization of human life that succeeds an evolutionary natural history, we seek to achieve a causal understanding of the mind-based, sociocultural forms of organization of human existence. I am not deaf to the epistemological warning bells that are set off by such pronouncements. I will respond to them in detail below. In the meantime, though, I wish to insist upon the cognitive opportunity afforded us by understanding the mind-based, sociocultural form of human existence as the organization that succeeds natural history. Whatever arises under empirically real conditions must be explainable in terms of these conditions. The causal reconstruction of the human form of existence as the successor organization to an evolutionary natural history enables us, if this reconstruction succeeds, to regain a unified worldview. However, it is a completely different kind of unity than that of the historico-philosophical understandings of previous centuries.

3. THE C OGNITIVE P RESUPPOSITIONS OF M ODERNIT Y The chance of achieving an understanding of one’s own existence by following the tracks of history is increased by two insights that, in practical terms, can be deemed strategic in nature: the consciousness of the convergence and constructivism that characterizes the modern worldview. Nothing has penetrated more deeply into present-day consciousness than the insight that the world of man converges upon man, that it is a world created by man. No other knowledge has moved so into the forefront of our understanding of the world as the realization that this world is a constructed world and must, for that reason, be conceived of in the plural: worlds rather than world. The knowledge of the convergent and constructed character of the world also determines the modern consciousness of historicity. History, no matter how it is conceived, consists of a sequence of constructed worlds. It is its interdependency with the consciousness of convergence and constructivism that primarily distinguishes the modern consciousness of historicity from everything that might be characterized,

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in a pinch, as historical consciousness in past societies.4 Thus, against the backdrop of the knowledge of man’s link to natural history, one must keep the historical consciousness of modernity distinguished from the consciousness of origin found in dream times, stories of creation, and past ages. Myth and history do not simply belong to different worlds; they belong to different ages. Is there an understanding of sociocultural worlds that goes beyond any particular time or place? Does the consciousness of convergence and constructivism entail cognitive conditions that also enable us to understand past societies and cultures? In other words, does recourse to constructivism promise to clarify the constructed worlds that have arisen in a sequence of historical development on this side of the virtual threshold between natural and cultural history? The momentary conviction of the scientific community seems to indicate otherwise.

4. THE P ROBLEM OF H ISTORICAL U NDERSTANDING 4.1 The World of Others There is evidence that even early in their history humans left their settlements and moved elsewhere. Thus it must have been one of man’s early experiences to come upon others who spoke another language and could only be understood with difficulty. In addition, there is also no doubt that varying interpretations were put forth to explain the occurrences of the world. Mythical thought has an almost unlimited power to make sense of the events of the world and to tell stories about them. Very little of it has survived in myths, epics, or in everyday interpretive schema to be handed down to us. Yet from it alone, we get a taste of the great variety of the results of interpretation. At the same time, we have reason to believe that in early human societies the various existing interpretations were mutually accessible and understandable, just as, when on familiar terrain, one understands the well-formed sentences of a language, even when hearing them for the first time. Our supposition receives support from the first reports handed down to us of foreign worlds. Herodotus, himself much traveled, diligently reported on foreign customs.5 Some of the practices of others, especially sexual ones, elicit him an amazement. What one does not find, however, 4 | Students of early history such as classicists tend to consider even reminiscences that are embedded in myths as evidence of historical consciousness. Many ethnologists employ similar arguments. Cf. R. S CHOT T, “Das Geschichtsbewußtsein schriftloser Völker”, pp. 166-205; J. A SSMANN, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, pp. 66ff.; U. L AU, “Altchinesische Vorstellungen über Ur- und Frühgeschichte,” pp. 201-222. 5 | H ERODOTUS , Histories.

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is Herodotus lamenting his lack of understanding of the stranger. Such a response is first found in modernity, where it has become endemic. We not only understand each other badly; it is not even clear that we understand each other at all. And if we do, no one really knows why. This finding holds generally and all the more so for the worlds of others; the latter includes both historical worlds and the worlds of those of our contemporaries who have not passed through the same developments as we have. The difficulty can be determined: meaningfully constructed worlds are only accessible via the understanding of meaning. One must, therefore, find access to the structures by which worlds of meaning form in order to understand the meaning that resides in them.

4.2 The Construction of Meaning There was no apparent problem involved in gaining access to any historically existing world as long as one was able to believe that differing cultures emanated from an absolute mind unfolding in history. According to this philosophy of history each of the many cultures could be understood as an advance on those existing prior to it. History was conceived as predetermined in its course between origin and goal, following a meaning immanent to it in the sequence of cultures. Imaginable is such meaning in history only in a universe in which there is a subject who determines history. This need not be conceptualized in an anthropological form; it suffices if the substance of the universe is understood in terms of the structure of subjectivity. In the understanding of modernity, however, we no longer find grounds for making either of these two claims. A certain amount of time was needed before the implications of the natural-scientific revolution in the seventeenth century made their way into general consciousness. Today one realizes: there is nothing at all “meaningful” about nature in the sense of the meaningfulness that organizes human action. We have thus relinquished all recourse to a pregiven or preestablished meaningfulness in the universe. Or more precisely: we have abandoned the logic that determined how we had to understand the universe. This took the bottom out of the philosophy of history and robbed history of its predetermined ontological meaning. For the effort to understand history by means of an underlying logic of the subject was only the continuation of a general logic of the subject that had previously ruled the world.6 This we will treat in detail. Since this time the problem of understanding other worlds of meaning took on its most radical form: can one find access from one world of meaning to another? The question has moved scientific thought for some time now. Today it has gained a practical-policy dimension, which makes it more urgent than ever. Other cultures have moved close to us, in both time and space. More 6 | Cf. G. D UX , “Wie der Sinn in die Welt kam und was daraus wurde,” pp. 195217.

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precisely: we have moved closer to them. The other cultures are above all the cultures of those societies that have not made the transition to industrial society or have not advanced as far along this path as we have. This constellation is part of the problem in both theoretical and practical terms. The difference between us and the others is a result of the line of demarcation that was drawn in our own history once we entered into a modern, secular world. If one grasps the move into the age of modernity as the difference separating us from others, this enables us to define the problem of understanding the worlds of others in more succinct terms. Then it is no longer a question of the resistance other cultures muster when we try to make sense of their practices and their interpretative schemas. It is instead a question of a change in the world’s interpretative logic in the transition to modernity. In making this transition, we made a clean break with the old world without having assured ourselves about what the logic of the new world would bring. For this reason, the problem of understanding other worlds is above all the problem of understanding one’s own.

4.3 Unstable Worlds: The Conditions for the Possibility of Their Development I have already pointed out the presupposition at the foundation of modernity’s understanding of the world: understanding the human form of existence as the successor organization to an evolutionary natural history. This realization is closely linked to the aforementioned cognitive opportunity that has been granted us: If we are compelled to understand the human form of existence as the organization that succeeds natural history, then history must be understood as the continuation of natural history, but in a different medium, namely, a mind-based and socio-cultural one. This is the understanding to which the consciousness of the triad of convergence, constructivism, and historicity is connected. The question is: how must the constructive capacity be understood in order to be able to make sense of each and every of the constructed worlds in the historicity of their sequence? Some time ago the question received a form that it seems reasonable to adopt: the question of the “conditions for the possibility” of that which one seeks to understand. Once again I am not deaf to the warning bells that accompany this formulation. For in the past it was the question of the conditions for the possibility that permitted the absolutism of the structure of justification to continue and allowed for a transcendental attribution of mind or spirit to human existence. Against the backdrop of the knowledge of the link to natural history, the question of the conditions for the possibility receives a different, strictly empirical sense. Let us give a more precise account of the strategy necessary for achieving an understanding of historical worlds. Modern consciousness recognizes that man developed as a species by

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means of a constructive autonomy on the basis of which he is competent to construct the practical forms of his action and to gain knowledge of the world. This consciousness practically compels one to address the question of the conditions under which such a construction became possible. In pursuing this question, it is necessary to define conditions such that they explain more than just how it was at all possible for a constructed world to arise. It must also be possible to explain on their basis why the constructs took on the form they did and no other. In other words, these conditions must not only provide an understanding of the process and processuality of constructivism; they must also explain the organizational forms themselves that develop in this process. To be concrete, the questions are: how did it become possible to gain knowledge of nature? And why did it take place in the mythic-magical forms in which we find it in early societies? What allowed the specifically human relation between the sexes to form? How was it possible for a specifically human society to organize itself that went beyond family relationships? And finally: how was man capable of creating a specifically human organization of his inner world; how could human subjectivity arise? Insight into the processuality of constructivism, into the way in which it developed its primary form, is thus of significance for all further development, since it has proven possible to continue this constructivism on our side of the virtual threshold separating natural history from cultural history. Sociocultural worlds are unstable worlds. But every constructive shaping of the forms of social organization of existence creates new premises for the continuation of that world. In this way, the conditions of constructivism themselves are changed. They change, however, in a comprehensible way. The moving forces underlying previously created conditions can be determined. Accordingly, an understanding of the sociocultural form in which human existence is organized, such as we find in history, cannot be achieved by constructing an abstract framework within which the different formations of sociocultural phenomena could be classified. The only real way to reach this understanding is by reconstructing the line of development in which the constructivism of this form of existence continues to evolve under ever-changing, but always comprehensible conditions. The myth-driven thought of humans in the early hunter-andgatherer societies can be understood if one clarifies the conditions under which it was able to form. The same holds for the epic poems of archaic civilizations or ontology in philosophy in its first appearance in China and Greece. Reconstruction is certainly demanding in time and effort, but it is a rewarding strategy. We are on the tracks of ourselves, and by following these tracks we are able to make modernity comprehensible as the latest result in the process of history. For how modernity is to be understood first becomes comprehensible in its actual reconstruction. The strategy of first making the constructed character of the human mind comprehensible in terms of its process of formation and, in so doing, making transparent the constructed forms in which societies and cultures appear to us in history

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is what I have subsumed under the concept of a historico-genetic theory. It is this theory that I seek to develop in the following as a theory of culture. The development of a historico-genetic theory of culture runs into a barrier. There is little doubt that the radical change in modernity’s understanding of the world has to be understood as a revolution in the way nature is conceived of. What has been less clearly perceived, however, is the radical change in the way man understands himself. Just as God escaped into an unfathomable seclusion at the outset of modernity, so too do the structures of mind of human existence escape understanding as long as they are hidden in the shrouds of an assumption of an indisputable transcendentality of mind. Surely, according to a transcendental conception it is possible to reflect on the founding structures of the mind, but only in an introverted sense of showing that they are always already operating as powerful determinants in thought, which define human existence. The barrier that blocks the path of the historico-genetic understanding of man’s mind-based, sociocultural existence must be grasped as a moment in the developmental process of modernity. As such it can be understood completely: it presents itself as a remnant of precisely the kind of logic that we must succeed in overcoming. We currently live in a schism of logics. To clarify what the change in logic involves, it is first necessary to present a systematic account of the radical change that the worldview of modernity represents.

2. The Radical Change in Modernity’s Understanding of the World

1. THE C HANGE IN THE S TRUCTURE OF THE U NDERSTANDING OF N ATURE The radical change in modernity’s understanding of the world was brought about by three revolutions: the revolution in the natural sciences of the 16th and 17th centuries and in staggered phases following this revolution, the industrial and political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. Each of these revolutions had repercussions that could in themselves be termed revolutions. The radical change in man’s view or image of the world already took place with the first revolution in natural science. It resulted from a change in the material logic with which nature was understood. We are just now beginning to understand what it actually means. When I speak of the material logic that underlies our understanding of nature, I am referring to the structure by means of which the dynamics specific to the universe receive an explanation. For a long period of time, the predominant explanation of natural phenomena was bound to a logic that found its genesis in the logic of action and adhered, on the phenomenal level, to a teleological explanatory structure. Due to its genesis, I have termed this logic subjectivist.1 The revolution in the natural sciences consists in having eliminated subjectivist logic from the understanding of nature and having replaced it with a functional-relational, i.e., a systemic logic. The radical change in the material logic of the universe has a long prehistory to it. It becomes visible—at least with hindsight—in the reflections on natural philosophy in the 13th and 14th centuries. Nonetheless, there is still something surprising about the abruptness with which the change in logic is articulated in the 16th and 17th century—in Galilei, Kepler, Descartes, Newton—to name just a few of the important thinkers of ear1 | C F. G . D UX , Die Logik der Weltbilder, pp. 86ff; idem, “Die ontogenetische und historische Entwicklung des Geistes,” pp. 173ff.

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ly modernity. If a definitive date for this sea change is sought, one should refer to 1687 and the publication of Newton’s Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica. For it documents, at least in intent, the subjection of nature to a completely mathematicized form of explanation. From here on the universe is to be understood in its immanent dynamics as an energetic system removed from any and all meaningful teleological occurrences. It is more than a little difficulty to explain what made the radical change in worldview and the accompanying change in logic possible. One thing is clear, though: the machine as model gained paradigmatic significance.

2. THE M ACHINE M ODEL AS P AR ADIGM The radical change in modernity’s worldview triggered by the scientific revolution becomes especially fascinating once one realizes that it occurred before modern knowledge of the basic principles of science was attained in subsequent centuries. It was made possible by taking the machine as a paradigm for the explanatory model. In any case, from the 14th century onwards, the machine model makes its way more and more frequently into interpretations of the world. One would thus do well to point out, for understanding’s sake, the basis in reality for this development. The entire Middle Ages is, namely, marked by a continuous increase in the use of the machine as the employment of wind and water allowed for a steadily improving technology.2 The use of the machine as a paradigm for the explanation of the world also began early. Both in Buridan and Oresme its influence is seen in the impetus theory, and it helps make the immanent dynamics of the universe immune against the persistence of the interventional causality of God.3 While Buridan (ca. 1300-ca. 1359) had the mill in mind, Nicole Oresme (1320/1325-1382) already made use of clockworks in explaining the motion of celestial bodies.4 In Le Livre du ciel et du monde, Oresme provides an explanation of the lawful continuity in the motion of celestial bodies. It is fascinating precisely because it provides an exceptionally clear example of the collision of two interpretive paradigms for understanding nature. For if, runs his argument, celestial bodies are moved by intelligent bodies—what we would understand as subjective powers—certainly not in the sense that these “powers” would have to be active everywhere and at all times. In ad2 | L.T. W HITE , Die mittelalterliche Technik und der Wandel der Gesellschaft; H.K. Grossmann, Die gesellschaftlichen Grundlagen der mechanistischen Philosophie und die Manufaktur, pp. 161-231. Cf. further K.H. Ludwig, Technik im hohen Mittelalter, pp. 37ff; V. Schmidtchen, Technik im Übergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit, pp. 211ff. 3 | J. B URIDANUS , Kommentar zur Aristotelischen Physik 1, viii. 4 | N. O RESME , Le Livre du ciel et du monde.

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dition to intelligent bodies, God, according to Oresme, also furnishes celestial bodies with forces of resistance that work contrary to the subjective powers. And these are the forces that create the regularity in the motion of celestial bodies: “[...] et excepté la violence, c’est aucunnement semblable quant un homme a fait une horloge et il le lesse aller et estre meu par soy.”5 In 1348, Giovanni de Dondi constructed a gigantic clockwork as a planetarium. The celestial bodies moved in accordance with the Ptolemaic system, driven by the mechanisms of the clockwork.6 The machine model seems so revolutionary because it makes obsolete any recourse to subjective energies within the structures of the cosmos. The revolution in the natural sciences at the outset of modernity consists of turning mechanical explanation into a principle. Even in the Middle Ages, it was increasingly looked down upon to explain natural phenomena by making reference to divine intervention or that of some other subjective power. Reference to divine intervention is only to be permitted if an explanation in terms of the immanent structure of nature fails.7 The scientific revolution put an end to this possibility. The machine became paradigmatic for the understanding of nature. In the functional movements of its mechanisms, every meaningful, intentionalistic interpretation along the lines of human action is excluded. With the establishment of the mechanical model, it was now held that one would no longer seek to explain an event in the universe in terms of divine will or any other subjective power. The universe was viewed as a clockwork in which one thing meshes with another.

3. M ACHINA M UNDI : THE P ROCESS OF S ECUL ARIZ ATION As unquestionable as the paradigmatic function of the machine is—the trail of mechanical metaphors can be followed from Montaigne via Descartes to Nietzsche and into the present—it still offers little by way of explanation.8 The question is: how did the machine manage to gain a paradigmatic function in the change in the logic with which the world is understood?9 In other words, its paradigmatic use must itself be explained. It is not the clockwork per se that produced the radical break. The use of simple machines is ancient. They initially represent nothing more 5 | N. O RESME, Le Livre du ciel et du monde, II, 2 folios, 71b, p. 288. 6 | A drawing done a few years later has been preserved. It is reproduced in G. Dux, Die Zeit in der Geschichte, p. 313. 7 | As argued by the English Benedictine A DELARD OF BATH (ca. 1070- ca. 1145) in his “Quaestiones naturales.” 8 | C F. M. M ONTAIGNE , Essais, II, 12, p. 495. R. D ESCARTES, Meditationes de prima philosophia, A-T vii, 14, 26. It is expressly stated in the Discours de la Méthode, A-T vi, 54, that the rules of mechanics and those of nature are identical. F. N IETZSCHE , Der Anti-Christ, 6:180 (14). 9 | As rightly asked by A. S UT TER , Göttliche Maschinen, p. 10.

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than a special kind of tool use.10 The disenchantment of nature first took on definitive character in the scientific revolution. Even in a first run-up to it, however—in which the subjective powers in personalized form, and gods in particular, were eliminated, and Lucretius (57-55 B.C.) promptly made use of the model of the machine as machina mundi11 —the subjectivist structure of nature qua substance was maintained. It was only on the substantive level that Lucretius sought to create a clear distinction between natural phenomena, on the one hand, and the form of activity involved in the work of man, on the other, the isomorphism of which Aristotle had taken such pains to emphasize.12 In order to retrace how the mechanical model was able to develop its influence (and this is a question far from resolved), one will have to take up its use in the constitution of worldview. Here, however, if one is looking for a concept adequate to the historical depth dimension of the problem, one is compelled to consider the concept of secularization.13 For in terms of the concept’s meaning in the context of worldview, the process of secularization refers to precisely that change in the interpretive matrix which we can observe in the paradigmatic use of the machine: In the process of secularization a systemic, this-worldly constellation of conditions is ascribed to what takes place in the world, removing it in this way from the interventional causality of God or other subjective powers. It was the organizational form of the town, which developed so powerfully in the Middle Ages, however, that gave the most sustained support to this process. Much can be said for the claim that the functional form of town organization paved the way for the paradigmatic reception of the mechanical model. We will discuss the development of thought in the Middle Ages in greater detail in another context, allowing us to come back to this question. In the present context we simply seek to stress this finding: the paradigmatic use of the functional organization of the machine enables one to develop a functional-relational or systemic understanding of the universe. By taking the theorems of the conservation of energy and of inertia as basic principles of the universe, the logic of action is eliminated from it and replaced by a different form of logic, a functional-relational or systemic one. A comparison of the Aristotelian-medieval and modern theories of motion sheds light on the definitive change in worldview and logic brought about by the natural-scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries: the 10 | For greater detail, cf. A. E GGEBRECHT, Geschichte der Arbeit, pp. 115ff. 11 | See L UCRETIUS , On Nature, Book V, line 96 12 | Cf. L UCRETIUS , idem, Book II, lines 378-380. On Aristotle, cf. Chap. 9 below. On the history of the topos machina mundi, cf. J. M IT TELSTRASS, Machina Mundi, pp. 14ff. 13 | Here, see the pathbreaking works of Hans Blumenberg: Die kopernikanische Wende; Die Legitimität der Neuzeit; Die Genesis der Kopernikanischen Welt, 3 vols.

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Aristotelian model requires a causative force for every motion, which starts it and maintains it. In modern physics, a motion persists until it is affected by countermotions or brought to a halt.14 Following Galilei it was Descartes who put this change in interpretive paradigm into effect and, by doing so, clearly emphasized the recourse to the machine.15 Only the energetic impetus still had to conceived as coming “from without.”–And this in turn made the machine seem all the more suited as a model for the universe. For a machine also requires an externally supplied source of energy to set the process in motion and keep it there, without interventions “into the internal mechanisms” of the occurrence being necessary. To explain the “external” impetus the this-worldly paradigm cannot be made use of. Epistemological critique had in the meantime cut the grounds out from any attempt to justify the necessity of an outer-worldly impetus and to ascribe it to a subjectively conceived power.16 For in the view of epistemological critique the subjectivist logic of transcendence displays a this-worldly genesis, which makes it appear extremely unsuitable for the “transcendent.”

4. THE R EMOVAL OF M IND FROM N ATURE The elimination of the subjectivist structure results in the removal from the universe of any structures of mind analogous to those of human action. This is a fait accompli, which is clearly manifested by the mechanical model of the machine. To put it as Kant would, there is no support any longer for viewing natural phenomena as if they were determined by intelligible beings in the manner of human behavior, i.e., as if they were determined by aims.17 There continues to be no place for this form of mind-based process once the mechanical understanding of nature is replaced by the probability theory of quantum mechanics. Chance cannot be resubjectified. In making the statement that any structures of mind was were removed from the universe, I was careful to add structures of mind “analogous to those of human action”. There are two reference points for this addition. On the one hand, it refers to the genesis of the logic in terms of which the universe had always been interpreted. On the other hand, it distinguishes the establishment of the removal of mind from nature from philosophical reflections on nature, especially those of natural scientists. The latter, namely, not infrequently use the concept mind as a metaphorical designation for the understanding of nature gained by mathematical 14 | This aspect is clearly brought out by H. B LUMENBERG: See idem, Die kopernikanische Wende, pp. 21ff. 15 | Cf. D ESCARTES , Meditationes, Synopsis 14, vi, pp. 112f. 16 | Cf. G. D UX , Die Logik der Weltbilder, pp. 305ff. 17 | K ANT, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, §§61ff.

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means. This mind, moreover, is ascribed to nature itself.18 Though this manner of speaking is more than a little problematic, I will not delve into it here. My present concern is with the difference between the premodern and modern understanding of nature. The premodern understanding of the universe, based on the structures of mind, was ontologically anchored and tied to a subjectivist logic. And even insofar as relational knowledge was fixed in rules and laws, there remained a subjectivist structure behind this rule- and law-based knowledge. It is this form of mind that was eliminated in the new understanding of nature.19 It has no place any longer as an interpretive matrix in the natural sciences. The removal of mind is recognized, not only in the natural sciences but in philosophy as well. Yet, quite a few philosophers find it difficult to discard the premise that it must be possible to imagine a completely different reality behind the constructs of the natural sciences. Thus, up until today, the defense of absolutist logic still seeks to evade the total removal of mind from the universe. “The world is a thought that does not think suspended upon a thought that thinks itself,” explains Jean Guitton.20 This is a somewhat complicated version of the Schellingian aphorism that nature is the mind that does not recognize itself as such. This adage has also found its admirers.21 That human reason could, after all, once again become a perceiving reason can occasionally be found articulated, as it were, as the hope of philosophy.22 This and other formulations represent a compromise between two different forms of logic. Does this make sense? I will return to this question.

5. M IND AS S UCCESSOR O RGANIZ ATION 5.1 Meaningless Nature, Meaningful Life I do not think anyone will find it questionable to so emphatically focus our interest, as I have, on the change in the logic underlying the understanding of nature: it is necessary to understand the mind-based, sociocultural forms of organization of human existence in a different way than they have ever been understood in the past. It is only on the basis of the modern understanding of the human form of existence that one can grasp the distinctive character of this understanding in the triad of convergence, constructivism, and historicity. Only on the basis of an anthropological

18 | As in E INSTEIN , Aus meinen späten Jahren, pp. 25-35. 19 | In uncompromising fashion in E INSTEIN, ibid. 20 | J. G UIT TON , “Kosmos im Wassertropfen.” Interview in Spiegel, pp. 142-145. 21 | V. W EIZSÄCKER , Der Mensch in seiner Geschichte, pp. 211-216. 22 | G. PATZIG , Aspekte der Rationalität, p. 5. The possibility of the return of a perceiving reason is also held open by R. S PECHT : see his Die Vernunft des Rationalismus, pp. 70-93.

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constitution that is kept strictly within the limits of the modern understanding of nature is it possible to make sense out of Ň Why and in what sense the world converges upon man Ň Why and in what sense this world presents itself as a construct created in symbolically mediated forms of organization, and Ň Why this world is an unstable world that has been historically capable of development and continues to be so. Moreover, it is only against the backdrop of this triad of organizational principles, which distinguish the human form of existence, that access can be gained to those early worlds that have now become largely foreign to us. Within this modern understanding, the scientific revolution provided the human and social sciences with a basic presupposition: however they sought to understand man, they had to attempt to understand him against the backdrop of a nature from which all meaningfulness in the manner of human action had been removed. For the meaningfulness of the world takes as its interpretive paradigm the previous logic of action. With the natural-scientific revolution, a constellation emerged in intellectual history that has remained in force until today and defines the point of departure for all sociological argumentation. It demands that the sociocultural organizational forms of human existence be understood as the organization that succeeds an evolutionary natural history. It is necessary to place man in nature in such a way that his intellectual and that means sociocultural, life-forms are understandable without any assumptions about structures of mind inherent to nature itself. This task was already perceived at the beginning of modernity and one immediately also set about modifying how the social world was to be understood. This had to lead to the effort to interpret man and his life-forms according to the mechanical model of the machine. Once more we find a first attempt in this direction among the “atomists.” Lucretius attempts to transfer feelings and intellect, and especially free will, into the microorganization of “atomism” by means of the crude models of motion taken from a theory of motion copied from the macro-organization of matter.23 The theoreticians of modernity follow this lead. No less a thinker than Thomas Hobbes begins his theory of the State with a kind of physiology of feelings, which he endows in accordance with the theory of mechanical motion of the corporeal world, in order to then move from there to the development of the State.24 It is easy to see that the attempt had to fail. The human mode of existence is in fact defined by a mind-based, meaningful form of life conduct. Interpretive patterns arose in the latter, which were turned into particular life-forms. They have no counterparts in the organization of matter, and thus also cannot be pressed into a scheme of 23 | Cf. L UCRETIUS , On Nature, Bk. II, lines 251ff., passim. 24 | T. H OBBES , Leviathan, pp. 11ff.

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mechanical motion of pressure and impact. The mechanistic physics of early modernity was, however, unacquainted with any other model. The mind-based character of man was, for this reason, ultimately completely dropped from nature. And since in philosophical thinking, even at the beginning of modernity, everything that is had to be ascribed an ultimate cause, nature and mind were ascribed to two absolute substances in Descartes: res extensa and res cogitans. And this was the birth of the dualism of body and mind.25 Of course, the question could not rest there, and this for two reasons. On the one hand, in a mode of thought that is intimately bound up with the structure of absolutist logic, it is impossible to conceive of two absolutes. The genesis of this logic in the subjectivity of action demands that everything be made to converge on one absolute. It is for this reason that in all metaphysical thinking, once the process of systematization has begun, the one represents the integrative element of thought in Occidental philosophy just as much as in its Chinese counterpart.26 The one is the all incorporating, the absolute uniter of all opposites. On the other hand, though the sociocultural organizational forms of human existence cannot be reductionistically integrated into the laws of motion of matter, they also cannot be completely separated from the body. For this reason, we must understand both mind and body differently than has been done in the past. Just as nature became something different in the understanding of modernity from what it was, so too does the understanding of mind receive a different meaning if one sees it as developing out of a nature that is itself removed from every form of mindbased quality.

5.2 Evolution as Key It was only with the discovery of the evolution of the species by Charles Darwin (1859)27 that it first became possible to make good on a postulate that integrated man into nature in such a way that his intellectuel, sociocultural life-forms became comprehensible without recourse to any mind inherent in nature. It is only since Darwin that it has become possible for a line of thought that starts its argument from nature to pose a question that provides a key to the understanding of the sociocultural mode of human existence. The question is: on the basis of which constellation of conditions was it possible, following upon the natural-historical evolution of the human constitution, to develop intellectual, sociocultural life-forms? The task of making comprehensible how intellectual life-forms qua sociocultural ones are supposed to have been able to develop out of a 25 | R. D ESCARTES , Meditationes de prima philosophia. 26 | On Occidental philosophy, cf. Plato’s idea of the good. On this, see A.O. L OVEJOY, Die große Kette der Wesen. On Chinese philosophy, cf. Chuang-tzu, Das wahre Buch vom südlichen Blütenland, VI, 1 . 27 | C. DARWIN, The Origin of the Species.

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nature devoid of all mind may seem to many just as unpromising after the discovery of the evolution of the species as before it. Before it, it was Friedrich Schlegel who personally articulated the impossibility of such a task. Like Hegel, Schlegel also sought, in a philosophy of history, to rewrite the story of creation. By doing so, he aimed to transpose history, and especially the history of mind, back into the divine absolute.28 For, it is his point of departure, that it is completely inconceivable that mind could ever be explained on the basis of natural organization.29 This conclusion is found throughout history, for instance, in the discussion of the genesis of language.30 It is a conclusion with absolutist logic on its side. For this logic is, as we will discuss below, a deductive logic in which everything is basically already inherent in its substance that is then found in reality as phenomenon. And it is in fact true: be deducted from nature can the human form of existence no longer. Moreover, since in all attempts to make the mind-based character of the human form of existence understandable, this mind-based character is part of the substance as cause that determines it, mind itself can, therefore, not be explained. On the basis of an absolutist logic thought can only be grounded in thought, language only in language. Accordingly, even in our own time one is often assured that the very thing that must be possible in light of our knowledge of evolution is fully impossible: namely, to find a causal explanation for the development of man’s intellectual life formes. Lévi-Strauss, who like few others was aware of the necessary task of bridging the gap between nature and culture, resigned himself to the conclusion that “No concrete analysis thus allows one to determine the point of transition between the facts of nature and the facts of culture or the mechanism of their intermeshing.”31 He nevertheless tried. In fact, one cannot simply write off the task; but it is certainly not easy. We must clarify the presuppositions that have arisen with the knowledge of modernity if we are to have any chance at all of ultimately resolving this problem.

28 | Cf. F. S CHLEGEL , Die Entwicklung der Philosophie, XI, pp. 429ff. 29 | F. S CHLEGEL , ibid., XIII, p. 30. 30 | For details, cf. W. S CHMIDT-B IGGEMANN, Geschichte als absoluter Begriff, p. 29. 31 | C. L ÉVI -S TRAUSS, Die elementaren Strukturen der Verwandschaft, p. 52.

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3. The Copernican Turn: The Consciousness of Convergence, Constructivism, and Historicity

1. THE D IMENSION OF E PISTEMOLOGICAL C RITIQUE Historical processes of the magnitude of the natural-scientific revolution bring insights in their wake that are as irrevocable as the primary revolutionary cognitive gains. Such insights include the consciousness that the world of man converges on man. When a worldview collapses and another must first be painstakingly found, when a logic of understanding nature is given up that has defined the life of humanity for its entire history, consciousness is put to the test: it has to forge its way to the realization that the world is always only that which represents itself in the intuition and thought of man. And both are subject to change. The radical change in the worldview of modernity is an irrevocable fact; accordingly, so is the consciousness of convergence. This consciousness has revolutionized man’s understanding of knowledge. Throughout history it was held that knowledge comes to man from the things themselves. “Where do I know the manner of all things from?” asks Lao-zi, to which he responds: “Through the things themselves.”1 Thought is intimately connected to that which is. One naturally distinguished between thought and that which is from the very beginning— no one held the idea of an antelope for the antelope itself—however, this was not initially conceived of as an ontic difference. Nevertheless, even when the shadow of reflection falls between the two, between that which is and the thought of that which is, thought remains the cause and immanent ordering principle of that which is. Thought is that “something” that penetrates the object as its own form of order. Parmenides’s profound words seek to be understood as an expression of a logic of identity con-

1 | L AO -TZU, Tao te King, p. 61.

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ceived of in this way: “For the same thing can be thought of and be.”2 This is the conception so thoroughly destroyed by the scientific revolution. Montaigne already concludes: “Que les choses ne logent pas chez nous en leur forme propre et en leur essence, et n’y facent leur entrée de leur force propre et authorité, nous le voyons assez [...]”3 According to Montaigne, even the sky above our heads is not exempt from our doubts. It is common knowledge that it was left to Descartes to develop this consciousness in a systematic way. No proposition of traditional philosophy can any longer claim validity without inspection.4 It is apparent that the doubt Descartes stylizes in his Meditationes as methodical doubt, and which then serves him as an Archimedian point of certain knowledge, predates his exposition as highly concrete doubt about prevailing knowledge, both in its everyday and philosophical form. The gnawing consciousness of doubt pervaded philosophy to such an extent that Descartes thought it better to consider even the probable as more or less false.5 It proved possible to defuse this conflict. For the scientific revolution had demonstrated that better knowledge could be had. Increasingly, the demand became to produce such knowledge. Thus as science was propagated, so too was a specifically scientific method, which was supposed to guarantee this knowledge.6 Even after consciousness of the constructed character of thought, including natural-scientific thought, had become thoroughly pervasive in our time, no natural scientist harbored doubts about the genuine nature of knowledge gained nor about the ability to be able to continue to generate such knowledge in the future. Even in the case of such a highly abstract theory as quantum physics and the special theory of relativity, it was held that knowledge had been “forced upon it by nature.”7 In terms of a critique of knowledge, of course, the consciousness of convergence and constructivism had first to come to the fore. That the reason why we see and understand the world the way we do is to be found in man himself represented the truly revolutionary consciousness with which modernity set itself apart from the past. This is the knowledge that Kant gives expression to in the now famous Copernican turn in philosophy. The revolutionary admission in the Preface to the Second Edition of the Critique is much quoted. As there is, however, no more concise way to express the consciousness of convergence, I will cite it again. Kant explains: Hitherto it has been assumed that all our knowledge must conform to objects. But all attempts to extend our knowledge of objects by establishing something in 2 | PARMENIDES , Vom Wesen des Seienden, Fragment 3, p. 17 3 | M ONTAIGNE , Essais, II, 12, p. 545. 4 | C F. R. D ESCARTES, Discours de la Méthode, I, 6, p. 9. 5 | R. D ESCARTES , Discours de la Méthode, I, 12, pp. 14/15. 6 | F. B ACON , Novum Organum (1620). 7 | THUS W. H EISENBERG, Wandlungen in den Grundlagen der Naturwissenschaften, p. 45.

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regard to them a priori, by means of concepts, have, on this assumption, ended in failure. We must therefore make trial whether we may not have more success in the tasks of metaphysics, if we suppose that objects must conform to our knowledge. This would agree better with what is desired, namely, that it should be possible to have knowledge of objects a priori, determining something in regard to them prior to their being given. We should then be proceeding precisely on the lines of Copernicus’ primary hypothesis. Failing of satisfactory progress in explaining the movements of the heavenly bodies on the supposition that they all revolved round the spectator, he tried whether he might not have better success if he made the spectator to revolve and the stars to remain at rest. 8 As concisely, as succinctly as the Copernican turn expresses the consciousness of convergence, so concisely does it also give expression to the logic with which it is achieved: with this insight, Kant also provides the consciousness of convergence with an apriori meaning. The realization that emerges from the Copernican turn, that reason recognizes only that which it itself produces,9 definitively confirms the absolutism of the mind in transcendental logic. The question has often been raised (and it was certainly also important to Kant)10 of how it should be possible, starting from this presupposition, to recognize something in nature without having to impute something to nature. This question has not yet been answered nor can it be. It was Fichte in particular—he saw himself as completing, perfecting Kant’s project—who gave the consciousness of convergence the decisively constructivist form that was to be maintained in all forms of epistemology ever since. “Should something,” in the dictum from the theory of science of 1794, “be in consciousness as a fact and thus become an object of cognition, it has to be previously posited by the ego as existing in its consciousness.”11 Knowledge becomes a construct, a construct, namely, whose basis allows no reconstruction.

2. S OCIOCULTUR AL L IFE -F ORMS AS C ONSTRUCT The natural-scientific revolution presents itself as a process of secularization that was preceded by a secularization in society. I pointed this out above. Here I understand secularization in a strictly structural-logical sense: as the bringing forth of a functional-relational organizational form, according to which explanations are achieved from the systemic conditioned character of processes, something which removes these processes from any extrinsic or interventional causality. Once again it is Montaigne 8 | I MMANUEL K ANT ’S Critique of Pure Reason, p. 22. (Translation by Norman Kemp Smith). 9 | Ibid., p. 20. 10 | As K ANT explicitly indicates, ibid., p. 20. 11 | J.G. F ICHTE , Grundlagen der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, vol. I, p. 221.

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who articulates a decline in tradition, which presents itself as, above all, a decline in the validity of patterns of normative order.12 Descartes also has no doubts that modernity brought about not merely a radical change in the understanding of nature, but also affected the validity of the normative constitution of society. As does Montaigne, he implores his contemporaries, in the face of the emerging uncertainties, to hold fast to the norms given by tradition.13 In a much more radical way, Pascal also understands the consciousness of convergence as a process of the de-ontologization of the normative. For Pascal, social life-forms are the result of power and custom. That which is truth and justice on this side of the river is error and injustice on the other. “Plaisant justice qu’une rivière borne.”14 The unrest triggered in society by the radical change in the understanding of nature could not compare to that caused by the consciousness of constructivism. What nature is “in itself” is of no interest for most people as long as they can be certain of what it is on a practical level. Things are quite different with regard to the consciousness of the constructed character of society. Having lost the secure grounding of their structure in nature, it was no longer clear by what means societies were supposed to be able to hold their own as a human life-form. The normative order of society was an order long understood as defined by normative propositions that encompassed the existing order, the status quo—in spite of all its oppressiveness—and in this way stabilized it. Now, however, the obligatory character of this normative order appeared to come unhinged. The Hobbesian constellation typifies the consciousness of the period: the task is to employ normative propositions to make mutually contradictory interests compatible, in order to avoid a war of all against all. Whereas previously the anchoring of these normative propositions required God, they now require a sovereign.15 This constellation continues to play a role in theory construction today.

3. THE C ONSCIOUSNESS OF H ISTORICIT Y Like the consciousness of convergence and constructivism, with the radical change in the worldview of modernity, the consciousness of historicity also had to establish itself as an irrevocable part of the understanding of the human form of existence. Rousseau’s philosophy of history represents one of the earliest reflections in which it is found combined with the consciousness of convergence and constructivism. Here history is presented, with a resoluteness previously unknown, as a sequence of life-forms pro-

12 | M ONTAIGNE , Essais, I, 23, p. 115; further, ibid., II, 12, p. 563. 13 | R. D ESCARTES , Discours de la Méthode, III, 1-2. 14 | B. PASCAL , Pensées, p. 294. 15 | T. H OBBES , Leviathan.

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duced by man himself.16 In it man claims to have been it, the prime force, that which socially existed.17 And one must add: and also not to have been it. For he himself is subject, in a somewhat incomprehensible way, to the development of society. Rousseau allows man to emerge from a nature defined by chance. Even the departure of man from nature occurs as if man were left on his own: “S’il [le genre-humaine] fût resté abandonné à luimême.”18 The history that begins in this way is a thoroughly ambivalent process. Culture is beset by all of the afflictions of mankind. At the same time, however, Rousseau describes history as a process of the perfecting of man. In doing so, he makes effusive use of teleological descriptions,19 which enables Günter Buck to speak of an inversion of teleology.20 The pervasiveness of traditional logic, however, should not cause us to overlook the fact that, in the view of history as a whole, a break has been made with the teleological understanding of the world. A comparison with the process of self-perfection that Dante had already seen man pointed toward makes this evident.21 For Dante, progress aims at a state of order, which, as the best of all possible orders, was set by God. A history that is put in motion by a mankind left to its own devices is also a history left on its own. This form of perfecting of man and of history is open-ended toward the future. No one today would attribute any real cognitive value to Rousseau’s historical narrative. The only thing significant about it is the perspective it assumes: to understand history as a history of societal forms of organization that first develop themselves, forms that are not already inherently prestructured in the nature that precedes them. Today we are able to give a more systematic foundation to this insight. And for just that reason, the task of making the developmental process comprehensible without positing any teleological structure inherent to it presents itself in a much more systematic way than before. So much can be gleaned from the pure finding of historicity: Constructed worlds are unstable worlds in the sense that they set free from within themselves action potentials that can lead beyond the structures stabilized up to that point. The process of construction continues through history. In the 19th century it was possible for the impression to arise that humanity, in the industrialized society of modernity, was moving into a kind of final epoch of history. A history that becomes conscious of the convergence and constructivism of the constitution of society is placed in the hand of 16 | Cf. the impressive beginning of the “Discours sur les sciences et les arts,” p. 3. 17 | Cf. O. M ARQUARDT, Schwierigkeiten mit der Geschichtsphilosophie, p. 68. 18 | J.J. R OUSSEAU, Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité parmi les hommes, p. 40. 19 | H. B LUMENBERG , Die Legitimität der Neuzeit, p. 410. 20 | G. B UCK , “Selbsterhaltung und Historizität,” pp. 29-94. 21 | DANTE A LIGHIERI , Monarchia, I, iii.

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politics. This allowed the project of modernity to come into being. Liberal doctrine promised, with the conquest of power by the third estate, to bring into being a societal formation in which freedom and equality would be realized.22 Marxian theory also envisioned a future in which the rule of the proletariat secured the unrestricted development of the individual and that of each and every one.23 This was tied to the idea of a final epoch of history insofar as the realization of the free development of the personality not only could not be undermined in the future, it could also no longer be surpassed.24 Even now the project of modernity is understood in this way. Habermas understands the freeing of the individual brought about by the capitalist economy and translated into the political organization of democracy such that the recognition of the individual as an equal among equals (with all of the morally supported postulates of his individual development tied to this) has been incorporated into the social structure.25 “In the democratic process,” according to Habermas, “the ideal content of practical reason appears in pragmatic form.” In this understanding, even though the organization of society can be undermined, it cannot be surpassed. This idea is supported by a theory of history which finds its adequate conceptualization in the thesis of the end of history, as it was recently put forth by Fukuyama after the decline of socialism.26 The triad of convergence, constructivism, and historicity form a systematic whole. None of modernity’s presuppositions of understanding can be understood without the other two. For this reason, it is out of the question to enter into the arena of discourses that seek understanding of historical development as long as this is not linked to the effort at a systematic reconstruction of the formative processes of societal structures. At the present, sociological theories are also based on assumptions in historical understanding but without having been systematically substantiated. This is the point of the present discussion. It will necessitate quite an effort. For the intention of enabling the constructivism of the world to become transparent by clearing up how it became possible requires, on the one hand, that this constructivism be connected to the anthropological constitution brought into being in evolution. This is the meaning of the statement: to define man’s place in nature such that his intellectual, sociocultural lifeforms become comprehensible as self-created life-forms of mind. It requires, on the other hand, that the reconstruction of the constructive proc22 | E.J. S IEYÈS, “What is the Third Estate?” 23 | K. M ARX and F. E NGELS , Das kommunistische Manifest, MEW 4, pp. 459-493. The foundation is provided, as always, by idem, Das Kapital, MEW 23-25. 24 | This “final epoch” aspect strengthens a not very sensible interpretation of the Marxian philosophy of history, which views it as a mere secularization of an eschatological expectation of salvation. Cf. K. L ÖWITH, Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen. 25 | J. H ABERMAS , Faktizität und Geltung, p. 367. 26 | F. F UKUYAMA , The End of History.

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esses and structures on this side of the virtual threshold between natural and cultural history be continued from the conditions of the structures of societal organization already developed. The cognitive chance discussed above cannot be taken advantage of without reconstructing the historical path of the constructive process. The triad of convergence, constructivism, and historicity forces reconstruction back to the start. This is not, as Durkheim thought, because things can already be uncovered as decided in simple conditions that then first manifest themselves in more developed forms.27 Quite the contrary! What the sociocultural constitutedness of the human form of existence develops into is first determined in history itself. This is the reason that necessitates to set aside all speculative theories and to trace the processuality of its development. The only thing that we can posit in the formative process of society and culture is the anthropological constitution of man. Let us take a more careful look at its foundations.

27 | E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.

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4. The Anthropological Constitution as a Condition of Enculturation: The Structures of Mind in Culture

1. THE D IFFERENCE B E T WEEN M EDIA In the first centuries of modernity, there was a twofold obstacle to the task of placing man in nature in such a way that his intellectual, sociocultural life-forms became comprehensible without making any presupposition of a mind inherent in nature. The mechanistic understanding of nature represented one obstacle, and an absolutist logic that allows thought only to be derived from thought represented the other. For the moment we are only interested in the former. For it proved resolvable. We will have to deal at greater length with absolutist logic below. In modernity’s mechanistic understanding of nature it was impossible to incorporate the mind-based organizational forms of human existence, i.e., those mediated by thought and language. For this reason, the elimination of the basic subjectivist model had denaturalized mind in a literal sense. The attempts to renaturalize mind had to fail, as I have already pointed out. The “practical” forms of human existence as well as its forms of thought are certainly set into motion by natural processes; the formation, however, takes place in a different medium, that of thought and language.

2. A NTHROPOLOGY AS A B ASIC S CIENCE If one grasps the intellectual, sociocultural organizational form of human existence as the organization that succeeds an evolutionary natural history, the conditions for the formative process of the intellectual, sociocultural life-forms must be intrinsic to the anthropological constitution of man, without the life-forms themselves also being intrinsic

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in this way. And in this understanding, societal organization must also be viewed as part of this anthropological constitution. This organization had already developed in prehuman times, and it is only because of this that it could take on its specifically human form. It was not an inclination to 1 enter into association, nor was it the instrumentally rational calculations of separately existing individuals that one lives better in community that led to the specifically human form of existence. This form of existence is instead the result of the practical forms of human existence in the world constructed in the medium of thought and language. This constructivepractical process, however, was only possible in communicative terms. Prehuman societal organization therefore represents one of the conditions without which the formation of a specifically human society cannot be made understandable. The question is thus: what are the defining characteristics of the anthropological constitution that make it possible for sociocultural life-forms to develop as intellectual forms of mind? This question turns biological anthropology into the foundational science of 2 the human and social sciences. Moreover, understanding can only be achieved if the following question is answered in terms of the defining characteristics of the anthropological constitution that emerge from evolution: why does man’s existence take place in sociocultural life-forms at all; why, in other words, were thought and language even able to form via communication and emerge from an evolutionary history; why is the process of enculturation linked phylogenetically or historically to the formation of a specifically human society? Anthropology must provide us with the service of clarifying the natural conditions that make possible the development of the mind-based, sociocultural life-forms of human existence. Nothing more, but also nothing less is to be expected of it.

3. F ROM P HILOSOPHICAL TO B IOLOGICAL A NTHROPOLOGY Biological anthropology differs from the philosophical anthropology that arose, especially in German-speaking countries of the first half of the twentieth century. In methodological terms, philosophical anthropology proceeds phenomenally. “Phenomenally” here means: from a detached view of man and thus of oneself, it seeks to grasp the essential laws of the mind-based character of the human form of existence. It is unacquainted with any other methodological preparations aside from this detached viewpoint. On the basis of these essential principles, the mighty philosophical structures are built with which theory seeks to synthesize the knowledge of our time.

1 | I. K ANT, Idee zu einer Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht, p. 9. 2 | Cf. G. D UX , “Anthropologie als Grundlagenwissenschaft,” pp. 9-19.

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The importance of philosophical anthropology in the development of thought in modernity is undeniable, but so are its limits. Its significance lies in making clear the interlinked aspect of natural and intellectual organization of mind. That “mind-basedness” is a feature built into the building plan of nature is a message that Plessner in particular, as founder of philosophical anthropology, was good at promulgating.3 The limits of this approach result from the deficiencies of its philosophical logic and its phenomenal method. (1) Its logic: there is no doubt whatsoever that this mind-based character is simply presupposed along with man. (2) Its method: it does not allow one to ask how man comes to develop this mindbased feature in the sociocultural forms of organization in which we find it. Plessner’s philosophy of life was only capable of achieving its subtle understanding of human existence because Plessner pursued the phenomenal analysis of the organizational forms of life by closely following the evolutionary definition of man. One might even think that he considered this existence to be completely defined by evolution. This he did not. But this did not prevent him from reaching the evolutionary dimension. As important as this analysis is, it is only history for us since we seek and require an anthropology in which man’s anthropological constitution results from the concrete characteristics of natural history.4 And mindbasedness, as it develops along with man, is precisely that which is not yet found in natural history. It cannot be overemphasized that if we seek to give an understandable account of the mind-based character of the human form of existence it is to biological anthropology that we must turn. In reconstructing its formative process, the path leads from biological to sociological anthropology.

4. THE R EDUCTIONISM OF S OCIOBIOLOGY The effort to understand this turn has the advantage to be able to take the claim into account, made by biology in the modern understanding of society and culture. Biology is currently on the rise. It cannot be denied its rightful place in the discussion of how the distinctive form of human existence is to be understood. But this does not allow us to accept indiscriminately the presuppositions made by the biological sciences, and especially 5 sociobiology. There is a very understandable reason why it causes consi3 | Cf. H. P LESSNER, Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch. 4 | For detail here, see G. D UX , “Für eine Anthropologie in historisch-genetischer Absicht.” 5 | Cf., from among the immense number of writings in sociobiology (aside from those that will be referred to below), the following: E.O. WILSON , Sociobiology; A. Alexander Jr., Evolution and Human Behavior; R. Boyd and P.J. Richerson, Culture and the Evolutionary Process; L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, Cultural Evolution,

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derable difficulty just to communicate about the process of enculturation: the construction of the world and of the practical forms of existence in the world take place in a medium different from that of biochemical evolution. Those questions about man’s biological constitution that can help us to clarify the conditions of the constructive process presuppose a prior understanding of the constructivism involved in the medium of thought and language. Biology, however, always reverts to a reductionist mode of thinking and seeks to locate, as finished forms, the organizational forms of thought and language in the genome or, more recently, in the organization of the brain. Thus, in what can now be termed a classic procedure, Konrad Lorenz simply places the categorical forms of cognition, which 6 had formerly been given a transcendental account, in the genome. In genetic terms, however, there can be no question that these forms must first be constructed. We are acquainted with the process. Here it is evident that sociobiology has failed to escape the inertia of thought, remaining subject to traditional logic and thus seeking to present as predisposition that which demands an explanation as an constructive, empirical finding. But things are changing. Even Lumsden and Wilson, who surely cannot be accused of a culturalist bias, declare: “Behavior is not explicit in the genes, 7 and mind cannot be treated as a mere replica of behavioral traits.” In terms of natural history, the developmental process is based upon a change in the genome which, along with the growth of the brain and a change in its organization, allowed the brain’s capacity to develop cognitive competencies to arise. The development of the instruments of speech and the formation of language it enables present themselves as equally important and systemically linked to the reorganization of the brain. Evolutionary and enculturational processes were interlinked in the development of hominids. It is very plausible to assume that the onset of enculturation 8 was connected to a reproductive advantage, i.e., to increased fitness. The scenarios have been played through, especially insofar as they involve the early development of a relation between the sexes that takes on human qualities.9 Here too it makes no sense to incorporate this development into the genome. Moreover, everything seems to indicate that moving things to a time long preceding the Pleistocene age is once again motivated by a reductionist explanatory strategy.

pp. 845-855; R. Riedl and M. Delpos (eds.), Die evolutionäre Erkenntnistheorie; A. Paul, Von Affen und Menschen: Verhaltensbiologie der Primaten. 6 | K. L ORENZ , “Die angeborenen Formen möglicher Erfahrung.” 7 | C.J. L UMSDEN and E.O. WILSON , Genes, Mind, and Culture, p. 2. 8 | On fitness maximization, cf. R. DAWKINS , The Selfish Gene. 9 | Cf. here the paleoanthropological discussion inspired by A.O. L OVEJOY, “The Origin of Man”, pp. 341ff. For details and literature, see G. Dux, Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, pp. 155ff.

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5. C ONSTRUCTIVE A UTONOMY 5.1 The System—Environment Relation The evolution of the species in the development from prehuman anthropoids to humans follows a course that unfolds out of the basic constitution of life, out of the systemic organization of the organism in the midst of a physical world. This basic constitution or structure has long been termed 10 “autonomy.” Autonomy means here: the organism as it self-organizes within the boundaries of the body by means of a systemic interrelating of its elements and processes distinguishes itself from the external organization of the universe in that whatever may occur to it is defined by the processuality of its internal organization. This also holds for the relationship system—environment. It is part of the basic constitution of life and, for this reason, represents a systemically specific interrelation. Environment is that with which system can interact.

5.2 The Increase in Autonomy With the system—environment relation, there is a moment immanent to the basic constitution of life that is highly significant for the understanding of enculturation: organic developments that are capable of increasing the efficiency of interaction with the external world produce a reproductive advantage and thus that which in biology is registered as fitness maximization. And this is precisely the increase that occurs in ongoing enculturation in the development of hominids. The development of the brain and instruments of speech—and the process of enculturation it inaugurated—were advantageous for system—environment interactions, such that the evolutionary process advanced in the direction of the constructive autonomy of the anthropological constitution. This constitution takes on definitive character with the homo sapiens. Thus let us emphasize: The evolution from prehuman anthropoids and hominids to humans is an evolution from a genetically preestablished autonomy to a constructive autonomy. Constructive autonomy means: the organizational forms in the relation between system and environment have first to be constructed in the medium of thought and language by the organism or by the self-forming subject itself. Decade-long discussions have been necessary to clarify how it was possible to change from an at very least primarily genetically defined form of behavior to a competence in action that is reflectively controlled via self-

10 | Cf. especially B. R ENSCH, Neuere Probleme der Abstammungslehre, p. 303f.; and ultimately, H.R. M ATURANA , Erkennen: Die Organisation und Verkörperung von Wirklichkeit.

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constructed forms of practice.11 This is still not entirely resolved. For the increase in learning competence that is usually pointed to is not nearly enough. The truly decisive moment for the human form of existence is not greater learning capability, but rather the constructivism that enables the world and practical forms of existence in the world to develop in the medium of thought and language. Learning is also found to an appreciable extent in the organizational form of the animal.12 In the animal’s environment, learning represents a completion or extension of the environment under highly specific mechanisms of selection. It presupposes that the animal is acquainted with a species-specific environment anchored in the genome. Processes of learning that are integrated into the constructive autonomy of man are of a different kind. The biological constitution of man is distinguished by practical forms in which he conducts his life that have a genetic foundation with a stimulating effect on the action system, yet, these practical forms themselves are not genetically fixed. With the cessation of a genetically preestablished organization of behavior, the environment can also no longer be genetically predefined. It must be replaced by a world that has first to be constructed. A mere completion of behavioral organization or of the environment by means of learning is, for this reason, not possible. The constructive process that is necessary for the building up of a “world” and the development of the forms of practice of life conduct is thus far more radical than ethological learning processes are capable of being. As we will presently see, this process takes place from a point of cultural position zero, even though it too is acquainted with certain basic natural prerequisites. For the genetic principle that nothing comes from nothing also holds for the constructivism of the human form of existence: but here such prerequisites are extremely rudimentary in character. There is no simple presupposition of an environment in which learning processes could be anchored. Both behavioral organization and man’s “world” must first—on the strength of constructive autonomy—be culturally created, and for structural reasons this must occur jointly and in an interrelated manner. The development of constructive autonomy discussed here has been debated in the German-speaking world primarily in terms of the central notion of “instinct reduction”.13 The resistance rapidly mustered by biology against the hypothesis of instinct reduction triggered a debate that should, if possible, not be continued, since it represents a heterogeneous, 11 | Cf. B. H ASSENSTEIN , “Das spezifisch Menschliche,” pp. 60-97; E.W. C OUNT, Das Biogramm. 12 | Cf. H.F. Harlow, “Die Evolution des Lernens.” 13 | The concept of instinct reduction was originally brought into the discussion by K ONRAD L ORENZ and then adopted by A. G EHLEN . Cf. K. L ORENZ , “Über die Bedeutung des Instinktbegriffs,” pp. 289-300, 307-318, 325-331; Idem, “Die angeborenen Formen möglicher Erfahrung”; and further, A. G EHLEN , Der Mensch: Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt.

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inextricable mixture of sensible, substantive arguments from biology with a lack of understanding of the culturally constituted organizational form of human existence. The problem involves connecting two arguments. On the one hand, there can be no doubt that the forms of human practice are not genetically predetermined, but must first be constructively acquired. This finding must be linked to the natural conditions of the anthropological constitution that comes into being through evolution. This problem becomes accessible if one shifts the definition of the forms of interaction between organism and external world from the genome to the brain and if one conceives of the latter as an intermediary organ between the genome and the external world.14 By pointing to development and a concomitant restructuring of the brain, all appearances are avoided of claiming that devolutionary processes were required to overcome the instinctive control of behavior. There is much to be said for the argument that the increase in the ability to differentiate elements in the construction of the organization of action and of the world, on the one hand, and of their interlinking into structural ordering forms, on the other, which accompanies the growth in the size of the brain and its reorganization, nullified the genetic fixation of instinctive mechanisms which held until then, replacing them by means of acquired organizational forms of action and of the world. This seems to me to be the hard and fast core of the hypothesis of a greater information processing capacity put forth by a number of researchers.15 There is no question that this capacity exists. The associated idea, however, that it alone and on its own explains the formative process of the cognitive, normative, and aesthetic forms of organization, is far off the mark. The decisive factor here is what kind of information the brain searches for and finds, and, just as decisive, in what way it uses this information to construct a system of action and a world. We are far from an explanation of how we should conceive of brain organization in order to understand the process of constructing both the world and the forms of practice of human existence.16 It is advisable to leave the process of knowledge acquisition open for surprises. In the meantime, however, we have been given reason to expect clarification of the structures in which the practical forms of human existence and the world develop, but it will not come from the prefigurations of the brain, but from the constructive processes involved in interactions with the external world. According to everything we know the key to understanding 14 | This is the decisive step taken by E.O. WILSON since the publication of his Sociobiology. The assumption that the culturally created organizational forms are prebuilt as “inventions” in the structure of the brain represents, however, nothing more than a reductionist shift from genome to brain. C. L UMSDEN and E.O. W ILSON , Mind, Genes, and Culture. 15 | K.R. G IBSON , “New Perspectives on Instincts and Intelligence.” 16 | Cf. the discussion in K.R. G IBSON , “The Ontogeny and Evolution of the Brain.”

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constructive autonomy lies in the capacity of the purely formal networking or circuitry of the brain. The brain is a self-organizing system.17 This holds for its evolutionary development; but it also holds for cultural processuality. The highly complex structuring of the brain, which enables its processuality to be very largely endogenous in character, in no way represents an argument against the initially constructed character of the action system and of the world. Quite the contrary! The high degree to which the structuring of the world involves breaking things down into more basic elements and the concomitant necessity of creating a coherent unity out of an almost infinite number of differentiations appear to be tied to precisely this complexity. For this reason, the understanding of the sociocultural form of existence developed here gives due respect to both our knowledge of evolution and our knowledge of the constructive process involved in the development both of the practical forms of existence and of the world. Even if one must reckon with the circumstance that, in phylogenetic terms, the forms of self-organization extend far back and were at some point fixed, one must nonetheless also realize that the grandiose increase in brain capacity achieved during the evolution from prehuman to human enabled the potential to arise for a primarily culturally shaped organization.18 One may assume that, to use a term from Plessner, the “bottomless matter-of-factness” (i.e., the unlimited objectivity or detachment) of which humans are capable owes its existence precisely to the formal capacity of their neuronal networks. We must not fail to recognize, that in historico-genetic terms, it is the biological understanding of fitness maximization as an evolutionary mechanism that we appropriate and make our own. We link it with the increased capacity that results from the development of the brain to assimilate its experiences in dealing with the external world into forms of cultural organization. And it is just this that allows us to conclude: The constructive autonomy of the human form of existence presents itself as a comprehensible development in the evolution of the species. It lies along the same line of development as that in which the basic constitution of life, the autonomy of the interrelationship of the internal and external, was able to develop into constructive autonomy. The constructive autonomy of the anthropological constitution could not have been realized without the development of language. The reason lies in the radicalness with which constructive autonomy brings about the construction of the action system and of the world by means of organizational forms that are themselves first constructed. The acquisitional process in which world arises is only possible at all in a symbolic medium. 17 | G.M. E DELMAN , Göttliche Luft, vernichtendes Feuer, p. 48. 18 | Whether the observable commissions and omissions of man, his conduct, is to be ascribed to the one stratum or the other can, for this reason, not simply be decided according to the formula: man follows the same organizing principles as does the animal. Which is what E. VOLAND does in his Grundriß der Soziobiologie.

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This is the case because (a) the world could only first be achieved by means of the practical forms of existence and (b) the world constructed here then took the place of what was environment in prehuman times. It is only the symbolically mediated organization of thought and language that makes possible the practically infinite ability to differentiate the “data” of existence in the construction of the world into which action is directed. It is only in this way that the construction of the world and the development of forms of practice in the world become possible. This conclusion gives us an opportunity to reflect on a category that has almost no place at all in postmodern thought: that of necessity. The development of a symbolically mediated organization is a necessary condition of the human form of existence.

6. THE K E Y TO E NCULTUR ATION : O NTOGENESIS 6.1 Mutation and Ontogenesis The transition from a genetically preestablished organization of behavior and a concomitantly preestablished environment to a constructive autonomy took place as in brain development the old neuronal networks were replaced by an incomparably more complex organization of the brain; and it was according to it that the concrete organizational forms of existence had first to be developed. This thesis, developed above, could represent the key to settling the hitherto unresolved question of how one should conceive of the transition from natural history to cultural history. Here, it is necessary to call to mind a significant complication: genetic changes accrue at birth in the ontogenesis of members of the species. The same also holds for the opportunities of development opened by the anthropological constitution and especially by the growth and reorganization of the brain. If preestablished organizational forms of life must first be replaced by forms acquired through construction, then the development of such life-forms can only begin in early ontogenesis, and this development must be so far advanced by the time of entry into the adult world that homeostasis is guaranteed. This means, however, that the biological development of man relegated man’s cultural take-off to the early ontogenesis of the members of the species. This idea is emphatically confirmed by the preceding analysis of man’s anthropological constitution, as brief as this analysis was: An organism that, like man, has at its disposal merely rudimentary forms of interacting with the external world (and this includes with fellow members of the species) that are predetermined by the genome has to begin the process of creating such forms in early ontogenesis if it does not want to perish. The placement of this formative process in early ontogenesis is another application of the category of necessity. And in fact this finding is open for all to see. Every human begins the formative process in early ontogenesis

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and continues it until he or she leads a viable form of life in the society they are born into. The only thing is: this was always the case, at all times and in all societies. Even a child who was born 30,000 years ago in Aurignac—and thus pretty much at the beginning of the cultural development of homo sapiens in Europe—began the process of acquiring the sociocultural organizational forms of its life in the same way as a child that comes into the world today in the delivery room of a university hospital, and it continued this process in the same way.

6.2 Always from Scratch The conclusion that the process of acquisition of the intellectual, sociocultural organizational forms of human existence always and everywhere begins in the early ontogenesis of the members of the species would in any case not amount to much if what had been accepted opinion until recently (and occasionally even today still finds advocates) were true. It was, namely, long believed that all knowledge is transmitted from the elder generation to the one following it, that it is imposed as it were, both in structure and substance. This was not what was meant, nor can it be. The point of the discovery of ontogenesis for the understanding of enculturation lies in the insight that the “constructor” of this form of existence is the new, maturing member of the species. And this is also always and everywhere the case: in every society, and at all times. The later-born members of the species always start the constructive process from anew and always start this process from the cultural position zero of their anthropological constitution. Unlike substantive knowledge, cognitive structures cannot be transmitted from parents to their children. The elementary form of causality cannot be taught; the maturing member of the species must learn it on her own. Also what time means cannot be taught. The child must develop the initial structure of time on its own, as it acquires the competence to act. In a conception where nature is given priority, we presuppose natural organization and nothing else. Anything more would be incompatible with knowledge of evolution. Out of this natural organization, each new member of the species develops cognitive structures anew. The only thing that can be adopted from one’s predecessors is substantive knowledge. This is the insight that brought about a real change in the understanding of the human form of existence and especially in the theory of knowledge. It is intimately connected to the research of Piaget. Let us take a closer look at it.

6.3 Ontogenesis and Phylogenesis 6.3.1 The Phylogenetic Findings The natural finding that genetic changes find an expression in the ontogenesis of the member of the species, and, for this reason, genetic changes that lead to a constructive autonomy must trigger processes of enculturation in the ontogenesis of the members of the species, also holds for

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the development toward man in the wide-ranging realm of hominids. The development of the anthropological constitution that we can observe in this realm, the development of the upright gait (already found in austra19 lopithecines), the development of the relation between eye and hand, and above all the rapid development of the brain (at least that which we can infer from skull shapes), and especially, however, the development of 20 language tools (of which we have hardly any empirical indication, but the assumption of which we must take as our point of departure): each of these developments resulted in the initiation of the cultural process in ontogenesis, and each allowed the push of enculturation to continue. We have few empirical indications of cultural evolution in this period and they allow interpretation great latitude. This makes the evidence that we can gather from our closest relatives among the primates all the more important. They also begin the process of acquiring cognitive competence in early ontogenesis and continue it into the fifth year of life. It then ceases abruptly on a level at which language comes to the aid of the human child, 21 towards the end of its second year of life. The necessity of developing the process of acquiring enculturation out of ontogenesis in the case of hominids as well is suited to meeting a particular objection, found especially in philosophical reflection. The objection still supports efforts to ground man‘s intellectual life forms without having recourse to evolution. All of our experiences of the ontogenesis of members of the species take place under conditions under which intellectual, sociocultural life-forms have already been developed. For this reason, the always already existing mind-based character of humans in history becomes support for the argument that mind is uncircumvent22 able. If one remains consistent, this has to lead to the assumption of the transcendence of mind. I will later discuss at length the hypothesis of the uncircumventability of the mind of sociocultural existence. In the present context, only its circumventability needs to be made clear, to serve as a model, in terms of an argument from development theory that understands the ontogenesis of the member of the species as the take-off point of the enculturation process.

6.3.2 The Phylogenetic Model The development of the brain puts the new, next generation in the position to increase the constructivism of an emerging, constructive auto19 | Cf. the detailed study by A. L EROI -G OURHAN, Hand und Wort. 20 | The dating of their development is extremely controversial and previous efforts have recently come under question. Discussion is found in P. L IEBERMAN , Uniquely Human. 21 | Cf. the vivid studies in J. L ANGER , “Die universale Entwicklung der elementaren logisch-mathematischen und physikalischen Kognition.” 22 | As representative of innumerable others, cf. R. WIMMER , “Transzendentalität und Rationalität der Moral,” pp. 35-36.

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nomy. For let us remember: the constructors are always and everywhere the members of the species of the next generation. The interaction with the less-developed constructive capacity and competence of the parental generation suffices to produce the effect of increased development of constructive competence. Hereafter the constructively further developed structures make it possible to shape adult-level practices more efficiently. The cultural restocking of those who now make up the parental generation improves the conditions of the enculturation process for the next generation. It also finds itself, however, subject to higher demands. The fitness maximization produced by the enculturation thus set off results in the continuation of the evolutionarily initiated process of brain development and ultimately also the development of the instruments of speech in the field of hominids. The phylogenetic enculturation process gets rolling. The model is anything but speculative. As soon as one is freed from the idea that the structure of constructs was transferred from one’s predecessors, in other words, as soon as one grasps the new member of the species as the constructor, one also understands that the social supervision and care as we find it at the level of the anthropoids suffices for the take-off of enculturation. The prerequisites for a favorable ontogenetic enculturation were certainly given among hominids. We can thus conclude: The key to understanding enculturation lies in the early ontogenesis of the members of the species. The ontogenetic constructivism of the brain in the process of interacting with an external reality that is at least accessible by means of the senses sets off a constructive process in which the basic structures of sociocultural competence as well as of the forms of praxis and those of the world are constantly developed anew by the members of the species of the next generation.

6.4 The Autogenesis of the Brain We have left out a question that must be answered. Like so many questions that defined discussions without being part of a systematically structured anthropology, in concealed fashion it dominated for decades the controversy between biology and the social sciences. Why, namely, does the new, the maturing member of the species initiate the constructive process at all? On the basis of our previous discussions, the answer can be succinctly formulated: because the brain sets this process in motion with the organization of the competence to act. The constructive process in the acquisition of action competence and in the construction of the world in our own society shows that a brain that has the capacity at its disposal of being able to develop cognitive competencies and practical forms of interaction with the external world, in fact also does this. In other words, the brain is an apparatus that sets itself in motion and develops autogenetically if it is given the material from outside it to process. How else should the enculturation process have been set in motion otherwise? It is obvious: the apparatus only puts the process in motion in order to start with a form of

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organization, which continues to require and use an external impetus in the future, but which, in doing so, receives support from the culturally initiated development. We will see that the development of the competence to act is accompanied by the formation of a reflexiveness of the organism that first of all makes possible the organization of action competence and of cognition. In other words, that which begins naturally continues culturally by utilizing its natural impetus. It is thus argued that the process of enculturation did not take place by means of a devolutionary instinct reduction. It resulted instead from the circumstance that brain development and concomitant brain reorganization replaced fixed neuronal networks with the option of networks that could be developed on their own. This line of argument has two ramifications of great systematic significance: (1) It puts us in agreement with the presuppositions of biological research. For, as we discussed above, biology rejects any claims of a devolutionary reduction of instinct.23 And connected to this: (2) By focusing enculturation on the development of the brain, this provides further foundation for the ontogenetic turn in the theory of knowledge. For a life-form that is equipped in this way at birth can in fact hardly avoid setting the process of enculturation in motion. The apparatus simply begins to work. By focusing on the development of the brain required by the take-off of enculturation, we once again move from a phenomenal-descriptive theory to a genetic one. In phenomenaldescriptive terms, the starting point can be characterized as a situation of constitutional disequilibrium in which the new member of the species finds him- or herself. The lack of preestablished, genetically inherited patterns of interaction with one’s environment, and, for this reason, the lack of an environment itself, does not yet make man a deficient being, but it does temporarily make him unfit for interaction. Plessner provided a sensitive description of this constitutive lack of equilibrium.24 Piaget also made use of disequilibrium in support of the processes of “assimilation” and “accommodation,” the two constructors in the process of cognitive development.25 The descriptions are as apt as they are useful, only they do not yet explain why the process is set in motion. By pointing to the autogenous productivity of the brain for the take-off of development, we do provide such an explanation. The strategy of historical genesis is just one more piece of evidence for the necessity of shifting from philosophical to biological anthropology if one has any interest at all in providing explanations.

23 | Cf. the differentiated discussions in R.A. H INDE, The Biological Basis of Human Social Behaviour, pp. 32-45. 24 | H. P LESSNER , Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, Gesammelte Schriften, vol. iv, pp. 383ff., esp. 391. 25 | Cf. the emphasis placed on this in J. P IAGET, “The Psychogenesis of Knowledge and its Epistemological Significance,” pp. 31ff.

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It is obvious that the understanding of the intellectual form of existence as the successor organization to natural history represents the combination of two developments: the consciousness of convergence and constructivism (which, in historical terms, was already discovered at the beginning of modernity) and the analysis of the anthropological constitution (which, in terms of natural history, was first made possible by the discovery of the evolution of the species). The insight that the world of man converges on man receives its fundamentum in re in this way: constructivism must be conceived of as the distinguishing feature of the anthropological constitution that results from evolution. It is in keeping with the directional sense of an evolution in which the individual autonomy of every organizational form of life was able to develop into the constructive autonomy of man. Constructive autonomy as the defining moment of the anthropological constitution marks the point of transition from the natural-historical to the historical understanding of man in modernity.

6.5 The “Naturalization of Mind” The “naturalization of mind,” as it was attempted at the outset of modernity, was a contradictory undertaking: it sought to reinstate the structures of mind of the human form of existence in a stratum from which it had just been removed. Organizational forms that include meaningful aspects that are achieved intentionally via the attribution of meaning cannot be translated back into nature. This is also where the fundamentalism of sociobiological theorems that try to effect this reinstatement breaks down. The previously discussed “naturalization of mind” means, if one wants to understand it in these terms, something quite different: it certainly does not mean in any sense that the intellectual, sociocultural organization forms of existence are built into biological organization itself, whether this be the genome or the brain. There are no structures of mind in the biological stratum. It provides solely the prerequisites for developing this life-form. If understanding the human form of existence as the form that succeeds upon an evolution of the species is to be considered as a “naturalization 26 of mind,” then only in the sense that the various modes of competence of mind themselves, i.e., cognitive, linguistic, normative, and aesthetic modes of competence, build upon natural capacities, but without being already part of them. This leads to a processual understanding of mind, which distinguishes itself radically from the understanding of the past.

26 | As does G. D UX , “Denken vom Vorrang der Natur,” pp. 66-81.

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7. M IND AND C ULTURE IN H ISTORICO -G ENE TIC THEORY 7.1 What Mind Means Mind is cognition. We can adopt this succinct formulation from past 27 thought. It means, however, something different from what it did previously. Mind is a cognition whose capabilities and means first form as cognitive competence. Its development has as its natural prerequisite the basal capacity of the brain. The forms of organization that first make cognition at all possible take shape themselves, however, in the process of acquiring action competence and in constructing the world. It is precisely because of this that the mind-based character of the human form of existence can only form in conjunction with the development of the sociocultural organizational forms of existence in history. It is one of the insights of a conception giving priority to nature, insights that shed light on the mind-based character of the human form of existence, to be able to make it understandable that the thinking ability of man—as competence—first develops along with the realization of constructive autonomy itself. This holds especially for the operationalism of forming formal-logical relations between distinct variables, regardless what these “variables” may be. The unsettling question as to why we are capable at all of discerning something about the universe with the resources of the human mind, and especially on the basis of the logical character of 28 its thought, can be answered if one takes into account that the cognitive competencies are first developed in the interaction with an always already existing reality. I will come back to this. Precisely because cognitive power first develops in the constructive process, it is also tied to the development of the means that make the constructive process possible: the development of the self-created organizational forms of thought and language. Logic must also first develop with formal operations. As Piaget was very correct in observing, it would cause considerable difficulties if one conceived of man as 29 being born with logical structures, and especially mathematical ones. The assumption would very simply contradict our natural-scientific worldview. For this reason, we can say that mind is, in short, the synergistic result of thought and language. That is, however, not yet everything. There is a strategic aspect inherent to the mind-based character of the human form of existence: a problem-solving competence. Its genesis in the process of the construction of action competence in the construction of the world can be clearly recognized. This competence would not be possible if that strategic aspect had not also been developed that first gives mind its powers and operationalism the sharpness of logic: the reflexiveness of opera27 | It is found in N IKOLAUS VON K UES [N ICHOLAS OF C USA], De docta ignorantia, p. 5. 28 | See S. H AWKING , Eine kurze Geschichte der Zeit, p. 27. 29 | J. P IAGET and R. G ARCIA , Psychogènese et histoire des sciences, Introd., p. vi.

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tionalism. The present context is not the place to discuss the formative process of reflexiveness. This occurs elsewhere. It must suffice for now to point out that reflexiveness develops with action competence as the inner organization of the subject and also first makes possible the process of the development of cognition. It is only by virtue of the reflexiveness of subjectivity that the strategic use of mind—i.e., the aim of gaining knowledge in a situation and translating it into structure—is even imaginable. After everything that we have discussed, it makes good sense to keep the concept of mind as the organizational form of human existence that characterizes man, that sets him apart. Admittedly, the concept of mind (Geist) is tainted by metaphysics. All reflexive terms are tainted philosophically. By tying this term to the development of the specifically human form of existence that succeeds upon natural history, however, we give it a new and different meaning. As mind and mind-based character of the human form of existence we mean to designate that mental activity on the strength of which man conducts his life by means of constructed, symbolically mediated organizational forms. This includes both the acquisition of knowledge and the reflexive conceptualization of his own self in the universe. This also includes, however, the translation of these acquisitional processes and their utilization in the organization of daily life. The mind-based character of the human form of existence is, after all, a manifestation of the characteristic inner anchoring of life conduct, which is connected to the symbolically mediated organization of both the world 30 and the forms of practice in this world. The connection between thought and being can only be a connection in terms of the difference between their respective organizational forms. We will take up in detail how this is possible. The first prerequisite in understanding it is the adoption of a logic different from the one that still defines current thinking. We will soon have more to say about this (Part II).

7.2 What Culture Means Understanding the human form of existence as an organizational form of life that was brought to fruition in the course of the evolution of the species allows us to grasp the human form of existence as part of natural history. The mind-based character of the human form of existence represents no exception to the conclusion that nothing in the universe falls outside of that universe. It was possible within evolution to develop a form of life whose organization was based on processes different from those that hitherto defined the organizational forms of life. The new, specifically human life-form was still based on the prerequisites resulting from biology, but only in the sense that man was put into the position thereby to develop 30 | Here cf. the fine-drawn comments of H. P LESSNER in his Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, p. 404f.

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a different form of life: a mind-based, sociocultural one. Can there be any doubt that man by virtue of this form of existence takes a unique position in nature? Yes, doubts are indeed raised. It is not simply that in biology and in paleoanthropology there is controversy about how to define the line that separates man from animal. The very way that sociobiology conceives of itself, its self-legitimation, appears to require it to insist on the doing away with man’s unique position.31 Does this make sense? The consciousness of convergence and constructivism discussed above clearly shows that we do more than simply take note of the evolution of the anthropological constitution that takes place in the long history of the evolution of the species: rather, we understand it as a prerequisite for the development of intellectual, sociocultural forms of life. The basic biological prerequisites: upright gait, development of the brain, development of the tools of language, just to name the most conspicuous, can be traced back beyond the field of transition from animal to man. Accordingly, neither in purely temporal terms nor in terms of the development of these prerequisites can the line of demarcation between man and animal be fixed. The closer we get to the human species in the evolution of anthropoids, the more comparable are the forms of interaction between animal and environment and the powers of man. This holds in a special way for the development of cognition.32 The circumstance that the field of hominid development also stretches over a period of almost 2 million years, a period in which biological evolution and the process of enculturation do not only run in parallel, but must have provided each other with basic support, tends to leave the entry into the history of culture completely in a transitional field rather than something marked by a clear cut-off point. Though there is one thing that is unmistakable about it: the rise of homo sapiens marks the rise of a new organizational form of life, precisely the one I previously termed the symbolically mediated form of existence, one mediated by thought and language. What is decisive is not the demarcation of a cut-off point, but the circumstance that an organizational form ultimately takes shape which develops and makes use of completely different procedures for organizing the way life is conducted. For this reason let us emphasize: The symbolically mediated form of organization of human existence has man’s biological constitution as its base, but it itself takes shape as a construct in a different stratum: in the sphere of thought, which finds its formative process by virtue of language. It is clear that for this reason one can say that biological anthropology lays the groundwork for the modern consciousness of convergence and cons31 | As reiterated in E. VOLAND, Grundriß der Soziobiologie, p. vi. 32 | On the development of cognitive competence, cf. the research report by J. Langer, “Die universale Entwicklung der logisch-mathematischen und physikalischen Kognition.” On the development of the powers of symbolization, cf. E.S. R UMBAUGH and D.M. R UMBAUGH, “The emergence of language,” which includes additional references to their other studies.

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tructivism. It does so by showing that the constructivism of the human form of existence is a consequence of an anthropological constitution that makes its formation possible, but that this constitution in turn is also dependent upon its formation. The interconnected character of the biological and cultural strata can be impressively documented in terms of the process of acquiring the competence to act, as observable in each and every case of ontogenesis. The acquisition of the competence to act is a cultural process through and through; this competence is itself a highly cultural construct. It is a construct, however, by which the organism acquires that which is inherent to every other organism from nature: the competence to interact with the external world. It is obvious that the organism first becomes viable by means of this constructivism. What the organism itself contributes are not the constructs themselves, not those of the world and not those of forms of praxis, but solely the capacity to develop them. It would thus be a crude misunderstanding—which one nonetheless encounters again and again—to view sociocultural life-forms as simply part of the natural stratum, a misunderstanding also of the role biological anthropology plays as the foundational science for the human and social sciences. The point of developing a historico-genetic perspective is precisely to connect biology and the world of the mind in such a way that on the basis of an anthropological constitution brought to fruition out of natural history a radically new form of organization has been able to emerge. The concept that is coined for this life-form: to have formed within nature an organizational form that differs from the natural one, namely, by being a mind-based one, is culture. In the preceding discussions I have intentionally termed this life-form, in an almost formulalike manner, as a mind-based, sociocultural life-form. For culture in this general sense is everything that man finds in the world; even each of the manifestations of his own life is culturally shaped. Even the most elementary natural processes are fitted, and not infrequently also force-fitted, into cultural forms. Moreover, first culturally developed forms of organization provide the means for making them accessible to interpretation. Culture is commonly understood, and is commonly understood in sociology as well, in a narrower sense than developed here.33 Since all organizational forms of existence are culturally produced organizational forms, it is not very easy to define this narrower sense. It focuses on the medium. This requires, namely, a more or less intentional focus on the process of construction. A simple reflection points the way: The construction of the world and of the forms of human praxis in this world by means of thought and language are made possible by the breaking down and recombination of the world of objects and events into a multitude of defining characteristics. Concepts serve here as the constructive elements. Since constructiv33 | On the sociological understanding of culture, cf. F. TENBRUCK , Die kulturellen Grundlagen der Gesellschaft.

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ism involves a high degree of breaking things down into more basic elements, there is a resulting necessity to create the unity of the world in the multitude of its events and fields of events on a more abstract level. This unity is prepared by means of the structures of thought and language. At the same time, however, the unity of the structures seeks to be transposed into the semantics of an understanding of the world, namely, into a semantics of the totality of the world and into a semantics of its “provinces,” its realms. This is precisely what religion, philosophy, and science do. They take up and work on the constructs on the metalevel of constructs specifically for the purpose of also making them more understandable on the basic level. Culture in a narrower sense is to the process of taking up the construction of the world and the constructive forms of man’s praxis in the world on a metalevel of interpretations and meanings. Here we also include the first symbolically mediated artistic forms of expression. There is no problem connecting all activities that fall in the area of schoolbased learning to the previously developed concept of culture. For this type of learning involves developing precisely those abilities that are necessary for acquiring constructive competence. The point of comparison, the tertium comparationes, is the taking up of constructivism itself in order to get a grip on the world rather than the immediate demands of practical life conduct. In short, one could say that culture is constructivism and reflexiveness on that constructivism. We can make the absolutely universal constructed character of the human form of existence more transparent by—with regard to the “world” side of existence—breaking down the development of the one world into three worlds: the world of nature, the social world, and the inner world.

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1. W ORLD 1.1 Cultural Position Zero Phylogenetically speaking, the process of enculturation is a process that has stretched over millions of years. It took time to transform the natural organization of behavior with its concomitant environments into a cultural organization. We will not take up here the wide-ranging phase of transition from animal to man. We start instead from our side of a virtual cut-off point: on this side the recently arisen homo sapiens is already fully developed in his biophysical organization and thus finds all natural prerequisites already given for developing sociocultural life-forms. From that point on, every individual member of the species finds itself at the hour of its birth at cultural position zero. Cultural position zero means: he brings with him into the world natural faculties that allow him to form a cultural organization of the world. Yet, he must first create the cultural forms themselves. We can give a more precise picture of what man acquires with regard to the “world” side of his existence: The new member of the species must develop the structure of three worlds: 1. that of a world of nature organized according to its relevance to human action; 2. that of a social world in which he or she interacts and communicates with his equals; and 3. that of an inner world, in which the culturally developed structures of life conduct become organically fixed.1

1 | By distinguishing three worlds, the theory developed here comes close to the one Habermas develops. Cf. J. H ABERMAS , Theorie des kommunikativen Handels, vol. I, pp. 144ff.

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There is something very distinctive about the development of these structures: in both phylogenetic and historical terms they are the means by which that world has arisen which is peculiar and specific to man. The early worlds were long ago transformed, even though the process of achieving the world continues to be set into motion by the structures developed in early ontogenesis. The conditions under which it first became possible for the process of enculturation to develop continue to exist. They are the guarantee that the world of man also continues to exist.

1.2 Pragmatism It is not easy to define what world means in this context, neither in view of the one encompassing world nor in terms of the three worlds, the world of nature, the social world, and the inner world. It seems reasonable to approach it from the anthropological point of departure. World, we said, assumes the place of environment. For the environment is the correlate to animal behavior. It serves as that with which species can interact. This pragmatic internal-external perspective is to be retained in the construction of the world of man. Every member of the species begins in early ontogenesis to gain the competence to act and to achieve a world for itself. The one is not possible without the other. In other words, the organization of the world is defined by a completely pragmatic interest, namely, to construct a world relevant to action. It is only that the formative process of the world in the medium of thought and language allows the world, once it is formed, to go beyond all pragmatic interest.

1.3 The Totality of the World The construction of the environment is organized in natural mechanisms on the subhuman level; the point of the construction of the world is that it cannot occur in the same way. I have already pointed this out. On the subhuman level we find a point-for-point relation between behavior and environment. This also holds for the behavior learned by animals. Ň An already established form of behavior can incorporate a new environmental feature. Ň Conversely, a form of behavior that is first learned can be adapted to an already established environmental trait. Ň And, finally, a variation of both is possible in that a learned form of behavior can be based upon a preadaptation that encompasses a kind of surplus variation. Surplus variation means that behavior that has proven to be adaptive in one regard turns out to be useful in other regards as well.2 This does not place in doubt the bipolar relationality between organization and environment. 2 | Cf. J.P. S COT T, The Evolution of Social Systems, pp. 113, 141.

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The starting point of the construction of the world by means of thought and language is quite different. At cultural position zero of ontogenesis, there are no differentiated variables, neither as this or that object, nor as this or that action. The significance that thought and language have achieved in the development of the specifically human life-form is based precisely on the fact that they have made it possible for a completely different process in the construction of the world to develop: for this process takes place under the condition of a nonpredetermined relation between action system and environment. The world is characterized by means of a practically infinite number of defining features or determinations. In the medium of thought and language they become signifiers for something in the world. On the basic level, these determinations are achieved through experiences that the new member of the species has with the world of objects and events, a world that constitutes itself for him from these experiences. Consequently, that which emerges as reality is not the plain reproduction of reality, but it is also not an empty construct. Instead, it is that which is developed from experiences with an initially precategorically accessible reality. As this process advances, the symbolically mediated shaping of characteristics is fixed in the generality of the concept.3 Since concepts can only be formed by differentiating them from other concepts in the conceptual field and the conceptual system, that which arises as the reality of the concept or of the conceptual world is doubly determined: That which arises as the reality of the concept is defined just as much by the multitude of experiences that have gone into the individual concepts as by the way they are interrelated in the conceptual field and conceptual system. This formative process cannot be untangled. The construction of the world by means of difference among symbolically mediated determinations has been reflected in and reflected upon in philosophy and linguistics for some time now.4 It is intimately tied to reflection on the concept formation of the world. And reflection begins, as we will take up below, with Plato and Aristotle. In the present context— not least because of the postmodernist confusion in the understanding of constructivism—I would like to keep that aspect in mind that I so clearly stressed above: difference between reality and concept develops by means of experiences with an already existing world. And this is tied to an insight of extraordinary importance: the objectivity of the world.

3 | Cf. L.S. V YGOTSK Y, Denken und Sprechen, pp. 291ff. 4 | In this sense, in modern understanding, reflection also begins here with K ANT. Cf. I. K ANT, Logik. Cf. further E. C ASSIRER, Zur Theorie des Begriffs, pp. 129-136. On the significance of concept formation in language by means of difference, cf. F. DE S AUSSURE, Grundfragen der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft, pp. 142ff.

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1.4 What Objectivity Means How are reality and constructivism related in that which we call the reality of the world and the understanding of human existence in the world? It has counted as one of the most obscure questions in the philosophical and sociological literature since the breakthrough of the consciousness of the convergence of the world upon man, i.e., at the latest since Descartes, and above all, since Kant. The discussion of the basic constitution of life in the context of the evolutionary determination of the anthropological constitution makes one assumption undeniable: the autonomy of systemic organizational forms of life in the midst of a material universe is only possible if, in systemic terms, an adequate interaction with external reality is secured. It is possible to give a sufficiently succinct definition of what adequate interaction means: the systemic internal organization of the organism must be produced by those ties to the external world that it requires to secure its homeostasis in the midst of the universe. If by virtue of his biological constitution, man must first acquire this internal-external interrelationship by constructing it, he can only do so by integrating reality into his constructs to such an extent that he can live in this reality and use it for his purposes. He must create materially adequate and, in this sense, objective constructs. Two strategies in the construction process of the world secure the condition of possibility of achieving a world at all: 1. The construction process already takes place ontogenetically in the interaction with an always already pre-existing reality. This above all creates the opportunity of allowing reality to be integrated into the constructs. 2. Every new member of the species develops in early ontogenesis—along with the process of acquiring the competence to act that occurs in the process of constructing the world—a reflexiveness that enables it to arrive at a detached relationship to each of the three worlds. The development of reflexiveness is a process that from the very beginning is tied to the process of acquiring knowledge. It produces the characteristic developmental potential that can be observed in the process of acquiring the competence to act and cognitive competence. Without the use of a concomitantly developing reflexiveness, the acquisition process would hardly be able to go beyond the cognitive competence also developed by the primates most closely related to us. Only because the subject can put himself in an opposing position to each of the three worlds is it at all capable of achieving a world and conducting its life in it.5 The formative process of this reflexiveness can be succinctly reconstructed in ontoge5 | The drifting that H.R. M ATURANA and F.J. VARELA provide as an explanation does not offer a precise explanation of the constructs of the human world. Cf. H.R. M ATURANA and F.J. VARELA , Der Baum der Erkenntnis, pp. 119ff.

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netic terms. We today also have at our disposal profound knowledge about the formative process of a subjectivity that first forms by means of the development of the reflexiveness of life conduct. In a conception in which nature receives priority, this knowledge gains epistemological relevance. For in this conception, the conditions of possibility of cognition lie not in a transcendental subjectivity, but in the empirical conditions under which the construction of the world is possible. And this includes the circumstance that each of the three worlds can only develop in systematic combination with the other two. Each of the worlds, however, is acquainted with the conditions specific to it and achieves its own ontic status, different from that of the other worlds. For this reason, we must take up each of these worlds in greater detail.

2. N ATURE 2.1 The Autonomy of Nature Nature is that which exists without man—the solid earth, the starry sky, the infinite universe. This ontic autonomy is to be kept in mind in all further discussion. We only know nature in terms of the constructs that we make of it; even our own bodies are only accessible in terms of the categorical forms that we have developed: spatial, temporal, causal, suffering, etc. At the same time we say of nature that it had already existed before man lived on earth and it would also exist even if no man were to think about it any longer. Even more importantly: we must admit this; we must grant nature its autonomy. In fact there is no one who does not do so; even theories of knowledge concede this. But why? The answer is simple enough: we would not be able to live if we did not do so. We cannot say even on a trial basis that the tree that is standing there or the car that is driving by is only standing there or driving by in our imagination. But nonetheless: every thing and every event is what it is only in our imagination; no one can have it differently. Only, we accompany every picture we imagine with the thought of the autonomy of reality and we act accordingly. And this conclusion has a further consequence that is as undeniable as the conclusion itself: we perceive nature in terms of the constructs that we make of it, and yet we do it in a real manner. Anyone who moves past a tree really does perceive something about it, namely, its limits. He does not merely posit them as real; they are real. And it is no different with the traits that we test in objects. Anyone who hangs a hammock between two trees perceives something of their qualities, even though, firmness, pliability, and hardness are all constructs that have come about under the pragmatic interest of human world-building. This conclusion can be substantiated in epistemological terms.

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2.2 Reality in the Construct of Nature Modern theories of knowledge stand under the influence of the discovery of the convergence of the world toward man, and thus under the sway of the insight that the world presents itself as construct. If one nonetheless continues to understand the world as in previous times from an ultimate point of attribution, the human ego moves to the place previously occupied by God. This is the understanding of absolutist idealism. By starting from an “I” that is thought, all those aporias arise that idealism is concerned with: Why do I imagine a world at all? Why as an autonomous one? Why in the forms in which I discover it? Why does this world stir my thought, set it in motion? Fichte’s transcendental idealism is instructive here, because of the utmost rigor with which it pursues these questions. The result is revolutionary, or more accurately, could have been revolutionary, if only Fichte had been able to let go of the absolutism of logic, which under the consciousness of convergence had let the “I” be posited as primary. For Fichte sees himself compelled to recognize that without an outside impetus the “I” of “I think” would not even start to think, and thus would not exist.6 Thinking is a process that takes place between the internal and the external. Fichte was not capable of imagining the consequence of no longer being able to think from the position of an absolute ego. We can and we must draw a much more radical conclusion: we can no longer think from the position of an absolute at all, regardless who or what occupies its position. Radical constructivism would also fall apart if it were to take this into account. We will soon take this problem up in detail. In fact, we achieve our understanding of nature in a much different way: we develop it in early ontogenesis, in the interaction with an always already preexisting external world. There is no question that what we develop from it is a construct. This is all the more so, since the dominant object of the external world on the basis of which we develop constructs is the caregiving, primary person of reference. For this reason, the constructs that we make from nature are in early ontogenesis as in all of history up into modernity formed, in categorical terms, according to the pattern of action in the social world.7 This does not prevent us in and with these constructs from perceiving those qualities of nature that are significant for us. I have designated this theory, therefore, constructive realism. One could understand it just as well as real constructivism.

6 | J.G. F ICHTE , Die Grundlagen der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, Werke, vol. I, p. 248. 7 | Cf. G. D UX , Die Logik der Weltbilder, p. 92ff.; on the systematic development, Idem, Die ontogenetische und historische Entwicklung des Geistes, pp. 173224.

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2.3 The Translation of Nature into Language In a discussion of the construction of the world, doubts can be entertained about which of the three worlds represents the proper starting point: that of nature or that of social interaction. At any rate, it speaks for the latter that nature, as we know it, represents a construct created in the social world. If one seeks, however, to clarify the conditions of constructivism and takes into account that phylogenetically constructivism presents itself as the successor organization of an evolutionary natural history, then it appears to be appropriate to start with nature. For it is the natural constellation out of which constructivism arises. And it is therefore also the natural constellation that provides the conditions under which constructivism becomes possible. In my case, the question does not possess systematic significance. We have discussed the natural constellation: we have an organism that is so constituted that it must first develop both the structure and contents of its interaction with the external world, and, in so doing, first constructs its world. For such an organism, the constructivism discussed above, which allows imagine reality to be conceived, represents the only possible strategy for securing the adequacy of system and environment. This requires the highly differentiating and integrative character of language. And precisely for this reason, as we have discussed above, language becomes a condition of possibility of constructivism. The point, however, that needs to made about this process is that, conversely, the strategy of constructive realism (please note: as strategy of the members of the species and not initially of scientific observers) is the key to understanding how the world is organized through language. Language could not even develop without interaction with an always already preexistent reality. Let us focus our attention on the organization of nature. The process of defining the world by means of a multitude of references and predications takes place on a basic level through experiences that are made in one’s dealings with the external world. It would be otherwise unimaginable how language in all its differentiations could be developed. For it is itself a construct. Thus, if we previously stressed that we need language in order to be able to do justice to the irrefutable necessity of objective determinations, conversely, it has to be recognized that language could only form by virtue of the objectivity of experiences. For the process of forming structures, language needs the external world as support. This holds just as much for the development of vocabulary as for that of syntax. They do not develop in a free-floating fashion; no communication from “black boxes” is capable of producing them. The point of constructivism here, too, is that the modes of competence, means, and procedures first develop in the process itself. There is a systemic aspect to the production of language and reality in that each has the other as its condition of possibility. This process takes place by means of communication. Only, communication is not the key to language per se, but rather just one of

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its conditions of possibility. Language is certainly conditioned by communication, just as conversely, specifically human communication is conditioned by language. Nevertheless, the condition of possibility is the third element in the trio: the external side of the communicants. Specifically human communication develops by giving linguistic form to (”languafying”) the world of objects and events. It is telling that the communication among our closest anthropoid relatives only marginally includes communication about the environment. It is instead largely expressive. Thus, let us stress: The key to understanding enculturation phylogenetically and ontogenetically is the realization that the process of constructing the world takes place in the triangle of communication between communicants, ego and alter ego, and their interactions with an external reality. It is only the communicants’s common experiences in interaction with external reality that makes communication by means of language possible, since language could not develop otherwise. Research on the ontogenesis of members of the species provides overwhelming material in support of this conclusion. Recent theoretical discussions also indirectly support this. Experiments aimed at limiting the condition of possibility for communication and for the construction of the world to communicants qua “black boxes” and at basing knowledge on double contingency, on lack of knowledge so to speak, ended as failures.8 The question of the condition of possibility aims at clarifying why communication is possible at all rather than being impossible. And this question cannot be answered if one starts from “black boxes.” For each communication from “black boxes” lets the process of communication always already begin in the structures of communication and, in doing so, also allows use to be made of all substantive knowledge that the observer brings along. Thus, to repeat: the point of constructivism in the process of enculturation is to gain structures in the construction of the world in a precategorically experienced world. Completely elementary access to nature is secured via the senses; its construction, its structuring, takes place socioculturally by means of the constructs with which we know nature.

2.4 The Ontic Status of Nature According to everything we have discussed, nature has its own inherent and unique ontic status. It is a construct, but one subject to the experiences that we make with an always already preexisting world of objects and events. One cannot get beyond the constructivism of the organization of nature. It does not make sense to try to learn something about nature “in itself.” And it makes just as little sense to dispute the independence of its reality. We call reality that which presents itself as reality in our constructs and has proven itself in action. Thus there can be no doubt about it: even 8 | N. L UHMANN , Soziale Systeme, pp. 148ff.

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the ontic status that we grant the constructs in which nature becomes accessible for us is only produced by means of constructs. This conclusion appears appropriate for clarifying a problem that had caused Karl Popper to come to a very different kind of theory of three worlds.9 Popper also sees nature as the first of three worlds, and he too emphasizes that in the constructs of nature we are dealing with an independent ontic stratum whose laws we seek to grasp. Popper consequently underscores that we are realists in our dealings with the world, constructive realists, as I was careful to put it. Popper distinguishes, along with a second world of consciousness, the world of objective mind from this first world. Since Popper includes no social world, meant are above all the theories of nature, both the cosmologies of past centuries and the modern theories of natural science. Does this make sense? Distinguishing a third world as a world of objective mind, especially from the first world, the world of nature, reflects the influence of the recent history of the natural sciences. Highly abstract theoretical structures have been able to form within these sciences that are far removed from the way in which nature is experienced and conceptualized in practical life, even though these structures have their ultimate origin here. Advances in knowledge of nature are advances that were initially made on the theoretical level. The hidden implications of these theories, that which cannot be easily integrated into them, are the problems that science takes up. The more abstract the theories, the longer is the path back into the first world to test these theories by means of an experiment or technological application. Theories—here we will follow Popper—take on a life of their own in abstract terms, all the more so, the more comprehensive their subject area appears to be. This gives all the more urgency to the question: how can such a theory ascertain the reality of its immanent logic? I will not enter into a fully discussion here. My sole interest in the present context is to make understandable that though the ontic character of more abstract theories also becomes more abstract, it is not lost entirely. “Black holes” also attempt to comprehend real processes. Admittedly, theories can also be false. This admission, however, does not in any way cast doubt on the ability of theories to incorporate the factual within their constructs and the regularity with which they also do so. Failure is a necessary part of their constructed character. As little as the statement “There stands a tree” loses its ontically intended meaning in a constructivist understanding if it turns out that no tree is standing there, just as little do theories loses their ontically intended meaning if they prove false. In short, since everything that we say about the first world, about nature, has always been a construct anyway, it makes little sense to construct a separate world for “objective mind” just to reflect the increase in the level of abstractness of constructs.

9 | K. P OPPER , Objektive Erkenntnis, pp. 123ff., 172ff.

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The finding previously discussed, that the constructivism of nature is first capable of developing in interaction with nature, is of the greatest significance in historical terms. Precisely because real knowledge must be gained from nature and is in fact so gained can the process of acquiring knowledge from nature continue through history. There is real progress in knowledge of nature.—Only blind constructivism could dispute this.— Progress in knowledge of nature also exerts influence on how man conceives of himself. Below we will take up in detail the fact that both up to, and even in, modernity the impetus for epochal developments arose out of the social world, but each societal change brought changes in knowledge of nature in its wake and required that society be given a new interpretive classification in the overall system of the universe. In all of the past, understanding of man, like that of society, could only be gained through the integration of his life-forms into the universe. This past universe, however, converged, within the order specific to man, in an absolute spirituality, an absolute mind, in which man participated. The man of modernity must seek all the more so to understand himself in terms of the more encompassing order of the universe. However, so much has already become clear, the mind-based character of human existence presents itself to modernity as an enclave within a nature divested of all traces of mind.

3. S OCIE T Y 3.1 The Genesis of Enculturation in Society The process of enculturation—as well as the concomitant formative process both of a sociocultural organization of the world and of the socioculturally created forms of human practice in the world—has only become possible by means of communication, and communication itself only as societally organized communication. There is agreement about this finding; arguments for it usually refer to the linguistic organization of forms of practice and of the world. On its own, however, this finding throws little light on the process. For if society can only constitute itself by means of communication, but communication is only imaginable as communication in society, then the process becomes circular and has no cognitive value from a historico-genetic perspective. In the circularity of reference, society escapes understanding. In a constructive sense, the specifically human form of communication was constructed in conjunction with the specifically human form of society. For this reason, one can gain insight into the formative process of communication only if one can throw light on its genesis by making the genesis of society understandable. This latter process succeeds upon an evolutionary natural history and can once again only be clarified if we reconstruct it in terms of the anthropological constitution and in so doing emphasize how this constitution differs from the organization of animal life. Subhuman organizational forms,

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including the forms of intercourse with fellow members of the species, are predominantly genetically fixed. In the relation between system and environment, these fellow members are also part of the environment. The societal constitution of anthropoids enables relations between members of the species to take a shape that has a certain resemblance to that of human societies. I attribute it to the close tie between mother and child in the long developmental phase of ontogenesis, but I cannot pursue this issue here. A decisive source of difference is the fact that the intensity of early ontogenetic social relations in prehuman societies does not encounter the constructed openness of the human world. Anthropoidal forms of action remain limited. In the evolution toward man, a unique opportunity arose, that of constructive autonomy. In terms of brain development, it can be seen as the opportunity to replace previously preset forms of praxis, since constructed connections now take the place of genetically predetermined ones. In terms of the development of the forms of interaction with others, there is a similar and perhaps even greater opportunity. For the process of acquiring the competence to act, starting ontogenetically from the cultural position zero of birth, provides man with exactly that sovereignty in the shaping of his life conduct that first allows him to organize the forms of interaction with others communicatively and interactively qua sociocultural forms of interaction. Only, this occurs in closest possible conjunction with the forms of praxis acquired through dealing with nature. In this latter process, the subject ties itself so closely to the significant others of its surroundings that it is fair to say that it integrates alterity into its very subjectivity.

3.2 Subjectivity and Alterity In the ontogenetic development of man, the maturing member of the species achieves a world only in communication and interaction with the social others of its surroundings. Insofar as experiences are had with objects and events in the physical world, they, too, are assimilated by means of communication with others. For this reason, in a constructed world, the other is just as deeply built into the world as, along with the world, into the inner nature of the subject. But this is not all: the world is conveyed through the significant others in it. All of their lives, people seek, for this reason, to assure themselves about their world by means of their communication with others. It is thus not surprising that in modernity the loss of a meaningfully organized world is supposed to be offset by one’s significant other. It was not only in the Romantic Age that lovers wanted to be the world for each other. In fact, as a young woman recently explained in a study of the relation between the sexes, one needs but one other person.10 The increased importance of the other in the relation between the sexes is no coincidence. It is intimately related to the process by which sociability develops. For this 10 | On romantic love, cf. G. D UX , Geschlecht und Gesellschaft: Warum wir lieben, pp. 277ff.

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process is uniquely shaped by the intimacy that develops in the early phase of ontogenesis, especially in the relationship between mother and child. This intimacy will later be “reorganized” in the relation between the sexes. In the study just cited, I sought to give more systematic arguments demonstrating that the relation between the sexes forms on the basis of the intimacy in early ontogenesis. One must maintain a link, however, between this process and the more encompassing one of the constructive acquisition of a world. In the latter, however, the alter ego is just as constitutive for the achievement of a world as the world is constitutive for the development of the ego. This does not yet say anything about the kind of behavioral forms that result from this for ego’s action vis-à-vis alter and vice versa. Only one thing is certain: phylogenetically, i.e., in the transition to the human form of existence, the sheer circumstance that the homines sapientes began organizing the world constructively in the medium of thought and language did more than just give relations to fellow members of the species its constructive and formative character. More importantly, it also developed specific social bonds between ego and the social others required for the social world to be organized. Accordingly, let us stress: The reason that there is a specifically human society instead of none at all lies in the societal members’ constructive competence (which comes into being with the anthropological constitution). In conjunction with the organization of the sociocultural forms of praxis and a sociocultural organizational form of man’s world, society also forms. Humans, we can thus summarize, have ended up in society just as they ended up in the process of enculturation: given the anthropological constitution, the constructive process simply sets itself in motion. The systematic account of why it took place within those organizational forms that we find in history makes up part of a historico-genetic theory of society.

3.3 The Concept of Society The search for a concept of society creates considerable difficulties. And this also holds if one has more in mind than abbreviated, definition-like versions. One of the reasons lies in the way in which concepts are customarily formed: as a framing definition which can encompass varying concrete applications. The framing definition is held to be that which remains constant. In the case of society, however, there are no such constant frameworks. For if we consider the forms that organize how subjects live together as the framework for defining society, we have to bear in mind that this framework itself develops. And it develops in such a way that that which links the subjects together is not that which has remained constant, but that which has developed out of what preceded it. For this reason, the identity of the society qua society that is conveyed by the concept must be understood in terms of a theory of historico-genetic development. This, however, means that we must succeed in a different kind of concept formation. Terminology based on a logic of identity must be replaced with

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terminology based on a historical or developmental logic. As the society must be understood the organization of how subjects live together which has developed in a comprehensible line from the early societies of hunters and gatherer up until the information societies of the present. This is an open, multidimensional concept of society, which, however, does not break down into a multiplicity of concrete, mutually unconnected forms of societal organization. Instead, all of these forms are held together by the dimension of their historical development. This concept of society maintains the concrete and vivid character of knowledge that we have of individual societies without surrendering that which they share in common. This latter element needs, however, to be defined in terms of its developmental dimension. By pursuing decidedly development-theoretical strategy already at the level of concept formation we link the definition of the concept of society—along its historical line of development—back to those processes through which members of society create a network out of the practices of their life conduct. It is part of the strategy of empirical concept formation that we seek to practice concept formation “from below” in order to capture the real, formative potential of societal formation in concept formation. Concept formation “from above” is indebted to the remnants of metaphysical logic. This in no way implies that the organizational form of society is intentionally created, i.e., as the result of intentional planning. Only the strategies of the actors are intentional; the forming of the result has an emergent quality to it: as the consequence of an obscure interlinking of the connected actions of actors. In this interlinking of actions and communications, the result achieves its own form of organization, precisely that reality sui generis that Durkheim had in mind.11 In its rules of organization and substance, this reality cannot be explained in terms of any one of its intentional acts nor can it be captured by any of the actors. Its existence nevertheless remains dependent upon the actional inputs of subjects. If the latter cease, so does the society. It is exactly this uncontrolled and also uncontrollable formative process that we seek to give expression to with the concept of emergence from below. The difficulties that sociological theory has in letting society arise out of the intentional actions and communications of its subjects while at the same time achieving a nonintentionally produced reality do not result from the phenomenon itself but rather from a (metaphysical) logic of identity with which sociological theory still operates. It is compelled, namely, to view anything that develops as already inherent in that which it arises out of. The structure of society, however, is not already pregiven in the actions of its subjects. Instead, this structure forms as something new in the interaction of actions and communications.

11 | E MILE D URKHEIM, Les Règles de la méthode sociologique; Idem, De la Division de la travail social.

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All in all we would like to say that society represents the creation of a network of the practices of daily life of those subjects who are the shapers of these practices in relation to an emerging, objectified organizational form of network creation. This is not the place for an extended discussion of how society must be understood. I will limit myself to continuing the effort to clarify the pervasive and pressing problem of the relationship between subject and society.

3.4 The Network of Actions and Communications It makes good sense, with Parsons and, recently, with Luhmann, to understand society not as the association of subjects (humans).12 Societies represent the intermeshing of, the creation of a network among, the practices of the members of the society. Practices of a societal network consist of actions and communications. Actions as well as communications are formed by the organizing competence of subjects. This also applies to those communications and actions that we, in accordance with the organizational level of modern societies, ascribe to formal organizations, such as associations or joint-stock companies.13 It are always real subjects who carry out the formative process. Even the circumstance that actions and communications are conditioned to a greater extent by preestablished societal givens than by the contributions of the actor as individual has no effect on the fact that their specific form is produced by the formal competence and activity of the actor. Accordingly, as correct as it is to define societies as the network of actions and communications, the network remains tied to the actors. And it is for this very reason that the actors also remain integrated in this network. Without recourse to them, no sensible and epistemologically useful definition of society can be found. Should we for this reason count subjects as part of society after all? The previously developed definition of society drew attention to a bifocal aspect in the creation of a network linking social practices: any present interlinking occurs with regard to an objectified social structure that had been previously formed and is reflected in expectations, rules, norms, and materialized institutions. Though the subject had already developed itself in its inner nature in order to be able to take into account as much as possible these pregiven objectifications of his or her practices, actions and communications must always be constructed anew, taking as their point of departure the already pregiven network of social relations and social structure. The subject is also not fully assimilated into that which had previously formed. It never corresponds completely in its form of existence with the objectifications developed in society. The difference between the two is dependent upon the level of development of a given society. It would, however, 12 | T. PARSONS, The Structure of Social Action; Idem., The Social System; N. Luhmann, Soziale Systeme. 13 | J.S. C OLEMAN, Grundlagen der Sozialtheorie, vol. 2.

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be a mistake to claim, with an appeal to the so-called mechanical solidarity that Durkheim saw as characteristic of the subjects of early societies, that this difference did not exist in these societies.14 It is not because subjects are bound to an organism that makes us hesitate to count them as part of society, rather it is due to the difference that exists between them and the society. This difference has to defined in terms of both sides. On the one hand it is the subject that is in the social structure of its inner world different from society. It is on the other hand society that, with regard to the rules of the networking of inputs, is an independent entity. It is only that the subject remains in its own constitution bound to sociability, just as conversely, society remains tied to the inputs of the subjects. The notion of seeking to understand society as “pure sociability,” as an entity that defines itself by itself for itself,15 is once again indebted to the remnants of a metaphysical logic, which is forced to derive the explanandum from the substance of itself: from pure intelligence, pure communication, pure sociability.

3.5 Subjects as the Limits of Society Our observations lead us to consider the subject, both in its practices and in its inner nature (more about that in a moment), both as part of society and, as differentiated from society, as not part of it. The concept of the border or boundary seems suitable for defining the situation. For it is characteristic for a border or boundary to belong to the side for which it is the boundary, while, at the same time, when viewed from the other side, not to belong. For this reason, we wish to say that subjects form the border or boundary of society or that they are located on the border or boundary of society. I will not take up here the advantages and disadvantages of such a definition, especially for the normative constitution of a society. This should be done within a historico-genetic theory of society.

4. I NNER W ORLD AND I NNER N ATURE 4.1 The Subject The inner world or inner nature is the culturally shaped organizational form of the life conduct of the subject as organism, and thus the cultural organization of a natural substratum. This is the inner world we are referring to when we use the concepts of the subject or subjectivity. By defining the subject succinctly as the cultural organization of an organism, we avoid the problematic situation that post-modern philosophy places itself in without being able to change it at all. It follows here in the tracks of 14 | E. D URKHEIM , De la Division du travail social, Chap. II, S. 35 ff. 15 | So N. L UHMANN, Soziale Systeme; H. WILLKE , “Die Gesellschaft der Systemtheorie,” p. 6.

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Nietzsche by declaring the subject dead.16 How should this declaration of death be understood? What kind of subject was it that Nietzsche declared for dead? There cannot be a moment of doubt about the answer here: the subject Nietzsche declared dead was the absolutist subject, that subject from which it was assumed that it acted out of its absolute substantive might. Nietzsche continued the project of the Enlightenment here, by also subjecting the subject, as the agency of human life conduct, to the constellation of conditions according to which human life was organized. And with it, the divine was also brought into disrepute. Since in philosophy, however, everything gets presented in reverse order, with the divine subject appearing before the human one, the declaration of death was first directed against the divine and only as a repercussion of this, against the human. Even in the present the decrying of the subject, particularly by post-modern philosophy and theories related to it, is directed against a subject, which in the strict individuation of its self, is removed from the constellation of conditions of its field of events.17 It is a subject, which in a strict sense is posited as an absolute and is imprisoned within the substance of its self. It certainly can be concluded that this subject died along with God. This makes it all the more urgent, however, to clarify what the real subject is, that subject, which in the constitution of its inner world stands before us in every single person. Subject and inner world as cultural constitution are interrelated concepts. Thus let us establish the following, preliminary definition: As subject we understand the cultural organization by means of which the organism incorporates into itself an organization of action and of the world, in other words, exactly that which we call inner world or inner nature.

4.2 The Necessity of Forming an Inner World or Inner Nature The anthropological constitution makes it inevitable that an inner world or inner nature is formed. Man cannot not be a subject. Precisely because nature does not provide him with either an organization of behavior or an environment that ensures his survival, he must develop both himself. He incorporates them into the natural stratum of his organism as a cultural organization of an action disposition and of knowledge. Thus the process of enculturation necessarily blends biological organization with cultural organization. The subject is just as much a natural substratum as it is a cultural one. That the anthropological constitution as an open system makes the formation of an inner world necessary, does not yet say why this also occurs. It might also have never happened. Then humans would not exist. What provides the impetus? We have discussed the question. It is crucial, 16 | F. N IETZSCHE, Die fröhliche Wissenschaft, KStA 3, 125, pp. 480f. 17 | Cf. M. F OUCAULT, Dispositive der Macht, p. 32.

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as we have seen, that the brain starts to process or assimilate experiences and, by doing so, begins to organize itself. The constitutional disequilibrium of the anthropological constitution, around which both Plessner and Piaget tailored their theories, is easily fitted to this defining process. In order to understand the nature of man’s inner world, attention must be focused on the development of the competence to act and the concomitant development of the reflexive quality of this competence. For it provides the basis for that unique form of self-referentiality that is entailed by the self-determination to action. In short one might define subjectivity as reflexiveness in the practice of conducting one’s life.

4.3 The Reflexiveness of Action Competence It can be seen as a fascinating feature of natural history that a form of life was capable of developing that lacks any naturally predetermined organization of behavior. Any how, one can view this form of an open constitution as the elaboration of a principle of behavioral organization already developed at the subhuman level: learning. The brain begins to adapt motor activity to the external world in a way that is adequate to the demands of that world, it creates thereby circuits between its course of motion and the determination of properties of an object. In just this way the acquisition of action process schemata and the construction of a object-defined external world are linked. This process occurs prelinguistically in the first two years of the child’s life, but is supported by a linguistic articulation of behavior on the part of its caregiving reference person. In this way, a rudimentary actional competence is developed by the end of the second year of life. The circular reactions within the individual stages of development in this phase studied by Piaget impressively document this process. It is impossible to overlook the key point in the development of actional competence: the initially unstructured relations between organism and external world become increasingly more structured on both sides, ultimately resulting in the transformation of the constitutional disequilibrium into a viable equilibrium. In this process, the entrance of language into the acquisitional process of actional competence represents a conditio sine qua non. It grants the selfforming subject an instrument of organization that changes the nature of the process. The entrance of language marks the beginning of the real cultural organization of actional competence and world. For first by virtue of language can that moment of competence in controlling human action be developed that we have already determined to be the truly defining moment of subjectivity: reflexiveness. Reflexiveness in action means the following: the subject is capable of defining his or her position in the field of action such that he or she is able to control its action in a way adequate to the situation. For this reason, it is not so easy to understand the development of reflexiveness, because in this process, man’s organic constitution is subtly incorporated into the development of his mind-based constitu-

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tion. It is hardly an exaggeration when we conclude that in social-psychological and sociological theories reflexiveness has also remained the blind spot in the understanding of the organization of action. Philosophy is unable to provide anything more than a determination of its phenomenal character.18 It must suffice in the present context to draw attention to three states of consciousness. At the basis of any formation of reflexive consciousness, there is an “organic consciousness,” with which the organism is naturally provided and which it has at its command. The organism is endowed with a certain feeling of its condition. Disruptions of this feeling draw attention. A toothache does not require any reflection; one has it when one has it. Also the acquisitional process of actional consciousness is founded on organic consciousness. Through organic consciousness, the child experiences the refractory character of the external world. Above all, however, organic consciousness conveys the manipulative measures of the child’s caregiving persons of reference. These two forms of experience teach the child to direct its attentions both to itself and to the object in the external world. This initially occurs prelinguistically. With the entrance of language into the process of acquiring actional competence and a symbolically mediated organization, the prerequisites are created for the development of a different, of a reflexive consciousness in action. The beginnings of symbolically mediated organization of the world enable the actor to perceive and objectify itself as an ego in the field of action and, in doing so, to be conscious instantaneously of the identity of ego as actor and as object. The reflexiveness of action is based on this very capability: to be conscious of oneself as actor by perceiving oneself acting in the field of action. This holds just as much for the mental conception of an action, i.e., when the action is consciously planned, as for its actual execution. Anyone who conceives of an action, conceives of it in such a way that he mentally allows the action to run its course to its goal, in order to then put the plan into action, or not. Planned actions are, as Alfred Schütz puts it, conceived in modo futuri exacti.19 In Chinese Sophism, it was held to be one of those irritatingly, overly subtle statements of argumentation to say: “Today I will set out for the South and I am already long there.”20 Not all action is action conceived in modo futuri exacti. A large part of everyday action takes places in a much less dramatic fashion. But even routinized actions have 18 | Cf. D. H ENRICH, “Selbstbewusstsein,” pp. 267-287; S.S. Shoemaker, “SelfReference and Self-Awareness,” pp. 555-567. 19 | A. S CHÜTZ , Der sinnhafte Aufbau der Welt, p. 55. The phenomenological description of actional consciousness in A. Schütz, however, lacks the moment of instantaneousness, which is the very condition of possibility of being able to act at all. 20 | D SCHUANG D SI, Das wahre Buch vom südlichen Blütenland, p. 36. This irritation is caused in part by a substance-logical time consciousness. I will not, however, pursue this further here.

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a precursive character. And anyone who, in the midst of an action, gives it a specific turn, by doing so objectifies himself in what he does. The reflexiveness of action is a reflexiveness that objectifies the subject in action. We permanently perceive ourselves in what we do. Action only becomes controllable through the reflexive form of self-perception. As such it is the basic form of daily practices. The reflexiveness developed with the acquisition of actional competence can be improved upon. In problematic situations it is possible to call to mind precisely which options may exist and what one actually wants. By virtue of this form of reflexiveness, the actor objectifies the field of action and himself to a much greater degree than in the case of recurrent or routine actions. And ultimately, the subject is capable of making himself into the object of discussion, by asking who he is, in order to determine how he wants to live. This form realizes the eccentric positionality that Plessner sought to describe: the subject steps back behind himself, in order to bring himself into his own view.21 This takes place undramatically in every action, and dramatically, when the subject himself becomes problematic, as in modernity. In conclusion, let us note: The formal structure of the subject, his inner nature, is defined by a multilayered reflexiveness.

4.4 Inner Organization as Inner World The reflexive structure of inner nature is just as much a social construct as are the constructs of the other two worlds. For this reason, in analogy to the latter, we speak of the inner world of the subject. There is, however, something significantly distinct about it: intentionality is built into the first two worlds. Action within them is oriented toward something. This also holds for customary actions, in which the threshold of awareness may sink very low. Operations that remain within the medium of thought and thus deal exclusively with symbolic objects can also be understood as intentional.22 In this case, however, they must be distinguished from the intentionality of actions that seek to produce effects in the world. In contrast, the inner world forms as a kind of repercussion of one’s experiences with the external world. It represents, qua sedimentation of that which was experienced in the external world, the imprint or impression of the other two worlds. For this reason, the inner world includes Ň The sociocultural competences, together with the reflexiveness peculiar to each of them. Ň The highly substantial dispositions in the action of subjects. They reflect the lived side of experience. Ň All knowledge, together with the interpretations and interpretive systems in which it is embedded. Each of these sediments must be under21 | H. P LESSNER , Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, S. 360ff. 22 | J.S. S EARLE , Intentionalität.

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stood in processual terms, caught in a permanent process of reconstruction. The way in which the inner world is formed via experiences gives us a clue for understanding our selves, though it grants only a limited one. For experience is not simply that which occurs and can be described in objectified form. Experiences have a lived dimension. The way an organism feels with regard to what happens to it takes place in this dimension. The feeling that arises here is incorporated into the organism’s inner organization along with the givens of the situation. For this reason, this also holds for those competences that form on the basis of experience; they also incorporate a lived dimension. And it is in precisely this special form or cast that experiences are made serviceable for future situations. The developing maturing member of the species thus acquires, in the development of an inner world, more than just a competence to act and with it, the means to carry out a multitude of daily actions. It acquires these competences saturated with the lived experiences that are associated with them. Man is what his own history has made him into. That which the subject develops as the material constitution of his self manifests itself in the state of feeling, the (pre-)disposition with which it stands in life: as timid or full of confidence, as uncertain or autocratic, etc.

4.5 Inner World and Inner Nature We have taken the formation of the inner world of the subject as the third of the three worlds in which the one, all-encompassing world forms. At the outset of our discussions we already concluded in the abstract that an inner world must develop along with the outer one. This we did in the context of establishing that the anthropological constitution is distinguished by a constructive autonomy that entails the cultural construction of both a system of action and a world. In concretizing this conclusion in terms of the formative process of interiority (the inner world), a highly significant mediation of a system of action and world results. For if, on the one hand, the inner world forms as that which marks the organism, its capabilities and states of feeling, from its experiences in dealing with an always preexisting reality, then that means that the organism knows how to build itself into this world, into that which is relevant for it. And this implies that realism, which I understand in cognitive terms as constructive realism or realistic constructivism. The mediation is no less significant in the other direction: the organism knows to imprint the world with the relevancies that the world has for it. The acting subject, Dante says, makes being resemble itself.23 23 | A. DANTE, Monarchia, I, XIII, 1-2. Dante has a concept of nature in mind, however, which is based on its completion through man by its “intellectum possibilem”.

5. T HE T HREE W ORLDS

It holds for both the social world and the world of nature that we have them only by means of our subjective experiences of them. Nature is always only that which we experience of it. One need only consider what the “starry heaven” above us “really is” and how we experience it when we perceive it in its sublimity. And what it “really is” is also our construct. Our experience of the organization of the social world is also always based upon the experiences we have of it, experiences of a family or of a university. Nothing is except that which in some way finds entry into our internal organization and is shaped by this organization. It “resides” there, opaque in its overall organization. But it is from here that the predispositions to action arise that define one’s life. In the formative process of the internal world, the constructive autonomy of life takes on concrete form. In human terms, that which is not experienced and conceived of by a subject does not exist.

4.6 Body and Mind Even for the constructive process in which the sociocultural organizational forms of existence take shape, it already holds that these forms can only take shape by virtue of the material substratum of the organism. The same holds for the integrated whole that develops as inner world out of it. This is evident for the experiential dimension; the entire body is involved in the constructive process. But even the more esoteric structures of sociocultural organization are built into the organism insofar as they are inherent to the subject. That someone speaks a language means that he has command of its grammar and is familiar with its vocabulary. “To have command of” and “to be familiar with” imply that they are in some way built into the organism via connections of neuronal pathways. How else are they to be available to us? Thus what distinguishes the inner world is the way in which nature and culture are integrated in it. In a literal sense, the organism is organized via culture. And in a literal sense, culture needs the organism. In this way, the culturally formed inner world becomes at the same time one’s inner nature. Both, inner world and inner nature, are one: The organic substratum which the cultural inner world is built into is also part of that cultural inner world; and the cultural forms in terms of which one’s inner nature is organized are also part of that inner nature. This conclusion would not amount to much if it only intended to say that man is able to create a world and live in it only thanks to his corporeality. The linking of life conduct to the integrative structure of body and mind as discussed above has a different significance: it points out why we are only able to organize our action via thought at all, what kind of effects thoughts or ideas that are incorporated into action are capable of producing, and the range of their directives. Action is organized in the medium of thought/ideas. Thoughts/ideas, however, are fleeting structures. If we considered them in isolation from the organism, we would not know how they could produce any effects. Those

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are just ideas! We also would not know how they could be translated into action. This is why Kant—in his efforts to base morality on a reason absolute and pure, i.e., free of everything empirical—put himself in a precarious argumentative situation. It was simply not clear how one could find the way from pure reason to the causality of empirical action.24 In The Critique of Practical Reason, Kant sought to grant validity to this reason by means of a causality of freedom.25 Be that as it may be here. For a mode of thought that starts from the priority of nature, thought itself, even though it itself is only a construct, is built into the natural activating system. It is for this reason, and this reason only, that an idea can make a difference in the world. And it is only capable of that which the organism—in accordance with its organization—is capable of taking up. An idea alone, as Max Scheler rightly noted, is powerless.26 So-called free will is also only free within the limits in which the inner organization of the subject was able to form. Hobbes claimed that free will is the inclination that is left after thinking about something.27 Informed about the formative process of the subject, we conclude: the will, when it comes under the influence of thought, is that which the organization of the subject, as it has developed up to that point as a predisposition to action, allows it to become. The formative process of the subject in early ontogenesis is of such importance precisely because thought is only able to put something into action insofar as one’s inner nature has been formed in a way that makes it accessible to reasonable ideas. What primarily interests us about the inner world is its connection back to the dimension of action. We seek to bring about the connection between the experiences that the subject has in its life and its actions, for example, when we attempt to explain deviant behavior. Because all experiences are reflected in one’s inner nature as the foundation of one’s predisposition to action, one can say that no one can act in any way other than his inner nature permits. This realization can already be found in Fichte.28 Even death is experienced in accordance with the way in which one’s inner nature has developed: “Nous ne devenons pas autres pour mourir.”29

24 | K ANT, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, Werke IV, pp. 454ff. 25 | K ANT, Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, Werke V, pp. 50ff. 26 | M. S CHELER , Die Wissensformen und die Gesellschaft, p. 21. 27 | H OBBES , Leviathan, p. 47. 28 | F ICHTE , Das System der Sittenlehre, Werke IV, p. 228. 29 | M ONTAIGNE , Essais II, 11, p. 404.

6. Misunderstood Modernity: Résumé I

1. I NTERMEDIATE R EFLECTIONS We have taken up the tracks uncovered by the knowledge of modernity. We have tried to figure out the proper way to understand the intellectual, sociocultural form of human existence once it turned out that (a) the organization of the universe itself provides no basis for its mind-based character and that (b) it must be understood instead as the result of an constructive development. In fact, there can be little doubt how the tracks, once taken up, must now be followed: we need to continue the reconstruction of the structures of mind in terms of the organizational forms of the three worlds. One would think that everyone would have to follow us here, even if in a different way and along different paths. For basically, if evolution makes any sense, anyone wishing to understand the mind-based character of human existence would have to try to conceive it as that which follows upon the evolution of natural history. This holds for philosophers in particular, but no less so for the other interpreters in the widely arrayed sciences of the human mind, and especially for sociologists. Much can be up for dispute, but certainly not this successor organization. What we find, though, is quite different. There are only a few of us following these tracks. And even worse: in pursuing these tracks we have inadvertently landed between two fronts—that of sociobiology, on the one hand, and that of the “blind constructivists” (for lack of a better term), on the other. As “blind constructivists” I understand all those who recognize the convergence and constructivism of the human form of existence, but claim that this constructivism itself cannot be reconstructed in terms of the historically concrete forms it takes on, but can at best be described tautologically. I have already labeled the various camps “postmodern.” Surely, this is an imprecise concept, since the divergences between the theoreticians are considerable. I have not, however, found a more suitable term. What I am interested in in defining this term is one aspect: the absolutization of the constructivism of symbolically mediated organization as manifest in the theorem of the uncircumventability of the mind. We are unable to fraternize with either of the fronts. Not with sociobiology,

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since it attempts to embed the constructive organizational forms of human existence into the genetic substratum of man in such a way that they fail to even be constructive any longer. The constructive process is paralyzed in a literal sense. Not with the theoreticians of postmodernity, since they seek to achieve their understanding of the world solely in terms of media, preferentially that of language. They usually do not even perceive the programmatic necessity entailed in the reconstruction of the formative process of the structures of mind of the human forms of existence from a universe in whose organization no structures of mind, in the sense of the meaningfully normative mind-based character of human conduct, can be found. The approach to the question of how this mind can produce effects in an autonomous universe is obstructed in postmodern thought, since the latter absolutizes the constructed character of the world. The question is considered unanswerable and thus as in fact non-sensible. This situation should be noted. For a theory of historical genesis, which understands the intellectual, sociocultural organizational forms as the result of historical development, it itself represents a product of modern thought, which must be integrated into the understanding of development. As we have known since Marx, historically structured theories must also integrate themselves into the process of development. But this means that we must seek to understand them in terms of the resistances of systems of knowledge developed in modernity. In fact, in the resistance of theories to a historico-genetic understanding on both sides of the front, manifests itself a result of the radical change in worldview in modernity: the change in the logic underlying the way mind is understood. This is where historical development experiences its crisis. On both fronts, the theoreticians of mind continue to hold that something can only be explained by being already inherent to that on whose basis it is explained. For sociobiologists that is nature, for the “blind constructionists” of postmodernity it is an enigmatic constructivism of mind, which can be most closely circumscribed in terms of language. In structural terms, the logic that is followed here is the old logic of metaphysics. Modern logic is different; as a processual logic it allows something truly new to arise. It is obvious that without an understanding of the change in logic it is not possible to reconstruct mind from a universe completely lacking any structures of mind. For this reason, we will be marking time in our reconstruction and give a comprehensive look to the change in logic. All theoretical controversies of the present, insofar as they are significant, are based on an understanding or misunderstanding of this change. Its understanding leads to a parting of roads among interlocuters. As a way of proceeding, let us first summarize the previous course of discussion and then consider strategies for advancing the discussion.

6. M ISUNDERSTOOD M ODERNIT Y : R ÉSUMÉ I

2. C ONSTRUCTIVE A UTONOMY It has proven possible to give systematic support to the cognitive perspective opened at the outset, namely, understanding the human form of existence as the successor organization to natural-historical evolution by means of which man enters into his own history, the history of intellectual, sociocultural forms of organization. Man’s anthropological constitution is distinguished by a constructive autonomy that refers to that aspect of the self-understanding of modernity, which came to consciousness at its beginning: according to his biological constitution, man is forced to construct his own world and the practical forms of his existence in this world. The consciousness of convergence and constructivism, which developed with the radical change in the world understanding of early modernity, has, after all, its fundamentum in re.

3. P OINTED TOWARD H ISTORY The fact that constructive autonomy is the defining characteristic of man’s anthropological constitution has significant consequences for the way in which man conceives of himself in our times. These consequences appeared in the 19th century, but they were not fully realized. The history of the social-cultural life-forms is the real history of the species. And history of the species means: by virtue of the constructive autonomy that distinguishes it, the organizational form of human existence undergoes a development that allows it to take on ever new historical forms. Since living things are defined by their organizational forms, “man” per se exists only in the given historical form in which he develops himself in the constructs of his world: in the world of nature, the social world, and the inner world. What all humans share is nothing that transcends this world and its historical dimension, but rather something that connects all humans through its constructivism. This conclusion is just as indisputable as it is ambivalent in its ramifications.

4. W ORLDS N OT W ORLD Understanding the human form of existence as the successor organization to natural-historical evolution allows each of the historical formations to become one form of expression of constructive autonomy. In this way, each also becomes a condition of further development under the conditions of a constructive autonomy. No one can escape the realization that for each of the presently existing societies and cultures there were preceding societies and cultures that were preconditions for their own development. There were different lines of development, lines that had little or no influence upon one another. This allows the question of their comparability to

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arise. Many worlds rather than just one—that is the finding that we associate with the historical consciousness of modernity. Historicity must also be understood as the historicity of many worlds. Every society and every culture has its own history; nonetheless, all of them are encompassed by the one history that makes up the history of the species. As long as a given historical form of expression realizes developmental potentials on a new level of organization, any kind of value judgment about it is completely precluded. For such an assessment would require an extra-worldly point of view. But the latter does not exist. Let us be precise: it does not exist for us. The thoroughly secular understanding of modernity, in which the world and its worlds are represented as the constructed forms of human existence, has made such a standpoint impossible. In this understanding, each of the worlds is equally relative—but no longer in relation to God, but in relation to the constructive formative process at a given historical location. For those who have not developed this worldview, it is still very possible to make this value judgment.

5. THE C HANGE IN L OGIC IN M ODERNIT Y ’S U NDERSTANDING OF THE W ORLD It is not difficult to realize that the three revolutions by means of which modernity was brought into being—the natural-scientific, the industrial, and the political—were only possible because societal developments that preceded us had opened new dimensions of constructive autonomy. They were made use of; whether for good or for ill, that is a question without significance for development itself. There was no one who raised this question; there was not even someone who could have raised it. Up until the development of modernity, societies and cultures are comparable in the sequence of development and in their structures at different levels of development. Modernity continues this development, but as a break with the organizational forms and organization principles of the past. This applies to the social-structural organization with its formation of a capitalism that is in the midst of transforming itself into a total market society; it also applies, and all the more decisively, to the development of the system of cognition, and thus to that which one commonly refers to as worldview. The previously chosen strategy, to start from an understanding of development, does not appear to be very dramatic. It has dramatic ramifications, though. For the question is: how can constructivism be understood in order to allow one to get from the anthropological constitution as a natural organization to the intellectual, sociocultural form of human existence? This question can only be answered if a change in logic occurs as I have thematized it at the outset of my reflections. Such a change allows both the world and the people in it to be understood in a fundamentally different way from all previous epochs. For this very reason I hold modernity to be the second of only two eras in all of history. The shift in

6. M ISUNDERSTOOD M ODERNIT Y : R ÉSUMÉ I

logic is evident and accepted in our understanding of nature. Whether it is applied to the way man understands himself, however, depends on the way in which his mind-based life form is understood. In other words, we would have to reconstructively translate the constructivism of the three worlds into the structures of these three worlds, if we did not see ourselves compelled first to reflect on the change in logic ourselves. It is not difficult to recognize that the mind-based character of the human form of existence can no longer be understood as in former history. Over a long history, man conceived of himself as if the mind-based character of his existence came to him from the absolute mind-based character of the cosmos. He participated in the divine spirit, just as he participated in the nous of the world. In all philosophies, in Greek, Chinese, and wherever else an increased abstract reflexiveness sought to gain certainty about the world, this world became a cosmos by appearing to have precisely this mind-based character built into it as its ontological structure. By reconstructing the intellectual, sociocultural form of existence as the successor to a natural-historical evolution that is divest of any of the structures of mind of the kind found in human conduct, this mind-based life from of the subject loses its cosmic backing. In this way, everything that had previously defined man’s understanding of the world and of his place in it in terms of this mind-based substantiation and its significance loses its validity. Metaphysics has often been declared dead already—as has religion. Surely, the reconstruction of man’s mind-based character on the basis of a non-mind-based nature is their end in the sense that in modern thought both are robbed of the foundations upon which they have so long rested. With the destruction of the absolute mind as substance of the universe, the foundation of their interpretive systems has quite simply been removed. What needs to be understood is that this process touches more than just the substantive level of these interpretive systems. Much more importantly, it changes the structure in terms of which the underlying order of the intellectual, sociocultural world has to be understood. Thought itself is established upon a different logic by the radical change in the way the world is understood. But, to put it as Hegel does, thought pervades everything. If one understands the radical change in modernity’s understanding of the world as a shift in logic, then there cannot be any task more urgent than making this shift comprehensible. It is the only chance we have of making ourselves heard in our position between the fronts and of breaking through the mental blockade hindering understanding of modernity. For we are dealing with a mental blockade. Absolutist thought has run into all kinds of contradictions, but it manages to persevere in the structure of argumentation. This holds for philosophy just as much as it does, but more annoying, for sociology. Kant made the forms of intuition and the categories into presuppositions of thought; Luhmann lets the entire system as it is move into the position of an uncircumventable absolute of constructivism. This finding cannot be surprising for a historico-genetic

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understanding of the sociocultural forms of organization and their historical development up to modernity. One cannot as simply discard a logic of understanding the world as one can outdated substantive knowledge. It haunts thought and reestablishes its validity in all reflections upon it. It is thus all too understandable that philosophical reflection, in its efforts to take epistemological measure of the modern consciousness of convergence and constructivism, remains in the grips of traditional logic. In it, however, something can only be explained by positing that the explanandum is already inherent or intrinsic to the explanans: that man’s mind results from mind. Thus there is one thing that cannot be doubted: if it is supposed to be understandable how man’s structures of mind were able to form in an evolutionary process out of a universe devoid of anything of mind-based character and were then able to develop cognitively in such grandiose fashion in history, then a new, a processual logic is required. Given all of this, it is only logically consistent for me to seek first to clarify the structure of argumentation found in the old and the new logic. In this context, my aim will not yet be to provide a systematic reconstruction of the genesis of the processual logic and its historical process of development. That would require a much greater effort. Initially, I seek merely to provide a phenomenal demonstration as it were. If the traditional logic underlying past is world-view capable of renewing its predominance in all reflection, then one will have to ask what the special conditions are that allow it to be overcome. These conditions include making its structure into the object of discussion and, by revealing its contradiction to the unrelinquishable advances in the knowledge of modernity, demonstrate the necessity for a new, processual logic.

II. The Schism of the two Logics: Maintaining the Absolutist Logic

6. The Subject Logic of Premodern Thought: The Logical Priority of Mind

1. M ATERIAL L OGIC IN THE O RGANIZ ATION OF THE W ORLD The modern cognitive insight, that the world in the organizational forms in which we find it must be understood as the result of a constructive autonomy under whose impact it changes and further develops, also holds for that which we term logic in the understanding of the world. Logic here does not refer to the formal-logical operation of deduction and of algebraic equations; it refers to the material logic that determines the structures built in into the world of objects and events. We have done some of the preliminary work toward understanding material logic in the construction of the world in our discussions of the constructed character of this world. I have emphatically sought to make clear that there are conditions under which the construction of the world takes place. I have named the two most important of these conditions: Ň Constructs are formed via experiences gained in the external world. Ň In this process, the objects and events of the external world arise according to a basic, stereotypical, paradigmatic pattern. Hereafter, this basic pattern is activated when objects and events in the world are to be understood. A more systematic account of this finding can be provided. Conditions of constructivism are translated into its result; otherwise it would make no sense to speak of conditions. Elementary conditions, which is to say those that present themselves (in experience) as the basic conditions of the world and necessarily demand attention, translate in just as elementary and general forms into constructs: as structures. If in the present postmodern theories have missed something (though this something is not debatable among empiricists of modern epistemology and, according to all empirical findings we are acquainted with, cannot even be debated), it is this: the demiurgic process of a constructed world stood from the very

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beginning under conditions that were not at one‘s disposal and that were built into the result as a structure. In a historico-genetic understanding of the history of mind, it has to be understood that a structure is built into objects and events that allows them to be perceived and understood in a distinctive way. Structures are organizational patterns in the construction of the world that form by means of pregiven conditions. They imprint themselves in the constructs of objects and events in the world, without themselves having to be reflected upon and without being able to be reflected upon. Hereafter the world presents itself as it has “naturally” formed in its structures. We use these structures to understand how something is, and especially, by which means and how something occurs in the world. In other words, in the processes of understanding and explanation, these structures return, this time in explicatory form. It is the use of structures for explicatory purposes which I designate as the material logic of the world. After all material logic means: in the construction of the world structures arise that establish how that which is found to exist in the world must be understood. We make use of these structures when we seek to make the world reflectively accessible to ourselves. This is the material logic we are dealing with in the present context. For it is the material logic underlying the understanding of the world that was superceded in the natural-scientific revolution of modernity. As you may recall, this was the hypothesis developed at the outset of our discussion (Chap. 2.1). This logic, however, was not just the logic of the premodern understanding of nature, in its abstractly developed form it represented the universal logic for understanding the world. On the abstract level of worldview, and especially in the understanding of the mind-based character of human existence, it had prevailed. That was the follow-up hypothesis developed above.

2. M ATERIAL L OGIC IN E ARLY THOUGHT The argumentative structure in which explanations are sought and found, that which we term the material logic for understanding the world, was in all previous periods determined by the structure of action. For this reason, in phenomenal terms, it presents itself as an inherently teleological structure. In terms of its genesis, this structure is sensible for a constructivist understanding that attempts to clarify the conditions of constructivism: it results from the fact that in early ontogenesis every member of the species forms categorical structures in interaction with an always more competent other. This even holds for the evolutionary period of transition from animal to man. That which the maturing member of the species is still trying to develop, namely, the competence to act, confronts this member in the other as the competence to initiate actions, as experience. Precisely because the caregiving, significant others are the predominant objects in

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the environment of the maturing member of the species and because the absolutely significant events in his or her life originate from these others, it builds the structure of action into the objects and events in its world. It constructs them by virtue of these structures. For this reason, I term this logic subject logic and the explanation, accordingly, as subjective. Subject logic and subjective logic thus try to denote that explanations of that which is found to exist and occur in the world are gained as if these phenomena were brought forth by an acting subject or as if they had been brought forth from out of him. In early societies on the subsistence level of hunting and gathering, but also in the following simple agrarian and archaic societies, this structure can be found in its elementary form as a structure of action. For both basic categories in the construction of the world, the categories of the event and that of the object, it builds, as it were, the scaffolding of its organization. With these basic categories, the structure also defines the associated categories of causality, time, substance, and space. I have presented this structure several times elsewhere, so I can refer to those discussions here.1 Moreover, the structure can also be discovered in every relevant ethnological report.2 Ancient worlds have the power to fascinate. They are at once both familiar and foreign for us. We run into the familiar side in the interpretations in which subjectivist logic is openly revealed. According to this logic, all events are understood as if they had been set in motion by an agent, an actor. The agent need not be mentioned as such; if attention is directed to the occurrence itself, then it is self-evidently understood as if it took place in the manner of an action. Precisely because the structure of action serves as the basic category in the construction of the world, the ancient worlds are full of gods, spirits, and demons. In principle, a subjective power can be conceived of for every event; one terms them gods of the moment or the occasion. In truth, such gods are not actually gods, but are subjective powers conceived of ad hoc. They are nothing more than the substantiation of the given occurrence in the structure of a subjective agent. And just as all events in the world, be they natural or social in character, are understood according to the pattern of action, the same holds for all objects: heaven and earth, river and tree. In other words, all 1 | Cf. D UX , Die Logik der Weltbilder, pp. 100ff.; idem, „Die ontogenetische und historische Entwicklung des Geistes, pp. 173ff. 2 | Cf., as exemplary for many others, Underhill, Red Man’s Religion: Beliefs and Practices of the Indians North of Mexico. In the social sciences, this logic has also become the object of reflection. This was already true in H. K ELSEN , Vergeltung und Causalität; E. TOPITSCH , Mythos, Philosophie, Politik, pp. 24ff. For a wide-ranging study with a developmental-psychological approach, see C. H ALLPIKE , The Foundations of Primitive Thought. That action provided the pattern for explanation in ancient thought was also recognized in philosophical definitions of the world. Cf. esp. E. C ASSIRER, Die Philosophie der symbolischen Formen. vol. 2: Das mythische Denken.

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things are viewed in terms of their structure as if they were determined by a central force, which produces the unity among their various qualities and allows them to act. If one follows the previously developed strategy in the constructivistic building-up of the world, then it becomes surprisingly simple to understand its interpretation: because the structure in which the world was constructed hereafter returns as an interpretive matrix for understanding it, people understand the world as it presents itself in a structure, self-created though not reflected in the construction process. The structure of action is virtually universal in early societies as a basic categorical structure. I have already provided the reason for this; it cannot be emphasized enough. For what presents itself as a bizarre form of early understanding of nature and world, a conflation of the world of nature and the social world, proves, once it is reconstructed, to be an expression of constructive realism: precisely because the world always and everywhere develops in interaction with an always already more competent other, it must be considered as a realistic procedure to build the structure of social action into its objects and events. As universal as the conditions are, just as universal are the resulting structures. If all humans share something in common, then it is the structure of action and interaction and the concomitantly developed structures of the world as they are achieved in the early ontogenesis of each and every member of the species. A long history was required to get beyond these structures. For this reason, let us take note: In early thought, the world is understood via a subjective structure. The subjective structure is the dominant structure in the understanding of the world up until modernity. And as the predominant structure, it defines each of the categorical forms: substance, causality, time, space. The concept of subjectivist logic is used here to cover all of the various manifestations of the basic subjectivist structure. As the material logic of premodern thought it determines how and by what means that which occurs in the world occurs and why that which is found to exist in the world is as it is found. Admittedly, in early societies knowledge was also stabilized in the form of rule-governed knowledge. Otherwise the world would have disintegrated into chaos. However, even insofar as rule-bound knowledge was developed and used for explanatory purposes, the subjective structure remained part of the understanding of the rule itself and as the form of explanation for the rule. Before we trace the abstract development of this structure in the reflections of philosophy, we need to work out more precisely the formal-logical aspects of this structure, insofar as they have explanatory significance. For only insight into the structural moments of subjectivist logic allows the unfamiliar side of early thought to become understandable and makes clear just how radical the change in the way modernity sees itself really is.

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3. S TRUCTUR AL M OMENTS OF S UBJECTIVIST L OGIC 3.1 Subjectivist Logic as Absolutist Logic Action takes place—especially, insofar as it takes place according to a plan—when an actor conceives a plan and then attempts to put it into action. Action proceeds from the subject and translates into an occurrence and ultimately into the realization of the purpose of the action. In other words, action proceeds as much in the understanding of the actor as that of the interpreters from the actor to the purpose of the action. In this twosided relation, action is understood brought forth from out of the subject. Prior to the subject there may be other determining causes of action. This lengthens the chain of actions, but does not affect the two-sided relationality. It is important to note that in explanatory terms the process runs in the reverse direction. If a phenomenon in the world is to be explained, then thought starts from the phenomenon and traces it back to the subjectivity of an agent, in order to then view it as having been brought forth from out of latter. Thus, to give an example, when asked why the minimum lending rate has been lowered, we answer by saying that the central bank sought to give the economic situation a lift. As a rule we consider such explanations sufficient. The way in which we also make use of action for explanatory purposes shows: the recourse to the subject as the explanans for the explanandum has a fundamentum in re. Even in the understanding of our own time, the subject is in the position to set occurrences into motion, to get things started. As many influences and conditioning elements as one may posit that the subject is subject to, they take their course through the subject and also become translated into the occurrence itself through the subject. In a two-part relational logic in which occurrences are accounted for in the way depicted above, the explanation lies in the beginning of the process. And that is where it stays. The occurrence is brought forth from out of the beginning. The beginning is an absolute beginning and, as such, an origin. It is, however, possible that the compulsion to give an account will also be extended to the beginning itself. For it is also a something in the world. For its understanding, however, one again has only a two-part relational logic at one’s disposal. It may turn out that the true beginning is found behind the beginning. Gods are capable of acting through men. When, however, the point is to determine the true beginning, the subject logic prevails. The actual moving force in the occurrence is always found in the subjectivity mentally associated with the beginning. Precisely this logic also determines the way in which the subject is understood. The real faculty of the latter to reflect is made use of in this logic, in order to allow the beginning to be its own cause. The reflexiveness of self has made possible a standard formula throughout history according to which the

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origin is its own origin. Early logic finds its logical conclusion in it. This is significant because the self-reflectiveness of the origin prevents explanations from getting caught up in an infinite regression. Every explanation in early logic ultimately makes recourse to the claim that it is possible for subjectivity to bring forth genuine beginnings. The logic of action in its two-sided, relational conceptualization explains the need throughout history for a primary entity qua ultimate cause. Explanation must continue, if one adheres to the logic, until one names the origin or source from which the occurrence has been brought forth. Crucial in understanding subjective logic as an absolutist logic is the circumstance that the explanandum already resides in finished form in the absolute as unrealized potentiality. Explanation consists in providing that which is with a foundation in the absolute.

3.2 The Logic of Origin as Logic of Substance The structural-logical understanding of early logic puts into practice, as I hope to have been be able to show, the constructivist understanding of the world that we have achieved since the beginning of modernity. The absolutism of logic is not the result of a speculative philosophy. It only later becomes such as philosophy. The reason for conceiving of an absolute at all is based on the two-sided, relational interpretation that the competence to act received and was capable of receiving, since the subject in fact defines itself in a self-reflexive way vis-à-vis action. For this reason, like the concept of the absolute, the concept of origin must also first be understood in structural-logical terms: as the endpoint of an explanatory process from which the explanandum brings itself forth. In this way, it becomes qua origin also substance. Nothing is so irresistible as the materiality of the world. On its basis, the symbolically mediated character of thought and language first develops. The form-creating process of thought and language would not be possible at all, if it would not be supported by sensual apprehensions and other experiences of objects in the external world. In early thought, symbolic mediation and materiality are kept connected. It is only after a long process of rational culture in which the subject and world are decentered that an awareness of the difference between materiality and thought arises such that it becomes the object of discussion. Naturally one is quite aware in ancient thought that an only imagined antelope is not the same as a real one. The mental image, however, of the antelope is considered connected to the materiality of the real antelope. Anything that is imagined is imagined as something real. In this way symbolic mediation appears to be inscribed in materiality. Thought in its symbolically mediated form and materiality share a common substance. This is the reason why origin is understood both materially and ideally. Once again the subjectivity of origin carries the burden of explanation. And precisely because the origin is conceived of in terms of the logic of the subject, the world is in the posi-

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tion of presenting itself as a world defined by thought. In structural-logical terms, the origin is subject and substance in one. Both Leibniz and Hegel were destined to base the systems of their otherwise so different philosophies on this logical consequence. There is nothing coincidental about this. For at the beginning of modernity the structures of traditional logic are articulated in a thematic and precise manner. This thematization is important for us, since the understanding of substantial logic qua subject logic leads us to its origin: every time ontogenesis takes place, the world arises anew in precisely this structure.

3.3 The Logic of Origin as a Logic of Identity Yet another structural peculiarity that the logic of early human thought is bound to and that was characteristic of thought until the beginning of modernity can be shown to represent the stringency of subject logic: namely, the logic of identity. It, too, is not an invention of philosophers, but is only thematized by them. In two-sided, relational logic, every explanation understands the explanandum that is found existing as brought forth from an origin in which it was already contained. For this reason, whatever occurs in the world and is found existing there must be identical with that which has been intrinsic to the foundation of the world for all eternity. This is the basis for all oracles and all prophecy.3

3.4 Meaning as Immanence of Mind in the World A world in which everything occurs in the form of an action is a thoroughly mind-based world, since at the beginning of every action the will manifests itself in thought. Perhaps the idea does not always precede qua rational cognition every formation of will, as Descartes supposed;4 but the idea is a part of every formation of will and precedes every occurrence. For this reason, the inner organization of the world is constructed completely in accordance with the model of human thought as it translates into acts of will and action, and thus in accordance with the model of a specifically meaning-charged mind. The effect of understanding the world as meaningful in this way is that everything in the world is understood, in its innermost structure, as directed toward a goal, and thus as teleological. Everything that occurs in the world, every event, is seen as if it were predetermined to move from a starting point to an end. If one understands the event structure of the world in this way, then the entire world presents itself as a meaningfully structured world. But not only that which currently occurs, but also the different states of the world, the world as it is and as it is found, is understood in just this way. For the same holds for the state or condition that has already been produced as for that which still has to be 3 | See D UX , Die Zeit in der Geschichte, pp. 193ff. 4 | D ESCARTES , Meditationes IV, 12, p. 109.

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produced. It presents itself as the realization of an in itself meaningfully organized occurrence, as its result. Everything is as it is because it has developed and continues to develop into this state in accordance with its meaningful (pre-)determination. This is what is meant when it is said that the world is a cosmos. One has to be aware after all that the unity of the cosmos is first based on the unity of the structures and only to a limited extent on the systematic interconnection of the infinite variety of events. Even where the world as a whole is attributed to a god of creation does not mean it will become more systematic in its immanent events as it in practice is. The effect is only that the entire mind-based character of the world converges upon the mind-based character of an act of creation and finds its abstract unity in this act. Thus we can conclude: In a world that is constructed and understood via the structure of action as its material logic, it is structurally necessary that the world be conceived in terms of the priority of mind. It should be remembered why I have once again taken some effort to discussed the logic of the early construction of the world and how it was understood: in the radical change in logic in modern thought, we are confronted by premodern logic in the theological and philosophical reflections found on the abstract level of worldviews. These reflections, however, have their own history and are dependent upon structures that developed much earlier than the reflections themselves. Without knowledge and understanding of these structures, one cannot understand the subsequent theological and philosophical reflections. Moreover, one can also not understand what truly makes the change in thought in modernity so radical, and what actually happened as a different world was brought into being in the revolutions of the first centuries of modernity. The increased reflexiveness of thought in modernity that is associated with the discovery of convergence and constructivism enjoyed a long run-up. In this process, an initial logic was subject to abstract transformations that find its expression in the development of the interpretive systems that we rediscover in history. The basic structure was maintained, but in more abstract form. It presents a challenge to a historico-genetic theory to trace the developmental process of culture, and especially of thought, in history, and in so doing, to make its developmental logic comprehensible. This developmental logic exists. It must be understood, however, in a different way than in the declarations of disrepute of historico-philosophical absolutism, which, in the structure of their own argumentation, remain a prisoner of this absolutism. The problem that a historico-genetic theory faces is evident: the historical process can only be reconstructed systematically in the processual logic of modernity. But at the same time the shift in logic itself must first be made comprehensible. For this reason, in the following discussion of the structure of early logic and how it was put to use by philosophy, I limit myself to clarify the structure itself. The absolutism in the structure of argument (strictly speaking: in the structure of justification) can be

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traced through the history of philosophy as the actual structure-building principle of the cosmos. It has been maintained in the transcendentalism of modernity just as much as in the new metaphysics. If, in the structurallogical perspective taken here—especially given the necessary restrictions on the scope of discussion possible here—the impression should arise that the aim here is to say that little has actually occurred in world history, then this impression is due to our cognitive interest: to demonstrate the persistence, through all of its transformations, of an explanatory structure as the material logic underlying the understanding of the world. Generally, the attention is absorbed by the substantive level of the semantics of world interpretation, as they are handed down to us through historical traditions. The impediment, the “mental blockade,” that the understanding of the world in modernity suffers from, however, consists precisely in the effort to divest oneself of the absolute on the substantive level, while at the same time remaining its prisoner in the structure of one’s logic.

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Hence when someone said that there is reason in nature, just as in animals, and that this is the cause of all beauty and order, he seemed like a sane man in contrast with the haphazard statements of his predecessors. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 984b

1. THE O NE , C OMMONLY S HARED L OGIC It is common and easily available knowledge that the structures in which the world becomes cognitively accessible to human beings develop along with the competence to act in the early ontogenesis of every member of the species. It is also sufficiently well-known that children in early ontogenesis use its structure of action as conceptual scaffolding for understanding objects and events. What needs to be understood is that the structure developed in ontogenesis by every member of the species continues to persist on the level of adults in early societies, even though in a more developed form. It functions as conceptual scaffolding for everything that occurs and is found in the world. As the absolutely dominant logic in the construction of the world and its understanding, it also determines thought on the more abstract level of the worldview, where the world as a whole is taken into view. This is evident in the gods of creation conceived of in early times. Philosophy, however, when it makes its entrance onto the stage of world history, is also bound to this logic. As Fichte emphasized, philosophy knows no logic other than the one shared by all.1 For where should any other logic come from?

1 | As explicitly stated in FICHTE , Das System der Sittenlehre, Werke, vol. 4, p.31.

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How, however, can the world as a whole in the unity of the many be imagined? This is the question that most interests us in the current context. For by reflecting on the world as a whole, an understanding of the world is articulated that makes the radical change in the worldview of modernity and the shift in logic clearer than anywhere else. Reflection on the totality of the world has been possible and in fact occurred in only one way in all of philosophy: the structure in terms of which the world is understood is reflected and on its basis the world as a whole is formulated as a unity. For this reason, we will necessarily find (as a structural-logical necessity) that in philosophy the powerful interpretive systems are developed via the logic of action, but a logic of action in an abstractly developed form. This needs to be recognized as such. What can we therefore expect as a manifestation of this logic, when philosophy enables man to thematize the world? No doubt thought that gives priority to an absolute mind!

2. THE W ORLD IN THE L OGIC OF A BSOLUTE M IND 2.1 Recursiveness and Tautolog y Subjectivist logic makes use of a peculiar explanatory procedure. We discussed it above: it starts from the phenomenon and traces it back to an agent, in order to then see it as being brought forth from the latter. Philosophy also proceeds in just this way, when it thematizes the totality of the world, be it in terms of the materiality of that which is found in the world or be it in terms of the basic order of that world. Philosophy also adheres to the formal structure of explanation. It starts from the world or its structuring patterns and traces it or them back to the absolute of its (their) origin, in order to then explain it (them) by having it (them) emerge out of that origin. Once again it was Fichte who uncovered this procedure with all possible clarity.2 In a strict sense thus that which is found in the world or taken as world is simply furnished with an origin. The linking of philosophical thought to the early structure of argumentation, and thus to subject logic, places all philosophy in the position of understanding the world in terms of an absolute origin. In our time, in which understanding for the internal rationale of this process has been largely lost, one can read that this process is tautological and is empty of meaning. If at the same time one sees oneself as committed to the structure of argumentation, there is nothing one can do but submit to the tautology and, following the theological maxim pecca fortiter, issue the slogan: “Tautologize strongly!”3 The misunderstanding could not be greater. For in the metaphysical thought of the past, the recourse to the origin had 2 | Ibid., vol. 4, p. 64. 3 | L UHMANN, Soziale Systeme, pp. 31f.

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an explanatory function because it was conceived in terms of the structure of subjectivity—which defines itself as the ability to make beginnings. It is only in modernity that the procedure becomes divested of meaning.

2.2 The Absolute as Mind A further defining moment of philosophical thought is also undeniable, given the commitment to subjectivist logic: the absolute has to be understood as mind. The reason for this was already described above: against the backdrop of the logic of action, everything that occurs comes from thought. The convergence of the world in the absolute as mind is given expression with the simplicity and clarity peculiar to Vedic thought. In the “Shatapata Brahmana” it is stated: “First stands the spirit.”4 This is further elaborated upon, with consideration of the first beginning, when it is stated: It was not that this world at the beginning was not; it was not. This world was at its beginning and it was not: it was only the spirit that existed.5 It is of some interest to compare these two statements to the statement in the Gospel of John, which is completely identical in structural-logical terms. It is well-known that there too one finds: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1). It could just as well have read: it was thought. For the two, word and thought, are identical in early thought. There can be no doubt about its genetic origin. The absolute as origin is a concept of a boarder that marks boundaries certain to cause problems for any mode of thought tied to this structure. One of these boundaries runs between being and nonbeing, the other between eternity and time. And finally, the difference between the arbitrariness of the will and the steadfastness of the idea is implicit in the conceptual definition of the absolute as mind. Each of the boundaries and differences is found in a variety of forms in the philosophical understanding of the world. What is striking is that philosophical thought pays scarce attention to a problem we find so blatantly aporetic as to require every cognitive effort directed toward its solution: the problem of the genesis of the materiality of the world from the substance of mind. It either does not arise as a problem in early thought or, if it does, in a way different for us. It is instructive for understanding the development of thought to ascertain how the absolute is conceived.

2.3 The Origin qua Origin Subject and action do not mean the same thing in early thought as they do for us. One must recall that the individual object as well as the world as a whole are conceived of in terms of the structure of a powerful agent. 4 | H ILLEBRANDT (ed.) Upanishaden, p. 36. 5 | Ibid., p. 38.

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Whenever the materiality of “objectness” is considered, the subjectivity of this agency is also thought about. Heaven is the starry heaven above one‘s head, but in ancient Chinese thought, it is also the subjective power that determines existence.6 The Ganges river is the real body of water, but at the same time in the thought of the Hindus the god. For this reason, when the world as a whole becomes the object of discussion, the subjectivity and mind or spirit of the absolute of the world are considered as linked to the world‘s materiality. Conversely, the material- and mind-based character of existence are kept connected. Reflexiveness, which is raised to a new level with the development of archaic civilizations and reaches mature form in antiquity, allows the structural moments of logic to be thematized for the first time and focuses attention on the origin. The thematization of the latter opens up two options for the ensuing definition of the world: to move either the subjectivity or the materiality of the origin into the center of the process of thematization. The first option leads to a story of creation in one or another form. In the conceptualization on the level of worldviews, this structure must give expression to the convergence of the world and its basic order in a subject qua agent, regardless how differently this agent may be personalized in anthropomorphic form: Ultimately the explanation makes recourse to God. All stories of creation are structured in this way. God, however, is the one who is through himself. You are—the Egyptians said of the god of creation Chnum, who had formed humans on the potter’s wheel—your own Chnum. Since the power of creation is considered as one with the materiality of the world, it includes in its substance the ordering structures of events and of the world of objects. The stories of creation practically never take up the speculative definition of the materiality of the origin. It is also not a problem in other myths. When it is stated in the ancient Akkadian myth, the “Enuma Elish”: at the beginning as heaven and earth were not yet divided,7 the Sumerians imagined the two, heaven and earth, as a divine couple, that lay in intimate embrace and had to be violently separated, so that the world could arise as it is. Heaven and earth are there, both as much in their materiality as in the form of a god. What is involved here is the effort to provide an explanation of the world‘s order, not of the origin of matter. The focus of interest in the act of creation in the Old Testament is also in the divine provision of order, and not in the chaos out of which it is established or in the question of where matter originates from. Even the illustrious formulation, as we find it in the Maccabees (2 Maccabees 7:28), whereby creation arises from out of the nothingness, has no other purpose than to demonstrate the greatness and power of God as creator.8 At the same time, subjectivist logic, which places creation at the apex of action, allows Judeo-Christian religion to conceive of the act of creation as separate from the materiality of the world. Since Yahweh is not inherently 6 | Cf. I-C HING . 7 | H EIDEL , The Babylonian Genesis, p. 18. 8 | G.E. W RIGHT, “Schöpfung im Alten Testament,” col. 1473ff.

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bound to materiality, he is able to advance upon the world in such a way that he can be conceived of as being ultimately transcendent to it. This, however, harbors the danger that one can then not know or say anything else about him. For this reason, in early modernity, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob becomes a God that withdraws from the world. The other option is the truly philosophical one.

2.4 The Depersonalization of Logic Philosophical thought is confronted in part in archaic civilizations, and completely in antiquity with a world that has become stable within immanent patterns of order and to this extent is not subject to the influence of arbitrary agents. The procedure characteristic for absolutist logic—to start from the world and to trace it back to the absolute—produces, in structural-logical terms, a rather obvious effect: in philosophical thought also, the absolute becomes the cause and formative power for the world being as it is. For this reason, the world is understood in philosophical thought, in structural-logic terms, isomorphically to theological thought.9 Precisely because the world is incorporated into absolutist thought and, conversely, the absolute in the world is maintained can the world‘s order be understood as eternal. Thus when Aristotle seeks to systematize preceding natural philosophy by insisting that an explanation is required for from where and how things are provided with motion,10 he follows, in his insistence on seeking to determine the cause of motion, the same absolutist logic that we have already become acquainted with. He does, however, divest the cause of its anthropomorphic form, and instead keeps the cause connected to the materiality and order of the world. By doing so, he also discards any assumption of an act of creation: “But motion cannot be either generated or destroyed, for it has always existed ...”11 The structural-logical compulsions that result from the persistence of the initial form of logic find comparable manifestation everywhere. This includes the circumstance that the integration of the absolute in the world and/or the world in the absolute requires an overstepping of the boundary within the absolute between being and nonbeing or between being and nothingness. This needs to be correctly understood: the consequences of a given logic may become the object of discussion, but they must not. One might simply accept that matter is as eternal as motion. At the same time, though, it is intrinsic to this logic to raise questions about the beyond. Once one does so, one can no longer avoid drawing a boundary between being and nonbeing (or nothingness). Hegel understood how to make a

9 | A comprehensive and informative presentation is provided by W. WEISCHEDEL , Der Gott der Philosophen. 10 | A RISTOTLE , Metaphysics, 985b. 11 | Ibid., 1071b.

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start with this logic.12 Thematization provides room for semantic elaboration, but the basic framework is predetermined by the logic. This is impressively demonstrated in the conception of the world found in Lao Tzu (probably born in 604 B.C.).

2.5 Being and Nonbeing in Chinese Thought In ancient times Chinese thought was as concerned with gods, spirits, and demons as everywhere else in the world. Their treatment defined popular Chinese religion. The material logic thematized in its religious thought also defined Chinese philosophical thought. The subjective matrix is clearly noticeable everywhere. And, when the totality of the world becomes the object of reflection, there is a structural necessity for it to result in an understanding of the world from the immanence of the absolute. The thought of Lao Tzu allows no room for doubt about its explanatory structure. It moves from being in the world to the foundation of being from which this being is determined. The compulsion of logic goes further. When one seeks an origin and conceives of this origin as the cause of all occurrences, one cannot avoid following this logic and searching for the origin of the origin. Thought is thus driven beyond the foundation or cause of an all-encompassing being to its cause or foundation: nonbeing. It is, however, actually not possible to go beyond the origin. Thus both being and nonbeing have to be conceived together in the origin. And this is what Lao Tzu teaches. In the Tao Te Ching it is stated: Thus the move toward nonbeing leads one to contemplate wondrous being and the move toward being to contemplate spatial limitations. Both are one according to their origin and only different in name.13 What holds for the substantial side of being, also holds for the active side. Action leads to inaction. This very idea pervades Lao Tzu’s philosophy. Action knows the beginnings of occurrences. If one combines action and inaction, the conception of a movement without beginning results. For this very reason it is said of Tao that it is always in motion, and thus eternal without beginning.14 The extent to which Tao, despite the negation of action, is defined by means of an abstraction of the logic of action is seen in the conception of the ever-moving being of Tao. It is seen, namely, as returning into itself, and thus as a circular motion. For even though we are accustomed to imagining action as a straight line that runs from its beginning to its aim or goal, the members of premodern societies conceived of occurrences on the basis of the logic of action as circular in character. The 12 | See G.W.F. H EGEL , Die Wissenschaft der Logik, vol. 1. 13 | L AO TZU, TAO TE C HING, p. 41. [Quote as given here is English adaptation of German translation of Wilhelm—transl. note] 14 | Ibid., p. 65.

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goal is contained in the origin; Aristotle also says that the why is part of the cause, and thus is part of the first of all causes. For just this reason, the occurrence returns to the origin when it reaches its goal. All teachings of return arose in this manner.15 Unmistakable evidence that the structure of the logic of action underlies even the inaction of Tao is found in the conceptualization of the Tao itself. It is revealed by the question that arises within it—a question similar to that faced by gods of creation in other cultures—if the Tao brings about everything, then what brings about the Tao? In structural-logic terms the answer is identical to answers found everywhere: Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The Tao takes its law from itself. 16 The formative potency of the Tao is unmistakably also at work in Chuang Tzu, when he says of Tao that it grants mind to gods and spirits.17

2.6 The Transparency of Worldviews What holds for early thought also applies to philosophical thought: the reconstruction of its genesis makes it more transparent and understandable as is otherwise possible. This is particularly true for the often discussed teleology of Greek thought. Its origin is considered a riddle in philosophy.18 According to a proven authority on Greek philosophy, the Greeks invented the concept of an acting nature.19 For us there can be no doubts about its genesis in the logic of action as it develops in the early ontogenesis of every member of the species. The structure itself is not only expressed with great clarity in Aristotle’s Physics; the structure is also the explicit object of reflection. It is stated in Physics: Thus if a house were one of the things which come to be due to nature, it would come to be just as it now does by the agency of art; and if things which are due to nature came to be not only due to nature but also due to art, they would come to be just as they are by nature. The one, then, is for the other. [...] If, then, that which is in accordance with art is something due to an acting, clearly

15 | Cf. G. D UX , Die Zeit in der Geschichte, pp. 223ff. 16 | L AO TZU, TAO TE C HING, p. 65. For more on the context of the topic discussed here, cf. G. Dux, Die Zeit in der Geschichte, pp. 157f. 17 | D SCHUANG D SI , Das wahre Buch vom südlichen Blütenland, p. 87. 18 | W. WIELAND, Die aristotelische Physik, p. 254, leaves the question open. 19 | J. M IT TELSTRASS , M ACHINA M UNDI, p. 7. The added comment, that the invention of an acting nature is the first documentation of the fact that we recognize only that which we ourselves are capable of producing, is an anachronism.

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so is that which is in accordance with nature. The relation of that which comes after to that which goes before is the same in both. 20 The meaning of the additional temporal remark is undeniable. When humans act “for the sake of [something],” they act in accordance with the course of nature. A resourceful philosophical mind had once argued that there are different ways to come to the same conclusion, to hit upon the same idea. No doubt. We happen to know, however, that the basic structure of the logic of action is developed in early ontogenesis in all societies. And we are just as sure, on the basis of numerous studies in cultural comparison that this structure in a (slightly) developed form is transported into the world of adult thought, in order to render comprehensible that which is found and that which occurs in the world.21 Should we thus imagine the following about the Aristotelian logic of action of Physics: that Aristotle developed it as do all humans in early childhood, then took leave of it in an act of reflexive detachment from everything that was popularly en vogue as a completely taken-for-granted paradigm of explanation, in order to then “invent” it on his own for Physics in his mature years as a philosopher? That does not make any sense. Correct is that Aristotle gave further abstract development to the subjectivist logic in keeping with the logic of this development as we are acquainted with it from ontogenesis. There is no longer anything animistic about as was the case in early periods of thought. This much should be considered settled.22 But this in no way alters the fact that Aristotle maintains the primeval structure of explanation in his logic of action. And even more: Greek thought was so deeply bound to this logic that the Greeks even conceived of abstract entities (abstracta) in the personalized form of this logic. To take just one example, we find the following in Hesiod: Next he married bright Themis (Statute, Custom) who bore the Horae (Norms), and Eunomia (Proper Order), Dikë (Justice), and blooming Eirene (Peace).23 I will not go beyond this brief documentation of subjectivist logic qua absolutist logic in philosophical thought. I intend no more than a brief documentation at this point. Its only purpose is to show that even after the radical break in the worldview of modernity this logic endures in philosophical and sociological visions of the world. For it is the cause of the universally noted crisis of thought, which is a crisis in sociological theory in particular. In our study of modernity, we will also have to make do with a brief documentation of the persistence of absolutist logic. 20 | A RISTOTLE , Physics, B 199a. 21 | Cf. K. Kälble, Die Entwicklung der Kausalität im Kulturvergleich. 22 | On this, cf. the study by U. Wenzel, Vom Ursprung zum Prozeß: Kausalität in der Geschichte der Naturphilosophie. 23 | Hesiod, Theogonie, 901-902 [translation modified—transl.]; as pointed to in O. M URRAY, Das frühe Griechenland, p. 78.

9. Holding its Own: Absolutist Logic in the Modern Understanding of Convergence and Constructivism

1. TOWARDS AN U NDERSTANDING OF TR ANSCENDENTALISM The consciousness of the convergence of the world in the human subject brought about by the radical change in the worldview of modernity and the consciousness connected to it of the constructed character of this world has a unique effect on philosophical reflection: nature is disenchanted, i.e., it is divested of its subjectivist structure. The consciousness of the convergence and constructivism of the world to man or the subject allows for the understanding of the constructive mind, however, to maintain the subjectivist logic in a taken-for-granted fashion. In the same way that the world used to converge upon the absolute in God, from now on constructive competence converges upon the subject. The fact that the genesis of absolutist logic arises out of man‘s capability to act proves helpful in its efforts to hold its own. Along with the subjectivist logic in the reflections of mind, the two-poled relational structure of explanation also holds its own: the point of convergence of constructivism in the subject is understood just as absolutistically as always. Descartes, who was the first to systematically incorporate the consciousness of convergence, raises the question of the Archimedian point in the certainty of the subject.1 Kant and Fichte, who brought about the connection of the consciousness of constructivism with that of convergence, also sought to gain the absolute beginning in the productivity of the subject, from whom productivity then emerges. In structural-logical terms, we find in the thought of modernity, so far advanced in its levels of reflection and abstraction, that logic of argumentative justification set into motion with which we are acquainted from the ontology of early thought: in a two-sided relational logic in which something appears as the cause of something else by appearing prior to 1 | D ESCARTES , Meditationes de prima philosophia, A-T VII.

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it and appearing to bring forth this other, this cause draws upon itself all explanatory power. Even if it itself is ascribed another explanation, only in the linear form of a two-sided relational account: questions can be raised about its causative basis, but it cannot be incorporated in any systematic sense into an explanatory account. Under the aegis of traditional logic, the insight gained in modernity that the foundation of cognition rests in man as subject can only be taken up in a single fashion: by referring to a substantive cause within subjectivity and thus referring the foundation of cognition to the competence of the subject to create it. The answer is well-known. The subjectivity of the empirical subject is circumvented in reflexive terms. The foundation of cognition is found in the transcendental subject. In its primordial apperception, the transcendental subject assumes the genuinely constitutive achievement in the construction of the world.2 Inherent in it is the condition for the possibility of knowledge per se. The incorporation of the world of objects into the immanence of the world-creating consciousness is, at least in terms of its synthetic apriori achievements, a consequence of this logic, which has been transposed from the past into modernity. Just the question of how synthetic judgments are imaginable a priori if it is to be possible to have certain knowledge of anything owes its existence to the continued staying power of subjectivist logic. Our initial finding, according to which history moves through an increasingly more abstract reflection of the structures of thought, allows one to thematize the structure of logic in German idealism with a clarity never reached before and, indeed, never previously possible. This holds not simply for the Copernican turn in Kant’s philosophy; it holds just as much for Fichte’s theory of science.3 According to Fichte, what needs to be posited is the I; everything else is to be derived from it.4 For understanding the transcendental argument, it is decisive to realize that the recourse to the subject is due to the structure of explanation and not, for instance, due to the circumstance that the human subject in some form usurps the role that God had earlier held. Logical absolutism is a part of the structure of explanation. Who or what is the transcendental subject? Anyone who poses the question in this way signals that he or she has failed to grasp how this subject forms: as the irrefutable consequence of an argumentative structure. It, however, has a ramification that remains hidden in transcendental logic. To “posit something a priori” or even to “allow something to be an intrinsic competence” presupposes that there is some kind of mind in the world. For this very reason, however, every form of transcendental a priori reasoning forces one back into metaphysics. Hegel knows how to affirmatively bring this consequence into the argument against Kant.5 Hegel de2 3 4 5

| | | |

K ANT, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (A), p. 117f. Cf. F ICHTE , Wissenschaftslehre, Werke, vol. I. Idem, System der Sittenlehre, Werke, vol. IV, p. 14. H EGEL , Die Wissenschaft der Logik, vol. 1.

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velops, from his logic into the philosophy of nature and philosophy of history a veritable history of creation as a new ontology, and this as well on the levels of the social constitution and as on that of mind.6 The clarity with which the underlying logic is presented was to become a condition enabling the thematization of the radical change in the understanding of the world under the hammer of Marx’s critique.7 The procedure that Hegel observes in the story of creation that is understood as a new, i.e., historical ontology is just as transparent as it has always been in stories of creation: in explanatory terms the world is understood in terms of an absolute, but the cognitive process actually travels in the opposite direction: the world and what is found in it is traced back to an absolute origin in order to then be seen as emanating from it. This is precisely the way in which Hegel deals with the historicity of the world. In Hegel’s system of philosophy the absolute itself is historicized in the absolute through the derivation of that which is perceived to be found in the world: the historicity of the human form of existence. For structurally necessary reasons, history becomes the history of the self-unfolding of absolute mind.

2. THE I NVECTIVE A GAINST THE A BSOLUTE IN P HILOSOPHY As I have already pointed out, Hegel’s philosophy of history has fallen victim to criticism. Philosophical reflection has proceeded here in its customary manner. After discovering the difference between the world and the constructed character of the world in the medium of thought and language, it sought to clarify the development of thought on the semantic level of contents. For this reason, even the critique of thought based on an absolute mind only sought to rid itself of the absolute on the semantic level, or more accurately, only sought to abstain from its explanatory use. It seemed intolerable after this history to posit an absolute as the point of convergence of the events of the universe. For in structural terms, the absolute necessarily entails distinguishing it from all else as the one, and as the one, distinguishing it from all else as the good, righteous, beautiful. Just as the God of Christians withdrew at the beginning of modernity, the absolute withdrew at the beginning of the 20th century. Negative theology and negative philosophy are manifestations of this withdrawal and of the abstinence it produces in thought.8 For structural-logical thought, there can be no doubt about the effect that a critique of absolutism on the semantic level must have: the absolut6 | Cf. idem, Enzyklopädie des Geistes (1830); idem, Die Vernunft in der Geschichte. 7 | K ARL M ARX , Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie: Einleitung, MEW 1, pp 378-391. 8 | Cf. T.W. A DORNO, Negative Dialektik.

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ism of logic is maintained; the point of convergence of logic in the absolute returns in a different guise. The critique is not sufficiently radical. What is not understood or not thoroughly enough is that the absolutism of thought, and especially the absolutism of the philosophy of history,9 is produced as the result of an explanatory structure or a material logic underlying understanding of the world. And exactly this structure continues to define the modern understanding of constructivism and historicity. Though the constructed character of the world is anchored in the human subject, it is still ultimately attributed to an absolute and thus indefinable capability of the human mind. Regardless how one defines this capability: as the creativity of the formative will, as a creative thought inscribed by the value postulates of its own form of intellectuality, or as the emanation of language, in terms of each of these capabilities, the constructed character of the world becomes incomprehensible. It becomes, as one says, uncircumventable. It is necessary to write the history of modernity differently than it has previously been written: namely, as the arduous process in the development of thought in which a logic is overcome that obstinately attempts to maintain its hold. The problem is to stick to the logic and yet go beyond it. Here a few reflections will have to suffice to show the aporias in which reflexion entangles itself in the process.

3. THE P ERSISTENCE OF A BSOLUTIST L OGIC IN THE L INGUISTIC AND C OMMUNICATIVE TURN 3.1 The Problem of Intersubjectivity As long as the critique of thought remains on the semantic level, it will only make sluggish progress. Though it constantly runs into contradictions in assimilating modern knowledge, it does so without really being able to come to terms with them. The problem of intersubjectivity is one of these contradictions. The problem of intersubjective understanding in collectively grounded worlds could only be resolved as long there was a static understanding of the achievements of a transcendental subjectivity. For these achievements could be considered as shared by all empirical subjects. It became, however, increasing more difficult to give a plausible account of these defining characteristics (of shared transcendental subjectivity) and the search for an explanation was already abandoned by Husserl’s phenomenology. The constructed character of cognition suffered radically from its subjectivist slant and was no longer able to give an account of intersubjectivity. This is something readily recognizable.10 9 | Cf. R.K. M AURER, Hegel und das Ende der Geschichte; L. N IETHAMMER , Posthistoire: Ist die Geschichte zu Ende? 10 | E. H USSERL , Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, Gesammelte Werke, Husserliana, vol 1.

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Regardless of all subsequent efforts, it is impossible on the basis of a subjectivity understood in absolute terms to give a plausible account of how constructs are supposed to arise such that they are shared by all subjects. This holds initially for the subjects that Schütz terms the world of our contemporaries (the Mitwelt). The problem becomes even more complicated for the subjects that precede and follow us, since the structures hardly remain the same. For this reason, in the turn from the transcendental to the mundane subject in sociological phenomenology, Alfred Schütz simply made the “we” and its world a pregiven for thought.11 He can be taken to task for this,12 but at least it is an attempt to establish an empirical basis for thought. In current understanding in philosophy and sociology, language and communication have become the point of convergence of an absolutism now understood in constructivist terms. The linguistic and communicative turn—and they are closely related—represent one of those steps by which thought moves. For it is clear that the recourse to language and to communication brings one close to real formative processes of cognition. This makes the contradiction all the more dramatic to the presuppositions and requirements of modern knowledge. Once one views the procedures and results of those elaborate theoretical constructs committed to one or the other of these “turns,” it is not hard to anticipate where they will fail: language and communication are themselves constructs that demand explanation.

3.2 The Absolutism of Language Games In the philosophy of language, Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations is held to be the basic manifesto of what is termed the linguistic turn.13 This is rather astonishing. For Wittgenstein’s felicitous choice to coin for the more comprehensive context in which concepts are formed and understood the concept of language game, and with which he emphasized the integration of practice into the process of understanding,14 is used in the linguistic and/or communicative turn for a decidedly absolutist logic of explanation. Lyotard’s cognitive interest in the fragmented reflections in Le Différend is to postulate the uncircumventability and ultimately unjustifiability of each and every language game.15 He articulates the creative moment that is supposed to be encompassed by the concept of language by understanding not language, but rather the phrase and time, as some11 | A. S CHÜTZ ,“Dimensions of the social world,” pp 20-63. 12 | Cf. the comprehensive and penetrating criticisms of F. W EL Z , Kritik der Lebenswelt. 13 | On the linguistic turn in analytical philosophy, cf. R ICHARD R ORT Y, The Linguistic Turn. 14 | L. W IT TGENSTEIN, Philosophische Untersuchungen. 15 | J.F. LYOTARD, Le Différend.

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thing originary. He understands the phrase as an event.16 That which is creative in it also affects the chain of all subsequent phrases. It is impossible to go beyond or behind language as power of productive creativity from which the phrase emerges. All that is to be said is the one and the same: il arrive. That which occurs, arrives from out of language. For exactly this reason what can be known of the world is exhausted by the statement: the sentences show it that way. Can there be any doubt that the linguistic turn in the way in which it undergoes an elaborate, language-philosophical presentation in Lyotard’s thought continues the absolutist structure of argumentation? Lyotard himself has no doubts about it. He makes the linear structure of derivation clear in each of his determinations. Every definition, he says, leads to a “récession sans fin dans l’ordre logique, sauf à recourir a une decision ou a une convention.”17 Ultimately, language assumes the previous position of God or of the Absolute Spirit. It is obvious that it is not really capable of occupying such a position. It only occupies the position because in the structure of absolutist explanation, this position must not be left unoccupied.18 If this epistemological critique has any merit, it is to document the complete emptying of an explanation procedure, which, even in the present, remains bound to the structure of absolutist logic. And one will be unable to deny the same significance to one of the most elaborate sociological theories in recent decades: Luhmann’s system-theory.

4. THE P ERSISTENCE OF A BSOLUTIST L OGIC IN S YSTEMS THEORY In a more intuitive than systematic fashion, systems theory follows a development of thought, which we have still to discuss in detail, namely, the epistemological postulate that what is thought of is to be thought of in such a way that it is incorporated within systemic connections and becomes comprehensible within the structures of these connections. Luhmann in any case introduces the choice of systems theory not as a necessity based upon epistemological critique, but rather as a decision.19 And, in fact, systems theory does represent an advance in the development of thought, which one could hardly have expected ex ante. There is a modern realization that everything in the world is to be subject to a systemic context of conditions and to allow nothing in the world not to be systemically 16 | Ibid., nos. 101, 106. 17 | Ibid., no. 106. 18 | The distinction can be made use of: precisely because it involves a process without a subject, because no one is found who would stand at the outset of languages and societies, the existence of God can be postulated. A. F INKIELKRAU t, Die Niederlage des Denkens, p. 25. 19 | N. L UHMANN, Soziale Systeme, pp. 7ff.

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integrated into this context. This realization results in the integration of everything that is thought of into a system, but to understand the constructed character of the system itself as subjugated to the logic of the subject.20 The system has moved into the position of the subject in the transcendental philosophy of Kant or the phenomenology of Husserl. This has an unavoidable repercussion: subject logic pervades inner-systemic organization in all of its aspects. Especially the differentiations of systems, precisely because they are repeatedly conceived of as closed systems, cannot be thought of in relational terms. It is significant the way in which in systems theory the metaphysical structure of explanation, as it was reflected for the last time in Hegel, is once again turned on its axis, in order to take into account what has now become the obvious inability to start from a veritably ontologically understood subject. In principle, Luhmann proceeds in the same way as absolutist thought has always done. We have already discussed it: according to absolutist logic, creation and all knowledge of it is traced back to the act of creation, in order to then see it explained as being brought forth out of this act. Luhmann also proceeds in this manner with the explanation of the system of society. In a systems-theoretic story of creation, the act of creation of the system lies in the circumstance that it begins from a decision for the first contingent difference of itself. Only the observer who writes this story of creation does not attribute this first decision to the opaque immanence of a God of creation, but to the system itself. That which has been brought forth from the system, is introduced back into the system in the manner of a re-entry borrowed from the axioms of mathematics. The system must make the decision to lie once, to present an untruth as truth, and then it works.21 The much-discussed “great success” of sociology of recent decades thus marks, all in all, the modern developmental state of thought because it consciously simulates the story of creation. The structure is not only made the subject of discussion as in Hegel, it has also become accessible and made use of as a simulation. God appears in all of the glory of His trinity and with all of his heavenly hosts, the devil not excluded. It is a ghost story, and an amusing one at that. For the question as to who must actually be deceived in order to allow the system to be that which it is understood to be can have but one answer: he who has committed himself to an absolutist logic, without any longer being able to make any use of it.

20 | Rightly pointed out in G ÜNTER S CHULTE , Der blinde Fleck in Luhmanns Systemtheorie. 21 | N. L UHMANN, Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft, pp. 415f.

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5. THE M ENTAL B LOCK ADE TO THE U NDERSTANDING OF C ONSTRUCTIVISM In the present context I am for the moment in no way interested in an immanent critique of these theories, neither of the philosophical nor the sociological ones. What would be the point of such a critique, given that the argument is that each of the incriminated theories had remained prisoner of a vapid logic of argumentation. I have already pointed to the basic contradiction in the linguistic and communicative turn: language and communication are themselves only the result of a constructive process of enculturation. If the worlds they give an account of are supposed to be understandable, both of them must for their part be understandable along with these worlds. For this reason, in the present context only one thing is intended: the demonstration that an absolutist structure of argumentation is maintained in these theories, a structure to which the complete failure can be attributed, to use the insight into the constructed character of the symbolically mediated worlds to make these worlds themselves understandable. In this regard it makes little difference whether the constructivism is ascribed to a transcendental consciousness or to a quasi-transcendental process of communication. Knowledge has never been gained through recourse to an absolute; preexisting knowledge has only been raised to another level by interpretation in this way. Knowledge of the convergence and constructivism of the human form of existence also does not allow any understanding of its worlds to be gained, if constructivism is put in the service of an absolutist logic of construction. Constructivist absolutism always produces but one thing: the perception of world and worlds, reality and realities as being brought forth from the formative competence of mind—of language, of communication, of society, of history—according to an incomprehensible design. The persistence of the hold of absolutist logic must itself—as I have already pointed out—be seen as a moment in the developmental process of thought. It is therefore necessary to show that the mental blockade of cognition under absolutist logic is also a mental blockade produced by absolutism. It thus seems appropriate, before we show that absolutist logic must be replaced by a systematic-processual logic, to make it understandable how the persistence of absolutist logic results in the loss of history.

10. The Loss of History

1. O N H ISTORICAL U NDERSTANDING The splendid feeling of retracing the tracks of history from its very beginning is only of use for a historical understanding of the worlds preceding us if one succeeds in making the process of constructivism comprehensible in such a way that both the transition from natural history to cultural history and the continuation of constructivism in the development of the worlds on our side of the virtual threshold become understandable. There is a concise concept for this cognitive strategy: that of reconstruction. The concept gains its conciseness, however, only if one makes use of it in the way demanded by a cognitive interest keen on clarifying empirical formative processes: as the reconstruction of the historical formations from the conditions under which they were able to form.1 This has yet to occur. Historical understanding proceeds hermeneutically, with a phenomenonbased approach: it is confident in its ability to gather from the materials themselves their unique and intrinsic significance. It is also confident in its ability to make understandable the developmental processes of successive organizational forms. Viewed from a historico-genetic understanding of history, we have every reason to raise the question of the preconditions of such a cognitive strategy. It is indisputable that such a strategy has resulted in significant advances in knowledge. If—as we have determined in our previous discussions and we will discuss more systematically below— the formative process of the structures of action and of cognition occurs in the early ontogenesis of the member of the species in terms of an always already preexistent reality, and if the elementary structures are the same everywhere, then one might suppose that, in later, more developed socie-

1 | J. H ABERMAS understands the concept of reconstruction in a precisely nonempirical sense, as the “logical reconstruction” of historical processes of development. In the cold light of day, this means the ahistorical reconstruction of a historical process. J. H ABERMAS , Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, vol. 1, p. 10, 561.

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ties, the access to worlds constructed earlier remains open. We will take up at length the question of the understanding of the worlds of others. There are limits to the phenomenon-based access to past worlds. And the further removed the societies studied are in the development of their structures of forms of praxis and of thought from our own, the narrower these limits seem to be drawn. It was recently stated that the earlier societies of hunters and gatherers are virtually incomprehensible for us.2 For this reason we really should not even be taking up early societies and cultures. And this is precisely what follows from Winch’s language-absolutizing reflections, if one thinks them through.3 Nonetheless, not only do we take up early cultures, we allow ourselves to be fascinated by them. Their myths undergo fantastic interpretations. We can, however, in no way be certain that we have understood what those who let these myths arise meant by them. One cannot even say why mythical thought was mythical. Once we ask why, we definitely run into the limit of a phenomenal ascertainment of past thought, i.e., determination gleaned from materials, artifacts, and texts. The more clearly the development of all of history comes into view, the greater the contrasts that become evident between past societies and ours, the more urgent the question becomes why people acted and thought in early societies differently from their counterparts in later societies, and why these later societies were able to develop out of these earlier ones. This question is not the result of an exaggerated, presumptuous cognitive interest. On the one hand, there are inner-systemic reasons for posing it: it is only when the formative process of the worlds is reconstructed in terms of its conditions that one can learn something about their systemic connections. The latter, however, define the configurations of meaning and significance and, in this way, what we term understanding. On the other hand, there is also a specific reason or justification for this question in terms of development theory: the consciousness of convergence and constructivism is connected to the knowledge that constructs are bound to conditions and are produced via these conditions. The most encompassing condition of development of each and every society, however, is the structure of the society that precedes it, out of which the new one has developed. The recourse to conditions as a means of reaching understanding of a historical formation is thus an indispensable postulate of historical understanding. And in fact historical investigations seek to give this fact due consideration. But conditions must be understood systemically. Each society brings itself forth from the (systemically understood) organization of its predecessor. An unavoidable question is thus how the systemic organization of a society is to be understood in order to allow its successor society to arise. This question is also only answerable in terms

2 | J. H ABERMAS , Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, vol. 1, pp. 152ff. 3 | Cf. P. Winch, “Understanding a Primitive Society.”

10. T HE L OSS OF H ISTORY

of systemic conditions. It unavoidably compels one to face the question of the sequence of structures in the succession of societies. The limits of the worlds of others that are only grasped in phenomenal terms are seen most impressively in the understanding of cognitive systems of interpretation. An understanding solely oriented toward semantic contents remains tied to the surface of that which is said. What needs to be understood, however, as we already established at the outset, is that structures underlie that which is thought and spoken that translate themselves into the variety of semantic contents. Without an understanding of the structures, interpretive systems remain ungrasped in their inner logic and are left to the arbitrary graces of the interpreter. The lack of understanding is not limited to stories handed down to us from early societies. Even the major texts of the archaic cultures, which have been largely deciphered, remain barely understood. In the myths of creation and the epic poems, one understands at best the course of events, for instance in the epic of Gilgamesh or in the “Popol Vuh.” But where the stories come from and what their purpose is remains largely unclear. One can never be certain that the sense made of it does not owe more to the imagination of the interpreter than to the text itself. To give an example: is it understood why Gilgamesh refuses intimacy with Ischtar? Absurd stories have been offered here. At best we know much about our own home pastures; of them hermeneutics at any rate claims to have been able to gain a secure historical understanding. 4 Understanding reaches as far as the thread that others began to spin goes and that subsequent interpreters have elaborated upon: it leads to the pre-Socratics and to the Prophets. From this point on, the tracks become vague; eventually, they disappear entirely. Anything that goes beyond the end of the philosopher’s nose is prehistory and remains ungrasped. The more sharply honed consciousness of the constructivism of the human mind has also caused hermeneutics some embarrassment. For is it true, as Bruno Snell says, that the discovery of the Western mind took place via the Greeks at the close of the archaic era and only fully in the classical period?5 If so, then one must ask what was the nature of mind that defined the Greeks prior to the discovery of mind, as in the thought of Homer for instance. Are not the Iliad and the Odyssey, the most often read epics of antiquity? Can one understand them without having determined the structures of thought of those who created them and listened to them? An analysis of structures of thought represents a prerequisite for any aesthetics of reception that sets out to unify aesthetic and historical thought.6 4 | Cf. H.G. G ADAMER , Wahrheit und Methode. For a critique of the restriction of the historical perspective to the context in which cultural artifacts of the tradition are received, cf. L. K RÜGER, “Über das Verhältnis der hermeneutischen Philosophie zu den Wissenschaften,” pp. 17f. 5 | B. S NELL , Die Entdeckung des Geistes. 6 | Cf. H.J. JAUSS , Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaften, p. 26.

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Admittedly, it is said of antiquity that a shared context connects it with our time in terms of the history of the reception and impact of cultural artifacts. Moreover, one can be confident that classicists and philosophers are able to interpret a great deal of the texts handed down to us. However, the Iliad and the Odyssey alone raise more than enough questions that cannot be answered simply from the text, such as the peculiar structure of time both texts reveal. And why should the chain of knowledge only be reconstructed back to Homer and no further? Where does the path lead if one follows it beyond Homer? How far does the history of understanding reach if we view the history of mind as the history of the species? It is obvious that a more sharply honed consciousness of constructivism does not allow one to make a clear distinction between that “which has always been understood” and that which is not, even if it does appear that there are cultures closer to us and others more distant. One must gain certainty about the constructs, and this is only possible by recourse to their structures. Understanding can no longer be achieved through confidence in the shared context in which the texts handed down to us are received and produce effects. This confidence cannot be maintained because it is tacitly premised on the continuity of mind in history. Whether there really is such continuity and above all what it would and could mean is far from certain. For this reason, even insofar as one can assume a history of the reception and impact in the development of mind, this does not guarantee that later eras really understand the eras preceding them. It becomes especially problematic to seek to derive an understanding of the societies and cultures that precede us in terms of continuity, if modernity actually distinguishes itself from the past by ushering in a new material logic underlying its understanding of the world. We must reckon with the fact that continuities in development are capable of bringing about discontinuities. Whatever the case, if we direct our attentions to a history of the species and if we must admit that we cannot easily understand texts that have become alien to us, then we can also not be sure that we have at least understood that piece of history that has been so diligently examined, so carefully worked through: the history of the Occidental mind. For then it also holds for that Greek thought so precious to us, that we can only then be certain to have understood it when we have come to know its intrinsic logic, i.e., when we have analyzed those structures of thought on the basis of which it has been formed. To take an example, does one know why Parmenides disputes the reality of becoming, of change? Have the immense efforts at a proper reading brought us any nearer to an answer to this question? Does one know why Aristotle felt compelled to make recourse to the air as mover in order to explain why the thrown object continues to move once it has left the hand that threw it? He himself does not tell us. Is it unknowable?

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2. H ERE TICAL C OMMENTS ON THE E NTERPRISE OF S CIENCE The enterprise of the human and social sciences has been and continues to be conspicuously insensitive to any epistemological doubts about understanding anything about foreign cultures. Ethnology continues its ethnographic activities and in them makes claim to an understanding that is in no way limited to just the practices of providing for daily existence. I already pointed this out above: if one were to follow Winch and other theoreticians, one would have had long to abandon their enterprise. There are good reasons for not doing so. The epistemological question, however, of how anything can be understood about the thought of others, cannot simply be cast aside by demanding at the outset of every new report the reader’s renewed trust in the authenticity of that which is reported, while at the same time resisting every demand of proof that the thought of others has really been grasped. The question raised by epistemological critique requires a solution. Only then can one allay the suspicion that it is the researcher’s own mind that is actually taking possession of the mind of the others. Everyone who has given up trying to secure understanding of the alien mind qua alien because he considers it impossible should admit to himself the need to change fields and to become a novelist. No matter how consciously dependent one is upon the perspective of one’s own age in the perception of the other, one is still compelled to identify the sense in which the other as such comes to bear, is represented in one’s presentation. This postulate applies to all historical sciences. Other scientific disciplines, such as Middle Eastern studies or Egyptology, to name just two, continue to view the texts that are handed down to us from Babylon or the Old Kingdom of Egypt as their domain. Who would want to or be able to dispute this! The only question is: where do the experts of antiquity draw their knowledge of how to access these texts from and where do they draw their understanding from? Let us assume that the implication of the thesis of the change in logic is correct, i.e., that the texts of alien cultures are written on the basis of different structures of argumentation. If this is the case, then one can no longer take for granted, as has been done up until now, that the statements of informants and the handed-down texts reveal their own meaning if one only asks the proper questions. Our investigations will give more than sufficient proof that the structures of thought and speech that define the material logic of the way the world is understood cannot be grasped purely philologically. They must be reconstructed. To do so, however, one must be acquainted with the conditions of the process in terms of which the structures of thought form.

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3. D E VELOPMENT AND D E VELOPMENTAL L OGIC 3.1 The Findings The opportunity brought about by the consciousness of convergence and constructivism—this much has become apparent from our discussions—is to get “behind the constructs.” Getting behind the constructs means making comprehensible the conditions under which the constructs could develop. This strategy also provides an opportunity for understanding alien worlds. The triad of convergence, constructivism, and historicity is suited for making a finding understandable that strikes anyone who studies history and is not blinded by the dogmatism of an absolutist critique of epistemology: there is development in history and there is a sense of direction to it. How the development is to be understood and what exactly this sense of direction is not easy to determine. The finding itself, however, is indisputable. Previous theoretical efforts to assimilate this finding are beset by problems. The literature demonstrates a proliferation of ideas and theories that seek to come to terms with the perceived developments. One thing is certain: without an understanding of the development of history, it is also not possible to achieve a more penetrating understanding of more limited phases of development. One of the most conspicuous examples of the completely unclarified way in which the theorem of development is treated is offered by the critique of “primitive thought” that Lévy-Bruhl once had to endure. Lévy-Bruhl was one of the first to attempt to provide a systematic account of early thought. His description of early, and in this sense “primitive” societies, contained hardly a conclusion not already made by his predecessors and that would not be made by his successors: above all, the tendency of early cultures to stick to the concrete. Unfortunately, LévyBruhl designated this thought as “prelogical.” What he meant cannot be disputed: defined by a logic other than our own.7 In the understanding of modernity, early thought presents itself, according to Lévy-Bruhl, as a preliminary stage in our own development. Humanity developed by passing through this stage. Its history is our history. It was, nonetheless unfortunate to term this thought “prelogical.” In previous studies I have made every effort to demonstrate the logical character of this thought.8 Its logical character will also be shown in the course of the present study. There would thus be no reason to waste a word on the taboo placed on Lévy-Bruhl, if it were not for a fact that, though not surprising, must give one to stop and think: the taboo also forbade any assumption of a development or developmental logic in thought. This results, however, in leaving a simply indisputable development unexplained. Defining characteristics 7 | Cf. L. L ÉV Y -B RUHL , La Mentalité Primitive. For detail, see G. D UX , Die Logik der Weltbilder, pp. 141ff. 8 | Cf. I DEM, Die ontogenetische und historische Entwicklung des Geistes, pp. 173ff.

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of early thought are left uncontested in reputable works, something we would never dream of putting forth in an updated theory of cognitive development and which we would have no reason for doing. Just to give a few examples, it is said of the Chaldeans—that Babylonian people and its potentates with the dubious fame of having destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem in 587 B.C. and the genuine glory of having built the High Temple of Marduk—that they achieved everything “as the human spirit was still half asleep.”9 We count the Chaldeans among the archaic civilizations and thus among the societies in which glorious developments are to be noted. This knowledge does not mean anything. Since it cannot be determined what distinguishes the indisputably less developed thought of the Chaldeans from ours, they are simply placed in a time of twilight of the human mind. Moreover, the accursed “pre-” that led to the taboo on LévyBruhl, is still ascribed to completely different cultures today. It is granted to heroes of the mind who participated directly in the run-up to our own history. Thus, W. Röd does not hesitate in viewing Anaximene’s philosophy of nature as “prerational,” as still indebted to mythological thought. He also unhesitatingly posits “stages of thought.”10 Andreas Graeser, who is continuing Röd’s history of ancient philosophy with the Sophists, will hardly be inclined to conceive a developmental logic for the advances of philosophical thought. He does not hesitate, however, to establish contradictions and confusions in Protagoras’s thought and to ask whether he was even in the position to think what we think.11 I have already pointed out the explicitly developmental-theoretical interpretation in the more historico-philosophical approach found in the above-cited work of Bruno Snell. In it, Homer’s thought appears, in comparison to classic Greek thought, as an archaic residue.12 Hans Blumenberg also knows how to present the history of thought from its beginnings, and especially since the beginning of theory, from a developmentallogical perspective. For him, too, Greek philosophy draws the line between myth and logos; for him, however, myth is itself already a form of world subjection.13 As plausible as the topos of world control seems, it allows one to gain at best only a vague understanding of why the development in thought took place in the way that we can follow it from myth to logos and then on into modernity. As problematic as the specifications of early thought are (under the taboo against developmental ideas of any kind, there was hardly a chance 9 | A. K OESTLER , Die Nachtwandler: Die Entstehungsgeschichte unserer Welterkenntnis, p. 18. 10 | Cf. W. R ÖD, Die Philosophie der Antike, vol. 1, pp. 50, 74. 11 | A. G RAESER , Sophistik und Sokratik, p. 27. Interpretation that takes our own thought as yardstick is especially outrageous for developmental-logical understanding. 12 | B. S NELL , Die Entdeckung des Geistes. 13 | Cf. H. B LUMENBERG , Das Lachen der Thrakerin.

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to reach a precise notion on what basis the state of development of thought in past societies differed from that of ours), they do document that also in the philosophical working off of the history of mind one cannot do without the idea of development. In previous times the achievements of subsequent cultures were simply chalked up as progress for humanity. Members of the urban cultures of Mesopotamia viewed their civilization as an achievement to which the anthropogenesis of human existence was tied and correspondingly looked down upon the nomads who inhabited the outskirts of their cultures.14 The Greeks were also aware of both the development of civilization and that of thought in their own history.15 Admittedly, the 5th century idea of progress came under pressure with the realization of the impermanent character of human destiny, which first gained expression in Archilochus of Paros (7th century B.C.E.) and then, with special poignancy, in Pindar (522/518-? B.C.E.).16 Nonetheless, the idea of progress prevailed in the study of nature, and especially in medicine. The consciousness of civilizational progress also remains alive in Aristotle.17 Here—for structurally necessary reasons—there is already a tendency to understand progress as a predetermined development. It is after all no coincidence that, in spite of the taboo placed on the theorem of development from various perspectives, the study of Greek history makes the idea of development indispensable. This development exists. This finding can be impressively documented in terms of social-structural development. Oswyn Murray depicts the early history of Greece in terms of developments that consistently lead from primitive to higher forms of organization. According to Murray Homeric society still shares many of the primitive forms of organization with other societies described ethnographically. At the same time, however, in its aristocratic elements it is further developed than the peasant communities in Hesiod’s Boeotia.18 The formation of the polis in subsequent centuries also cannot be characterized without the category of development and the concomitant impact of the aspect of progress. Jochen Bleicken, who makes special efforts to provide an integrated picture of the development of social structure and cognition in Greek and Roman history, does not hesitate to ascribe developmental-theoretical schemata to the history of the Athenian polis and the Republican constitution of Rome. He also does not hesitate, on his part, to speak of “developmental stages in the relationship of social-structural and cognitive development.”19 14 | An impressive documentation is found in the story surrounding Enkidu in the epic of Gilgamesh; cf. here G. D UX , Liebe und Tod im Gilgamesch-Epos. 15 | See E.R. D ODDS , Der Fortschrittsgedanke in der Antike. 16 | H. F RÄNKEL , “Ephemeros als Kennwort für die menschliche Natur,” pp. 23-39. 17 | Cf. A RISTOTLE , Politics. 18 | Cf. O. M URRAY, Das frühe Griechenland, p. 47. 19 | Cf. J. Bleicken, Die athenische Demokratie, passim; I DEM , Die Verfassung der Römischen Republik, p. 61.

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The evidence previously provided for a developmental-theoretical line of argumentation served the purpose of showing that we have more than just good theoretical reasons for not surrendering the category of development and—as we shall see, not surrendering the logic of development—in the analysis of history. Instead, a glance at historical accounts confirms that history cannot be grasped at all without the assumption of development. What is not debatable for each and every discipline—for mathematics, physics, medicine, but also for the understanding of society, morality, and subjective self-consciousness—also holds for comprehensive historical accounts, such as those of thought in antiquity or of secularization in early modernity. In empirical research and in historical accounts of historical experts, the use of the idea of development is taken-for-granted and universal. The mental blockade first arises when the theory of cognition takes up the particularized knowledge of the individual disciplines in the various epochs and asks what the red thread is in all development, and how, if this red thread exists, the logic of development is to be understood.

3.2 Histor y: The Wasteland in Logical Absolutism The blind spot in logical absolutism, as we have come to know it in the post-modern understanding of constructivism and in systems theories (with its affinities to it), consists in its failure to subject constructivism itself to a systemic context of conditions. If one sees the constructed character of the human form of existence as emerging out of an unfathomable absolute, such that nothing more can be said about the constructs other than that they come from language or communication, then history becomes a wasteland in which nothing can be established except the incomprehensible designs of ever new language games, which form into world and worlds. Knowledge is not treated quite so unscrupulous in sociology. The discipline has committed itself to an empirical approach. But this does not create a problem for logical absolutism: the empirical approach is reduced to fleeting, ephemeral communications, which, for their part, arise out of an unfathomable communicative potency. For this reason, even in such autogenetically self-justifying communication there remains nothing more to know than that the historical worlds are the construct of communication, each the result of an unfathomable, primordial decision. Luhmann explains: “If something has occurred, it was in any case possible and not impossible. What interest could there still be in the context of societal development in the question of the conditions of its possibility?”20 Quite true! Within the framework of absolute constructivism, the question is ultimately meaningless. It makes no sense, since it cannot be answered. To paraphrase Hegel, in the night of the absolute all cats are gray. The worlds that are brought forth out of the absolutism of constructivism must be taken the way they are found, or more accurately, the way they are 20 | N. L UHMANN, Evolution und Geschichte, p. 293.

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thought to be found. There is just as little an explanation for them being the way they are as there is a understandable method upon which to base a critique that they are not that which they are held to be.

3.3 The Suspicion of Ethnocentrism The loss of history under the absolutism of a logic that has taken over the consciousness of convergence and constructivism receives support from a mode of thinking that has freed itself from the bankruptcy of the philosophy of history without having recognized its underlying premise: the absolutism of logic. From now on it holds that every society is, so to speak, connected in an unmediated fashion with what is no longer God, but with the constructivism of a this-worldly subject or quasi-subject. Even without the sizable philosophical efforts connected to the postmodern and related theories, just the knowledge of the equality among human life worlds suffices for this way of thinking to reject each and every of their developments. The idea that equality can only be produced in the developmental dimension of the human form of existence and that it must prove itself as postulate in this dimension is beyond the horizon of a mentality that is content with the suspicion of ethnocentrism. The accusation, that every form of developmental-logical understanding of history falls prey to ethnocentrism, has a moralistic basis. This makes it difficult to dispute. For this reason, let us establish one thing: there can be no doubt that all cultures are of equal value. This can be established, however, not because there is no development of thought, of cognition, but because there is no point outside of the world from which cultures can be assessed. Accordingly, regardless how highly one regards the knowledge of one’s own time, this does not entail a value judgment of previous cultures. In any case, there are some who feel more at home in a nonindustrial society than in their own—of course, with the knowledge gained from the latter!

3.4 The Performative Contradiction Times of radical change in worldview such as that of modernity manifest distortions in thought. This is especially true for the distortions evident in the understanding of historicity and the way it is assimilated into a critique of knowledge. As I have tried to demonstrate, when one takes up historical worlds in terms of the changes they undergo, it is impossible to get by without an idea of development, and it is also impossible to avoid establishing the existence of progress. Every history of science is written in these terms, for instance, the history of mathematics.21

21 | Cf. H. G ERICKE , Mathematik im Abendland; A. P ICHOT, Die Geburt der Wissenschaft.

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The critique of knowledge, though, proves incapable of giving full due to this developmental dimension. By declaring historical development dead, by declaring it an ethnocentric prejudice, it not only draws upon itself the accusation of simply refusing to incorporate historical knowledge into its framework, it also draws upon itself the accusation of being a victim of a performative contradiction. A performative contradiction means: the critique makes claim to something it denies with the same breath.22 For there can be no doubt: this form of equality can first be conceived under the conditions of progress in the reflexiveness of the cognitive system, conditions engendered by modernity. The contradiction entails that the proponents of a blind equality—i.e., an equality immunized against any perception of development—prove themselves guilty of precisely that flaw in argument that they so severely castigate. No worldview is more ethnocentric and imperialistic than the one that ascribes man’s constructive autonomy to an unfathomable absolute within man, in order to then bring forth world and worlds according to an incomprehensible pattern out of his own subjectivity. Never before has one been able to think in such a way. Let us take a closer look at the underlying form of argumentation. Consciousness of the equality or equal value of cultures, as is made claim to by those who seek to put a stop to developmental-logical reflections by raising the accusation of ethnocentrism, is tied to the way the world is understood by modernity. This conclusion holds not only in the trivial sense that it is simply impossible for anyone to think except on the basis of his or her own time. More importantly it is true in a decisively more elaborate sense: only on the basis of the cognitive prerequisites of the triad of convergence, constructivism, and historicity can one even conceive of raising the accusation of ethnocentrism. Moreover, being able to do so cannot be understood as anything less than a major advance in cognition. Indeed, the accusation of ethnocentrism makes claim to this advance in exactly this sense, hereby demonstrating its pathos of equality. The cognitive prerequisites for this are based on experiences that are as incontrovertible as the established differences in the sequence of cultures itself. Even if one is willing to ascribe the consciousness of historicity to past cultures, modern consciousness remains—as we discussed at the outset of our argument—radically different; it is defined by the consciousness of the constructed character of the world. And this is exactly what distinguishes it from everything that was previously known about the mutability of human forms of existence. Here we also could only gain insight into the constructed character of the human form of existence as a result of the developmental process of this constructivism. Even the right that the suspicion of ethnocentrism can make claim to is tied to this form of historical consciousness: because 22 | It is well-known that the trope of the performative contradiction was developed by K.O. A PEL in the context of an account of morals. Cf. K.O. A PEL , Das Apriori der Kommunikationsgemeinschaft, pp. 358-435.

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nothing that can be conceived by man and be translated into practical forms of existence (whose societal sequence we term history) can be conceived from a standpoint outside of history, is it impossible for one culture to raise itself over any other. The performative contradiction in all of this lies in making claim to progress that should not, or more accurately, is not allowed to exist. This is the case since it is assumed that the conceptualization of progress always entails an absolute value judgment about cultures and the persons tied to them.

4. U NDERSTANDING F OREIGN W ORLDS : THE C OGNITIVE O PPORTUNITIES OF M ODERNIT Y 4.1 The Question of the Condition of Possibility By demonstrating that the problem of understanding alien cultures is produced by the persistence of an absolutist structure of explanation, the way is opened for overcoming the resulting aporia in the understanding of history and cultures. It is necessary to take up the question that is unavoidably raised if one understands the human form of existence as the successor organization to the evolution of natural history: the question of the condition for the possibility of the demiurgic process. Accordingly, the same strategy has to be adhered to for each of the epochal developments in history. The consciousness of evolution is pervasive; the realization that the understanding of society and of its culture must also be connected to natural history is growing.23 Luhmann also concedes that the theory of evolution is the only theory capable of explaining the formative process of society.24 Admittedly, he then goes on to treat the theory of evolution in a way directly antagonistic to advances in knowledge: evolutionary theory is, namely, integrated into his conceptualization of systems-theory. In plain English this means, however: the strategy of tautological argument is retained in which the system of society is posited as beginning and defined phenomenally in terms of its immanent mechanisms. The explanatory strategy of Luhmanns systems-theoretical constructivism proceeds in the same manner as one previously treated creation: one provides it with its absolute basis. Just as at that time—with recourse to God—no new knowledge could be achieved about the world, now, through the research-strategy of the “lie of the first decision,” one can never achieve a knowledge of the communication of the world that would make comprehensible why humans live in the historical worlds in which we find them. This is not the meaning of the question of the conditions of the possibility of the successor organization of the human form of existence. The point is not to translate the theory of 23 | Cf. T. I NGOLD, Evolution and Social Life, with further references to the literature. 24 | N. L UHMANN, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, pp. 413ff.

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evolution into a theory of society in terms of the abstract formulas of variation, selection, and restabilization. Nothing is to be gained this way. The point is to define the constructive process in its constituent moments in order to understand the lifeworlds that emerge by doing so. The question is, how was it possible to develop human forms: the causality of thought, the moral imperative in action, the ability to love, the ability to distinguish the beautiful from the ugly, and so on.

4.2 The Promise of a Historico-Genetic Theor y The historico-genetic theory of reconstruction as pursued here contains a promise: to make comprehensible the means by which historical understanding is possible. This, however, requires the realization found at the point of convergence of our discussions: the realization that along with the knowledge of modernity a logic different from its absolutist predecessor developed—a systemic-processual logic. There is nothing under the sun that could not and should not find its explanation by being integrated into a set of interrelationships, out of which and into which it developed. This also holds for the distinctively human “constructive autonomy,” whereby man must first construct the practical forms of his existence in the world and the world itself. Like everything else that is found to exist in the universe, the constructive capacity of humans must also be integrated into a systemic relationality of both, of the the context of its genesis and of the historical form in which it presents itself. If, as we described above in detail, historical understanding is only possible if one “gets behind the constructs,” then it is only possible by virtue of a logic that makes the constructed character of the human mind comprehensible and that lays bare the process of construct formation. The epistemological postulate holds on the one hand for the evolutionary understanding of the entrance into cultural history as the transition out of natural history; on the other hand, it holds for the development of history itself, i.e., for the understanding of the epochs leading up to and including modernity. Above all, however, modernity itself wants to be understood as a turning point in history. Lyotard was ready and willing to take his place as a premodern theologian;25 once one realizes the absolutism of the logic to which his thought is bound, nothing else could be expected. We are ready and willing to take our place in a radically secular world in which it is possible to explain the conditions of its evolutionary and historical process of formation. What is meant by this new logic and what kind of methodological strategy of cognition it requires are questions we will need to take up in detail.

25 | J.F. LYOTARD, Das Undarstellbare, p. 237.

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1. THOUGHT B ASED ON THE P RIORIT Y OF N ATURE The radical change in the worldview of modernity, as we detailed at the outset of our discussion, allowed us to uncover the tracks that lead to modernity. The significance and dimensions of the change in worldview can only be grasped once we have learned to understand this radical change as a change in logic. On the basis of all our previous discussions, it is now possible to give a succinct definition of this radical change itself: Until modern time the universe and, along with it, the organizational forms of human existence were conceived of in terms of the priority of an absolute mind. We understand the universe without to suppose it any inherent form of spirituality and seek to understand man in terms of a mode of thought that proceeds from the priority of nature. One cannot fail to see the drama that the radical change in the understanding of the world produced for the way man views himself: for all of history man could consider the way he conducted his life as being in harmony with the most fundamental level of organization of the cosmos. His prominent place in this cosmos rested on the isomorphism between the respective orders of nature and the social world. The spiritual character of the cosmic order produced by subjectivist logic found reflection in a multitude of different semantics. They all shared the view that the order or structure of the world and the existence of man in it is determined by a reason that is pervasive throughout this world. Wherever theologians and philosophers advanced to more elaborate forms of reflexion, this understanding found expression. Man participated in the rational order of the cosmos. For this very reason, the soul—as the mediating place of reason in man’s being—was just as immortal as the absolute of reason itself. This consequence can be shown from Plato through Descartes.1 In a nature divested of any 1 | P LATO, Phaedrus, 245C-246A; R. D ESCARTES , Meditationes de prima philosophia.

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spirituality, and, therefore, of any intelligence, it is no longer possible for man to conceive of himself in this way. He is placed on the same level as the other organizational forms of life: “Nous ne sommes ny au dessus, ny au dessoubs du reste.”2

2. F ROM A BSOLUTE TO S YSTEMIC -P ROCESSUAL L OGIC 2.1 Systemic-Processual Logic As succinctly as the change in logic can be defined as succinctly the radical change in worldview in modernity. In thought that starts from the priority of absolute mind, it is held that everything that occurs in the world was already previously inherent in the foundation of this world. This consequence is entailed by the two-sidedly relational structure of explanation. This understanding comes most pointedly into play with regard to the concept of time: the present is the present past, the future is the present future.3 For this mode of thought, there is nothing new under the sun! In an entirely different light presents the world itself in the understanding of a systemic-processual logic. The logic of modernity is a systemic logic. As such, it is also reflected in the epistemological critique of the natural sciences. As mentioned above this also holds for the distinctively human “constructive autonomy.” If, therefore, historical understanding is only possible if one “gets behind the constructs,” then it is only possible by virtue of a logic that makes the constructed character of the human mind comprehensible and that lays bare the process of construct formation.

2.2 The Asymmetr y of Evolutionar y Processes In mechanical physics, the universe was taken to be an energetic system whose dynamics required no energetic input.4 The time of the universe was in early modern times isotropic in character; within it, in principle, every occurrence could have taken place in the reverse direction. The trajectories of the material particles were determined by three principles: lawfulness, concrete determinacy, and reversibility. This understanding of the system was revolutionized on the macro level by the theory of relativity and on the micro level by quantum theory in physics. In contradistinction to the assumption of a static system, such as the one in which the wellknown Laplacian demon had its place, since the theory of relativity we have had to assume that the universe is dynamic, self-developing. There are instabilities of organization in this universe, and, under probable/im2 | M. M ONTAIGNE , Essais II, p. 346. 3 | For more detail, G. D UX , Die Zeit in der Geschichte, pp. 185ff. 4 | On the following, cf. I. P RIGOGINE and I. S TENGERS, Dialog mit der Natur.

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probable, new forms of organization may form at their points of weakness, forms not already inherent in preceding organization. Moreover, there appear to be singular events, not only for the infinite density of energy at the beginning and end of the universe, but also for the intervening period. If one follows the relevant reflections, the guiding notions in the revised understanding of physics revolve more around small-scale chaos and large-scale catastrophe than around structured statics.5 For the evolution of life and, in this way, also for man’s anthropological constitution the principle of increasing entropy gains prominent significance. Development toward a state of greatest possible disorder provides the dynamics of the energetic system (that we understand the universe to be) with a drift resembling an time-arrow. The irritating question arose, therefore, of how, in a system that proceeds toward a state of the greatest possible disorder, can organizational forms of life form as new forms of organization? Current theory has been able to answer this question by means of a theory of dissipating processes and structures. One can give an abbreviated summary of the theory for our purposes: there are instabilities in the system of matter, which under the wasteful (dissipating) input of energy (and far from a state of equilibrium) allow new organizational forms to arise. Under the irritation of an unstable order, a nonlinear processuality crystallizes that is characterized by an asymmetry of organization between before and after.6 Accordingly, let us conclude: The immanent dynamics of the universe are understood in the processual logic of modernity such that new organizational forms of life can form in the universe under probable/improbable conditions. What they develop into, emerges only in their interaction in process. Whereas the dictum of “Nothing new under the sun” holds for thought based upon traditional logic, the exact opposite is true for processual logic: it is possible for something to arise that did not exist previously, also not potentionally.

2.3 Processual Logic in the Understanding of the Sociocultural Organizational Form of Human E xistence For a cognitive interest that aims to make the human form of existence comprehensible as the sequel to natural-historical evolution, it is impossible to overlook the significance of the theory of dissipating structures. It documents a processuality in the universe that does not presume that any subsequent development is always already inherent in the initial constellation out of which it arises. This confirms our assumption that the transcendental compulsion of having to presuppose what actually needs to be explained in order to understand the mind-based form of existence is 5 | B. K ANITSCHEIDER , Singularitäten, Horizonte und das Ende der Zeit, pp 480511. 6 | I. Prigogine, Die physikalisch-chemischen Wurzeln des Lebens, pp 19-52.

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simply dependent upon the abstract assertion of an outmoded logic. The “it has always been so,” so often called upon in cognitive theory, owes its existence to the reductive ductus of an argumentative structure that has fallen victim to critique today. The processuality of the energetic system of the universe is one thing, the processuality of the symbolically mediated organization of the world in the sociocultural organizational forms of history another. It would seem to me a mistake if one sought to indiscriminately transpose the former into history. The social world is formed by means of generating mechanisms different from those that we find in nature. The “dice are rolled” in genetics, and only thereafter does it becomes apparent whether the new species finds an ecological niche for itself, in order to hold its ground alongside the older species, or whether a fitness maximization takes place that enables the new variant to further develop the older one. These natural mechanisms were also important in enculturation. I have already mentioned that in the long phase of transition from animal to human, the hominids’ initial sociocultural organization must have given them an advantage in fitness over the australopithecines; the same holds for homo sapiens vis-à-vis the less developed homo erectus.7 This, however, is not yet an explanation of how the construct-creating mind was itself able to form, for it cannot be explained in terms of natural prerequisites. The misunderstanding of a great number of biological and, above all, sociobiological studies consists in the belief that reference to the completely unquestionable, natural conditions of sociocultural organization is already an explanation of this organization. It is, however, precisely the question of how it is possible for intellectual, sociocultural forms of existence to arise that the biological mechanism cannot answer. For the intellectual organizational forms are themselves not already genetically predetermined.8 And they are also not found in finished form in the brain. For it also holds for the brain: it is removed from any and all mind in the sense of the structures of mind according to which humans meaningfully lead their lives. The implication is evident: The very fact that the intellectual, sociocultural organizational forms of human existence develop in a stratum different from that of nature creates the requirement for a processual logic for understanding its genesis that differs from the logic applied to natural occurrences. Accordingly, how should one understand the processuality of the sociocultural organizational forms of human existence, if it is not the processuality of the natural stratum? And how was it possible to develop out of the natural stratum and to form a mind-based, sociocultural one? I will attempt to give a detailed answer to this (Part III). The entrance of language into 7 | Cf. R. DAWKINS , The Selfish Gene. A brief depiction of the theory of fitness maximization is found in E. VOLAND, Grundriß der Soziobiologie. 8 | I have already pointed out the more recent admissions of C.E. L UMSDEN and E.O. W ILSON . Cf. Chap. 4, Part 4 above

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the process of the development of the competence to act represents the key here. It can be observed in every ontogenesis: By virtue of the fact that around the second year of life language enters into the process of acquiring the competence to act, it becomes possible to develop a reflexiveness that transports the organic consciousness of the actor into the reflexive consciousness of a self and, by so doing, creates the ability to reflect upon the field of action and that which takes place there. The real driving force of development rests in the development of the reflexiveness of the competence to act and of the self, and this holds just as much ontogenetically as, with other presuppositions, historically. In the present context, in which the goal is solely to define processual logic, we can leave it at that. About the finding itself there is nothing to doubt: The processuality in the formative process of sociocultural worlds is tied to the development of reflexiveness. The use of the latter makes it possible first to create sociocultural lifeforms and to go beyond the current level of historical development. Processual logic is a reflexively created logic.

2.4 The Integration of Natural and Sociocultural Determinants The previously discussed question of the condition for the possibility of developing intellectual, sociocultural forms of organization out of a nature that is divested of any and all structures of mind (in the sense of the meaningful actions of the mind that man conduct) is probably, in epistemologically critical terms, the key question of modernity. If one pursues the reflections that we investigated into the idea of processual logic, a dense interaction between the two strata comes to light. We need processual logic, as it were, twice. Once in its natural form: Ň Only in terms of a processual logic in the understanding of the universe is it comprehensible that an anthropological constitution can form in which the practical forms of existence and the world are not already developed, but in which we see the natural presuppositions (brain and language development) developed, which allow a completely different form of organization. Ň Only in terms of a processual logic of sociocultural organization is it in turn comprehensible that constructive processes can build upon this organization, processes whose reflexiveness is in the position to go beyond the given accomplishments of those constructs previously developed. It will not have remained unnoticed that we seek to make use of the very logic that we are concerned with reconstructively elucidating. In a world that has become radically secular, in which, as we have said, nothing is found that escapes a context of conditions it must also be possible to gain understanding of constructed worlds by taking into account the conditions under which they were able to develop, and this includes the different kinds of logic upon which they are based. Moreover, it must also be possi-

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ble to bring about a decision between these different kinds of logic. Logical absolutism developed a defensive strategy based upon epistemological critique. In the past one would have understood this strategy as an intended immunization, but it actually needs to be understood as the recursiveness inherent in every kind of logic. If everything is a construct, that is the argument, then this also holds for the understanding of nature from which we proceed and, naturally, also for processual logic. But between constructs, and this is the message of “Le Différend,” there is no decision.9 Logical absolutism does not enter into disputes about itself. It contents itself by permanently confirming itself self-referentially.

3. O VERCOMING THE S CHISM OF L OGIC 3.1 Toward a Critique of Communication as Primeval Beginning One thing should be apparent from our previous discussions: the radical change in the understanding of the universe allowed a level of knowledge to be achieved that cannot be left unexploited in how we understand of the mind-based, sociocultural organizational forms of human existence: it is simply not possible to catapult oneself out of the systemic context of conditions. If there are processes in this context of conditions that have the character of events—the process of enculturation, for instance—then they also have to be understandable qua events in the system’s own terms. In short, it is imperative for scientific understanding not to leave unexplained the evolutionary process and especially the transition from the prehuman organizational form of life to the human one.10 Logical absolutism blocks potential knowledge by keeping the logic of its argumentation outside any systemic analysis. It takes up the modern understanding of convergence and constructivism, but understands the latter in an absolute sense. The vicious circle to which it is condemned by its own absolutist logic forces it to perceive modern understanding of the world as a construct whose constructivism it proves impossible to logically deconstruct. We are all too well acquainted with such theorems of uncircumventability from the deductionist structure of traditional logic for there to be any misunderstanding. Whatever may present itself as world, so goes the argument, is the result of a preceding (!) process of construction. For this reason, regardless how elaborate this process of construction presents itself as being, each and every construct is itself dependent on the presupposition of constructivism. Even the understanding of constructiv-

9 | J.F. LYOTARD, Le Différend. 10 | Very rightly remarked in M.J. C ASIMIR , Die Evolution der Kulturfähigkeit, p 44. I will not take up here the view of culture developed in this book.

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ism is a construct; and for this very reason, the process itself cannot be explained any further. Reflection about the nature of knowledge of the world is far too advanced for it not to be possible to problematize the validity of the internal logical stringency of absolutism from without, from the decentered, epistemologically critical position of an observer. The logical absolutism of a postmodern understanding of communication and language is also cognizant of the reality of the world, and it also knows about the empirical character of communication in a world in which it is embedded. Regardless how one conceives of constructivism, and no decision need be immediately taken on this issue, it is tied to the natural conditions of homo sapiens as a species and must, for this reason, be understandable on the basis of these conditions. If the effort is not even made under these conditions (which are also not simply negatable for absolutism) to integrate communication and its distinctive ability to create constructs into our knowledge of the universe and to find an explanation for the process by which “worlds” form and, along with it, an explanation of communication and language, then this can simply be attributed to the mental blockade of logic. In the modern world, communication can no longer be something “primary” or “originary”. The status of postmodern absolutism is no different from that of its transcendental predecessor: The theory of the uncircumventability of thought or of constructivism simply becomes obsolete once it is shown that the formative process of knowledge and its distinctive constructivism can be made understandable in terms of a construct-based knowledge of the universe founded upon processual logic. This knowledge is not gained by being postulated that it emerged from a beginning and thus is not circular in its methodology. For in our explanation we do not start from communication or from knowledge, but rather from a universe in which communication and knowledge first develop. Let us outline more precisely the strategy that a historico-genetic theory must adopt if it seeks to make the knowable knowable and seeks to come to an understanding of ourselves.

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1. R ECONSTRUCTION AS C ONSTRUCT FROM C ONDITIONS 1.1 The Question of the Condition of the Possibility of Intellectual, Sociocultural Forms of Life The evolutionary understanding of the development of intellectual, sociocultural forms of life allows one to raise the question of the condition(s) of their possibility. How was it possible to develop this distinctive form of life as a sequel to natural-historical evolution? This is the so simple and so unavoidable question that we are concerned with answering from the state of knowledge of modernity. After Kant it has become commonplace to raise the question of the condition of the possibility. Kant, however, was guided by a derivational logic, which found itself compelled to posit the basic forms of thought as given within each individual. In terms of the critique of knowledge, times were easy as long as one could still be of the opinion that the mind-based character of the human forms of life—especially of cognition, but also of normativity and aesthetics—could be posited as given in structures of a transcendental a priori. In its efforts to understand itself, thought was only concerned with thought. By contrast, we do not start from thought, but from evolving organizational life-forms in the middle of a universe; and we require that each and every form of thought develop as a sequel to this natural-historical evolution. If it proves possible to clarify the character of this formative process, we will have found access to the initial worlds of humanity. Once the form of entrance into history is resolved, the question of the condition of the possibility of the historical development of the sociocultural organizational forms, and especially of the cognitive form, can be taken up. We seek to elucidate the , sociocultural forms of organization. We do not attempt to do this, however, by means of

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some form of ultimate grounding or foundations, but by integrating these forms in a systemic fashion into an all-encompassing world. Our strategy is to take history as the basis for understanding, but to go back to the conditions in prehistory in order to understand how the entrance into history as a history of intellectual, sociocultural life-forms became possible. This is the strategy with which we began our investigation. In a strategy of argumentation that starts from the priority of nature, we posit nature as found in the interpretive system of the natural sciences, with all of the uncertainties that it holds, and allow the intellectual, sociocultural organizational forms to first develop out of an evolving anthropological constitution. This constitution includes, as our discussions have shown, a constructive autonomy, which, in processual terms, translates into the constructs of the human form of existence. The processual process of formation we seek to reconstruct. Here, as I have already pointed out above, the concept of reconstruction has to be given a precise meaning, something it lacks in both everyday understanding and in philosophy. Reconstruction is a reconstruction from the conditions under which the process of enculturation was set in motion and hereafter historical development ensued. Structures can only become comprehensible to the extent that the conditions under which they were formed and developed can be reconstructed. These conditions also include the historical actors. Though their “inner worlds” also only develop under specific concrete historical conditions, they cannot be simply equated with these conditions. It is the difference between the given conditions and the actors living under them that first makes understandable what it is that leads beyond these conditions.

1.2 Systemic Causality One can understand reconstruction, if one likes, as reconstruction by virtue of a systemic causality. Systemic causality means: The explanation of historical processes and historical worlds is not achieved by finding this or that cause of them. It is also not enough to name several causes and establish an interaction between them. That may sometimes work for heuristic purposes, but in theoretical terms it is an unsatisfactory procedure. It is necessary to integrate the explanandum into a functional systemic connection, whose immanent processuality is provided by the explanation. The explanation consists of (a) The demonstration of the processuality of this functional systemic connection, and (b) The determination of the fact that it was possible and how it was possible in this functional systemic connection that the explanandum was able to emerge as an organization that advances development.

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In other words, every reconstructive explanation is a systemic-processual explanation. The strategic determination holds especially for the organizational forms of cognition themselves, and thus just as much for the operational and categorical structures of thought as for the structures of language. And since all of these structures are tied to the formation of society, the strategic determination also applies to society as well. This conclusion gives us reason to draw attention to the distinction between causal explanations in the natural sciences and those in the human sciences. The formative process of sociocultural worlds takes place via the action of subjects. It first becomes at all possible, as we have clearly seen in the discussions on processual logic, by means of their reflexiveness in action. Only life-forms that reflect on their actions are in the position to go beyond the constellation within which they are integrated. This already holds for the phylogenetic dimension of the enculturation process. It holds, however, above all for the historical dimension. Subjects are capable of shifting the horizons of their actions—against the backdrop of a given constitution of society—thanks to the reflexiveness at their command. The first person to fence in a piece of land and to declare: “This is mine,” knew, to quote Rousseau, what he wanted, even if he could not know what kind of historical ramifications would emerge out of this act for the societal constitution. For such ramifications develop out of the obscure reactions and anticipations of the respective historical actors and, for this reason, it is impossible or nearly so to anticipate their results.1

2. THE P ROBLEM OF THE P RESUPPOSITION There is no question about it: we make a major, substantive presupposition in this procedure; we posit nature. And there is also no question that nature is also assumed in those models of theoretical explanation that have been accepted in the present: in physics as well as in biology. How else can we understand nature other than that which is presently recognized as knowledge in the natural sciences and is considered unrelinquishable. Far from seeing the mere fact of the presupposition as a problem, we incorporate it into our cognitive interest and cognitive strategy. The question is precisely whether, under the presupposition of the knowledge gained in modernity about nature and about the social world, it is possible to determine the cognitive conditions such that it becomes comprehensible how humanity was able to develop in intellectual, sociocultural life-forms. This is exactly what I mean when I say: We have put ourselves on our own tracks and seek to catch up to ourselves. 1 | This appears to me to be the reason why even at the present prognoses about the course of events in processes that affect the entire society remain uncertain. Cf. R. M AYNTZ , Die gesellschaftliche Herausforderung als theoretische Herausforderung, pp 15ff.

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One can occasionally read that this presupposition simply replaces one absolute with another: nature replaces absolute mind or spirit. Feuerbach had noted that it depends what you begin with, mind or nature.2 True enough. Whoever believes, however, that nature is presupposed as an absolute in the same way here as mind is in traditional, premodern thought has either not understood what distinguishes the absolute in premodern thought or not understood how very differently the present understanding of nature was formed and in which sense we make the claim to come to an understanding of ourselves. The absolute of the priority of the mind or spirit in premodern thought was absolute in that it contained a substance that brought forth from itself what existed and happened in the world. The mode of explanation consisted in retracing the explanandum back to it, in order to have it then be brought forth out of it. It is precisely this mode of explanation that has been lost in a process-logical thought that starts from the priority of nature. By presupposing nature in the reconstruction of the intellectual, sociocultural organizational forms, the one thing we do not do is to make any presupposition from which we are able to derive the latter. Processual logic is the counterlogic to derivational logic. Let us give a more precise account of what it means in processual logic to start from nature. Processual logic is a systemic logic. Whatever occurs comes out at the intersection of dynamic processes, which are understood to be systemically interrelated. The natural sciences have made nature comprehensible in terms of a physical nomological knowledge that can be combined into a comprehensive system of knowledge of nature. In the processuality of its microphysical and macrophysical processes, this understanding of nature has no place for thought and none for reason. Thought, reason, normative rules, or whatever else one might name as distinctive features of intellectual, sociocultural life-forms can, therefore, also not be derived from nature. For this very reason, there is no natural science that provides us with information about the formative process of the intellectual, sociocultural life-forms, and especially not biology. In processual logic, when we take our point of departure from nature, we do so in exactly the sense we have previously discussed: the natural constellation forms the take-off; the intellectual sociocultural life-forms only develops in the process itself through the actors involved. The achievement of processual logic consists precisely in making the formative process understandable in processual terms. From the ex post facto perspective it should be clear that though we can only bring about the reconstruction of thought by thinking, this should not lead us to derive it from thought and thus become circular. The one thing that the natural stratum certainly does not already contain within itself is, namely, thought.

2 | L. F EUERBACH , Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Philosophie, Werke II, pp 165f.

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3. TR ANSFORMING THE K NOWABLE INTO K NOWLEDGE 3.1 Reconstruction as Enculturation A reconstructive strategy of explanation of the form of organization translates the postulate named at the outset—the effort to achieve empirical knowledge—into a methodology. What is involved are causal explanations of the formative process of social worlds. This causality differs, however, from that in the natural sciences, since human action is integrated into the constellation of conditions and into the processuality that makes use of them. Methodologies always entail a specific epistemological basis. It is impossible to overlook the significance that the reconstructive strategy has for a critique of knowledge: We seek to answer the question that the critique of knowledge raises about what we can know by reconstructing how it was possible at all (a) to achieve knowledge and (b) to translate this knowledge into the construction of worlds. Through a reconstruction on the basis of the conditions under which these constructs took place, we seek to understand both past and present worlds. The strategy of reconstruction on the basis of conditions frees the critique of knowledge from the turmoil of autosuggestive circles and paradoxes in which the postmodern understanding of constructivism has entangled itself. Under an absolutism that continues to obey the old structural logic, there is ultimately no certainty other than the fact of constructivism itself. It cannot make any sense of the accessibility or the mode of accessibility of an always already pregiven reality of the universe though it is impossible to break through the construct character of this reality. It can make just as little sense of the accessibility of a social world established in symbolically mediated forms. By naming the tasks that need to be mastered, I will be able to make the strategy of reconstruction more precise. In light of everything previously discussed, the cognitive potential of a historico-genetic theory is produced by linking history to evolution. Only because and to the extent that we can make the enculturation process understandable from conditions arising out evolution can we uncover our own tracks and understand why we conduct our lives as species in intellectual, sociocultural life-forms. And only because and to the extent that we can make the process of enculturation understandable do we have the chance of following our tracks and clarifying the conditions under which the epochal processes and structures of history were possible. The necessity of making the process of enculturation understandable on the basis of empirical conditions could prove to be a further obstacle. For how does one intend to make sense of a process in the developmental field of the hominids that was completed over a period of ca. two million years? This truly is a tricky problem. And there is no way that we can attempt to gain enough empirical material from prehistorical times in order to understand how development took place. The key, however, is something different: we

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have begun to describe it. It consists of the anthropological constitution of the organizational form of life as it developed in conjunction with the homo sapiens of our type. The lock in which it fits is called ontogenesis. The path to history passes through ontogenesis in the formative process of each member of the species. It was others—and especially Jean Piaget— who made this discovery. However, neither he nor his contemporaries— Vygotsky and Luria, to name just two besides Piaget—developed this idea systematically. This will be one of primary concerns in the following.

3.2 The Reconstruction of the Structures of Thought and Language The strategy of reconstruction seeks to develop the formative process of the intellectual, sociocultural organizational forms of existence out of natural history without positing them as already inherent in some form in the natural stratum. Such a strategy proceeds in a radical fashion: it requires that the kinds of competence presupposed by this organization and, along with them, the symbolically mediated forms of organization—thought and language—first form and become understandable themselves. Cognitive critiques and cognitive strategies can be evaluated in terms of their contribution to the explanation of the genesis of the structures of the symbolic media. What needs to be explained is not simply that symbolically mediated constructs are organized around difference; one must instead explain what made it at all possible for the difference required by symbolically mediated organization to develop and to translate into constructs. It is also insufficient to establish that human worlds are worlds created through meaning. The question is what made it possible for the development of meaning to grow out of something that is “not-meaning.”3 In short: the structures of thought and language must be made comprehensible on the basis of their formative process. In a historico-genetic reconstruction of enculturation we do not simply assume the symbolically mediated organizational form of communication— thought and language. We reconstruct them by having them processually develop out of the conditions that lead out of natural history. Once more the formative process of the media—thought and language— have to protected against any simple cooptation at the hands of biology. In recent decades we have considerably increased our knowledge, which allows us to reconstruct the procedural form of the transition in terms of reliable empirical assumptions. In evolutionary terms and from the perspective of newly emerged forms, transitions are characterized by the existence of precursors. And this is exactly what one finds in the transition to the first form of existence developed by man. The investigations 3 | Cf. G. D UX , “Wie der Sinn in die Welt kam und was daraus wurde,” pp. 195217.

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by Jonas Langer and his colleagues have shown that the primates most closely related to us begin to develop a competence in both physics and mathematics in early ontogenesis. In just the same way, the language experiments with apes have demonstrated a considerable capacity to conceptualize, which finds support from the rudimentary reflexiveness of a beginning self.4 This emerging prehuman development must be understood correctly. It is in no way evidence of a preestablished organization of thought and language in the natural substratum. There is, of course, a natural substratum. It is found in the respective natural constitution of the species, especially in the capacity of the brain. The capabilities that lead to man must still, however, be developed. What we can observe is that along with the natural constitution of nonhuman primates, there is also a rudimentary development of cognitive kinds of competence, which, however, is limited in its development by the prehuman constitution.

3.3 The Structures of Material Knowledge The reconstruction of the three worlds requires time and effort, especially when “history as a whole” becomes the focus of attention. Only the scientific community can finally and ultimately manage this undertaking and resolve its problems. What holds for action, holds, however, even more conspicuously for the movement of knowledge in times of change and uncertainty: Everyone is tied to the knowledge of his or her time. Thought, however, only moves forward from the efforts of the individual. Lucretius had already noted that he found himself caught up in a development of thought that compelled him to decide on his own what needs to be thought about it.5 Descartes made a very similar remark: “And so I found myself forced as it were to take on the task of guiding myself.”6 Given the mental blockage discussed above, it is necessary to focus reflection on our epistemological and methodological strategy. Even the reconstruction of the ontogenetic and historical structures directs more effort at developing the strategy of reconstruction in the processual logic of a historico-genetic theory, than at carrying out systematically the reconstruction itself.

4 | On the development of cognitive competence, cf. the research report of J. L ANGER , “Die universale Entwicklung der elementaren logisch-mathematischen und physikalischen Kognition,” pp. 119-172. On the development of the competence to symbolize, cf. E.S. R UMBAUGH and D.M. RUMBAUGH, “The Emergence of Language,” pp. 86-108, with additional references to their other investigations. 5 | L UCRETIUS , Von der Natur. 6 | R. D ESCARTES, Discours de la Méthode, p. 27.

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1. THE R E ALIT Y OF THE W ORLD Every critique of knowledge proceeds from the assumption that its critique takes place in a very real world. Even he who might be tempted--as in some of the reflections of the ancients long ago--to view everything as just a dream, would just as quickly need to distinguish between a “dream-reality” and a “dream-dream,” and in the difference between the two position reality in exactly the same way as he did previously. The pragmatics of life compel us to make this distinction. It is not all that long ago that there was a highly subtle discourse among prominent minds of Occidental philosophy with regard to this statement, not in reference to dreams, but in reference to the attempt at pure thought.1 The simultaneous non-simultaneities in the discourse of modernity bring about the need to remind ourselves in a cognitively critical fashion of the necessity of making just this differentiation. There should be agreement that theories that present themselves as theories of knowledge, but are not in the position to make this distinction should also not qualify to take part in the discourse.

2. THE R E ALIT Y OF THE S YSTEM -E NVIRONMENT R EL ATIONSHIP Every cognitively critical reflection must start from more than just the presupposition that the universe exists. It must also admit for every critique of knowledge that life exists in this universe and is only possible when the organism possesses knowledge of the latter. The system-environment relationship is something we share with all life-forms. Moreover, it is as real as life itself. The only thing that differs is the way in which the practical

1 | Cf. the discussion of the objections to D ESCARTES’S meditations on a first philosophy. R. D ESCARTES , Meditationes de prima philosophia.

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forms of existence are defined within this relation. A difference in genesis, admittedly, can also result in a quite different kind of knowledge. This conclusion is of some significance. It draws attention to the blind spot in postmodern thought and in a systems theory that is related to it. If the system-environment relationship has to be understood as just as real as the fact that the universe exists and as does life within it, then it does not make any sense and is in fact completely absurd to seek to introduce this relationship as an axiomatic decision as Luhmann does. This is the speculative thought from which the speculative understanding of the world and a concomitant speculative sociology result. And as we have discussed before, the strategy of a blind or ignorantist constructivism is brought about by an absolutist logic.

3. C ONSTRUCTIVE R E ALISM —R E ALISTIC C ONSTRUCTIVISM There is agreement among the epistemologists of modernity that human knowledge is organized around constructs mediated by thought and language and is thus in this sense a symbolically mediated knowledge. Today every theory of knowledge is constructivist. Even sociobiologists give construct formation a certain scope as a causa proxima. Let us note that each and every organization of life is only capable of forming in an autonomous universe by keeping this autonomy in mind. If one takes this into account, a postulate results regarding the constructivism of human knowledge that can hardly be negated: this constructivism must be able to integrate reality into its constructs in such a way that reality-based knowledge is gained. In terms of a theory of knowledge, this must (at very least) produce a willingness to try to satisfy the demands of the critique of knowledge by assuming that even though the things in the world have to be oriented in terms of our cognition, this must be understood to mean that we develop and test out the structures of our cognition in terms of the things and events of the world. By taking this turn at least provisionally, the theory of knowledge would assume a position compatible to what I term constructive realism or realistic constructivism. By doing so, it would clarify a situation in the critique of knowledge, a situation whose lack of clarity is in any case the fault of a theory of knowledge still interpreted in an absolutist sense. For it is not just everyday practice that provides constant proof of the fact that we actually do access reality with our constructs. The natural sciences do not harbor the least of doubts that they have recovered the reality of nature in theory by means of the abstract theories of modern physics, even if they long ago started to grasp their theories as constructs and not as reality “per se.” The self-intoxicated postulate of Niklas Luhmann’s absolutist constructivism whereby neither nature exists nor do the natural sciences, a postulate Luhmann had meant to disempower the so-called natural sciences,2 can only 2 | N. L UHMANN , Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft.

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prompt one reaction from natural scientists: a great laughter. Given such a loss of reality, social scientists would have just as much reason to do the same. For none of the research on the acquisition process of cognition can make do without assuming that constructs develop in terms of an always already pregiven reality and are, for this reason, reality-based constructs.

4. THE I NDISPUTABILIT Y OF P ROCESSUAL L OGIC Given a theory of knowledge that proceeds from an understanding of nature as it forms universally in the constructs of everyday life. And given that this theory has ultimately developed in history into the abstraction of modern theories in a long course of processing experience. On the basis of the question of the condition for the possibility of knowledge, such a theory would of itself develop into a constructivist science of experience. Such a science of experience must fully satisfy the expectations raised by an exploration of the possibility of knowledge: it must clarify how it was possible that man was able to create an organizational form of existence out of a nature divested of any mind or intelligence in the sense in which it is found in human conduct, such that he was able to gain knowledge of reality and translate it into the practical forms of his life. The first thing we should note: the intellectual, sociocultural life-forms actually did develop out of natural history by virtue of the anthropological constitution. This development cannot be explained within absolutist logic. For absolutist logic presupposes that that which develops always already exists in that which it develops out of. If the sociocultural mode of existence is supposed to enable us to arrive at any explanation whatsoever, it is entirely dependent upon processual logic for doing so. Processual logic makes it part of its definition to gain explanations by defining the processuality set free in a given constellation as a spatiotemporal occurrence in which something new is able to develop. It is not only the focus of cognitive interest on the transition from natural history to cultural history that necessitates the use of processual logic. An understanding of the development of human societies, of thought, art and so on in history cannot be achieved without securing for oneself a processual logic. The entire historical process only becomes accessible if this logic is applied. This is especially true for the difference that arises between the formative process of individual practices and the structures of society. In other words, in the history of the sociocultural form of existence, the same logic continues to unfold that set it in motion. Only it allows us to understand the fact that new life-forms could arise and why they were able to develop in history the way they actually did.

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5. O NTOGENESIS AND H ISTORY A processual logic is only effective to the extent to which it is able to make the mechanisms of the formative process transparent. These mechanisms, however, insofar as they involve thought, cannot reside anywhere else but in the formative process of thought itself. The latter process, however, is an active occurrence, which, tied to the developmental processes of the subject itself, begins always and everywhere in the early ontogenesis of the member of the species. For this reason, a reconstructive strategy of cognition must seek to reconstruct the formative process of the intellectual, sociocultural life-forms on the basis of the ontogenesis of the member of the species. The previously postulated turn to an empirically based theory of cognition (for that is what is involved here) happened long ago, even if it has hardly been perceived as such in the critique of knowledge and in theories of science. The fact that this turn took place in the context of the clarification of ontogenetic development has not helped in its dissemination. But, after everything we have discussed, it is clear that that is only the apparent barrier. The real barrier lies in the resistance mounted by absolutist logic. As long as one believes one is certain about this logic, there is no reason to grant increased attention or significance to elucidating the empirical character of the connection to natural-historical evolution. The turn is tied to the development of Piaget’s genetic theory, even if it is indisputable that the discovery of ontogenesis as a basis for understanding thought can be found in the same way in the contemporaneous research of other scientists. I have already pointed to the work of Vygotsky and Luria.3 Today one can gather the information required for understanding the ontogenetic process of enculturation from a research literature so wide-ranging as to be almost unassimilable. The discovery of ontogenesis represents a genuine revolution in cognitive theory. This is what we will take up in the following chapters. In this context our interest is exclusively focused on the critique of knowledge. The fact that this critique finds itself dependent on the formative process of cognition in early ontogenesis exposes it to a whole bundle of empirical problems. For this reason it is not surprising that Piaget’s uncommonly wide-ranging research has not remained free of criticism. Doubts have not been limited to individual empirical results. Instead, the theoretical foundation of Piaget’s work has come in for a profound critique: in particular, the explanation of the ontogenetic process of development which Piaget believed he had achieved by demonstrating a sequence of stages in the development of operational structures.4 This does not concern us here, or more accurately, only concerns us to the extent that this critique has rami3 | L.S. V YGOTSK Y, Denken und Sprechen; A.R. L URIA , Cognitive Development. 4 | R.L. C AMPBELL and M.H. B ICKHARD, Knowing Levels and Developmental Stages, pp 1ff.

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fications on the critique of knowledge. Our interest in Piaget’s genetic theory is focused on an implication of this theory that was but marginally perceived by Piaget himself: the significance of ontogenesis for history.

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14. The Ontogenetic Turn in P IAGET ’ S Genetic Theory: Its Significance for History

1. THE D ISCOVERY OF O NTOGENESIS At the beginning of Piaget’s work a question is found that not only presupposes the state of knowledge reached by modernity, but which is also imperative for this knowledge: the question of the relations that exist in the realm of cognition between the organism and its environment.1 The process of determining the character of this relation practically leads on its own to the discovery of the importance of ontogenesis in the understanding of cognition. For when one proceeds from the organism, as Piaget does as biologist, it is practically a natural necessity to come upon the early ontogenesis of the member of the species in which the structures of cognition develop. All in all, Piaget’s genetic theory reflects a historical demand made on cognition that translated itself step by step into the work of a life of research. The deeper Piaget went in his investigations of the ontogenetic development of cognition, the more persistently epistemological problems, previously the domain of philosophy, became the focus of his interest. In substantive terms, Piaget clearly makes one aware of the difference between a derivational-logic-based treatment of thought, in which thought only takes up thought and an empirical-genetic treatment, in which thought first develops.2 Here interest increasing focuses on the understanding of scientific thought, and especially the constitutive meaning that mathematics had gained for physics. He was not satisfied with an understanding of the formation of science that rested solely on intellectual history. For an intellectual-history-based exposition “always involves the

1 | Cf. M.P. M ICHIELS and A.S. VAUCLAIR -VISSEUR, “Piaget und seine Zeit.” 2 | Cf. the impressive discussion in J. P IAGET, Die Entwicklung des Erkennens, I:13-23.

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effect of ideas that were developed from other ones, which are themselves subject to an evolution, and rather than the actual genesis of cognition.”3 The critique of knowledge, in the genetic way that Piaget conceives it, does not escape the logic of all development-theoretical thought: it forces one to consider its constructive beginnings. It is possible to gain at times the impression that Piaget abandoned himself in the course of his research to the notion that the modern developmental process of cognition, and especially the cognitive process in natural sciences, could be connected to ontogenetic development in an unmediated way. For the historical developments that lie between the processes of ontogenetic construction and modernity are lost sight of almost entirely; in any case, they are not incorporated into theory formation in any way. This results from a purposeful narrowing of his epistemological theory: the concentration on the operationalism of arithmetic development. In fact algebra could without great effort be connected to it. Whatever the case may be, it is certain that the juncture between the ontogenetic development of thought and the foundations of the modern worldview, and especially the foundations of natural sciences, presented itself, even in Piaget’s own self-understanding, differently prior to his investigations than it did for us after them. After a revolution the world always looks different. It is primarily the strategy of developing the formative process of cognition out of ontogenesis that produces the revolution in the critique of knowledge. For the realization that each and every member of the species begins the process of enculturation from a cultural position zero, in order to then work its way up to the level of the society of its time, is the basic assumption necessary for understanding the subsequent developmental process of cognition, including within history. The significance of this approach for the critique of knowledge becomes evident if we take into view the cognitive dimension of modernity developed at the outset of this study: to place man in nature in such a way that his intellectual, sociocultural lifeforms become comprehensible without any presuppositions about any mind inherent to nature. For if we were able to establish that the theory of evolution created the prerequisite for this, then only in exactly the sense that we have already discussed as the condition for the possibility of a successor organization: an anthropological constitution that enables man to set in motion the formative process of intellectual, sociocultural worlds in early ontogenesis. From the perspective of a mode of thought in which nature is given priority, the foundation is developed in the ontogenesis of the member of the species that first makes it possible to conduct life in intellectual, sociocultural organizational forms. The intention of the following is to elaborate on this conclusion and to see ontogenetic development further develop in an historical development. It does not aim to provide an interpretation of Piaget’s theory as it was 3 | Ibid., p 21.

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developed during his lifetime; my intention is also not to provide a review of Piaget’s theory. It is easily accessible,4 and a certain basic knowledge of it has become widespread. I will only discuss those defining features of his theory that are required for grasping its ramifications for the understanding of historical societies. These include above all a naturalism as well as a constructive realism. The following discussion, insofar as it takes up Piaget’s genetic theory, initially involves the reception of a cognitive strategy. Even if Piaget did not take up the trail of historical development in a systematic way; indeed, even if he, as we shall see, more or less misjudged this development, he can be given credit for having triggered the revolution in the critique of knowledge that genetic theory represents.

2. A G ENUINE R E VOLUTION Piaget’s works are located within developmental psychology. That they represent a revolution in cognitive theory is occasionally perceived; however, their implications have nowhere been worked out in systematic form.5 One might say that the revolution took place in a discipline in which it was not expected. The revolution would have required immediate translation into paleoanthropology or an anthropology of history. The former, however, was unprepared for such a development, and the latter did not even exist as a discipline. For this reason, it is up to us, observers after the fact, to assume the difficult task of making understandable the significance for history of the insights on ontogenesis gained in developmental psychology, and especially those gained on the ontogenesis of cognitive development. The foundations of a historico-genetic theory of cognition, which I seek to develop in the following, at least as a general perspective, were laid down by Piaget himself. Let me name five insights that appear to me indispensable for a theory of cognition that claims to be scientific in our day and age: Ň The naturalism of cognition. This means that a theory of cognition must bear in mind that the specifically human form of knowledge developed out of the natural history of life. This process must be made comprehensible. Ň The ontogenetic beginning of the acquisitional process of cognition. This means that a theory of cognition must keep in mind that the structures of cognition always and everywhere form in the early ontogenesis of the member of the species. 4 | Cf. esp. J. P IAGET, Psychologie der Intelligenz; idem, Die Entwicklung des Erkennens. For the significance of the P IAGETIAN work, the contributions found in G. S TEINER , Piaget und die Folgen, remain informative. 5 | On the importance of P IAGET for philosophy, cf. R.L. Fetz, “Piaget als philosophisches Ereignis”; idem, Struktur und Genese.

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Ň Constructive realism. This means that a theory of cognition must make understandable the fact that and means by which constructivism succeeds. It must show how it is possible for the biological human system to interact efficiently with the outside world. Ň The communicative, symbolically mediated construct. This means that a theory of cognition must bear in mind that the process of acquiring cognition is a communicative and construct-forming process that takes place within the medium of thought and language. For this reason, it must make comprehensible how communication is possible. To do so, one must explain the development, construction, and capacities of media in terms of the structures of thought and language. Ň The developmental logic of development. The symbolically mediated constructive process made possible by thought and language does not enable a system of cognition to arise that had already existed in completed form from the outset. A world created as a construct in the medium of thought and language is an unstable world. For this reason, a theory of cognition must make comprehensible how and in terms of what process cognition was able to develop further. By giving evidence of the process of abstraction réfléchissante, Piaget probably uncovered the most important mechanism in this context. These five maxims of a theory of cognition prompt me to start from Piaget and to make use of his theory for our guiding cognitive interest, the developmental logic involved in the constructivism of historical worlds.

3. N ATUR ALISM 3.1 “Empirical Abstractions” Piaget’s theory of knowledge is a naturalist theory. Here one must understand the concept of naturalism in exactly the way in which it formed in consequence of modern development. Piaget presupposes nothing more than an organism for the formation of cognitive structures and gains in knowledge, an organism that possesses natural cognitive prerequisites, but not yet the structures itself to gain knowledge. The natural cognitive prerequisites, the organization and capabilities of the brain in particular, are solely the conditions for developing the structures of cognition—nothing more and nothing less.6 Every form of naturalism must provide conditions for cognitive achievements in the organism with which the process of cognition can be set in motion. Piaget also viewed the organism as being equipped with sensory mechanisms that granted it access to natural reality. These sensory givens, however, are not yet the structures in terms of which humans 6 | J. P IAGET, Biologische Anpassung und Psychologie der Intelligenz, p 79.

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know their world and with which they have learned to deal with this world. If one follows Piaget, a process of construction of logical, mathematical operations is set in motion on the basis of sensory schemata. Piaget first termed these initial operations “simple abstractions” and later “empirical abstractions.” According to this, a simple or empirical abstraction later becomes a reflexive abstraction (abstraction réfléchissante).7 Piaget, however, defined the beginning of the operations with “empirical abstractions” in an irritating way. He explained, namely, that empirical operations themselves already demonstrate a “logico-mathematical” form.8 As a consequence of such statements are we forced to assume that Piaget also adhered to the cognitive reductionism characteristic of biological theories? Cognitive reductionism distinguishing quality is that the basic forms of cognition are inscribed in the organism’s natural substratum. The question becomes important, since it helps us understand what a “naturalistic theory of cognition” might mean. “Empirical abstraction” proceeds from the object. Accordingly, the object must be given. It was one of the arguments of Kant’s transcendental theory of knowledge that in order to acquire knowledge of the object, it must already be accessible. Piaget also assumes this, only he understands the prerequisites differently. Without the input provided by the senses, it would be just as impossible to set a cognitive process in motion as without the pregiven reflexes, in particular the sucking and gripping responses. There can be, therefore, no questions here: every cognitive process is of organic origin. There would be otherwise also no way to conceive of the intellectual organizational form of humans as the sequel organization to natural-historical evolution. What is decisive, however, is that the organizational forms of humans first develop by means of specifiable mechanisms found in the interaction with external reality. This also holds for sensory activity, especially for sight. “With birth,” explains Piaget, “the reflexive perception of light and, in its wake, all reflexes are given that provide for the adaptation of the act of seeing to different circumstances (the reflexes of pupil and eyelid, both reflexes a reaction to the degree of brightness). All other dimensions of the act of seeing (perception of form, size, position and distance, surface composition, etc.) arise through a combination of reflex activity and higher capabilities.”9 All in all, empirical abstractions are determinations that the developing subject gains from the object, such as the brightness of light that causes an infant to turn its head. They manifest themselves in action schemas that set the developmental process of the mind-based life-forms in motion in the phase of 7 | On the concept of simple abstraction, cf. J. P IAGET, Les explications causales, p 20. On the concept of empirical abstraction, cf. J. P IAGET, Biological Anpassung, p 87. On P IAGETIAN concept formation and its critique, see R. VUYK , Overview and critique of Piaget’s genetic epistemology, 1965-1980. 8 | J. P IAGET, Biologische Anpassung, p 89. 9 | J. P IAGET, Das Erwachen der Intelligenz beim Kinde, p. 72.

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the first two years of life and that move it forward. They are endogenous processes that originate from the subject and which cannot be taken from the object. They, too, must be understood as coordinating achievements, which represent the beginning of logico-mathematical operations. In fact, and this is the conclusion that Piaget himself draws, there are no purely empirical abstractions. As problematic as the concept of “empirical abstraction” is, it shows how Piaget conceives of the basic problem of his investigations: the relation between organism and environment. The organism begins with natural reflexes; they in turn trigger processes of determination. The beginnings of operationalism is found in these determinations. It is based, as Piaget explains, on an assimilatory apparatus, which accepts pregiven contents, but then brings these contents—through endogenous processes on the basis of “quite a few tools” that already require the “gauging” of contents—into a form that makes them operable. For this reason, it is significant that the assimilatory apparatus is determined to be mathematical in its natural structure, since Piaget can in this way allow empirical abstractions to begin with natural mechanisms and to extend hereafter all the way to scientific experiments.10 Up to this point, however, a totally different form of reflexivism—an abstract form—had been developed. It is obvious what Piaget is driving at: he wants to make clear that the factual is pervaded from the very beginning by an operationalism, which, Piaget says, gives a logico-mathematical form to the factual.11 The hypothesis that all knowledge is, “from the very outset,” of a logico-mathematical nature gives one pause. It points, namely, as much to the natural location of the mind-based constitution of human life as to its distinctiveness vis-à-vis natural mechanisms. What humans are naturally provided with from birth are the coordinating capacities of the brain, by means of which the object appears in a rudimentary fashion in its interaction with humans. The child begins to respond to this appearances. For this reason, one might wish to view the operational capabilities of the brain as the seat of all of man‘s mind, which allows this mind-based character of human life to extend far back into phylogenesis. Neurophysiologists proceed in this manner.12 However, as fundamental as the brain’s capacities are for any form of intelligence, prior to the experience of manipulating the object world, the brain contains neither operationalism, as it first develops in logico-mathematical form, nor the forms of the object world themselves. It is one thing for Piaget to already call the beginnings of 10 | It would be worth the trouble to pursue the question as to why P IAGET is able to ascribe a mathematical nature to natural processes, even though mathematics also represents a cultural construct for him. I will abstain from detailed reflections here. 11 | J. P IAGET, Biologische Anpassung, pp. 88f. 12 | Cf. G.M. E DELMAN , Göttliche Luft, vernichtendes Feuer. Wie der Geist im Gehirn entsteht.

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operationalism in the natural reaction schemata themselves logico-mathematical; the development of the operational structures that build on these beginnings in their logico-mathematical operationalism is another thing. If Piaget had more clearly worked out the processual logic with which he operated, he would have had no trouble giving an account of the aforementioned realization that there are no purely empirical abstractions. For then the conclusion would have been that the factual, as it is initially accessible to us, possesses a form that enables “empirical” abstraction to connect up to it, to follow from it, in a processual fashion. For this reason, empirical abstractions are actually already reflexive abstractions. There is now impressive evidence that objects first have to be constructed within the limits of their self-organization, evidence not limited to investigations of the ontogenetic development of cognition.13 Moreover, even in nonhuman primates, the groundwork for competence in mathematics and physics must first be laid in the experiences gathered in the first five years (!) of ontogenesis.14 The process begins ontogenetically with the cultural position zero of birth; phylogenetically, it extends far back. After all of this one thing appears certain: an abstraction réfléchissante in the genuine sense of the word first arises out of the interaction with the external world and it determines the process of development of cognition.

3.2 Abstraction réfléchissante For Piaget the cognitive process represents a process of acquiring operational competences, a process necessary for being able to live competently in an always already preexisting reality. It becomes necessary to organize cognitive structures because the structures of cognition rest on foundations in the organism (as aforementioned), but are not simply given within the organism. They must first develop. They first make access to nature possible, and they also first make the shaping of the social world possible. It is always precarious to define the crossing of the threshold from nature to culture as the organization of the intellectual, sociocultural life-forms of mind, because the latter always remain tied to natural organization. When we enter the history of culture, we do not simply leave nature behind us. For this reason, regardless how clearly a naturalist theory of knowledge distinguishes the mind-based constitution of man from his biological organization, the intelligence, always remains an organizational form of the organism. Piaget placed for his entire life great score on this side of naturalism. Ultimately, in the way he conceived things, it was the structurally

13 | Cf. O. S ACKS , Eine Anthropologin auf dem Mars, pp. 159ff. On the ontogenetic development of object forms, cf. J. P IAGET, Der Aufbau der Wirklichkeit beim Kinde, pp. 14ff.; M.S. M AHLER ET AL ., Die psychische Geburt des Menschen, pp. 145 ff. 14 | J. L ANGER , Die universale Entwicklung, pp 119ff.

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conforming “mechanisms” that nature adopted in the development of the organism and of cognition.15 I will not pursue this point here. For understanding the development of the operationalism of logicomathematical thought it is crucial to realize that the process can be lead from the simplest beginnings in mere reaction or response to an abstraction réfléchissante. It appears to me that the key to understanding how it was at all possible to succeed in moving from a natural organizational form of existence to a mind-based one can be found in what Piaget terms “reflexive abstraction.” For the step from empirical to reflexive abstraction marks the shift of operation into another medium: that of thought and language.16 Reflexive abstraction allows the subject to become conscious of the competences he has developed up until then, and by doing so, raises his level of competence beyond its prior level. This becoming conscious of one’s competence is connected to the reorganization of that which one can already do. The process is first possible when practical competences can be objectified by virtue of their symbolically mediated representation. In other words, with reflexive abstraction a shift in focus takes place from the symbolically mediated construction of the world of objects and events to the constructed character of the subject itself, which for all practical purposes triggers a new motor of development. We must take a closer look at this development.

4. THE D E VELOPMENT OF O PER ATIONALISM 4.1 The Radical Character of Genetic Constructivism The radicalism with which Piaget seeks to show the construct-based character of the process of acquiring cognition results from his naturalism. It is not merely the organizational forms of the external world, of the objects and events, that have to be constructed; the constructive forms of the brain itself, and thus those forms by virtue of which the constructs of the world of objects and events are created, must themselves first be developed. In order to understand the process of acquiring cognitive structures it is necessary to distinguish between capacity and competence. Capacity is that which is given naturally; competence is that which is developed in operative forms. Not unimportantly, this distinction aids in the understanding of the difference and integration of natural capacity and cultural competence in nature and mind. One thing is indisputable: it is first and foremost the natural capacity of the brain that makes the development of cognitive competence possible. Moreover, this competence remains tied to this capacity. The distinction between the two keeps us from getting caught up in an aporia 15 | Cf. J. P IAGET, Biology and Knowledge; idem, Biologische Anpassung, pp. 87ff. 16 | On the following, cf. ibid., pp. 88ff.

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that is practically unavoidable for derivational-logic-based thought. It finds itself faced by the implication of a kind of homunculus in the brain. As we have discussed at length, derivational-logic-based thought finds itself forced, in order to avoid an infinite regression in argumentation, to develop the following construct: something must be already preestablished, already inherent in the given object’s foundation, which then develops out of it. In this case, it would best be served by a kind of little man (homunculus), who can already do that which the subject first acquires. Neurophysiology also had to struggle against this structural-logical aporia of a homunculus.17 The aporia can be overcome by a processual mode of thought, such as that developed by Piaget. What is revolutionary about genetic theory, as it gradually emerged from the course of Piaget’s investigations, is its ability to make us see how the formative process of the cognitive structures actually developed from a cultural position zero. In epistemological terms, primary cognitive interest is focused here on the construction of the material organization of the external world, i.e., of the organizational forms of objects and events; from a specifically sociological viewpoint, cognitive interest focuses on the organization of society. However, it is not just the interest in mathematics as motor of the natural sciences of modernity. It is above all the radicalism with which Piaget knows how to go about giving an account of the constructive process that moves him to direct his interest to the development of operationalism qua logico-mathematical constructivism. It arises together with the formation of the organizational structures of the world. The brain is self-organizing, to quote Edelman again.18 One could immediately add, however, that it is only able to organize itself in interaction with an always already preexisting reality. We should take this opportunity to note that the insight into the formative process, including that of the endogenous organization of the structures of thought, represents the exact opposite of the theory of so-called radical constructivism. For radical constructivism leads, on the basis of the assumptions at the foundation of that propagated by Maturana and Varela, to a rigid biologism of cognition, and, on the basis of the postulates of its human- and social-scientific apologists, to just as rigid a obscurantism of the cognitive process.19 No form of constructivism is less radical than that of “radical constructivism.”20 It has, namely, no way of explaining

17 | Cf. G.M. E DELMAN , Göttliche Luft, vernichtendes Feuer, p. 48. 18 | Ibid., p. 48. 19 | On the former, cf. H.R. M ATURANA and F. VARELA , Autopoietische Systeme, pp. 170ff., and idem, Der Baum der Erkenntnis; on the latter, cf. the contributions in S.J. S CHMIDT, Der Diskurs des Radikalen Konstruktivismus. 20 | Cf. the splendid critique by G. S CHULTE, Der blinde Fleck in Luhmanns Systemtheorie, pp 35ff; further the critique by W. M EINEFELD, Realität und Konstruktion, pp 99ff

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how these constructs arise. And, as has been admitted, due to its lack of access to reality, it is not able to distinguish between reality and illusion.21

4.2 What Operationalism Means We have already established: Piaget’s investigations of the ontogenetic development of cognition concentrate to a great degree on the development of operationalism. What Piaget means by operationalism can be succinctly defined: the ability to form relations between distinct dimensions. Which ones? Those that are at all possible! Operations that are at all possible are those relations between distinct dimensions that can be formed independently of the material peculiarities of these dimensions. Operations are purely formal in this sense. For this reason, the development of operationalism entails the development of algebraic logic. Piaget let, therefore, the development of operational competence come to an end in the algebraic group.22 The reversibility that Piaget time and again called to mind in the defining of operational thought apparently must be understood as a heuristic indicator: formalized relations between distinct dimensions can be read as equations in every direction. In the context of our discussions: i.e., laying the basis of the cognitive process for history, the analysis of operationalism, as simple as it initially looks in the coordinations of the actions of children and as technical as it appears, results in a breath-taking perspective. The development of operationalism begins in the early ontogenesis of each and every member of the species; it can be continued on the adult level. The latter occurred in history. Regardless how the processes of social change may have been triggered and determined, they could not have been continued without the development of operationalism. This conclusion holds especially with regard to the significance that logicoalgebraic operations have gained in modern physics, i.e., in micro-physics. For this reason it is understandable why Piaget was able to believe that the developmental process of thought as a whole could be made comprehensible by means of the development of operationalism. Piaget associates with the last of the four stages, the formal-operational stage, the idea that the rapid process of mathematicalization in the scientific revolution was able to proceed from this stage. Regardless how one should understand

21 | H.R. M ATURANA , Gespräch, p 70 22 | Cf. J. P IAGET, Psychologie der Intelligenz, pp 43ff. The development of operationalism proceeds through four phases of development in early ontogenesis: The sensorimotor stage 0-ca. 2 years of age The preoperational stage ca. 2-6/7 years of age The concrete-operational stage ca. 7-11/12 years of age The formal-operational stage ca. 11/12 years of age

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this process, it is indisputable that it goes beyond the stage of formal-operational competence.23 The only question is: what were its prerequisites?

5. C ONSTRUCTIVE R E ALISM Piaget’s constructivism is—this has been shown by preceding discussions—a constructivism that is first produced in the process of acquiring the intellectual life-forms of man. This distinguishes this theory from others and marks its radicalism vis-à-vis biologically reductionistic theories of knowledge. Naturalism creates a foundation for Piaget’s theory of knowledge that does not simply point, in phenomenal terms, to the interlinked character of natural and intellectual forms of existence and leave it at that. Piaget’s constructivism becomes concrete: Piaget’s genetic theory presents more than just the interpenetration of natural organization and a mind-based form of existence; it describes the way in which the development of this mind-based organizational form occurs in the organizational forms of thought. A naturalism that identifies —in the way previously discussed — the organizational forms of thought as the acquisitional process of humanity can only be a constructive realism. This consequence is part of, as we discussed at the outset, the “logic of biological systems,” and thus of life. That which has not already been developed in the course of natural history in the interaction between organism and its environment has to be formed on the basis of experience: in this way one could define the principle qua biological principle prior to its realization. My interest is reserved for the other side of this principle, the epistemological side. The epistemologically outstanding side of Piaget’s theory is the way it realized constructivism as constructive realism. For in this way constructivism takes on a sense that makes it comprehensible why and in what way we find access to an always already preexisting reality. It does not make sense any longer to seek to orient a theory of cognition in opposition to “copy-theories” of reality.24 Defining one’s place in history is a precondition for effective reflection in times of social and cultural change. The consciousness of convergence has been well documented since Montaigne; since 1781 this consciousness has existed in a systematically worked-out form. What needs to be done today is to reconcile constructivism with man’s competence to act and thus with the pragmatics of man’s competence to give shape to sociocultural realities. This holds for 23 | C.N. A LEXANDER, E.J. L ANGER, R.M. O ET TER (eds) Higher Stages of Development: Adult Growth beyond Formal Operations. 24 | As do H.R. M ATURANA and F. VARELA , Der Baum der Erkenntnis. L UHMANN ‘S work also appears to be defined by the notion of the necessity of taking a stand against the ontology of antiquity and the Middle Ages. N. L UHMANN , Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft, p. 176, passim.

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pragmatics in dealings with nature and for pragmatics in the formative process of societal forms of organization. Piaget’s theory is effective here in that it knows how to explain exactly what radical constructivism proves incapable of explaining: why the constructs of knowledge are formed in such a way that it is possible to make one’s way between two trees or to find safety in the face of a gathering storm. For the revolutionary step with which Piaget initiated the sea change in the theory of knowledge consisted in proceeding from the organism and clarifying empirically how the development of cognition became possible. Neither he nor the developmental psychologists preceding him doubted for a moment that the developmental process takes place in the interaction between the organism and an always already preexisting reality. For this reason, Piaget also did not doubt for a moment that in this process genuine knowledge of the world of objects and events was attained. For him the development of cognition is from the very beginning a process in which the aim is to develop those cognitive forms that make it possible to gain knowledge about the object that allow man handle it competently and, with advances in knowledge, increasingly more so.25

6. P R AGMATISM AND C ONSTRUCTIVE R E ALISM 6.1 Constitutional Disequilibrium The question as to why the organism develops a cognitive system at all was one that we sought to clarify in our discussions of man‘s makeup, his anthropological constitution. The brain very simply begins to form those links that make more efficient dealings with the external world possible. That is the first step. The second follows with the formation of a reflexivism that is tied to the acquisition of the competence to act. I think that this explanation puts us squarely on the tracks of the evolutionary process. It is impossible to overlook the advantage it offers: in our presuppositions we stay within the limits that are drawn by the natural constellation of conditions. Piaget favors the functional explanation of the imbalance between organism and environment. As we have also discussed, it fits very well with causal explanation. If one follows Piaget, the efforts of the organism to free itself from its constitutional disequilibrium and to reach equilibrium represents the moving force underlying the developmental process of cognition. On each new level of development it moves the organism to ever more complex forms in which an equilibrium can be produced. Initially the disequilibrium exists between the endogenous action and operational schemata of the child on the one hand and the “properties of the objects that are forced [upon the child] by experience” on the other. With advancing development, however, the creation of equilibrium 25 | J. P IAGET, Das Erwachen der Intelligenz beim Kinde.

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becomes more complicated by the addition of the disequilibrium between equivalent or adjacent subsystems and the disequilibrium between one and several subsystems and the system as a whole.26 Subsystems are individual action cycles that are formed between the organism and external reality and which, with increasing differentiation, become increasingly compelled to solidify into the unity of the overall system, and thus to an integrated actional competence. Piaget’s understanding of the disequilibria between the forms of thought and the properties of objects is as concrete and empirical as one can imagine. It is truly the object, or more precisely, the information that is obtained from the object27 that the child first is unable to integrate. The two basic mechanisms of the process of acquiring cognitive structures— namely, assimilation and accommodation—must be understood in terms of this basic idea about the development of cognition. Assimilation consists of the extension of the schemata at one‘s disposal to further cases of application in external reality. Cognitive schemata prove here to be operative mechanisms that seek to incorporate everything in external reality within themselves that is suitable. But not everything is. External reality is independent and clashes in its independent organization with the organism . The organism is not capable of simply recognizing how this reality is organized. What it does experience, however, is the resistance that reality affords. Why is this the case? This lies within the nature of the schema. A schema would lack its organizing function if it could subsume everything beneath it. The independence of the external world thus makes accommodation necessary. It consists in adaptations to the properties of the objects within the limits of that which is possible in terms of adaptation with the schemata developed up until that point. One can summarize our discussions by stating that the motor of development is the organism or the subject that is just forming itself. The latter finds itself within a reality that it seeks to influence, since it has to live in it. The environment is, as Piaget says, the object to be taken over.28 But there is only one way to take over an object: by having the organism or the subject incorporate something from its properties into its schemata. This is exactly what I call “constructive realism” or also “realistic constructivism.” The construct-based aspect consists in the fact that it is the organism that from the very beginning determines the structures with which it takes in or grasps its environment. These structures, however, are constituted such that they really are able to assimilate the contents of the environment. Piaget defined this state of affairs rather infelicitously. He declared: “These structures are added to the properties of the object by serving as

26 | J. P IAGET, Biologische Anpassung, p. 100; idem, Die Äquilibration der kognitiven Strukturen, pp. 16ff. 27 | Idem, Biologische Anpassung, p 87. 28 | Ibid., p 78.

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their assimilating framework.”29 What is meant is apparent: the structures incorporate something of the reality of the object into themselves. How Piaget conceives of the relationship between construct formation and reality is best seen in terms of a category that he paid great attention to: that of causality. The striking significance that Piaget attributes to the development of causality is not without reason. Causality helps one come to terms with the independent dynamics of nature. And for this very reason, the relationship between construct formation and reality can be most clearly defined in terms of causality.

6.2 The Structure of Causality Piaget clarifies the relationship between constructivism and reality with regard to causality right at the beginning of his 1958 treatise on causality. Here it is stated: In genetic terms, the operations transform the real in a totally general way; they correspond to that which the subject can do to objects in his deductive manipulations; they are initially tied to the material, but are increasingly accessible to formal improvement. By contrast, causality expresses that which the objects do when they influence each other and the subject. It is thus unimaginable that there is not an intimate connection between these two kinds of action. Otherwise the logico-mathematical constructs of the subject would never capture reality, whereas reality would define the operations of the subject, but without the subject knowing it . 30 According to this, Piaget unequivocally assumes that the category of causality allows us to grasp the real processes in the external world. Causality consists in grasping that which occurs in the external world. It belongs to the object side of reality. Piaget goes so far as to practically speak of two systems: that of operations and that of causality. This leads him to ask how one should understand the interplay between the two. In this respect he now explains that the constructive operations, the further they are formalized, the better suited they are to grasp real processes. For, so he reasons, it is precisely the function of the operations to assimilate reality. For this reason, the subject endeavors unceasingly to form his operations to grasp reality. The subject does not copy reality, and it does not create a duplicate of it. It does, however, seek and find forms with which it can encompass reality.31 Success stimulates the process: causal processes influence the development of operations and lead to their further internal development. Operations that succeed in this way react upon the process as a whole and allow for an increasingly more successful grasping of the object. 29 | Ibid., p 79. 30 | Idem, Les explicationes causales, p 11. 31 | Ibid., p 26.

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The extent to which Piaget seeks to give expression to the notion that causality is really a force on the level of objects is shown by the distinction between applied and attributed operations. Piaget says that one can apply operations—numbers, for instance—to objects in the external world without believing that these operations are part of that world. Admittedly, the child first sees numbers in the objects themselves—Aristotle is also still accustomed to treat numbers in this manner.32 However, with increasing formalization, numbers are attributed to the subject as operations and only applied to the object world. On the other hand, there are operations that, though they originate from the subject, as all operations do, and are also brought to the object world, this nevertheless occurs in such a way that one can ascribe these operations to the process of reality itself. In other words, the attributed operations capture something that is inherent in the objects themselves. The relationship between operation and reality, as it presents itself in constructive realism, can accordingly be summarized in two hypotheses: 1. In order to be able to handle an object world at all, man must develop a processuality that allows him to construct relations between distinct entities, mental tools as it were. These are the operations in a strict sense. They are brought to the object world as formes appliquées. 2. In order to grasp objects in terms of the properties that are really part of the objects themselves, it is necessary for man to develop forms about which it must be said that they appear (aufscheinen) in the object itself. These are the attributed forms: les formes attribuées. Causality is one such form attributed to the world of objects and events itself. It is evident that causality, even as a forme attribuée, is nothing that could be derived from the occurrences in the world of objects. It is a construct that is operationally formed. It would be a misunderstanding to understand it purely in ontological terms. It is, however, a construct about which we must assume that it incorporates reality within it. For this reason, the complementary misunderstanding would be no less of one: Piaget is far from viewing causality as merely a subjective instrument that satisfies our need for consistent explanation and, also, at most, satisfies our further need to represent the world as objective. He understands causality as an unavoidably necessary attribution to the objects themselves. The very notion that we cover over objects with our categories is, in Piaget’s view, a typically positivist and conventionalist error. Moreover, for Piaget, the inherent necessity of causality is not a necessity created purely by the subject, but is instead grounded in the nomological relationships of an external, ontic stratum. Piaget even goes so far as to assume an isomorphism 32 | Cf. the distinction between counting numbers and number in A RISTOTLE ’S Physikvorlesung IV, p 11. On A RISTOTLE ‘S concept of number, cf. G. M ARTIN, “Platons Lehre von der Zahl und ihre Darstellung durch Aristoteles,” pp 191-203.

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between construct and object in the way each organizes itself. I will cite the passage in its entirety here, in order to show how ridiculous it is to try to lay claim to Piaget in support of the cause of “radical constructivism”.33 Piaget construes the concept of attribution in analogy to that of application. The attributed form displays three distinguishing moments: (a) Qu’il s’agit de propriétés des objets qui existaient en eux (à une certaine échelle) avant que le sujet ne les y découvre; (b) Que pour les atteindre le sujet a besoin de construire des opérations applicable à ces objets, cette construction comportant une part nécessaire d’abstractions réfléchissantes; (c) Mais que cette application ne consiste pas simplement en de tels cas à soumettre les objets à des structures librement choisies (comme c’est le cas des applications sans attributions) et revient en plus à établir un isomorphisme entre les structures opératoires utilisées et les caractères objectifs découverts grâce à elles, cet isomorphisme assurant ainsi une attribution et fournissant par cela même le principe d’une explication qui satisfait les conditions de l’assimilation intellectuelle, c’est-à-dire de la compréhension des objets par le sujet .”34

6.3 The Problem of Form and Content Piaget’s constructive realism entails a number of problems, and it leaves numerous questions unanswered. The relationship between form and content is both: a problem and an unanswered question. One thing is beyond doubt: within Piaget’s constructivism, all cognition is without reservation a construct. If one assumes that the cognitive agent gains knowledge of reality, in other words, if one demonstrates that constructivism finds access to the ontic, then the question arises how the determination of the object comes about, without simply being a copy. Piaget sought to make the integration of the two systems understandable with the concepts of form and content. The subject in his or her operations makes the framework available by means of which material properties can be grasped. The idea here is that material properties are grasped via operations, but that they originate from the object itself. This position is encumbered with two problems, which must at least be cited, even if they are not to be discussed here. One problem lies in the separation of form and content. It creates the impression that only form comes from the subject and that content simply reproduces reality. The other problem lies in the definition of the form by means of which contents are to be grasped. Let us clarify how the problem of form and content presents itself in a historico-genetic theory. The practices of everyday life make it imperative (and the same holds, by the way, for any serious research) to attribute certain assumptions that we make about the world of objects and events to reality itself, namely, pre33 | E. V. G LASERSFELD, Wissen, Sprache und Wirklichkeit, pp 99ff. 34 | J. P IAGET, Les explications causales, p 68; see also J. P IAGET and R. G ARCIA , Psychogenèse, p 3.

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cisely in the form and with the contents with which we grasp the world. As much as we may emphasize that for the molecular physicist the object and its surrounding medium merge into one another without boundaries, we must posit the bounds of a tree as real. It will not do to point out that positing something as real is also our construct. Pragmatics puts an end to the redundancy of the argument. Pragmatics not only requires the assumption that there is an external reality, but even more, that it presents itself in a definite way in that which makes up reality for us. Physical objects in everyday life are always objects that have bounds. Admittedly, “correspondence” is a vague concept; one can brilliantly polemicize against such a notion by not even allowing the question to even arise of how it is possible to come to terms with an autonomous reality.35 The critique of knowledge cannot do without a relation of compatibility or adequacy in some form. This is one side of the problem. It is no less important to establish the other side: the compatibility or adequacy between construct and reality may be viewed very narrowly; it still makes no sense at all to act as if we had grasped “reality in itself” in these constructs. Reality always exists only for us, and this means within the respective constructs with which man grasps this reality. It is, however, hard to say whether Piaget actually intended the form-content dichotomy to be understood in this way. The other problem lies in the determination of the forms through which the world of objects and events becomes accessible. For Piaget there are only logico-mathematical operations. The material structures of the world of objects are, according to him, formed via the same operations as are algebraic relations. It is not hard to imagine that here Piaget once again took his lead from the defining role of mathematics in physics. This is an untenable position for understanding the object world, and especially its immanent dynamics, such as we maintain in everyday understanding of our lifeworld and as we find in history. I have already pointed this out on several occasions.36 U. Wenzel was not satisfied with the earlier treatment, as found in the numerous discussions that we held. For this reason, I will return to this subject.37 In the present context, the preceding discussion of the question of how one is to understand the constructivism of the human mind should help us point out a much more general deficit in Piagetian theory: the explanations that Piaget’s genetic theory provide for the process of acquiring cognition lag far behind the empirical evidence of the investigations from which the explanations can be taken.

35 | N. L UHMANN, Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft, p 177. 36 | Cf. G. D UX , Die ontogenetische und historische Entwicklung des Geistes, pp 173ff. 37 | See Chap. 16, Sect. 3.

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7. R EQUIREMENTS OF A G ENE TIC THEORY Piaget’s genetic theory is a structuralist theory. The concept of structure upon which bases his theory is tied to the development of operationalism. The stages of operationalism that he established are characterized by three features:38 1. Each stage has its own overall organization of operations. 2. There is a sequence to development such that each subsequent stage leads to a new organization of cognitive structures. 3. The sequence is irreversible. The concept of stages provoked a profound critique.39 This concept only interests me with regard to its empirical determination: it is a methodological construct. Piaget establishes stages on the basis of the presence or absence of specific accomplishments. What interests him is what can be done or what cannot. The only other question that interests him is: if a stage has been reached, how was this managed, by which means was it reached? We are acquainted with the answer: the development is produced by an abstraction réfléchissante. As important as the discovery of this process is, it does not free us of the task of determining more precisely how the process of interaction between organism/subject and environment takes place, in what way reality is assimilated via constructs, and especially, how the abstraction réfléchissante is achieved. And once again the previously discussed deficit becomes noticeable, of not having distinguished the construction of the object world in the structures peculiar to it from the structures of operationalism. The process of learning takes place in terms of the world of objects, in terms of nature just as much as in terms of the social world. In the process of organizing the material world of objects and events, the development of algebraic operationalism is also advanced, but there is a completely different dimension to the levels of learning. In practical terms, learning occurs by means of substantive knowledge of the real world of objects and events. And this is what we are interested in. The deficiency in the explanation of the learning process is already evident in the early phase of development. The long phase of the so-called preoperational period between the ages of 2 and 6/7 remains an empty field, about which only one thing can be established: it is not yet operational. In the context of our discussions, the methodological deficit has farreaching consequences: we have a lasting interest in learning not only how 38 | Cf. J. P IAGET, Biologie und Erkenntnis, pp 17ff.; R. S ELMAN , Die Entwicklung des sozialen Verstehens, pp 71ff.; C.J. B RAINERD, “Entwicklungsstufe, Struktur und Entwicklungstheorie,” pp 207ff. 39 | Cf. R.L. C AMPBELL and M.H. B ICKHARD, Knowing Levels and Developmental Stages.

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the world is constructed in the mathematical structures of operationalism, but much more so, how it develops in categories. Categorical structures, however, cannot be simply equated with logico-mathematical ones. And this is linked to a second problem: in the development of operational competence, it is unimportant which objects and events of the external world are involved in the operations. Accordingly, there is no methodological reason for Piaget to take into account that the constructive process occurs in a communicative process. The fact that actional and cognitive competence can only be acquired communicatively has, however, far-reaching consequences for the construction of the world. Communication with an always more competent other represents the condition for the possibility of the process of construction taking place at all. But even more importantly than this, the fact that interaction chiefly occurs with social others has a lasting impact on the definition of categorical structures of objects and events. Finally, there is a third deficit at work. The problem that is concealed by it will occupy our attention in the following. Piaget initially assumed not only that the constructive process of operationalism begins for every member of the species from the same cultural position zero, but, more importantly, that this process develops up until formal-operational competence is reached by each member of the species (which children in our society attain around the 11th year of their lives). There is no doubt about the first assumption, but the second one is not the case. This error had grave consequences. It resulted in the question remaining undiscussed of how the constructive process of developing a world and forms of practice in this world takes shape historically (a question initially not raised at all and later only vaguely). It also resulted in Piaget believing he could assume that by demonstrating development up until formal-operational competence he had also found the connection to the rapid mathematization of physics in modernity. In actual fact the question of how the ontogenetically begun process continues on the level of adults in history must be taken up much more systematically, if the chance for cognitive critique inherent in genetic theory is not to remain unexploited. Not least of all in view of the resistance still encountered by a theory of historical development today, there is good reason for us to focus our interest on the following idea: Let us assume that the development of the sociocultural organizational forms of existence takes place in all societies at all times in the early ontogenesis of each member of the species from a cultural position zero. Let us further assume that this occurs by means of an initially identical development of cognitive structures. One must then ask how this development was further advanced on the level of adults, in order to achieve understanding of the historical cultures that we actually find already existing. That ontogenetic development could be the key to the understanding of the history of mind, that is what Piaget’s investigations allowed to become a revolution in the theory of knowledge. What needs to be realized is that this is what first opened the way into history. For this reason, the all-

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decisive question is: in what sense can the ontogenetically initiated logic of development be followed in history? Nothing is yet said in this way as to how this question is to be answered, what consequences are linked to the process of reconstruction for understanding those cognitive interpretations that we find existing in different societies over the course of history. The historical perspective, however, is starting to prevail in those scientific disciplines in which cognitive critique is kept tied to the empirical.40 Although Piaget himself had his eye on historical connections, he developed interesting but far from clear ideas about them.

40 | Cf. the work of E. B ATES , Language and Context.

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1. L INKS B E T WEEN O NTOGENE TIC AND H ISTORICAL THOUGHT It seems to me no question that for Piaget consciousness that man is part of natural-historical evolution formed the backdrop for his ontogenetic investigations. There would have been no other way to pursue the program of a “naturalist theory of development.” This consciousness, however, did not go much further than to the realization that on this side of the virtual threshold to the recent Homo sapiens every member of the species begins the developmental process anew in early ontogenesis and continues it up until a developmental state that enables him to survive at the developmental level of his society. For this reason, it is even more surprising that during the entire process of research indications of parallels to historical societies are found in his studies on the cognitive development of the Genevan children without Piaget himself coming upon the idea of making the relationship between ontogenesis and history into the object of systematic study. He had to first be pushed upon it. As I have already mentioned, there were two basic assumptions that appeared to him to be unquestionable: (1) The operational structures of thought, as he was able to establish them in the ontogenetic course of development of the Genevan children, were attributed an absolutely universal significance; for this reason, they also had to be at the foundation of every specific historical culture. (2) The final stage of this development, the formal-operational competences, represent the initial structures of European science.1 This notion may have reinforced his viewpoint of perceiving the ontogenetic developmental process exclusively in terms of those structures that had proven so immensely favorable for the success of science: the logico-mathematical operations. However one may understand the relationship between ontogenesis and history, these two basic assumptions are not tenable. First of all, it does not make any sense how the development of the ontogenetic structures, if they were genuinely universal without reservation, could have resulted 1 | J. P IAGET and R. G ARCIA , Psychogenèse et histoire des sciences, p 17.

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in the cognitive systems of specifically historical cultures. Secondly, it is not readily evident why the advance to the structures of scientific thought did not take place much earlier. I will take the question up in detail in the next chapter, but the question of the way in which Piaget himself created links between ontogenetic and historico-cognitive developments is worth pursuing first. The ties between ontogenetic cognitive structures and their developmental logic, on the one hand, and history, on the other, first presents itself simply as a phenomenal finding: each of the ontogenetic developments of one of the cognitive competences studied practically forced one to perceive parallel formations in history, especially in the increasingly more thoroughly researched ancient societies. This resulted in an interesting inversion of the situation of reporting: whereas up until then the reports on the worldview of ancient societies were pervaded by the observation that their thinking in many ways resembles that of children, now conversely—instead of the largely narrative recounts of the thought of ancient society—the clinical studies of thought in the early phases of the ontogenesis of European children were compared with the cognitions of ancient societies. I would like to take this opportunity to already point out a significant distinction: Piaget’s comparison is a comparison in the developmental logic of cognitive structures. In none of his comparisons is there even the slightest intimation that the adults in so-called primitive societies could be simply children of advanced age. Piaget did, however, point to the comparability of structures from the very outset of his activities in epistemological research.2 Thus, just as in the past the lightly made comparisons in ethnological reports never resulted in any systematization and remained at the level of simple references to careless statements, Piaget also drew connections in history during the many years of his creative work, without giving much thought as to how such connections should be understood. He was, however, aware from the outset that there was a problem here.3 It is possible that for this very reason he was careful not to make any hasty decisions in this regard. The most striking analogies result when one compares the worldview of children in its substantive explanatory patterns with that of early societies. The subjectivist construction of reality both here and there simply cannot be overlooked. One can discover animistic and artificial notions and the associated magical practices in both interpretive systems. In fact, Piaget pointed to these connections numerous times in his early work on The Child’s Conception of the World. For that which he terms the “realism of the child,” i.e., “the projection of the mind-based connections of things,”

2 | Cf. in particular the early essay on the question of physical causality in his coming to terms with B RUNSCHVICQ . Cf. J. P IAGET, “L’expérience humaine,” pp. 586ff. On this, R.L. F ETZ , “Naturdenken beim Kind und bei Aristoteles.” 3 | J. P IAGET, Das Weltbild des Kindes, p 144.

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he considers explanations such as Frazer offered for them;4 and for the intuition that all things have consciousness he also refers to the reports on the views of “primitive peoples.“5 Even if Piaget exercised caution in the interpretation of analogies, he left no doubt that a developmental-logical sequence of stages was involved in one realm as much as in the other. And since he understands every form of development as the development of operational structures, there can also be no doubt that the comparison points to the same developmental level of structures. Nonetheless, he leaves it, for the time being, as a “similarity”: One can hardly deny the similarity in logico-mathematical operations between prelogical forms of thought or the concrete numbers tied to collections, which one finds among primitives, and the preconceptual and prenumerical structures of the child between 2 and 7 years of age. 6 Piaget’s restraint in making any definitive interpretation of the findings does not deter him from placing “children and primitives” in their conceptions at the beginnings of cognitive development and locating “civilized adults” at its more advanced end.7 He explains explicitly that the ontogenetic development of a sequence of stages can be rediscovered in historical development. The latter also seeks a state of equilibrium in the formation of cognitive systems. One rediscovers this process in its broad features on the level of historical development, which builds up in stages from elementary, later perceptual or pictorial actions at its beginning to a well-defined system of concrete operations, which in retrospect can be axiomatized in different ways: the sequential principle here is, as we have seen, given by the direction of development against a reversible state of equilibrium, where development proceeds from an initial state of irreversibility and simplicity in the sense of noncompoundability. One can speak in this case, without becoming metaphorical, of a genetic series and its convergence toward a certain limiting value. The latter is defined by a form of equilibrium, i.e., by a specific form of overall composition.8 Such comparisons can be found in almost all areas of the development of categorical forms. Especially the development of the understanding of time gives Piaget reason to emphasize the comparison between ontogenetic and historical development. Children in industrial societies at the preoperational stage, and thus until about their sixth or seventh year of life, have not yet formed a fully 4 5 6 7 8

| | | | |

Ibid., p. 134. Ibid., p. 150. J. P IAGET, Die Entwicklung des Erkennens, vol. II, p. 75. Ibid., I:165. Ibid., I:43.

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developed, operational concept of time and for this reason also do not have a concept of speed according to which time and distance can be succinctly related. And just as little do the members of early societies.9 Both lack a shared, homogenous time that encompasses all the events of the world.10 If one accepts these comparisons, which are dictated by the material and, for the time being, not pursued further in a theoretical sense, then there can be no doubt that Piaget located thought in early societies—in structural terms—at a preoperational stage. The analogy between childlike and early thought attains special status in morals. It simply cannot be overlooked that the principle of “objective responsibility” is to be found in the same manner at the start of the moral development of the child and of history. There exists, Piaget explains, a kinship between the segmental or mechanical solidarity of simple societies, as Durkheim analyzed them, and groups of children from five to eight years of age.11 In both there is a real-ontological consciousness of rules: rules are viewed like physical entities; when they are broken, it is the violation itself and not the moment of subjective attributability that is alone decisive. Here, too, the child’s and “primitive mentality” are in agreement in tracing rules back to a transcendental will as their origin. “On this point,” Piaget explains, “the theory of the origin of religious feeling in the relationship of the child appears to us to be especially plausible.”12 Piaget also considers ontogenesis and history to be more clearly determined by the same law of development in morality than in pure cognition: the development runs its course from its beginnings in the heteronomy of morals until its ultimate equilibrium is found in autonomy. Piaget had ever-greater success in perceiving cognitive development in history against the developmental backdrop of the ontogenetic process of stages. This is seen when he explicitly raises the question of what the cause may have been for overcoming the preoperational stage. Two factors were occasionally considered, and there is a certain epistemological interest in underscoring the intimate interaction between them and their convergent effect in the sense of a decentering of thought. The first is the dissolution of the original social units into larger and denser totalities, which led to both an economic division of labor and to the psychological differentiation of individuals. The other is the advance in technologies tied to the division of labor and a mental differentiation.13 9 | Ibid., II:48. 10 | Ibid., p. 75. 11 | Idem, Das moralische Urteil beim Kinde, p. 111. In the interpretation of findings, P IAGET adopts from D URKHEIM his model of the constraint that adults exert upon youth, and introduces this argument into the ontogenetic explanation. This does not seem very sensible to me. 12 | Ibid., p. 101. 13 | Idem, Die Entwicklung des Erkennens, II:77.

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Accordingly, the stage of concretely operational thought is—roughly speaking—reached in archaic civilizations. Piaget explicates this thought historically in terms of the achievements of the Egyptians14 and the Chaldeans.15 For Piaget the focus of historical interest prior to modernity, however, is on antiquity.16 The development of cognition enters the formaloperational stage with the Greeks. The pre-Socratics, according to Piaget, had already overcome an initial phenomenalism; they begin to separate reality from the mere appearances of their perception and, above all, they begin to reflect upon the constructed character of conceptual reality. Reality starts to become relative for man. The decentering that occurs here, vis-à-vis concrete-operational thought, cannot be overlooked. History only moves slowly. Greek philosophers certainly develop formal thought, but their image of the physical world lags behinds the formal achievements of modernity. Piaget’s explanation here is that Aristotle saw himself compelled to return to common sense in the face of the speculations, especially on the part of the atomists and in the face of “Platonic mathematics.” In cognitive terms this was tied to a backwards movement in the direction of concrete operations and was thus a regression.17 For this reason, overall, Greek thought is comparable to that which “psychogenesis shows us at the developmental stage halfway between concrete and formal operations ...” There is no doubt about the problematic status of this explanatory scheme of regression, introduced as it is, as is so often the case in Piaget, in an ad hoc manner. Nonetheless, the placement of Greek and especially Aristotelian thought halfway between concrete and formal operations is consistent with that which Piaget elsewhere analyzes as the developmental stage of the individual categorical forms in Aristotle. For instance, he attributes to the Aristotelian consciousness of time the persistence of a spatial fixation.18 It is, however, above all the completely subjectivist concept of causality that gives Piaget cause to refrain from viewing Greek thought as having achieved the full stage of formaloperational thought. Let us ignore here the fact that the lack of distinction between the acquisition of operational competence and the construction and elaboration of categorical forms makes itself evident in an especially serious way in the estimation of the state of development of cognition in Greek thought.19 —The subjectivist interpretation of reality cannot be 14 | Ibid., I:58, 261. 15 | Ibid., II:77f. 16 | On the following, cf. esp. ibid., II:80ff. 17 | Explicitly stated in ibid. 18 | J. P IAGET, Die Bildung des Zeitbegriffs beim Kinde, pp. 80, 140f., 174f. 19 | The problem can still not be mastered today without this distinction. Unsatisfactory for this reason is R.L. F ETZ , “Naturdenken beim Kind und bei Aristoteles,” pp. 501ff. On this distinction itself, cf. below (Chap. 16). On A RISTOTELE ’S understanding of causality in developmental-logical terms, cf. the clarification yielded by the work of U. WENZEL , Vom Ursprung zum Prozeß.

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overcome simply by the acquisition of formal-operational thought.— The only thing of interest for us in the present context is the fact that Piaget rediscovers the ontogenetic sequence of stages in the course of history and the manner in which he does so. And here the uncertain classification of Greek thought now gives us the opportunity to define the formal-operational stage in a way that at least offers promising perspectives for historical understanding. Ontogenetically, the formal-operational stage distinguishes itself in that thought frees itself from conceptions of concrete activity in concrete situations and carries out operations purely as mental activity. An adolescent on the formal-operational level is capable of thinking in a hypothetically deductive manner. His starting assumptions need in no way be in accord with reality; it depends solely on the logical character of the conclusion drawn from given premises. Both children and adults at the preceding stage, the concrete-operational one, are not capable of such conclusions.20 Operations on the formal-operational level are the same as on the concrete-operational level. But now they are removed from a concrete context. They are operations in the realm of operations. Piaget explains this as follows: Formal thought, by contrast, consists in reflections on operations (in the genuine sense of the word), and thus in operating with operations or their results and, accordingly, in the creation of second-degree groupings of operations. 21 When Piaget speaks here of reflections on operations, the operations meant here are first-degree operations, i.e., concrete-operational ones. When the formal-operational stage is reached, a state of equilibrium is attained. This leaves but one thing to do: now to elaborate and extend that which has already been reached structurally. At least this is the way that Piaget’s genetic epistemology must appear to the reader; and this is most likely the way that Piaget himself intended it to. With regard to the historical structures of cognition, this raises a number of unanswered questions: (1) Has this state of equilibrium at the formal-operational stage been reached everywhere? (2) If it has been reached everywhere, to what extent can the development of thought in modernity, in the procedures of scientific cognition, still go beyond it? Is modern development simply an elaboration of the final ontogenetic stage? With regard to the first question, it is extremely irritating in retrospect to see that Piaget proceeds from the universality of a developmental process from the sensorimotor stage to the formal-operational one. This contradiction became possible because Piaget—regardless of all of the al20 | Concrete examples in adults of this are found in S. S CRIBNER, “Denkweisen und Sprechweisen,” 311ff.; on the untenable construal given the findings by S CRIBNER , following C OLES, cf. the aforementioned work of U. W ENZEL . 21 | J. P IAGET, Psychologie der Intelligenz, p. 168.

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lusions to historical relationships—always put aside the compelling question of how historical findings are to be explained and contented himself with ad hoc assumptions about specific societies. The question that logically arises here, of how one is to explain the historical process in the case of a nonuniversal development, at least of the more recent stages, need in no way to be posed in this way. We will immediately turn to a detailed discussion of Piaget’s explanatory efforts. Piaget is much more certain about his answer to the second question: the question of development in modernity. He explains the difference between it and the prescientific stage in terms of the limits at which Greek thought came to a standstill. We have seen that Piaget certifies that the thought of Greek philosophers, at least in its approach, reached the formal-operational stage. Nevertheless, there was something lacking, especially in regard to mathematical thought, both algebraic and geometric, that was only to be acquired for the first time in modernity: a going beyond operating with operations, a reflection on operations, a thematizing of operations as purely subjective operations.22 This, however, indicates yet another increase in operational competence. What does it consist of? The step from the concrete-operational stage to the formal-operational stage represents the creation of a second-degree operation in the sense that first-degree operations can now be thematized independently of their concrete contents as operations. If this is the case, then the concomitant reflexiveness of operations can be raised to another stage by thematizing formal operations as purely formal ones and, in so doing, becoming conscious of their nature as mental groupings of the subject. If this occurs, they can also be further investigated in terms of their immanent logicity. The Greeks were not capable of this third-degree operation; this stage was only reached in modern times. In his definition of the next step beyond the Greeks, Piaget follows the argument of P. Boutroux in declaring: The mathematical ideal of truth that was pursued in this period [modernity] consists in his view in an infinite and autonomous operative construct, which allows us to speak of a historical becoming aware of operations in contrast to the paucity of such consciousness in the contemplative stance of the Greeks. 23 The natural question is: what stopped the Greeks from going beyond the formal-operational stage as a second-degree reflection? Piaget explains: the Greek’s subject was not decentered enough. It did not sufficiently grasp that it is its own mental operations within which the cognitive process moves. For this reason it cannot thematize the operation as such; it attributes a latent ontological status to operations. For Protagoras, for instance, numbers are contained within things. Under such premises, 22 | On the following, cf. J. P IAGET, Die Entwicklung des Erkennens I:259ff. 23 | Ibid., I:267, with reference to P. B OUTROX , L’idéal scientifique des mathematiciens dans l’antiquité et les temps modernes.

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it is impossible to discover negative numbers. In geometry as well the constructs are not truly understood as operations, but as entities encumbered with qualities. Why, however, the Greeks remained stuck at precisely this point of development and why it was possible to take the step beyond this point in modernity is a question that Piaget does not raise and which cannot, at any rate, be answered with psychogenetic explanations alone. It requires an explicitly historico-genetic theory of development. Piaget was quite a distance from such a theory if only because it is an approach that reverses the process, something essential for the later stages of development: If we must assume that the late stages were not reached by earlier societies, and if, moreover, development progressed beyond the formal-operational stage in modernity, then the reason for this has to be sought in societal developments. But this also makes it necessary to revise the ontogenetic theory of development. I will return to this question. What first needs to be done is to follow the line of argument with which Piaget integrated references to history into his genetic theory of knowledge.

2. A T TEMP TS TO E XPL AIN THE C ONNECTION B E T WEEN O NTOGENESIS AND H ISTORY It has often been concluded that Piaget carried out his critique of knowledge from a “retrospective” perspective.24 This is nothing special; all historical thought proceeds from the current state of history. It is all the more imperative for historico-genetic reconstruction to take up the basic idea of hermeneutics: we are always defined by the history that precedes us, and this is what makes understanding possible.25 It is just that we give a different systematic account for this history; moreover, this history is universal in the sense that it encompasses the understanding of all cultures.26 For the time being, though, this is a mute point. In the present context it is crucial to become conscious of the fact that there must be a path that leads from the ontogenetically developed structures of cognition to the adult-level structures of a given culture, and thus also to the structures of scientific thought. The path back can only proceed from them. For this reason one could have expected the problem of defining more precisely how ontogenetic developmental processes go together with historical ones to have become central for genetic theory from the very outset. Piaget does in fact insist that the history of science cannot be understood with24 | P.M. G REENFIELD, “Cross-Cultural Research and Piagetian Theory: Paradox and Progress,” p. 100. 25 | H.G. G ADAMER , Wahrheit und Methode. 26 | For a critique of the limits of hermeneutics, see L. K RÜGER, “Über das Verhältnis der hermeneutischen Philosophie zu den Wissenschaften.”

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out a psychogenesis of its concepts.27 This, however, appears only to be a way to achieve a better understanding of the inner nature of the fully developed theoretical constructs of science. The matter can, assuredly, not rest there, though. The historical analogies to the ontogenetic findings, where historically identified notions, such as the Aristotelian concept of time or his theory of “natural place”, are ascribed to ontogenetic stages of development,28 were just too massive not to raise the question of their theoretical explanation. As remarked upon above, Piaget exercised restraint here. In so doing, the explanations that he provided for the analogies established were just as sporadic and unsystematic as the cross-references themselves. An idea of Piaget’s that approximates the one I will develop is found in the comparatively early study of moral judgment in the child. It will be recalled that the “parallels” drawn in this study were especially striking and undifferentiated. An initial comment by Piaget offers little, giving the impression that the intuitions of the child and the adult involve two types of intuition and thought that could be found in the child just as much as in the adult. Piaget explicitly writes with regard to the comparability with conceptions in “primitive” societies: There is an adult in every child and a child in every adult. The difference in nature reduces itself to this. There exist in the child certain attitudes and beliefs which intellectual development will more and more tend to eliminate: there are others which will acquire more and more importance. The latter are not simply derived from the former but are partly antagonistic to them. The two sets of phenomena are to be met both in the child and in the adult, but one set predominates in the one, the other in the other. It is, we may say, simply a question of the proportions in which they are mixed; so long as we remember that every difference of proportion is also a difference of general quality, for the mind is one and undivided. 29 Later, this idea receives a developmental-logical dynamic. Piaget first explains with regard to ontogenetic development that a phase-specific discrepancy exists between the level of practice and that of theory. That which has already been overcome in practice continues to assert itself on the level of theory; indeed, under the pressure of theoretical problems that arise with ever more complex forms of practice, consciousness of the stage already practically superceded is first truly achieved. This holds to a special extent for the “moral realism” of the first years of life. In view of it, Piaget explains that in the structures of morality of early societies this 27 | J. P IAGET, Die Entwicklung des Erkennens II:16, 18; idem, Psychogenèse et histoire des sciences, pp. 13ff. 28 | Cf. J. P IAGET and B. I NHELDER , La genèse de l’idée de hasard chez l’enfant, p. 22. 29 | J. P IAGET, The Moral Judgment of the Child, p. 85.

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ontogenetic phasal difference is frozen in place as it were. The elementary constraint that adults exerted on children contributed decisively to this. Piaget assumes that it is above all the constraint exercised by adults that keeps consciousness on the level of moral realism.30 This idea is expanded upon when the moral realism of adults calls for explanation: in the moral realism of so-called primitive societies it is not only the elementary constraint that adults exert upon children that allows moral realism to arise: instead, the social constraint of the group as a whole leads to the “consolidation” of childlike realism.31 Piaget explains: But one can go a step farther and surmise that the outstanding features of ”primitive mentality” can be explained by a conjunction of the childish mentality with the effects of the constraint exercised by one generation upon the other. Primitive mentality would therefore be due to social constraint being refracted through the childish mind. 32 Thus it is the preexisting constraint in the social organization of primitive societies that keeps children on the level of moral realism; it is the reason that they also remained bound to it as adults. In other words, adult mentality represents the persistence, the holding fast to, the mentality of the child. A continuation of this argument is found when Piaget explains that the realism of the conception of crime and punishment found in primitive societies can be understood as an infantile fixation. As Piaget explains: How could the scope of influence exerted by the ideas of punishment and atonement have become so large in the society of adults if humans had not all first been children...33 This perspective could easily have been expanded into a historico-genetic theory and then could have been corrected. For Piaget was quite cognizant of the fact—as the cross-references amply show—that history must also be open to a genetic mode of reconstruction. He also explicitly said as much. He explained: We designate all psychogenetic or historico-genetic investigation of the ways in which the growth of knowledge takes place as [part of a] special, genetic theory of knowledge [...] 34 Nonetheless Piaget never made it to such a theory. There were too many problems in the way, which would have required resolution. If one seeks 30 | Ibid., p. 184. 31 | Ibid., p. 185. 32 | Ibid., p. 348. 33 | J. P IAGET, Das moralische Urteil, p. 385. 34 | J. P IAGET, Die Entwicklung des Erkennens I:49.

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the common denominator of all these problems, it can be found to consist in the holding separate of two sets of worlds, the worlds of children with their cognitive system and the worlds of adults, and in the necessity of doing so. For the historical worlds of adults cannot be understood without reconstruction of historical structures. Accordingly, all of the insight in the world into the course of ontogenesis sheds no light on how one should define the structure connecting the two. This question is, moreover, further obscured by a theory that had become foundational in epistemology and charged ideologically: a theory of the dichotomization of individual and society. Piaget is clearly influenced by the Durkheimian postulates of the absolute difference in origin between individual and collective ideas, even if he does seek to bring about a certain correction by making recourse to ontogenesis. Durkheim’s distinction between individual and collective representations came into being because he was bound to an absolutist structure of thought. In Durkheim’s view the origin of thought could only be sought either in the individual or in the society. Since thought, however, demonstrated elements of both, it had to be divided up among the two.35 In no way did Piaget simply continue Durkheimian thought. The theory of a “sociomorphic explanation,” however, was left unelucidated. Thus, in the study of the development of moral judgment in the child, it simply cannot be decided how the moral judgments of the child are to be explained: as the result of an only slowly developed competence in processing social experience or in terms of the constraint exercised by adults, which is reduced with advancing development—though only in our case. Piaget in any case attributed a decisive role to the constraint exercised by adults: For it seems to us obvious that all the elementary social phenomena would be radically different from what they are if communities had never been formed except by individuals of the same age and ignorant of the pressure of one generation upon the other. 36 A genuinely developmental-logical explanation would have to sound different: in the early stages of moral development, the child is cognitively not in any position to separate the rules governing social reality from the regularities governing physical reality. This would require the decentered experience of the constructive shaping of the social order. Such an experience is not acquired, however, simply by learning to autonomously manage and grasp the rules of children’s games. The real constraint exercised by adults thus only tends to obscure the cognitive compulsion of acceptance that every reality not at the disposal of constructs demands. In 35 | Cf. E. D URKHEIM, The Rules of Sociological Method; I DEM , Soziologie und Philosophie, pp. 45ff.; I DEM, Die elementaren Formen des religiösen Lebens, pp. 536ff. 36 | J. P IAGET, The Moral Judgment of the Child, p. 347.

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early societies organizational competence was not very highly developed with regard to the shaping of the social order. This kept the process of decentering within narrow limits and, consequently, also held cognitive and moral development at early stages of development. The social order, as it arose spontaneously, was viewed as an irreducible reality. The hypothesis of sociomorphic constraint prevented Piaget from fully working out an assumption well within reach: that early societies are, cognitively and morally, simply early structural fixations of ontogenetic development that follows the same sequence of steps everywhere. The constraint hypothesis, though, was not the only obstacle. There is an inherent automatism in early ontogenetic development. In the sensorimotor and early preoperational phase, there is such a collision between the individual’s lack of practical competence and the refractory character of the external world that the organism/subject is forced to learn. And it has to go on learning until it reaches the level of adults, since it is only then in the position to provide for itself. Piaget is often accused of putting learning on a biological foundation. This is not true in any reductionist sense. Admittedly, the self-preservation of the organism is a cause of learning. This, however, does not say anything about the way in which learning occurs, what one could term the mechanism by which learning takes place. In this sense Piaget leaves no doubt: The whole structure of the genetic theory is based on understanding the course of learning as an interactive process and thus also as a primarily social process. Much too little attention, though, is actually given to the social aspect as a condition of the possibility for learning. There is no doubt, however, that according to Piaget the process of learning must not be reduced to a maturation process. Piaget gave a clear account of this sociocultural nature in precisely that work in which he most carefully treated the biological basis of learning. In Biology and Knowledge it is stated: Human intelligence develops in the individual in social interactions, which are generally much too neglected. Even if they are emphasized, however, they are a part of that which is transmitted via external or educational influences and not by heredity. 37 At the same time, though, Piaget starts from two assumptions that he takes for granted: (a) the endogenous driving force of learning38 and (b) the belief that (on the human level) the learning process first attains equilibrium and thus a stopping point with the phase of formal operations. According to Piaget, this latter assumption holds just as much for the ontogenetic as for the historical process. I have already quoted the passage above, but will do so again because it typifies both Piaget’s basic position 37 | J. P IAGET, Biologie und Erkenntnis, p. 230, cf. also the further clarification, ibid, p. 232. 38 | Ibid., p. 232

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and the difficulties it results in. Piaget explains that the process of psychogenetic development can be rediscovered in its broad features on the level of historical development, which builds up in stages from elementary, later perceptual or pictorial actions at its beginning to a well-defined system of concrete operations, which in retrospect can be axiomatized in different ways: the sequential principle here is, as we have seen, given by the direction of development against a reversible state of equilibrium, where development proceeds from an initial state of irreversibility and simplicity in the sense of noncompoundability. One can speak in this case, without becoming metaphorical, of a genetic series and its convergence toward a certain limiting value. The latter is defined by a form of equilibrium, i.e., by a specific form of overall composition. 39 It is obvious that Piaget did not go any further than establishing that in both ontogenesis and history the same principle of development could be observed: the development against a reversible state of equilibrium.40 As significant, however, as the idea of equilibrium is for understanding cognitive development, the question of how equilibrium is produced has different ontogenetic and historical answers. For ontogenetically an equilibrium is reached each time the maturing member of the species works his or her way up to the level of existence of the society into which they were born. In industrial societies this normally means attainment of the formal-operational stage. One has to reckon that under the conditions of less developed societies: in societies with an economy of hunting and gathering and in simple agrarian societies, cognitive structures are not advanced to the same degree. Otherwise it would be inconceivable to compare earlier ontogenetic stages with historical formations. Early societies secured their existence at a level that did not include development of an algebro-mathematical operationalism in the fashion of the INCR (identity, negation, correlative, reciprocity) group.41 I have already pointed out that a reverse in the direction of one’s focus is required if one seeks to extend the ontogenetic theory of development as a historico-genetic theory to cover the later stages of development. When we base historical development on ontogenetic development, this initially only means that the construction of worlds is initiated in ontogenesis and propels itself forward until the members of the species are capable of surviving. All subsequent historical development is propelled by adult-level processes of acquiring knowledge. Ontogenetic development then follows these processes! For this very reason it is important for a historico-genetic theory to ask under which conditions a historical process is initiated that 39 | J. P IAGET, Die Entwicklung des Erkennens I:43. 40 | Explicitly in J. P IAGET/R.G ARCIA , Psychogenese et histoire des sciences, pp. 13ff. 41 | Cf. J. P IAGET, Psychologie der Intelligenz, pp. 49ff.

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leads beyond the original level. Even Piaget occasionally raised the question of the links to history.42 It became especially pervasive with regard to the development from heteronomous to autonomous morality.43 Regardless of which causes one attributes the process of the development of society to, they are certainly of a different order from the uniquely “inner” causes of ontogenesis of the first stages of development, which include something like an endogenous driving force. I suspect that it is this difference that kept Piaget from understanding the historically establishable analogies to ontogenetic stages of development in the simplest imaginable way: as limits beyond which the development of early societies did not advance. This contradicts the notion of ontogenetically endogenous development that Piaget entertained. He was more willing to imagine an external influence on early societies, i.e., an influence that came from societal forces that produced a regression. For a long time at least Piaget assumed that every ontogenetic development actually proceeds as it does for us: up until the formal-operational stage. Finally, there is a third unclarified problem of Piagetian epistemology that makes itself felt, which prevents him from coming to terms with historical findings: the limitation of the discussion of cognitive developmental processes to the development of mathematico-logical competence. I have pointed out that the logico-mathematical competence represents but one of the two kinds of structure that form the basis for the construction of the cognitive system.44 Operational structures enter into the material structures in which the object world is represented, but they are not identical with them. The cognitive systems of adults, which are what we find in history, confront us, however, as fully developed systems. They reflect just as much the practical demands of life on the level of adults as they do the theoretical interpretations that they experience on the level of worldviews. If one takes the cognitive systems as a whole and not just their structures, let alone with regard to a single structure, then the cognitive worlds of children and adults are obviously not identical. Piaget has this distinction in mind when he declares: “This means that when there is a correspondence between “theories” that belong to science’s past and certain, easily reconstructable constructs on the level of psychogenesis that this actually only involves a correspondence between cognitive achievements on naturally and completely different hierarchical stages of thought [...]” 45

42 | J. P IAGET, Die Entwicklung des Erkennens, II:77. 43 | J. P IAGET, The Moral Judgment, pp. 449f. 44 | Cf. G. D UX , “Die ontogenetische und historische Entwicklung des Geistes”, pp. 173ff. 45 | J. P IAGET, “Die historische Entwicklung und die Psychogenese des ImpetusBegriffs”, p. 64.

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Unless one wishes to render this conclusion completely unintelligible, one should not identify the “different hierarchical stages of thought” that Piaget takes up with those that we are acquainted with from the development of operational competence. The “hierarchical stage” of thought here refers to a material restocking of the cognitive system that goes beyond the operational competence reached at the time of entry into the world of adults.

3. I RRITATIONS Piaget was simply not able to bring forth a historico-genetic theory of development under the given difficulties, even though he clearly recognized the need to do so. As long as Durkheim’s substantialist hypothesis remained uncontested, that it is societies that independently produce, strictly speaking, original thought, there could be no access to the societal level, the macro level, for any developmental theory that started from the individual. As in Durkheim, individual and sociocultural thought stood opposed to each other in Piaget as two modes of thought with different roots. Piaget was left no choice but to leave the more precise understanding of their interrelationship to future researchers.46 He himself sufficed, in his last statement on this problem, with a solution that reflects this unsatisfactory state of affairs. Little more than a dilatory compromise formula, it can hardly be the end of discussion. For Piaget took recourse to the mechanism of abstraction réfléchissante from the theory of ontogenetic development and explained that what already transpired on the lower ontogenetic level must be realized once more, at a higher level, on the adult level of historical societies. This is precisely the way in which that which occurred previously is integrated into latter constructs. With regard to the history of the concept of impetus in ontogenesis and in the history of science, he explains: The comparison between the history of the concept of “impetus” and its psychogenesis consists in the fact that a correspondence that is established between the two takes place on two completely different levels. Their interconnections become understandable, however, if one makes reference to a basic principle of cognitive constructs. Constructs, namely, they do not follow each other linearly, but instead arise stage by stage through reconstructions of that which precedes, which is then integrated into that which follows. 47 Reflective abstraction is ascribed a crucial function within ontogenetic development. This is seen particularly clearly in the transition from the sen46 | J. P IAGET, Die Entwicklung des Erkennens II:74, cf. also ibid., pp. 14, 18. 47 | J. P IAGET, “Die historische Entwicklung und die Psychogenese des ImpetusBegriffs,” p. 65.

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sorimotor to the preoperational stage. For at this threshold, sensorimotor skills must be integrated into the medium of the symbolic construction of the world.48 Piaget generalized this procedure to cover all developmental processes defined by stages, and he also gave it a more precise meaning: all developmental processes are defined by the fact that structures already developed make use of a basic mechanism—the interplay between assimilation and accommodation—to become enriched with new knowledge and brought onto a new level of organization by means of a reflective abstraction.49 According to this, reflective abstraction is characterized by two interconnected processes: 1. The realization on a higher level (e.g., that of representation) of that which was derived from a lower level (e.g., from that of action). 2. A process of reflection that reconstructs, reorganizes, and, in this way, expands upon that which was transferred by means of the above-cited realization.50 Piaget was so familiar with the procedure of reflective abstraction from ontogenetic development that he applied it indiscriminately to the relationship of transition from the child’s systems to those of adults and in this way believed he had discovered an explanation for the opaque relationship between ontogenesis and history. It is in my view shortsighted, however, to seek to explain the observed isomorphism between early ontogenetic and historical structures by means of this mechanism. There is no doubt that our stocks of knowledge are immensely expanded on the level of adults and integrated into a worldview for the first time. This occurs, however, in early societies precisely upon the foundation of structures that we are familiar with from ontogenesis. What has to be explained about the cross-referential character of ontogenesis and history is that we can establish, in Piaget’s own words, a genuine parallelism in these links—and I add: only in them. En un tel cas le parallélisme entre l’evolutions des notions au cours de l’histoire et au sein de développement psychogénétique porte sur le contenu même des notions successives, et cela est compréhensible puisqu’il s’agit de concepts en quelque sorte préscientifiques.”51 Let us direct our attention once again to the comparison of the transition from the sensorimotor to the preoperational phase. As mentioned above, 48 | On the developmental effect that results from the encounter of different representational systems (media), cf. J.S. B RUNER et al., Studien zur kognitiven Entwicklung, p. 33. 49 | J. P IAGET and R. G ARCIA , Psychogenèse et histoire des sciences, pp. 13ff. 50 | Ibid., p. 14 (my translation). 51 | Ibid., p. 39.

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it is highly plausible that a genuine reconstruction of the child’s motor skills takes place in the new medium of conceptual organization. This is the way in which that sequence of cognitive development is realized that Piaget established in the development of operational competence. Precisely this kind of succession of stages cannot be established in the transition of the cognitive system from the way it has formed by the end of childhood into the cognitive system of adults. Let us reiterate: it proves irritating, unsettling, to find that the cognitive structures that we came to know in past societies as adult structures are the same ones that we are acquainted with as early structures from the development of ontogenesis in industrial societies. There is no way to get around this finding. There is a further incongruity that results from the assumption that psychogenetically all operational competences as we find them in the children of industrial societies are also developed in all earlier societies, but they were only first thematized in modernity or, as in the case of the impetus theory, on the eve of modernity. This incongruity consists in the fact that it is not comprehensible at all how a formal-operational competence of thought with a capability for abstract-deductive argumentation is supposed to have developed in earlier societies. We need years of school-based training to accomplish it! One would have to assume that this could be replaced by practical learning processes. But precisely they are not abstractdeductive in character! If we nevertheless sought to follow Piaget, the relationship between ontogenesis and history would be hopelessly muddled. For then it would make no sense at all why a competence that was developed from the very beginning had first been made use of so late historically by means of reflective abstraction. We would have to find a theory for historical development, which, in a completely incomprehensible temporal way, duplicates the ontogenetic development on a higher, more reflective level. Such a form of parallelization has to elicit grave doubts. I need not go into them. For the irritation is based on the untested assumption that operational competences are developed in all societies up to the formaloperational level. For this reason it needs to be once again emphasized that Piaget’s own historical cross-references unambiguously place early thought in the preoperational stage with regard to its understanding of time, number, classification and so on. If operations from a stage earlier than the formal-operational are found in the thought of adults, then a different explanation for this will have to be found. The problem became explosive when doubts arose about the universality of at least the last stage, that of formal operations. These doubts were all the more important since it was also possible to find the lack of formaloperational competence in Western industrial nations.

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4. M ANIFEST D OUBTS A BOUT THE U NIVERSALIT Y OF D E VELOPMENTAL S TAGES Piaget’s assumption that every human of normal abilities passes through the developmental stages that he established in his Genevan children, and in this way reaches the formal-operational stage, had a theoretical basis: he assumed that the endogenously, biologically anchored impetus of development tended toward a state of equilibrium. And this state was produced by the development of formal-operational competence. Piaget apparently did not develop any systematically more elaborated notions about the external and especially the social conditions of the developmental process, even though he certainly considered them necessary. The thought did not come to him that these conditions could only be universally given in the early stages of ontogenetic development. The comparison with the epigenesis of processes of biological development appeared to support his assumption just as the experience (with the Genevan children) did, that it is the formal-operational stage that first brings about a sustained state of equilibrium. In other words, there is a lack of an explicit theory of development that would have explained its social conditions. Due to this deficit, the observations made early on that in early historical and recent simple societies a lower level of development of cognitive structures could be found was unable to irritate Piaget any further. Such observations remained long unexplained and then found those ad hoc accounts that we discussed above. For this reason it must have irritated Piaget no end as the first studies showed that in industrial societies even the attainment of the concreteoperational level was tied to conditions that were not given everywhere.52 It became necessary to reformulate at least the succession of stages once it became evident that the tasks in Piaget’s studies that were taken as indicators of the attainment of the formal-operational stage were not completed by a considerable number of adults. This realization also threw a new, and as I think, more realistic light upon the findings that had been made in the meantime in history and in cross-cultural comparisons.53 It could no longer be denied that the more advanced ontogenetic level had never been reached in earlier societies. J.S. Bruner, who cannot be suspected of the least inclination toward evolutionary thought, put this in no uncertain terms: It has to be clearly stated that a child that grows up in a native village in Senegal, among Eskimos, or in a rural mestizo village in Mexico never attains this capability. It instead remains on a level of treatment of the environment of concrete 52 | N. P ELUFFO, “Culture and Cognitive Problems,” pp. 187ff. 53 | Cf. P.M. G REENFIELD, “Über Kultur und Invarianz,” pp. 271ff.; L. I BARRA , La Visíon del Mundo de los Antiguos Mexicanos, pp. 125ff.; M.C. B OVET, “Cognitive processes among illiterate children and adults.”

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operational that lacks symbolic structures — even if its language in this regard exhibits surprisingly exquisite features.54 Piaget himself offered three explanations for this finding, which is at odds with his starting assumption:55 The first is that it only involves a difference in the speed of developments, a décalages. According to this, the stage of concrete operations is just reached later, though that of formal operations is never reached at all. For Piaget, though, this does break new ground: for the first time he gives the social environment a concrete part to play in the attainment of a developmental stage. Piaget had, of course, always knew and emphasized the significance of the socially embedded character of the process of development.56 What now first comes into view is the fact that certain more or less favourable social prerequisites were not given everywhere. It remained a rather general concession, however: that under disadvantageous conditions some subjects never reach the formaloperational stage does not mean, Piaget explains, [T]hat these formal structures are solely the result of a process of social mediation, for there are naturally factors of spontaneous and endogenous construction that need to be taken into account, which are inherent in every normal person. That means, however, that the acquisition of cognitive structures includes an entire process of social exchange and reciprocal stimulus. 57 One can only agree with Piaget on both counts. The ramifications of the latter of the two statements is, however, far more radical than he admits to himself. And above all, they are not compatible with the conclusion discussed above, that historical comparisons are located on a different level. Now it involves the structures themselves! The second possibility that Piaget takes a look at consists in the assumption that the diversification of abilities and talents becomes more important with increasing age. According to this, only those persons reach the formal-operational stage who are especially talented in logic and mathematics. This would of course sacrifice the universality of the fourth stage. Piaget ultimately takes a different tack. In his own words, it comes down to saying: [T]hat all normal individuals, if not between 11/12 years of age or by 14/15, then in any case between 15 and 20, reach the stage of formal operations and structures. They reach this stage, however, in different areas, in accord54 | See J.S. B RUNER , Über kognitive Entwicklung, p. 73. 55 | J. P IAGET, “Die intellektuelle Entwicklung im Jugend- und im Erwachsenenalter,” pp. 53ff. 56 | J. P IAGET, Psychologie der Intelligenz; cf. in particular his early study of the Sprechen und Denken des Kindes. 57 | J. P IAGET, “Die intellektuelle Entwicklung,” p. 54.

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ance with their abilities and their job-related fields of specialization (scientific studies or work-related education in different professions). The manner in which these formal structures are used is, however, not in all cases exactly the same. 58 This explanation is not without its problems, as Piaget is well aware. For Piaget had emphasized that the operations on the concrete-operational level are identical to those on the formal-operational level; the only difference is that the former are still tied to the concrete. This means, however, that formal-operational competences are characterized precisely by their independence from any given field of activity.59 It is nevertheless true that new fields of activity even cause difficulties if cognitive abilities exist. These difficulties would, however, not be attributable to operational competence, but to a lack of substantive knowledge or of familiarity with the contents of the field, in short, to performance. It does not seem possible—in view of a formal-operational competence that is in Piaget’s understanding divest of any substantive competence whatsoever—to bind the formative process of competence itself to work-oriented specialization. If one seeks to do so, one would have to define the levels of learning differently as Piaget did before. The question of universality becomes all the more explosive in view of cross-cultural studies. I do not see that in them the thought of diversification is able to provide any kind of satisfactory explanation for the findings. Piaget also initially emphasizes with regard to cross-cultural studies that there are clearly other, nonepigenetic factors that play a defining role in cognitive development.60 He draws here those social factors into view that can be found in all societies. These conclusions, which are taken for granted by every sociologist, are significant insofar as they allow one to recognize a clear turning away from the Durkheimian dichotomy. Piaget explains: In this sense, one could view logic, understood as the end form of equilibration, as simultaneously individual and social; individual insofar as it is shared by all individuals and social insofar as it is shared by all societies. 61

Theoretically, the question is thus of special interest, since a developmental theory that is committed to tying the process of acquiring cognitive competence to social prerequisites must consider the possibility that ontogenetic developments came to a standstill at an earlier stage because specifically social conditions did not exist for further development. In or58 | Ibid., p. 57. 59 | P.R. DASEN, Piagetian Psychology, p. 7. 60 | J. P IAGET, “Notwendigkeit und Bedeutung der vergleichenden Forschung in der Entwicklungspsychologie,” p. 63. 61 | Ibid., p. 65.

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der to clarify this question, it is first of all important to know the stage at which adults in nonindustrial societies find themselves, especially to the degree that this involves the logico-mathematical line of development. It is precisely here where knowledge is lacking—something that Piaget rightly points out.62

5. P SYCHOGENESIS , H ISTORY, AND S CIENCE Piaget took up this problematic once more in the final phase of work with the declared aim of finding a synthesis of developmental theory such that its general principles would encompass both ontogenetic and historical development. I have already drawn on this work several times.63 This late realization confirms my thesis that without incorporating history, one cannot establish an ontogenetic theory either. After everything that we have discussed, it, indeed, cannot be dismissed out of hand that the driving force of cognitive development on this side of preoperational competences does not reside in the endogenous drive of the organism, but in the conditions under which society advances. The systematic incorporation of history became indispensable in view of an observation that Piaget had already made about early societies, but which gained a significance in the context of the modern history of science that made it impossible to ignore: it simply cannot be overlooked that the premodern understanding of nature with regard to the material logic of its organization, and thus in the causal understanding of its processuality, in particular, was in line with notions with which we are acquainted from early ontogenesis. These notions can be followed in developed form through history. Piaget had already established previously that notions of causality, as they were developed in Aristotle’s Physics and in De caelo, can be found in 11- to 12-year-old children. He takes up this finding in his late study. He systematizes it in two ways: on the one hand, the process of cognition is broken down into two major parts: premodern and modern. This appears rather simplistic; however, we must reckon with the circumstance that history is actually acquainted with this periodization. I have tried to demonstrate that the radical change in the worldview of modernity and the change in logic must in fact be understood as a dividing line between two ages. Piaget provided process-logical support for this division. The cognitive structures of premodern thought—nota bene: of adults— find their parallels in ontogenetic structures. Such parallels do not exist, though, for the cognitive structures of modernity as they have been created in science. They find no counterpart in ontogenesis, but instead go beyond the development of the latter.

62 | Ibid., p. 73. 63 | J. P IAGET and R. G ARCIA , Psychogenesis and the History of science.

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In concrete terms, Piaget showed premodern analogousness or parallelism in the ideas of causality from antiquity until Newton. He distinguishes four stages, which we uncover in the same fashion in ontogenesis. We need not discuss these four stages here. What is crucial for our present purposes is the account that Piaget gives of this “parallelism.” For it remains unsatisfactory. Piaget argues that all ideas of causality are based on substructures of action.64 Here he is apparently referring to the motoric schemata of the earliest phase of life. For this reason, he continues, there is a territory that all subjects share in common, regardless of their intellectual level. For precisely this reason, it is also not improbable that there is a correspondence between these (elementary) schemata and reflexive ideas, even though the latter go far beyond the level of the former. In his exact words: Therefore a territory exists which is common to all subjects whatever their intellectuel level, so that there is nothing implausible about the correspondence between the development of these schemata and that of the reflective ideas, even though the latter go far beyond the level of the latter. 65 In this way, Piaget once again brings the difference of levels into play; and once more we must conclude that it is not capable of explaining that which requires explanation. Let us clarify once again what is involved here. We must find an explanation for the circumstance that ontogenetic developmental processes, and especially that of causality, can be found in history in such a way that even Piaget must admit that they are “identical in content.” Such an explanation, however, cannot be found by making recourse to a level of action or motoric schemata that is shared by everyone. Moreover, it also cannot be found by introducing a difference in levels such that the adult level displays a higher level of reflection, on which the ontogenetic stages are rediscovered in more developed form. There is a genuine difference in levels. The finding that needs explaining, however, is precisely that the structure of causality used by adults is exactly the same one that we are acquainted with from the ontogenesis of our children! In addition, it also needs to be clarified why in earlier societies the causality of earlier stages becomes the subject of discussion (thematized) and not the causality of more advanced societies. If, to get concrete, Aristotle’s. idea of causality corresponds to the first of the four ontogenetic stages of development mentioned here, then the difference in levels that we establish between the developmental level of children at the end of childhood and Aristotle’s cognitive capabilities does not change anything, not anything at all, about the fact that Aristotle, in terms of his understanding of causality, remains tied to the early stage of development, a stage of development 64 | On the following, cf. ibid., pp. 65 f. 65 | Ibid., p. 66.

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superceded by subsequent development at the end of the Middle Ages. Thus let us admit: there is this difference in levels. No child in any stage of its development is in the position to develop a cognitive system such as that of Aristotle’s Physics. There is also a moment of reflexive abstraction in this system. The only thing is: this changes nothing about the ties of thought to the structure developed ontogenetically; and the latter prevails, as we have seen elsewhere, in the finest details of interpretation of physical phenomena.66 Piaget also sought to resolve the problem of the interrelation between ontogenesis and history by means of a functional approach. According to this idea, the striking parallels between ontogenetic and historical development have their basis in functional commonalities, which can be observed in all further development. He writes: The main reason why there is a kinship between historico-critical and genetic epistemology is that the two kinds of analyses, irrespectiv of the important differences between them in the data used, will always and at all levels,converge toward similar problems as to mechanisms and instruments (e.g. reflective abstractions, etc.). These mechanisms operate not only in the elementary interactions between the subjects and objects, but particularly in a way that a lower level influences the formation of the following one. This inevitably leads to a situation where, as will be seen, the same general problems, common to all epistemic development are posed.67 It is clear that this also does not resolve the problem of why specific ontogenetic structures in specific phases of development also form as historical structures. This problem can only be resolved by developing ontogenetic theory further, into a historico-genetic theory. Piaget did not take the step from ontogenetic to historico-genetic theory. The obstacles along the way were too immense; conceptions, such as those adopted from Durkheim in particular, blocked the path just as much as the lack of an elaborated theory of social development, which would have known how to unite the indispensable point of departure from the singular individual with social presuppositions as the conditions for the possibility of the acquisition of cognitive competence. Piaget was, however, really only one step away from the necessity he so clearly recognized of providing a genetic explanation for historical development as well. Let us take this step. 66 | Cf. G. D UX and V. P USPHA K UMARI , “Studien zur vorindustriellen Kausalität”; U. WENZEL , “Dynamismus und Finalismus”; L. I BARRA G ARCÍA , La visíon del mundo de los antiguos mexicanos, pp. 139ff. In the meantime, U. WENZEL has defined the structure of Aristotelian causality in such a succinct manner and integrated it into the developmental process of thought in such a way that one has to consider the question as resolved: U. WENZEL , Vom Ursprung zum Prozeß. 67 | J. P IAGET and R. G ARCIA , Psychogenesis and the History of Science, p. 8.

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1. THE I NSTABILIT Y OF THE W ORLD 1.1 The Historicity of the World The mere fact that the world forms as a construct in the medium of thought and language (as do the practical forms of existence in the world) makes every world unstable in its structure. Under favorable conditions, this process of construction continues. For this reason, any science, such as sociology, that seeks to understand these worlds is faced with structures that can and have changed. This is why it must look to history. Hence it appears that there is no other way that these worlds could be treated in a rigorously systematic fashion. Even the basic terms with which we first distinguish society as human society: action, meaning, communication, or whichever other ones one might mention, are historical terms and must be introduced and developed as such. This is, moreover, not different for such forms of social-structural organization as family, neighborhood, or town. For this reason, there is no point to abstract-general nomenclature that goes beyond the real structures of societies as actually formed in history. For concrete structures, as genera specifica, cannot be subsumed under an abstractly general conceptual framework. They simply follow a different logic of development. Accordingly, the cognitive interest of a historico-genetic theory takes advantage of the cognitive advance made by genetic theory. The world looks different after a revolution, even if the result is different from the one one had in mind. Piaget felt compelled to take up the ontogenesis of the members of the species in order to make sense of the dashing advances in the recent history of science. Any given point in history, however, cannot be understood without some understanding of the developmental processes at work in history. We make use of the insight gained by genetic theory and raise the question of the beginnings of sociocultural development. As I tried to demonstrate at the outset, the strategy that I follow in

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a historico-genetic theory is to go back to a point prior to history in order to shed light on man’s entry into it.

1.2 The Methodological Significance of Ontogenesis It seems—at least to me—indisputable that the process of enculturation has to be developed on the basis of the ontogenesis of the members of the species. Given the liminal position of enculturation, this holds just as much for biological understanding as it does for cultural understanding. This opens up a magnificent methodological perspective of reconstruction. The strategy of making man’s entry into history understandable by going back prior to history can be done by developing the enculturation process out of ontogenesis on the basis of the anthropological constitution of man of the first generation of Homo sapiens sapiens. In order to avoid any misunderstanding: it is obvious that it is impossible to provide any empirical definition of this first generation. The process of enculturation is a long and continuous process. The point is not to define this first generation, but rather to make it understandable on the basis of the definitively developed biological constitution of Homo sapiens sapiens that we find on our side of the virtual threshold separating human from prehuman history. Since Marx, there has been widespread awareness in sociological theory of the necessity of making the connection to evolution in theory.1 This is reflected most emphatically in Jürgen Habermas’s theory of communicative action.2 Habermas, however, has only been able to capitalize on this philosophically. He seeks to gain understanding of man’s entry into history and of its development by means of a “logical reconstruction.” However, one can only make methodologically productive use of the awareness of the necessity of linking up to evolution, if one develops the reconstructive process out of ontogenesis and restricts oneself in doing so to empirically secured knowledge. This potentially opens up the perspective of understanding the enculturation process, not as a unique process, but as the start of a process called history.

1.3 Reconstruction in Processual Logic The beginning is not origin! This distinction gives expression to the difference between two logics. Previous discussions have shown that the strategy of a historico-genetic theory of connecting to the developmental process of society in the transition from natural history to cultural history and of working out the developmental process of its structures as a theory of society would be impossible without the shift from an absolutist to a processual logic. The effort would otherwise repeatedly collapse into one 1 | K. Marx and F. Engels, Die deutsche Ideologie, MEW, vol. 3. 2 | Cf. J. Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns.

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of the two basic fundamentalist tenets offered along with the consciousness of convergence: into the transcendentalism of a priori assumptions about the mind-based constitution of existence or into the reductionism of sociobiology, which is simply incapable of taking into account the difference between the two layers with their completely different constructive principles. The key role that falls to processual logic and its prerequisite role for the understanding of the process of enculturation is pervasive. In the formative process of sociocultural worlds, this logic gains strategic significance for theory construction in two ways: Ň It allows one to proceed from the natural constellation of conditions and to let sociocultural forms of organization first develop on the basis of a process. Processual logic thus makes possible that which is impossible in a deductionist logic: the metabasis in a different medium. Ň It explains by which means it is possible to bind constructive performances structurally to the development and use of the constructive competence of subjects, while at the same time allowing a stratum of society to arise on the basis of the communicative and interactive cooperation of these subjects, a stratum that develops its own mechanisms of organization. In other words, processual logic makes the assumption of a quasi-subject as a societal subject obsolete.

1.4 The Reflexiveness of Theor y Sciences on the level of modern consciousness are creations with highly reflexive structures; at least in the human and social sciences, every theory must take itself up qua theory in its own theoretical framework.3 This realization is indivisibly connected to historical consciousness. Historical consciousness recognizes its own historically conditioned character. In a historico-genetic theory that is defined by the shift from absolutist to pro cessual logic, the understanding of this shift can thus in turn only be gained in a historico-genetic fashion. This is precisely the promise of the strategy of going back to the beginnings of history and developing the process out of the ontogenesis of the members of the species. Historico-genetic theory does not merely conclude that absolutist logic has been surpassed; it reconstructs how it came into the world and why it has become obsolete within this world. Only in this way is it possible to draw two further implications of reconstruction. I have already made the first one clear: it must be understood that the absolutism of past thought does not rest solely on a given material premise, e.g., on the absolutization of God or the natural order; it must instead be understood as the consequence of an explanatory structure. Only then can it be shown that it remains in force behind the backs, as it were, of its critics. The second implication is to present, in the process of reconstruction, the reasons for 3 | N. Luhmann, Soziale Systeme, p. 9.

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the formation of the logic that replaces absolutist logic: processual logic. History is found to lie between two processes. On the one hand, there is the development of absolutist logic as the result of a construction of the world linked to the acquisitional process of the competence to act in the early ontogenesis of every member of the species. This process continues in modified form in adult worlds. On the other hand, there is its replacement by processual logic, as it was initiated in early modernity and actually first took on defining power in the 20th century. Let us start from the beginning of this historical process.

2. THE S UBJECT AS C ONSTRUCTOR OF THE D EMIURGIC P ROCESS 2.1 On the Genesis of the Formative Process Who is the constructor of the demiurgic process? The question has yet to find a satisfactory answer. Its beginning was outside of understanding: in theoretical terms due to the absolutism of logic and in empirical terms due to completely inadequate knowledge. Friedrich Tenbruck has concluded that society has always existed.4 In view of our knowledge of the historical beginnings of human society, this appears to be absurd. This, however, is not even the society that Tenbruck is referring to. He avoids taking up its genesis and instead makes recourse to a vague general concept of “living together.” In view of sexual reproduction, one would be hard pressed to contradict him here. What sense does it make, however, to start from a vague general concept of living together and to establish that it has no beginning, in order to then shift without transition to the concept of society, a concept that can only have first arisen in society? Once again, the statement is not intended in a historical sense, but in the sense of epistemological critique. The beginning of society, and this is Tenbruck’s point, cannot be reconstructed. From this perspective, this conclusion has documentary value. It documents the contradiction between logic and historical knowledge. A theory of enculturation that seeks to connect the formative process of intellectual, sociocultural life-forms, and especially the formative process of cognition, to natural-historical evolution cannot avoid understanding anthropological constitution as the constitution of the individual members of the species. I have made this clear above. Evolution starts from the genome and is thus compelled to make reference to the machine conveying the genome, to paraphrase an expression from Richard Dawkins.5 This means, however, that the formative process of sociocultural worlds also has to take as its point of departure the organism, which 4 | F. Tenbruck, “Die kulturellen Grundlagen der Gesellschaft,” p. 193. 5 | R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene.

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first produces its life-forms in precisely this process. There is no way for a naturalistically informed mode of thought to get around establishing a, in this sense, action-theoretical foundation for the sociocultural mode of existence. However, it is far more than just the natural conditions of the constructive process that refer the demiurgic process back to the organism or the self-forming subject. For the point of construction lies precisely in the realization that the competences that make this process possible first form along with the subject. The only thing that this subject brings with it are certain capacities. The formative process of action resides in the subject. Contrary to the emphatic lectures that the discipline has recently been subject to, let me conclude: only the subject can act. For with every new action, the process of action is subject to a complicated formative process. The whole apparatus for dealing with such a process must first be developed. And this occurs with the self-developing subject and by means of it. For this reason, the formative process also lies within the subject. One can attribute action to organizations. This occurs to an ample extent in modern society. Nonetheless, the question of attribution must be clearly distinguished from the question of the actor. There would be no doubt about the question of who the constructor of the demiurgic process is if the candidates (the subject or society) were not once more understood in terms of absolutist logic as ultimate variables of attribution. Ever since the subject reflexively sought to gain certainty about itself, it has understood itself, in absolutist logic, as a point of attribution of its action to be defined through itself and on the basis of itself. In this understanding it participates in the substance of its mind in the substance of God. This subject did in fact die at the beginning of modernity. Since absolutist logic was able to persevere, the place of the subject was taken by society, in whose understanding subject logic continued in an impressive fashion, in a newly transformed mode in systems theory. In the present context, the absolutism of society is only of interest because it seeks its justification in the negation of the subject in its absolutistically understood form. If one understands the subject in an absolutist fashion, it is impossible to understand the constructive process it needs to produce. In this case, it can prove advisable to try and make use of absolutism in conceiving of the autogenesis of society. In the processual logic of a historico-genetic theory, both the subject and the formative process of the mind-based life-form produced by the subject present themselves differently. There is nothing in the world that escapes from being systematically interconnected. Thus, it is not possible not to think systematically. Since this also holds for the subject, it applies a fortiori for the capability of constructivism and communication specific to this subject. The subject that we take to be the constructor of the demiurgic process in a historico-genetic theory is a subject that has always already been interconnected in communicative terms. Others are for each person who participates in the communicative process, (in just the same way as the pregiven

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conditions under which everyone acts) in a strict sense the condition of possibility. Nothing more and nothing less. It is unquestionable that in phylogenetic terms the demiurgic process of creating world and practical forms of existence in the world could only occur communicatively. Language, moreover, especially as a system of rules, brings its own communicative genesis with it. These conclusions, however, are of little value unless one knows how to reconstruct the genesis of the specifically human form of communication and the rules of language, something which was indeed first developed by man. However, for the constitutive process of either, only the natural powers of subjects that first socialize themselves by means of communication come into consideration. Any critique of knowledge that feels itself compelled to posit the social world as already given in the structures of communication and language is—in view of our knowledge of evolution—of no epistemological value.6 Evidence of the valuelessness of a theory that seeks to explain communication as a form of autogenesis can once again be gathered from Luhmann’s efforts to prove the opposite.

2.2 The Emptiness of “Box-olog y” Luhmann proceeds rigorously in his development of systems theory in making the system of communication itself into the subject or quasi-subject of the demiurgic process. Thus, the declared goal that Luhmann sets himself when he confronts the question of the condition of the possibility is: to demonstrate the autogenesis of communication.7 The intention is to demonstrate that, in the encounter of two “black boxes” and in the double contingency that arises in that encounter, there is an intensification of communication that ultimately gives determinacy and thus a system to communication. The line of reasoning possesses documentary value because step by step the argument has to attribute all of the interests, various types of competence, and rules of communicants to the communicative system in order to master double contingency. Double contingency only exists in a society that is already constituted. Luhmann ultimately sees himself compelled to admit this himself: one would think that this is the equivalent of admitting failure in the effort to explain the condition of possibility of communication. This is not the way Luhmann sees it though. For once 6 | This conclusion holds for the positing of the world of our contemporaries (“Wir-Welt”) in Schutz in the same way it does for Vygotsky’s assumption that the “higher mental functions” of subjects are internalized copies of social interactions. As in L.S. Vygotsky, “The Genesis of Higher Mental Functions,” pp. 144-188. For a critique, see C.G. Sinha, “The Role of Ontogenesis in Human Evolution and Development,” pp. 400-406. 7 | Cf. N. Luhmann, Soziale Systeme, pp. 148ff.; on thought starting from the position zero of evolution, ibid., p. 217.

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again Luhmann outs himself as a lover of tautology. Even if we were to follow him here, the contribution of double contingency in the clarification of the condition of possibility of communication would still remain completely unexplainable. If only tautological definitions are possible, the effort nonetheless to introduce explanations into these definitions, and especially explanations that are supposed to demonstrate the conditions of possibility, must be disconcerting. Ultimately, the provision of the boxes in interaction with all of the advantages of subjectivity: with interests, reflexive anticipations, competences and rules of thought and language, documents that the system of communication can only then find an explanation if one first forms these prerequisites along with the subjects and then allows them to be produced by the subjects. Accordingly, let us conclude: Constructors in the demiurgic process are real empirical individuals, equipped with the specifically human capabilities of sociocultural organization that they have acquired. They are constructors, however, only under the condition of interaction and communication with others. The systemic organization of communication is a systemic organization that takes place through the subjects. Only when one removes subjects from the relations of their societal practices, i.e., only when one continues to understand them in terms of subject logic does the alternative arise of having to decide between subject and society. It is not necessary to analyze anew the ontogenetic process of formation of the structures of cognition. The research of Piaget, Vygotsky, and Luria, to name just a few, have provided us with basic understanding of this process. Moreover, they have in their wake triggered such a wealth of research on the ontogenetic development of cognition and language in our time that now, as in all empirical fields of inquiry, an amazing diversification of research holds sway. Given our interest in the development of historical worlds, we would also need to extend discussion to the development of normative and aesthetic structures. There is, however, one problem we must take up in some detail, a problem we have already run into several times: Piaget viewed the developmental process of cognition as almost exclusively defined by the development of operational competence, and thus of logico-mathematical competence. Though he distinguished a second system from it, which he termed the infralogical system, it remained unclear how he wanted this latter system to be understood. We need to produce clarity about this. For the historical development of worlds cannot be understood just on the basis of the development of logico-mathematical competence.

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3. O PER ATIONAL AND C ATEGORICAL S TRUCTURES IN THE F ORMATIONAL AND D E VELOPMENTAL P ROCESS OF C OGNITION 3.1 Preliminar y Terminological Clarification The development of the competence to act is only possible in conjunction with cognitive competence. The demands placed on the latter are radical: not only must access be found to the highly real objects and events in the external world, to do so the operational forms must first also be created. Put more precisely: the demand to find access to the world of objects and events must be accompanied by the development of a procedure for constructing the structures necessary for such a task. I term the structures in which the objects and events of the external world hereafter present themselves on the macrolevel of practical, everyday life categories. In agreement with Piaget, I name those structures that are developed logico-mathematically in order to define the relations between distinct variables operations. As pure structures of cognition they are comparable to mental tools. Both kinds of structures must be developed together, and this must take place in the process of interaction with an always already preexisting reality. It is nonetheless necessary to carefully distinguish these two kinds of structures. When one states: “All things tend toward their natural place,” one makes use of a multitude of relations, both with each term and with the statement of the sentence as a whole. Only on the basis of these relations can that which is said first be said and be understood. Primary attention here is attained by the relation between an object and its natural place. The statement focuses on the connection between the two in the tendency of each thing. The way, however, in which a connection is produced between the two—through the tendency of each and every thing— is produced by means of substantive knowledge that has turned into a structure. The following is included: Ň That there is something in things that seeks to produce a relationship to its natural place, and Ň how this relationship is in fact produced: as the potentiality of the tendency that translates itself into the event of movement. Thus, both the thing’s intentionality and its movement is included. These substantive moments are stereotyped and in this way categorialized in the relation. Thus one must say about the categories that, though they use relations, they do not do so to translate them operationally into logico-mathematical forms, but in order to link them to substantive defining characteristics such as “Whenever something exists, it exists in this way,” or “Whenever something occurs, it occurs in this way.” And it is precisely this substantive moment that defines the cognitive-critical interest that we take in categoriality.

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By contrast, we pursue a completely different cognitive interest with operational structures. Through them we determine which relations are possible at all between distinct variables without coming into contradiction as well with logic as with reality. Since they abstract from all concrete conditions, and are thus developed as purely formal relations, one tends to forget the practically relevant way in which they are developed in terms of reality. Freedom from contradiction in the determination of those relations that are at all possible has in fact a great effect on practice. If the question occasionally arises in top-flight reflections on the cosmology of our times why we have the right to assume that we recognize something of the reality of the universe with mathematical operations,8 it makes little sense to point to the selectivity of evolution. The latter had, namely, little opportunity to put the elaborate mathematical competences of modernity to the test. It is justified, though, to take into account that logical operations were specifically developed in the process of enculturation in order to come to terms with reality. Progressive constructivism was certainly beneficial for the fitness of the species. The revolution in epistemology brought about by Piaget’s genetic theory with its demonstration of the genesis of logico-arithmetic logic lies in the fact that the latter can no longer be understood as an a priori given. Logic is a construct acquired a posteriori, but one that can claim strict necessity.9 This in no way stops mathematics from assuming certain axioms. Mathematics finds given the structures of operationalism as they are developed in ontogenesis and further elaborates upon these basic structures. I was careful initially to introduce the distinction between operations and categories as a systematically necessary distinction. For this also allows me to make the difference clear between my position and Piaget’s distinction between logical and infralogical structures, and, at least in my opinion, make the deficits of Piaget’s position evident. This is mostly clearly seen if one takes up the development of categorical structures, such as causality, and the conditions of their development in history.

3.2 Logical and Infralogical Relations Piaget focused the development of cognitive competence on the development of logico-algebraic competences. It was clear to him that logico-algebraic operations do not yet reproduce the forms that we build into objects and events as constructs. For this reason, he distinguished very early between logical and infralogical operations. In the Psychology of Intelligence, it is stated:

8 | As does Steven Hawking in his, Eine kurze Geschichte der Zeit, p. 27. 9 | J. Piaget and R. Garcia, Psychogenèse et histoire des sciences.

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The different systems [of operations] mentioned do not in any way encompass all elementary operations of intelligence. In fact, the latter does not operate only with concrete objects in order to combine them into classes, to list them in series, or to count them. Its activity also involves the construction of objects as such, and this already begins—as we shall see below (Chap. 4)—with sensorimotor intelligence. To take an object apart and put it back together again represents the real work of a second system of operations, whose basic operations can thus be termed “infralogical,” since the logical operations combine objects that are assumed to be invariant.”10 If one takes this statement as it stands, and especially if one takes it to refer to the appearance of objects and events in the everyday world, it makes no sense. A tree as a cognitive construct in the organization of roots, truck, branches, and so forth is not formed by way of logico-algebraic operations. If one looks a little closer, especially at what Piaget says about the use of infralogical operations, then it can be seen that he had something quite different in mind from what I intended with my definition of categories and their distinction from operations. The construction of the world of objects once again only interests Piaget insofar as this construction proves accessible to algebraic operations. The divisibility of time and space and the assignment of objects in space is what he means by the “construction of objects as such.” He actually means the application of algebraic logic in processes in which objects are taken apart and put back together again. It would be no mistake to assume that an interest in the natural sciences guided Piaget here. I have already cited the following quote once, but will do so again, since it clarifies what Piaget meant by “infralogical processes.” In the short and late work “Biological Adaptation and the Psychology of Intelligence,” it is stated: Since about the beginning of this century [the 20th], it appears that an impressive number of phenomena, ranging from microphysics via the theory of crystals to general relativity, can be explained by mathematically ascribing them a “group” structure. This is not because physicists would consider this a convenient language for better describing facts, but because they give expression to the real transformations that can be traced back to the actions of objects conceived as operators. In other cases the objects are attributed ordering structures or actions of probability and so on, but the general principle of causal explanation always remains the same: the systems that are formed by means of facts and regularities that are observable and recorded in an exogenous way are replaced by mental systems whose structure is that of the operations of the subject and, accordingly, are treated endogenously.11

10 | J. Piaget, Psychologie der Intelligenz, p. 53f. 11 | J. Piaget, Biologische Anpassung und Psychologie der Intelligenz, p. 83.

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Piaget’s understanding of objects reflects above all the specifically modern natural-scientific treatment of the energy system of the universe and its subsystems. The distinction discussed previously between structures that are “appliqué” and “attribué” proceeds in completely the same manner. The attributed structures, i.e., those structures ascribed to the object itself, are, if one follows Piaget, formed in analogy to logico-arithmetical structures. The same principles that apply to the latter apply to them: linearity, distributionality, and proportionality.12 Causality enjoys priority status among attributed structures. The structure of causality should be strictly interpreted as a linear, mathematical equation, and thus in a transitive sense.13 I mean something quite different with my definition of categories and their distinction from the operations of arithmetical thought. I take into view a world of objects and events as it presents itself on the macrolevel of the world of objects and events in intuition and experience that can be termed, as Scheler put it, the “relatively natural worldview.” It is a world of objects and events that has long occupied man’s thought, including that of epistemologists. The “ancient atomists” also developed their notions about atoms in the everyday world of experience. The objects and events of this world of objects have an inherent structure that needs to be understood. For these are the structures that formed the basis for thought prior to modernity and thus allowed that completely different explanatory structure of the premodern physical universe to develop. One can take, if one wishes, Kant’s table of categories as a point of orientation. For precisely it must be subject to critique, since it fails to distinguish between operational and categorical structures. In addition, the manner in which it defines categories remains tied to subject logic.

3.3 The Epistemological Status of Categories The distinction between operational and categorical structures is of great significance for understanding constructivism. If one does not commit oneself to an absolutist logic in the interpretation of convergence and constructivism according to which no distinction can be made between reality and illusion and then, on top of this, accept this indifference,14 then the basic epistemological question is and remains how it is possible by virtue of constructivism to reach the world of objects and to achieve a world. By defining categories as those structures in which reality becomes comprehensible, we provide further support for a constructive realism. I would first like to call to mind its pragmatic genesis.

12 | J. Piaget, Les explications causales, p. 68. 13 | Ibid., p. 30. 14 | See the admission made by M ATURANA cited above: M ATURANA , “Gespräch,” p. 70.

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3.3.1 The Pragmatism of Interaction The driving force behind enculturation, phylogenetically and ontogenetically, is interaction with the external world in which the maturing member of the species finds him- or herself entangled. If there is a key to understanding cognition that gives a convincing account of how it was possible to enter into a cultural-historical process of mind from a natural-historical starting point, then it is found in the circumstance that the construction of the world of objects and events occurs in the interaction with an always already preexisting reality. Social others are, as has already been mentioned, initially also objects from which events originate that are of special significance. In this process, development is guided by the acquisition of the competence to act. This conclusion is a manifestation of the basic constitution of life, or more precisely, of the basic constitution of the human form of existence. The organism must be able to interact with the external world; its autonomy cannot be realized otherwise. It can be confirmed in the ontogenesis of each and every member of the species that the takeoff of enculturation is initiated and continued with the process of acquiring the competence to act. Moreover, our anthropoid relatives are closely enough related to us that they are also acquainted with a comparable acquisitional process of protocultural organizational forms.15 The process of acquiring the competence to act sets into motion in us and in them the acquisition of cognitive competence and of all other sociocultural forms of organization.

3.3.2 Why Categories Categories are also constructs that are formed in order to come to terms with the world of objects and events. Thus categories also do not capture reality as such. The world remains uncircumventably a construct. It is, however, a construct acquainted with necessities as part of its process of formation. Moreover, it is one of these necessities to build certain structures into the world of objects and events such that we can make a certain claim about the contents encompassed or captured by these structures: namely, that these contents inhere or are specific to these structures. The category of substance is one such structure; space, limits, causality, and time are some of the others. These are all determinations that are implicated by the structure of objects and events. If asked for the reason why they form, one must look at two constellations of conditions. One of these constellations results from the symbolically mediated character of constructivism; one results from the external position of objects and events. It must be ascribed to the constructivism in the medium of thought and language that we define objects by means of a multitude of properties. It is com15 | On phylogenetic development, I refer once again to the study of the development of cognitive competence in apes by J. L ANGER, “Die universale Entwicklung der elementaren logisch-mathematischen und physikalischen Kognition,” pp. 119-172.

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pletely impossible for a constructivism that can only succeed in creating a world in the medium of thought and language to proceed any other way. In other words, it must distinguish between object and property.16 The definition of the object side is then characterized by that interpenetration of construct and reality discussed above whereby the definition arises as a construct, but as one that in its characteristics has to be attributed to the objects themselves. Here there are different degrees to which objectivity comes to be mutated or refracted and these differences are subtly incorporated. It makes a difference whether we say an object is alive or it is red. It is obvious that categories are special kinds of concepts. They are distinct from other concepts in that categories capture those characteristics humans always and at all times ascribe to objects and events without which there would be no practical way to understand any object or event. Categories capture the conditions that are so elementary in the construction of the world that they define the construct as its elementary conditions and are to be found in any world that is possible at all. This thesis holds for the construction of nature and for the construction of the social world. Accordingly, we find certain structures in each of the possible worlds that are comparable to those in the other. Here one must bear in mind that in defining these structures we find ourselves on the descriptive level of everyday interactions with the external world. One difficulty that should not be underestimated is that scientific understanding has made this descriptive level porous today. This points once again to the fact that the categories are themselves also constructs, constructs that change in the process of knowledge acquisition. As the system changes so do its structures, but they are not replaced so much as they are elaborated upon. And this holds for all systems, be it that of nature or that of society. These structures maintain their structuring function through development. Action, interaction, reciprocity of perspectives, normativity are such categorical defining characteristics of the social world. This has grave ramifications, especially for the understanding of society. There are no basic concepts that would be sufficiently static to allow one to develop a framework theory, a model, of society that would apply to all societies in history. In the place of basic concepts, structures must be used; their identity must constantly be kept tied to their processual character. It would be a both necessary and intriguing undertaking to develop a new table of categories. The old one, in which Kant developed, without distinction, operations and categories from the competence to judge,17 no longer makes sense in a historico-genetic theory. If one were to take up the task, the result would hardly be a simple table anymore. A systematic 16 | L UHMANN has kept it to himself how it is supposed to be possible to dispense with the classification of properties. See N. L UHMANN, Die Kunst der Gesellschaft. Even if one holds that the construct “world” forms without contact with the world, the distinction is still indispensable. 17 | Cf. I. K ANT, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, II:93.

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elaboration of categories would especially have to make the differentiation of the world into three worlds its own. Such an elaboration would be part of a cognitive theory and cannot be undertaken here, if only for the fact that each determination would require a lengthy presentation. The development of the object and event structures mentioned above can serve as the guideline for such definitions. Both structures capture experiences and process them under the conditions of further experiences into elementary structures in which objects are perceived as objects and events as events. After all of this let us return to the distinction between operational and categorical structures. One thing appears undeniable for me: if in a historico-genetic theory we are interested in coming to a reconstructive understanding of the construction of the world such that we understand how the process of enculturation was able to develop ontogenetically and phylogenetically, then the distinction between the two structures is indispensable. The operational, i.e., logico-arithmetical structures, are not yet the structures of the world of objects. The materiality of the substance of an object is just as little a logico-arithmetic determination as is the property-based distinctiveness of an object. It is also, however, indisputable that it is only by virtue of operationality that the categorical constructs are possible in elaborated form. Moreover, precisely because the very purpose of the development of operationality itself is to efficiently organize interaction with the world of objects and events, a higher-level form of operationality, such as the level already reached in the formal-operational competence of arithmetic, is capable of having a lasting effect on categorical determinations. Time provides an excellent example of this. Piaget’s conception of time could mislead one to believe that time, according to its own specific nature, is simply and only the computational time that has found acceptance since the fourteenth century. That would be a grave misunderstanding. Time is not computational. It is only the intervals between the states of a permanently changing universe that allow these intervals to be subject to computationality. As one knows, modernity would not have been possible without the computationality of time.

4. O NTOGENESIS AND H ISTORY 4.1 “Not from the Beginning ...” Knowledge of the instability of the world is older than the insight into the acquisitional process of knowledge first presents it to be in antiquity. Xenophanes’s insight, which is couched in the terms of divine revelation, underscores an experience that regains validity in each and every biography, but which achieves a completely different dimension in history. “Verily,” says Xenophanes, “the gods did not reveal everything to mortals from the very beginning; it was only gradually that they sought and found

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that which is better.”18 In constructive terms, gaining knowledge of the universe and translating it into the construction of worlds is a completely tentative and uncertain venture. It is is unavoidable for worlds to become unstable. Any ontogenetically and historically produced equilibrium can only be preliminary in character. The sociocultural forms of organization are vulnerable to being destabilized. Humanity could have survived with any of the systems of knowledge developed in any given epoch. It did not remain at any of the previous levels it reached. And each time development was driven on, the acquisitional process of knowledge was also advanced. We will need to discuss what the driving forces were behind these developments. Their systematic presentation is the task of a theory of social and cultural change. In the present context, there are two questions at the center of our attention: What is the proper way to understand history as a sequel to the ontogenetically initiated process of enculturation? And what is the proper way to understand the cross-references to ontogenesis that we find in history, cross-references that Piaget made such frequent use of without ever providing a systematic and satisfactory discussion of them?

4.2 The Entrance into Histor y In a systematic sense, there is a clear attribution between the ontogenetically initiated development of constructs in the construction of the world and their development in history. The ontogenetic process of enculturation is a process that drives itself onwards. This “self-driving” quality means: the mere fact that the organism or the self-forming subject comes into contact with a resistant external world triggers learning processes. This in turn causes the organism to accommodate itself to its environment, which ultimately results in the establishment of fixed forms of interaction. This process is pushed forward until a viable level is reached. We must assume that the early paleolithic societies of Homo sapiens sapiens on the subsistence level of hunting and gathering document this state. All previous efforts—in the treatment of initial human societies—to set into motion the formational process of the specifically human organizational form of existence have run into an insurmountable barrier. There is an amazingly easy way to overcome it once one realizes that the process of enculturation arises out of ontogenesis. The constructive process is set in action with the development of the brain and the availability of the tools of speech. All other conditions are given and suffice to put cultural history into motion. The final sentence is especially applicable in one case: it is always assumed that one of the conditions is lacking and thus does not allow the process of enculturation to be understood: the intensity of communication and interaction with always already more competent others. It is not lacking in any way! Even among prehuman anthropoids, the intensity of communicative 18 | H. D IELS and W. K RANZ , Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, I:21 B

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and interactive relationships between a mother and its young suffices to set learning processes in motion that are comparable to those of human children. I have already pointed to the study by Jonas Langer.19 It has documentary value for understanding the way in which the sociocultural organization of Homo sapiens of our cast follows as the sequel to natural history. If one takes into account the process of over 2 million years in the transitional field of hominids, there can be no doubt that the enculturation process let itself be initiated in the at first prehuman ontogenesis between the mother and her young.

4.3 The Continuation of the Constructive Process in Histor y It had to revolutionize the historical understanding of modernity overnight, once one realized that sociocultural development takes place for each member of the species from cultural position zero, and that each member must work his or her way up to the level of the society into which they are born. It is just absurd to want to make any kind of connection between this conclusion and Haeckel’s basic biogenetic principle. The attribution must be made in precisely the opposite direction: ontogenesis produces the point of departure for history! In just the same way, the developmental process of cognition, when it continues in the structures of society, lies in that line of development which is begun in the early ontogenesis of each member of the species. Thus, when we find a development of cognitive structures in these societies, of operational and cognitive structures, with which we are acquainted from the ontogenetic development of children in industrial societies, this is not because ontogenesis and history go through parallel developmental processes. This would be a totally unfounded conception. It is, instead, because the process of knowledge acquisition that began ontogenetically is led, at the level of adults -under the impetus of demands that arise from societal development—beyond the initial level of structural formation. Ontogenesis and history are connected developments of the sociocultural organization of the world. In short: Historical development of cognition follows as a sequel to ontogenetic development by following a developmental logic that was initiated in early ontogenetic development. The competences that are advanced and refined by society then return as demands placed on the ontogenetic development of subsequently maturing members of the species. When viewed from the perspective of historico-genetic theory, the process of cognitive development turns out to be clearly more complex than it is usually taken to be. It begins in the early ontogenesis of the members of the species, but is brought up to a level by historical processes that goes beyond that indisputably required for a viable form of life. Of the four phases or stages that Piaget established in the development of operational competence in his Genevan children, only two of them—the sensorimotor and 19 | See Chap. 4 above.

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the preoperational phase—are phases in the endogenous development in each ontogenesis. The two later stages represent achievements of society. The societal standards of those societies represent an incentive for cognitive development for subsequent generations if they are made subject to these achievements. It is recognized that even in more complex societies this does not hold for all societal members to an equal extent. Modern society provides ample instructional material here. In order to reach the organizational level of industrial societies, three decades of a way of life concentrated completely on the acquisition of knowledge are necessary for reaching a median level of education. Even in the consciousness of educated of our time, the ontogenetic development of thought generally triggers little reflection. It is usually conceived of in terms of the substantive knowledge that is found in every case of ontogenesis and that is assimilated by the maturing members of the species. Epistemological critics are beginning, admittedly, to get accustomed to the idea that thought must have formed along with man, but they still reserve the right to a certain degree of unexplainability. One can live with this. In a similar way language is understood. Epistemological critics are much more uncompromising in their insistence here, though, that language is something absolutely uncircumventable in its structures. Once again historico-genetic theory finds itself between two fronts in a war. On the one hand, there are the philosophers among epistemological critics. A great majority of them consider language as an a priori given and cloak themselves in silence when the question arises of what a priori assumptions can possibly mean within a modern understanding of the world. On the other hand, sociobiologists would like to conceive of such assumptions as given as part of the genome. They have received reinforcements from a faction of linguists: from the Chomsky school. Chomsky felt compelled to appeal to the nativism of transformational grammar because, as he admitted, he saw no way to make the learning of a language understandable without assuming the natural anchoring of its deep structure. I believe that there is a way.

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1. THE E ND OF THE M ENTAL B ARRIER As we have discussed above, within the logical absolutism of modernity, language occupies the point of convergence of the absolute. In this view, the sociocultural life-forms arrive as emergent out of language. The diversification of language games and the profound differences between the abstractions of worldviews connected to them cause language to be understood as an emanation of an obscure event.-character of existence. As obscure as the genesis of language remains in this view, and as obscure the reflections about it also remain, the reason for the obscurity is clear: the traditional worldview dissolves even in its remnants, its logic perseveres, however, and allows certain of its set pieces to claim ultimate validity for themselves. There can be no doubt how the obscurity must be overcome: by means of thought starting from the priority of nature. It is precisely this turn in the understanding of language that Noam Chomsky’s linguistic theory takes.1 He proceeds, however, just as one has always proceeded: Chomsky posits in the natural stratum that which, if you follow generative transformational grammar, is then brought forth, transformed, out of this stratum. He places the deep structures of grammar in the genome. He is not the only one to follow this strategy. Konrad Lorenz had already viewed the Kantian a prioris of intuition and thought as inherent to the genome.2 Chomsky attempts to do the same with the structures of language. Both efforts arise from the necessity of starting from biology, since no other explanation is in sight. Under the aegis of derivational logic, there remains no course other than the substantialist reductionism taken by these two theorists. The genesis of language presents itself in a different light if one starts from the processual logic of historico-genetic reconstruction. Thought and language are first of all constructs of man. For this reason, an explanation 1 | N. Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax; idem, Language and Mind. 2 | Cf. K. Lorenz, “Die angeborenen Formen möglicher Erfahrung.”

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for them must be found that is backed up by nature, but which does not view their structures as already intrinsic in nature. The structures of language first form, as do the structures of thought, in the process of practical application of constructive autonomy. Moreover, as in the case of the structures of thought, language’s formational process becomes understandable in terms of the conditions that govern that process, since new forms of organization are capable of developing out of this constellation of conditions. By reconstructing the genesis of language within the processual logic of modernity, we gain an additional tool for overcoming the mental barrier to self-understanding found in modernity. In this reconstruction of the genesis of language, we once again take up the tracks that we have left in the history of our species.

2. L ANGUAGE AS M EDIUM IN THE P ROCESS OF C ONSTRUCTING THE W ORLD From a historico-genetic perspective, the basic function of language can be unambiguously defined: it is a means and medium in the process of enculturation for achieving the competence to act and for creating a world. Only when one understands language in this way is the two-fold perspective in understanding human communication opened up. On the one hand, communication is a means of organizing the relationships between those who communicate. Those who communicate integrate themselves in this process in a social world. At the same time, however, communication is the process in which the world is organized via the propositional contents of communication. The formative process of society only becomes understandable in terms of this twofold function. Let us therefore conclude: Society forms by means of the fact that those who are part of it are interconnected by communication. That they are able to interconnect is dependent, however, upon the fact that they allow a world to arise through constructs with propositional contents. If the world of man is a construct, then language is a means of forming this construct. I have already presented the absolutely indisputable necessity of language in making possible the rise of the human form of existence. Since natural forms of practice are no longer genetically preestablished once the brain develops, there is also the lack of a species-specific environment. The ethological procedure of linking old forms of practice to new environmental traits, or new forms of practice to old environmental traits, or even new forms of practice to newly used environmental traits is simply not available as an option. Language is the medium in which the constructivism of the human mind first becomes possible. It is not the sole constructor. For language’s propositional contents represent knowledge that must first form by means of cognitive structures. Thus, cognition and language take part cooperatively in the formative process of the world.

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Both the structures of cognition and language first have to be developed. In conjunction with cognition, the formative process of language is the formative process of world and vice versa: the formative process of the world involves the formative process of language. As language forms, so does the world as well. What causes language to arise? Moreover, why does it develop in structures we are acquainted with? This is the question. The formative process of language can be broken down into three subprocesses: Ň The phonetic organization of morphemes Ň The lexical organization of words, and Ň The syntactic organization of words and word units, that is, sentences. The organization of the sentence plays a prominent role in these three subprocesses insofar as the other two processes only occur within the context of a sentence-building process and only make functional sense within it. For this reason, I will concentrate upon and limit my discussion to the basic problem of sentence building: the question of the conditions under which the formation of sentences first becomes possible. Not only does controversy surround this issue—the same holds for all problems of language formation—it is caught up in the tangle of the epistemological obscurity of the present. We must throw some light into this tangle, in order to gain some understanding of the structuring process of language formation.

3. THE N ATUR ALISM OF G ENER ATIVE TR ANSFORMATIONAL G R AMMAR 3.1 The Naturalism of the Deep Structure In terms of a general perspective, what Chomsky’s legion of critics accuse him of, to argue from the priority of nature, turns out to be advantageous: Chomsky meets the demands placed on genetic explanation by thought in modernity. This advantage continues to hold even if the procedure itself— of seeking to simply embed syntactic structures back into the natural substratum—proves untenable.3 Chomsky, along with the followers who have grouped themselves around his theory, has made significant developments to the theory of transformational grammar since it was first formulated. It cannot be in my interest in the context of this discussion to enter into the controversies engaging linguistics. This would not even make sense. For it is precisely the basic axiom of linguistics that a historico-genetic theory cannot make into its own: to seek to do everything possible to explain lan3 | For a critique of innateness theory, cf. H. L ÜBBE, Soziologische Aspekte einer Theorie des Spracherwerbs, pp. 9ff.

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guage on the basis of linguistic structures. This axiom is itself a manifestation of the absolutist logic of having like arise from like. In this way, Chomsky seeks to gain the reason in generative grammar for distinguishing between deep and surface structure.4 The construction of a sentence is defined by its deep structure. The latter defines its surface structure [16] and determines its semantic component. More precisely: the surface structure of a sentence such as “Peter hits Paul” is generated through the transformation of the elementary units of the deep structure into the surface structure of a specific language (in this case, English) that results from the application of a specific operation (grammatical transformation). The focus here is on the deep structure. Chomsky explains: The base of the syntactic component is a system of rules that generate a highly restricted (perhaps finite) set of basic strings, each with an associated structural description called a base Phrase-marker. These base Phrase-markers are the elementary units of which deep structures are constituted. [17] One needs to be careful here: the basic strings with their base Phrase markers are themselves generated, namely, by a system of rules. Strictly speaking, conceptual efforts should actually be directed at defining this primary system of rules, which is supposed to be the initial source of the elementary units. This does not occur; it also does not need to, since this rule system is only the dynamic aspect of the deep structures. Chomsky views the latter as the genetic foundation; he states that language acquisition would be impossible without it. Once we take a closer look at the natural provisions of the deep structure, the problematic nature of proceeding in this fashion will become evident. In Chomsky’s view the child enters into the process of language acquisition with an “innate theory of potential structural descriptions” of sentences [30-31]. This theory is based on the following abilities: 1. A technique for representing input signals; i.e., the child must register that a statement is, as it were, a “possible sentence” 2. A competence for understanding these signals as information about a structure; i.e., the child must know what a structural description is 3. A competence for making initial delimitations that involve possible hypotheses about language structure; i.e., the child must know how one moves from elementary units to syntax and thus be acquainted with something like “a definition of ‘generative grammar’” 4. A method for determining what each such hypothesis implies with respect to each sentence; i.e., the child must have at its command a method for generating “a structural description of a sentence, given a grammar” 4 | On the following, cf. N. C HOMSK Y, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Hereafter, numbers in square brackets refer to pages in this work.

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5. “[A] method for selecting one of the (presumably, infinitely many) hypotheses” on syntax construction that is “compatible with the given primary linguistic data” [30]. Thus, the child must evaluate alternative possibilities such that it checks hypotheses about proposed grammars to see which corresponds to the inputs as they present themselves in accordance with the competences previously named. Chomsky notes that unusually strong assumptions are being made here [32]. Indeed! Precisely that theory is placed in the genome of the child that the linguist must find in order to present a description and explanation of language [25]. How does it get there? For me there appears to be only one possible answer: as in the case of all distinguishing characteristics of human action and operationalism, by means of the two constructors mutation and selection, acting in the course of fitness maximization. This assumption creates, however, considerable difficulties. The description of the abilities implies, namely, reflexive processes, which do not allow themselves to be translated into biochemical mechanisms. This could be a problem that only exists for social scientists. Two observations increase, however, our doubts: Ň There is no sign of any biological explanations of these mechanisms. The recourse to the genetics of DNS simply follows the customary procedure of viewing that which is found to exist as rooted in the genome. For this reason, the reference back to the constructors of evolution is no help.5 Ň Like every other form of placing intellectual, organizational forms back into the natural stratum, dropping grammar into the sediments of the genome, insofar as it implies references to meaning, simply stands in contradiction to the basic understanding of that world and of man in the world found in the worldview of modernity. We need to clarify this contradiction. It has to lead to a different strategy in the understanding of language acquisition.

3.2 The Implementation of Meaning The removal of mind from nature discussed above prohibits one from conceiving of the basic structures of mind-based life-forms as innate in the natural stratum of the genome or the brain. Prestructurings of sociocultural organization that already entail references to meaning are alien to this stratum. Such references are inherent in the deep structure, however, as Chomsky understands it, even if Chomsky himself does not wish to conceive of deep structures in terms of meaning, but as purely syntactic structures. In his view, meaningfulness and, more generally, any struc5 | As already noted in J. P IAGET, “The Psychogenesis of Knowledge and its Epistemological Significance,” pp. 23ff.

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tures of mind are first incorporated into language with the generation of semantics. This is a misjudgment, however, which is not difficult to see through.

S NP

VP NP

If we take a look at such a simple sentence as “The man hits the dog,” in one reading of the deep structure of this sentence, its nominal phrase (NP, left) entails that it involves the subject of the sentence, and the subject as syntactic element should be translated into the agent as semantic element. It is in no way clear how this should occur if the syntactic element does not know, so to speak, of its semantic, meaning-related character. Only in this way can one move from syntactic to semantic form and function. In the other possible reading, however, the nominal phrase (NP, left) is just a noun, and then there is no way whatsoever to move from the syntactic to the semantic level. One could just as well interchange the two nouns “man” and “dog” and read the sentence as “The dog hits the man.” In order to prevent this reading, Chomsky provided the noun in the nominal phrase as in the verbal phrase with subcategories “±alive” and “±human.” The incorporation of the lexical definition in the syntax confirms that the syntactic definition “subject” is supposed to be translated into the semantic one of agent as “+alive” plus “+human” and both conceived together. We can put the argument in more abstract terms: One can only move from the string of syntactic P-markers to the semantics of the sentence if the semantic contents of meaning are conceived of at the same time. One could also not make the distinction between NP and VP without the semantic contents. At best, one would come to a stringing of undefined positions, which, however, would not make any sense. This is, indeed, the way in which transformation grammar is understood by its followers. The principle is, as Bechert and others explain it in a textbook, “to have the entire semantic information contained in the deep structure and only there.”6 The problem that is associated with the failure of transformational grammar to reflect on the contemporary relationship between nature and mind can be made clear in terms of the sentence “The man hits the dog.” The subject-verb-object relation conveys the intended meaning: the action of the actor to change the world. If we make that which has to be translated into surface meaning innate in the deep structure, then we reincorporate intentionality into nature. Moreover, we already naturally tend toward this 6 | J. B ECHERT, Einführung in die generative Transformationsgrammatik, p. 165.

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understanding of the world. Clarification here involves more than just the problematic relation between the deep and surface structure. What concerns me involves the following: Language, in terms of the structures specific to it, cannot be placed in the natural substratum (the genome or brain). For that would mean that one would have to place all of the meaningful intentionality that language entails in the natural substratum. This conclusion, of course, in no way contradicts the results of brain research, which has located specific, interconnected areas in the brain that are responsible for linguistic ability and specific performances connected to this ability. The neuronal basis of all language performance cannot be questioned. Accordingly, there can also be no question that the largely still unexplained construction of the neuronal modules of language ability involve complex processual prestructurings of the capacity for language. For the motoric control of speech is held to be the most difficult of all the tasks of motoric control.7 The only question is how grammatical structures, with their specific way of mediating organized references to meaning, as we find them developed, arise. For this reason, it appears to me to be important, in the discussion of the genesis of linguistic structures, to provide a historico-genetic clarification of the so problematic and obscure relation between nature and mind. Historico-genetic theory knows how to explain the conditions of the possibility of the development of intellectual, sociocultural life-forms (and this thus includes, above all, the development of language) on the basis of natural presuppositions. The point is, however, that it knows how to do this in such a way that their intellectuality itself first develops processually out of these presuppositions. It seems to me that at least sociobiology could make this strategy its own without losing the natural foundation it claims. In any case, there is no empirical indication whatsoever that the structures of language are themselves innate, i.e., given at birth.8

4. THE G ENESIS OF L ANGUAGE IN THE O NTOGENESIS OF THE M EMBERS OF THE S PECIES Our strategy of also developing the phylogenetic process of enculturation on the basis of ontogenesis is successful not least of all by virtue of its ability to reconstruct the genesis of linguistic structures. The cognitive strategy also developed in this context as the consequence of the ontogenetic turn. The development of language also finds its explanation in terms of the basic ontogenetic process of developing the competence to act. After 7 | P. L IEBERMAN, Uniquely Human, p. 83. 8 | On the state of research, cf. R. H OLLOWAY, “Evolution of the brain”; A. L OCK and K. S YMES , “Social relations, communication, and cognition.”

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the completely futile efforts to discover the origin of language in phylogenetic terms, the realization that access might be gained ontogenetically has gained a foothold. J.S. Bruner writes: If one tries to understand the origin of language not phylogenetically, but ontogenetically, one could investigate the universal traits of earliest childhoodlanguage without regard to the language community that the child belongs to. 9 Reconstruction poses considerable problems, even in the case of the ontogenetic strategy. This is all the more true if the purpose of the ontogenetic reconstruction also includes uncovering the condition of possibility of its phylogenetic genesis. One of the most common arguments used to support the claim that it is completely impossible to explain the genesis of language has long been that language can only be acquired by means of language. For this reason, let us first clarify how we should understand—in phylogenetic terms— the strategy of seeking access to the genesis of language ontogenetically. It should be understood, namely, as precursor of an acquisition of pragmatic and cognitive competence in early ontogenesis, which could be used and extended on the level of adults. The achievements of the adult level come back in the next generation, in schematic terms, to develop the ontogenetic competence further. The only thing that interests me in the following is this: to clarify the initial processes under which further development and, along with it, the formative process of grammar becomes understandable. This clarification is also of constitutive significance for the understanding of ontogenetic development in all subsequent societies. For even in socioculturally developed societies, the process of language acquisition cannot be understood as a simple process of adoption on the part of the maturing generation.10 The impossibility of being able to explain even ontogenetic language acquisition by means of learning in the sense of a process of impregnation was exactly what drove Chomsky, in an act of desperation so to speak, to develop the innateness hypothesis. In a historico-genetic theory, we can formulate the counter-thesis. We follow Andrew Lock here, but give the argument a decidedly constructivist turn:11 In every ontogenesis, the basic structures in the formative process of language are developed anew. The linguistic environment merely supports development. An effect of developmental support is that structures take on concrete form in terms of the structures of the language of the given environment. 9 | J.S. B RUNER , “Studien zur kognitiven Entwicklung II,” p. 55. 10 | Following W. H UMBOLDT, C HOMSK Y correctly points this out. See Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, p. 51. The thesis here is that language acquisition is “Wiedererzeugug, that is, ... drawing out what is innate in the mind” [51]. 11 | L OCK lets himself be guided by the strongly naturalistic presuppositions of a modular theory: A. L OCK , The Guided Reinvention of Language.

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5. THE D E VELOPMENT OF L ANGUAGE IN THE C ONTE X T OF THE A CQUISITION P ROCESS OF THE C OMPE TENCE TO A CT 5.1 Systemic Relationing Every reconstructive analysis of sociocultural structures faces the problem of defining their formative process such that these structures are able to develop in the systemic interaction of natural presuppositions in which they are neither contained nor recognizable in their later forms. This problem presents itself in a special way for linguistic structures. For if language is, as we have claimed, a medium in the process of achieving the competence to act and organizing the world, then it can only develop in conjunction with and by virtue of the organization of action. For the latter determines the process of enculturation. Moreover, one has to take into account that in this way language is a medium in the development of the competence to act and the organization of the world, and that it objectifies their structures in a process of abstract reflection that first makes these structures available for use. By taking this into account it then becomes clear that language can first develop in its own structures when the organization of action and world has already begun prelinguistically. To put it in the simplest possible fashion, there must be something that can find expression in language, before language can move into action, and that means before it, for its part, can form or develop. This preliminary reflection holds the key to understanding the development of linguistic structures. Language enters into the formative process of action and the organization of world. To put it in more processual terms: in the process of acquiring the competence to act, the child develops—after an initial phase in which this competence has begun to stabilize in actions in the immediate vicinity of the body—language as a medium to effectuate this process. In a process of abstract reflection, the child makes use of the competence to act developed up to that point by seeking to make the courses of action and their concomitant situations representable with the means of linguistic articulation. The point of this process is that it is only through this form of reflexive objectification that the previously only rudimentarily developed intentions and courses of action can be effectuated. First by virtue of the incorporation of the process of language acquisition into the acquisition process of the competence to act and the concomitant construction of the world can the conditions be created for achieving a specifically human organizational form of existence. One advantage of this approach is immediately apparent: we are able to answer the question as to why language developed at all, even though, by abandoning any recourse to innate linguistic structures in the genome or brain, we can no longer make direct use of the evolutionary mechanisms of mutation and selection. In the same way that the apparative mechanism of the brain simply takes up the processing of experience and, in doing so, translates natural capacities into cultural competences, the

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brain uses semiotic possibilities by integrating them into the formative process of actional competence, in this way effectuate the latter. Piaget termed the process autoregulation and in this way indulged his predilection for seeking parallels to natural mechanisms.12 After all of this, there is no doubt: just as in the acquisition process of the competence to act and of cognition, the formative process of language also receives an organic foundation, only in a setting that makes the constructive process possible without already containing the structures themselves.

5.2 Lateralization, Action, Language Lateralization is one of the few phenomena from our knowledge of brain development that can be reliably drawn upon for the understanding of linguistic development. The left hemisphere controls the right hand; at the same time, it controls speech motor activity. Lateralization has phylogenetic precursors,13 but it is nowhere so extremely developed as in man.14 Doreen Kimura has developed a hypothesis in conjunction with the extreme lateralization of the human brain: she argues that the asymmetry is the result of the asymmetry in the use of arms in tool production. Furthermore, the left half of the brain controls speech motor activity, because this side of the brain already had a highly developed center of motor control.15 The phylogenetically preformed lateralization strengthens rather than weakens this argument. Human organization takes advantage of phylogenetic preformations in the development of language, but then develops them further.16 The supposed connection between the development of language and tool production advanced by brain research can not only be supported in historico-genetic terms; it can be much more systematically accounted for in its terms. Even if Homo sapiens sapiens and its unique speech ability is supposed to have formed prior to its arrival in Europe, the explosion of cultural artifacts that we observe in Europe between the Middle and Upper Paleolithic ca. 35,000 years ago17 impressively documents that language competence was achieved in the triangle formed between communicants and the external world. Not the need to communicate for maintaining social relationships caused human communication and, with it, language to develop, but the necessity of achieving the competence to act and creating 12 | J. P IAGET, “The Psychogenesis of Knowledge,” p. 30. 13 | Cf. P.F. M AC N EILAGE, “The Evolution of Hemospheric Specialization for Manual Function and Language.” 14 | E. L ENNEBERG , Biologische Grundlagen der Sprache. 15 | D. K IMURA , “Neuromotor Mechanisms in the Evolution of Human Communication.” 16 | P. L IEBERMAN , The Biology and Evolution of Language, pp. 66ff.; idem, Uniquely Human, p. 80. 17 | R.K. WHITE , “On the Evolution on Human Socio-cultural Patterns.”

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a world. Ontogenetically, the intimate connection between the acquisition process of the competence to act in relation to an always already existing reality and the development of language is above all doubt. For purposes of clarity, let us call to mind the process: the organism has sensory access to the external world; the process could not be set in motion in any other way. Moreover, this process brings with it elementary reaction schemas; accommodation of motor activity could not be attained in any other way. Equipped with this ability, this process sets into motion the development of a competence to act. Along with the competence to act, it develops those prerequisites necessary for integrating the formative process of language in the acquisition process of the competence to act. This holds for the development of syntax, and it holds for the development of vocabulary.

5.3 The Structure of Action as the Structure of Syntax 5.3.1 The Acquisition of the Competence to Act as a Precursor If the sentence represents the unit that genuinely structures language, if it is the source of the productivity of language, then the genesis of syntax also discloses one’s understanding of language. For this reason, in explaining syntax, the historico-genetic theory of culture also experiences its own emphatic confirmation. In both ontogenetic and phylogenetic terms, the development of the structure of action is already far advanced by the time the development of syntax begins. Ontogenetically, anyone can witness this finding. A child’s motor competence is still limited in the middle of its second year of life, and the intentional structure of its action and the developing reflexiveness of its self-awareness is still just beginning, even though it is clearly visible. Phylogenetically, observations of our closest prehuman relatives in the wild and especially the efforts to teach anthropoids a sign language have already made both a rudimentary intentionality and a just as rudimentary abstract competence visible. For this reason, the genesis of syntax is easily explained if one proceeds from that which is given and that which can be made use of in syntactic formation: the structure of action and an initial abstract reflection developed along with action.18 One could be tempted to make use of the linguistic pregiven and understand the structure of action as the deep structure of syntax. This would not be advisable, however. For this would not only provoke the question of what “depth” means in this context and how structures attained depths, it would also tend to obscure the process of structural formation. For it is a process of abstract reflection:

18 | As also found in E. B ATES, Language and Context, p. 13: “And, in fact, we will suggest that the propositions that children eventually ‘have’ as part of the meaning of sentences, are originally organized as action schemes that the child carries out, mentally or literally, at an earlier stage in development.”

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In the formative process of language, the actors use previously developed pragmatic and cognitive competences in order to build the structure of action developed by them into the language as syntax. The formative process of syntax is indebted to a process of abstract reflection. As such, this process is entailed every time a sentence is formed. Precisely because language acquisition is tied to the acquisition of the competence to act, wide-ranging structural agreement can be observed between vocalized language and the language of deaf-mutes.19 For children born deaf-mute, the formative process of language also occurs via abstract reflection. This hypothesis is beautifully substantiated in the research of Bellugi and Klima. They expressly conclude that deaf-mute children also observe more of an abstract rather than iconic procedure of language formation.20 The understanding of the genesis of syntax developed here is suited for helping us understand the role of language acquisition in the process of enculturation. Once developed, these two processes of development support and mutually advance one another. The development of language competence enters into the development of actional competence and first creates the potential for progress in this process. Here the collusion between the acquisition process of the competence to act and the development of language must be understood in systemic terms. Whereas the symbolically mediated construction of action and world is conducive for the acquisition process of the competence to act, the acquisition process of the competence to act for its part supports the development of language. It provides it with its most powerful impetus and the condition of possibility of its structural formation. The development of language, namely, does not arise out of a semiotic predisposition inherent to man‘s nature. That instruments of speech existed and the necessary organization of the brain was produced specifically for their control is not yet evidence of the predisposition of language itself, i.e., its structures in the brain. The structures of language do not arrive out of language. Human behavior must be understood more in reverse terms: phylogenetically, the initial development of the competence to act was the most powerful impetus behind the development of speech instruments and their potential controls in the brain. In this sense, there is a certain plausibility to attributing language acquisition to the requirement of large-game hunting. One will have to expand on this, however: the shift to a symbolically mediated organization of the world takes place in the handling of all practices in life and returns from there in the ontogenesis of subsequently maturing member of the species as the demand to make previous achievements one‘s own, to appropriate them.

19 | Cf. M. D EUCHAR , “Spoken language and sign language”; cf. also H. S CHLESIN GER and K. M EADOW, Sounds and Signs: Childhood, Deafness, and Mental Health. 20 | U. B ELLUGI and E. K LIMA , “Two Faces of Sign: Iconic and Abstract.”

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Piaget, who made the acquisition of the competence to act defining for the process of cognitive development, did not make enough use of the former in the explanation of the acquisition of language. In the memorable discussion between Chomsky and Piaget, in which Chomsky’s nativist thesis was confronted with the constructivist thesis of Piaget’s genetic theory, Chomsky emerged as the victor because he rightly demanded that the formative process of syntax be substantiated in terms of its structures.21 The mere assertion that processes of language formation represent a special case of general learning is in fact not enough.22 Precisely this concrete conclusion results if one combines the two distinguishing principles of historico-genetic theory: pragmatism and the process of abstract reflection. The fact that the process of syntax formation does in fact become comprehensible reconstructively once again shows the superiority of the empirical approach of reconstruction over the purely speculative nativism of both sociobiology and linguistics of Noam Chomsky.

5.3.2 Constructivism Versus Nativism There are efforts today to justify nativist accounts of sociocultural lifeforms by making reference to brain research. The Chomsky school has further advanced the nativism of generative transformational grammar by linking it, as a modular hypothesis, to brain research.23 The topographical centering of language ability is taken to mean that this ability owes its existence to brain modules whose neuronal architecture contains the structure of language. There can be no doubt that the capacity for language is located in specific topographical areas; this does not, however, justify the conclusion that linguistic structures are already genetically fully formulated within this capacity. I have already pointed this out. Let me give concrete form to my objections here: There are currently between 4,000 and 4,500 languages spoken in the world. In more than 99 percent of them, the grammatical subject as a rule precedes its object.24 It is in no way clear that the placement of the subject at the beginning of the sentence, which is indeed the general rule in over 90 percent of all languages, is established in any modular form whatsoever. There is also no known neuronal organization that is structured to produce a decision about the placement of the subject, whether at the beginning of a sentence or elsewhere. Given our previous discussions, however, there is also no need whatsoever to posit innate linguistic structures. For the process whereby language is ac21 | M. P IAT TELLI -PALMARINI , Language and Learning: The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky. 22 | On the difference between P IAGET ’S cognitive theory and C HOMSK Y ’S theory of innateness, cf. C. J OHNSON , H. DAVIS , and M. M ACKEN, “Symbols and Structure in Language Acquisition.” 23 | Cf. N. C HOMSK Y, Rules and Representation; J.A. F ODOR , The Modularity of the Mind. 24 | D. C RYSTAL , Die Cambridge-Enzyklopädie der Sprache, p. 85.

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quired becomes comprehensible if one traces the development of pragmatic competence at the end of the second year of life. Discussion of anthropological constitution has shown that the constructive autonomy of the way humans are constituted needs to be grasped in a radical fashion: man brings with him natural capacities, but not sociocultural competences or the organizational forms themselves. We have reason to proceed from a veritable cultural position zero. Even the mediators and conveyers of the external world, the senses, provide access, but not initially in organized forms; the latter must first be developed. Trees and shrubs, water and mountains do not already inhere in the senses as organized forms. The linkage of the genesis of syntax to the development of the competence to act demonstrates that language acquisition follows upon a development that is set in motion under naturally existing conditions, but that occurs from a cultural position zero. Chomsky thinks language would be incomprehensible if the deep structure were not conceived of as already naturally developed; fortunately his reflections were radically enough not to posit anything as the natural conditions of take-off; he lacked, however, the processual logic necessary for being able to conceive of syntax developing itself culturally on the basis of natural conditions. It has become apparent that language must be viewed as a tool for achieving world and forms of practice in it. Language had to develop phylogenetically without having already preexisted; it can also form anew ontogenetically in every ontogenesis without any presupposition of its structures once its natural prerequisites have already been developed phylogenetically. The development of actional competence and the subsequent process of language formation that it triggers are repeated in every case of ontogenesis.25 In a process of abstract reflection that results from a distancing between subject and object, the rudimentary development of the competence to act and the structure of action is built into developing sentence structure. It is reasonable to view the process of distancing in the process of acquiring the competence to act and the abstract reflection this makes possible as the core of the formative process of human mind. This is the process that repeats itself in every case of ontogenesis. It is for this very reason that the process of language formation is—as Andrew Lock succinctly termed it—a process of guided reinvention.26

5.4 The Competence to Differentiate No less important than the understanding of how it is at all possible for the process of language formation to be set in motion is the recognition of how the competence to draw distinctions or differences is achieved, which is the basis of all linguistic competences and especially of the develop25 | As correctly pointed out in D.J. S LOBIN , “Kognitive Voraussetzungen der Sprachentwicklung,” p. 127. 26 | A. L OCK , The Guided Reinvention of Language.

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ment of words. Perhaps communication theories, which apparently run wild, should be assessed according to their contribution to explaining this process, which is absolutely fundamental for constructivism. For generally this capacity is simply presupposed. In fact, it must first develop. The basic differentiation is always that between subject and object. The understanding of the subject-object difference is in dispute. Postmodern theories think they need to eliminate this distinction. Nothing could be more absurd. For without this difference, which is absolutely fundamental for the construction of the world, it would simply be impossible to achieve the competence to act or to create the human world. If the subject-object difference has become the topic of critique since Nietzsche, this is because the subject has been understood as an absolute and pure subject that is not incorporated into the world. Here as elsewhere, Nietzsche articulated revolutionary insights without achieving any kind of systematic knowledge. Nonetheless, he did occasionally term the desire to do away with the contrast practically a misunderstanding of the life instinct. For, as he declared, that would mean degrading corporeality into an illusion “denying faith in its ego, negating its own reality.”27 In fact the construction of the world would not be possible, if the effort in ontogenesis failed to translate the cognitive dualism of its earliest phase into a further developed form in which dualism of subject and world are counterposed. The distinction that develops here between subject and object is one that literally develops with regard to the mother‘s body. The young member of the species achieves constructive competence to the extent to which it detaches itself from the mother‘s body and realizes the constructive autonomy of its anthropological constitution.28 Only when the child frees itself from the mother‘s body in its interaction with her does it brings the world into a counterposition, and only by elaborating this counterposition is the constructive process able to efficiently carry forth the process of translating experiences in dealing with the world into constructs and construction of this world. It is this process of difference formation that is set in motion by the acquisition process of the competence to act and it continues to make possible the formative process of language starting in the middle of the second year of life. Sentence and word formation are both tied to the preceding development of actional competence and are set in motion while systematically interconnected. Only the competence of difference formation, developed along with the competence to act, makes it possible for the maturing member of the species to translate its experiences—in an never-ending process—into the formation of semiotic differences. The same applies to the differentiation of objects and properties of objects, as well as the differentiation of the courses of events and the properties of the 27 | F. N IETZSCHE , Die Genealogie der Moral, p. 364. 28 | An impressive discussion of the process is found in A. M AHLER et al., Die psychische Geburt des Menschen.

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courses of events in the midst of an event field. In language acquisition research, complete certainty has not yet been reached about the extent to which object constancy is or must be developed for a one-word expression with an object reference to appear.29 According to everything we know from empirical research what does appear certain, as far as I see, is the highly advanced state of development of object constancy when language enters into the developmental process. Thus if definitive stabilization has not already taken place prior to one-word expressions, the latter produce it. In this way the insight into the understanding of the genesis of language is achieved that I had identified previously: The language acquisition process takes place in the processing of experiences. Language is not there prior to the acquisition of the competence to act and of the world as a structure of the genome. It forms in the acquisition of the competence to act and the construction of the world. The operationalism of the brain is capable of dissolving an initially prelinguistically conceived reality into the differential formations of linguistic objectifications and at the same time to produce the unity of action and of the world by means of the generative processes of a developing grammar. In precisely this way the innumerable experiences that man makes are transformed into a linguistically organized reality. Ontogenetically, there can be no doubt that in the context of the process of acquiring actional competence the process of linguistic differentiation takes place by means of external referents. It is not at all clear that it could have achieved in any other way. Not only is the mother’s body the most significant referent, through its mediation a process of organizing the world takes place in which the structures of object and event are developed in the triangle consisting of the maturing member of the species, the significant social others, and the external world. The genesis of language in the interaction with an external world is so evident that it is carried along as a little discussed part of every developmental-psychological reconstruction of language acquisition processes and cognition. In linguistics one may limit oneself to proceeding from the notion of referents rather than referents themselves.30 In this way, the characteristic interiorization of human knowledge is taken into account.31 In the theory of knowledge, we require the opposing stratum of reality in order to explain how difference formation is at all possible and how knowledge about it can be gained. Only after a symbolically mediated system of knowledge has been developed in interaction with reality can constructivism be reflexively used in order to further advance this system in system-immanent terms. Only when the constructive process allows reality to be gained, can reality be negated in 29 | Cf. P. G REENFIELD and J. S MITH , The Structure of Communication in Early Language Development. 30 | F. DE S AUSSURE , Grundfragen der allgemeinen Sprachwissenschaft. 31 | On this, cf. H. P LESSNER , Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch, pp. 404f.

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propositions and a sentence be formed in which it is established (!) that “There is no tree there.” Can that be a problem for a constructivist understanding? If the opposing stratum of reality does not exist for postmodern theories, this is the fault of logical absolutism in construction theories. Theories of knowledge are rigorous in their demands: anything that does not fit in their systems is negated or, when necessary, not even taken into account anymore. Science is also acquainted with desolate spaces.

5.5 On Ontogenetic Documentation The previously developed thesis, that syntax forms in the process of an abstract reflection of the competence to act finds impressive substantiation in the ontogenetic process of language acquisition itself. The first symbolic representations contain courses of action that appear outside of their original context.32 This is the beginning of construct formation in language. For one-word expressions must not be understood—as one would assume in the case of an innate deep structure of syntax—in the sense of holophrases that already contained complete propositions in elliptical and reduced form.33 One-word expressions articulate events, one‘s own, which are intended, without already having found a form, and those in the world: “Objects in the child’s experience are initially embedded events, and as a result object concepts are not at first differentiated from their event representations.” 34 The elementary syntactical elements, as they are most frequently observable in initial two-word expressions, also support our thesis, for the earliest units are: agent--action, agent--object, action--object, owner--property.35 They demonstrate that they not only presuppose the decentering of perceptive and motor egocentrism, but rather that the organizational potential won in this way is used reflexively in them. Here one has to take into account that “reflexive” and “reflexive abstraction” themselves must be understood in developmental-logical terms. In this early phase of language development, this means nothing more than the translation of the structure rudimentarily developed in conjunction with the competence to act into the medium of symbolic organization. The finding is reflected in fully developed syntax. As was already mentioned, in most languages the

32 | H. S INCLAIR - DE-Z WART, “Psychologie der Sprachentwicklung,” p. 77. 33 | On this, cf. D. M C N EIL , “The Acquisition of Language”; P. G REENFIELD and J. S MITH, The Structure of Communication in Early Language Development. 34 | K. N ELSON , Making Sense: The Acquisition of Shared Meaning, p. 79. 35 | Cf. the compilation and discussion in R. Brown, ”Die ersten Sätze von Kind und Schimpanse,” p. 42.

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occurrence takes its start in a sentence with, as a general rule, the subject also starting off the sentence. I am willing to admit that this increases our interest in the almost 1 percent of languages where this is not the case. I consider them, however, more a confirmation than a refutation of the thesis that the structure of action forms the abstract structure of syntax. For here as everywhere else the constructivism of symbolically mediated organization allows for some leeway in design. It has limits, however. For the course of events must also be representable by means of a sentence in these languages. Events, however, are, as we know, cognitively speaking, in their original form structurally bound to action. Moreover, when language starts to structure the process of the symbolic mediation of the world, action has already taken the lead here. For this reason it is understandable why languages such as those in the Altaic language group, which do not build the structure of action into sentence structure in the same way as, for instance, IndoEuropean languages do, are still able to work in everyday practices. On the surface, a different sequence of syntactic unit is imaginable; the agent must not necessarily be distinguished grammatically as subject and stand at the start of the sentence. Linguistic structures are not simply a “copy” or “reflection” of the structure of action. In this case, the structure of action is carried along as the veritable, cognitive deep structure of the sentence, even if the conceptualization of this deep structure does not remain uninfluenced by the surface structure of the sentence. There is reason to suppose that such an ordering principle does not prove to be very useful. It would otherwise be hard to understand why 99 percent of all languages proceed differently.

6. C ONSTRUCT, NOT “COPY ” Construction in the medium of thought and language in relation to an opposing stratum of an always already preexisting reality supports that which we have already concluded several times above: One can get “behind” language. One can analyze it and make it understandable with regard to the presuppositions involved in its formative process, but it cannot be broken down into parts of a simple reality.36 The epistemological difficulties of Radical Constructivism and related theories result in part from the fact that they continue to argue against outdated forms of ontological realism and the ontological “copy” or “duplication” theory.37 I have already sought to demonstrate in my discussions 36 | A comprehensible depiction of this circumventability is found in E. H OLEN STEIN , Von der Hintergehbarkeit der Sprache. 37 | The fixation on a simple realism goes so far that L UHMANN takes the existence of numbers and negation as evidence that all forms of constructive realism or real constructivism are impossible. N. L UHMANN, Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft.

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of communication that understanding among communicants is only possible because the medium, thought as well as language, has been constructed from outside an always already preexisting reality. This means, however, when put in the plain English of our present discussion: the only reason that language can succeed in its form-building process is because its structures find matter in an external reality, which it then forces to take on form.38 This applies to the formation of word field differentiation as much as to the formation of syntactical structure and sentence meaning. The processes in the triangle of communicants and external reality that ultimately lead to the formation of concepts are subtle and can not be further disentangled. For that which is experienced from external reality and incorporated into the construct, first undergoes definition in course of its symbolically mediated processing or assimilation. Just as this assimilation begins with a process of reflexive abstraction, it continues on by virtue of such abstraction. The reflexive abstraction increases the organizational competence as the organization of action and the construction of the world—both symbolically mediated—develop. The conceptual terms that form with the myriad of details in the construction of the world become organized into conceptual classes and systems. The unity of the structures in that which occurs and is found existing allows the tying together of the variety of thematic fields into the unity of the world. Poststructuralist theoreticians have taken the discovery that one is integrated within the relations and structures of language as a reason for denying any place for a subject in the construct of language and for considering the distinguishing character of the world to be defined solely by the medium of language.39 For either of these two assumptions there is no basis. In truth, the real components of the world that have entered into the formative process of language, in both its concepts and structures, remain part and parcel of that world. Moreover, the subject is also able to follow the chain of interconnections and keep them linked in a continuous process of abstract reflection. The subject not only does not forget the beginning in the chain of interconnections , but rather formulates anew with every connection the meaning of that previously stated. Within the procedural character of a linguistically shaped and interpreted world, simple sentences can have an exceedingly complex, linguistically mediated foundation. The sentence “It was a beautiful August day in 1913” can mean a variety of things. What it does mean when it stands at the beginning of a famous novel, which is now part of world literature, can only be known for sure when one has read over a thousand pages. The entire language, Deleuze and Guattari say, consists of indirect speech, is an indirect dis-

38 | Even in language-philosophical reflections that do not present themselves as postmodern, this is sometimes not recognized. See, for instance, K. RÖT TGERS , Spuren der Macht, p. 348. 39 | Cf. M. F OUCAULT, Von der Subversion des Wissens, p. 16.

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course.40 The speech act refers to something that is itself already linguistically formed; it gives it, any way, a different meaning.

7. L ANGUAGE AND SOCIE T Y 7.1 Where media intersect As long as sociological theory is also tied to traditional logic, it is compelled to presuppose society along with language. The willingness in principle to understand society in evolutionary terms41 has no effect. For under the aegis of traditional logic, society as a sequel organization to natural evolution cannot be made understandable as shift in media . This is necessary, however, if one seeks to give due to the contemporary state of knowledge. We simply do not find ourselves in a century in which one can be content with phenomenally descriptive analyses. The radical shift in thought necessitates explanations, veritable explanations for that which arises as construct. The reason for this: because we are aware of the constructivism through which the sociocultural organizational forms of human existence have developed. Not the least of the advantages of the pragmatic-cognitive genesis of syntax as sketched above lies in the access that it provides us with to an understanding of communication and, in this way, of society. I have already pointed this out. There is controversy about determining when these two phenomena were able to form. It is difficult to reconstruct the development of instruments of speech.42 The development of the human vocal tract begins with Homo erectus.43 Thus one must reckon that less perfect linguistic forms developed prior to Homo sapiens sapiens.44 It is decisive for us that along with the process of language development, the formative process of the specifically human organizational form of society can also be made comprehensible. Then there cannot be any doubt about it: a society in the specific sense of the human organizational form of society can first arise with the change in media at the virtual point of intersection between nature and culture. Biochemical control processes govern the practical forms of behavior on the other side of the threshold; on our side, with the development of language, symbolically mediated organization assumes control of action. Moreover, the formation of a specifically human society first becomes possible by virtue of the symbolically mediated 40 | G. D ELEUZE and F. G UAT TARI , Tausend Plateaus. 41 | N. L UHMANN, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, pp. 413ff. 42 | Cf. P. L IEBERMAN, Uniquely Human. 43 | J.T. L AITMAN and J.S. R EIDENBERG , Advances in understanding the relationship between the skull base and larynx, pp. 101-111. 44 | A seemingly realistic assessment is found in M. D ONALD, Origins of the Modern Mind, pp. 201ff.

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organization of the world brought about by the development of language. There is a coevolution in the development of language and that of society; each triggers the other. To avoid circularity in this coevolutionary interconnection of mutual reference, it has to be made clear where the developmental process takes hold. Once more the recourse to early ontogenesis provides the key to understanding the process, if the latter is understood in terms of processual logic.

7.2 The Genesis of Society We can assume that our anthropoid predecessors already lived in societal groups. Accordingly, they also communicated with one another. However, one of the most conspicuous things observed about communication among nonhuman primates is that there is practically no communication about the external world. This provides the historico-genetic reconstruction of society with a precise starting point. There are sufficient indications in phylogenesis of the strategy of having the acquisition process of constructive competences start in early ontogenesis. We may assume that the Australopithecines did not remain behind the development of chimpanzees most closely related to us in their cognitive competences. These chimpanzees, however, have the competences at their disposal that human children have developed by the end of their second year of life, i.e., at the point at which language enters into the constructive process. Thus, the best presuppositions were found, in phylogenetic terms, for the development of language. In the line of hominid development, the development of the brain and that of language prove mutually supportive in evolutionary terms. What then allowed society to form: The developing ability in a population to communicate about the external world, to build forms of action into sentences, and the ability to reach understanding about the propositional contents of the form “The river is deep.” The competence for this was developed in early ontogenesis. The phylogenetic form of communication between mother and child suffices to start the process. The practical use in life of the competences developed early in ontogenesis takes place at the level of adults. In the ontogenesis of the next generation, this use returns as a demand upon that generation to adopt it as its own and, in this way, promotes their development. It is this recursively dynamic process that sets the formative process of society in motion. The conclusion that society formed by virtue of communication about the world possesses an inestimable advantage: if it is adopted, no special arrangements are then required to achieve society. Older theories of social contract certainly allowed doubts to arise as to whether there was not an implicit, but nonetheless defining notion of a moment of agreement or unification involved.45 Even if one were to agree that such a notion was 45 | Cf. J.J. R OUSSEAU, Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité parmi les hommes.

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only to be accepted in a metaphorical sense, one would still not know what the metaphorics of agreement was supposed to represent. In this way, the formative process was more obscured than explained. Comparable reservations are elicited by the hypothesis that cooperative hunting set the enculturation process in motion and pushed it along. It does not explain what produced the cooperative achievements, in other words, what made society possible.46 With the thesis of a language-pragmatic constructivism, we move beyond those irritations that, generally known as “Münchhausen effects,” are connected to the genesis of society. It is no longer necessary to presuppose society‘s existence just to achieve society. Not only was there never any actual contract, there were not any contractual aspects involved in the process. The human species found itself unexpectedly incorporated in a process of enculturation in which, in conjunction with a common, shared world, the constructive forms of social relations, and the relation between sexes in particular,47 also developed. The real explosiveness of language-pragmatic constructivism is first perceived when it is viewed in connection with processual logic. The point of the entrance of language into the enculturation process is, namely, that the process of societal formation that becomes possible with language becomes the condition of possibility of further linguistic development. The development must be understood processually. With the beginnings of language-based communication and development of society an impetus is produced that first makes possible the continuation of linguistic development, i.e., its genuine formative process. The more developed form, for its part, represents the condition for the intensification of the process of societalization. This is precisely the sense in which processual logic seeks to be understood: in that which afterwards presents itself as a stringent process of development, the stringency first develops through the circumstance that every step of development allows a new constellation to arise, which, in turn, produces in processual terms the condition for a new constellation. The distinguishing moment of processual logic, i.e., allowing something new to arise, grants itself continuity, in other words, by means of developmental steps in which the condition of possibility for their continuation first arises. Development is not already given within the beginning of the process. Language development ignites and produces— with the start of communication—the beginnings of societal formation; the latter, in turn, becomes the condition of possibility for the continuation of the process of language development. This is the process that we can observe historically in the long phase of development toward Homo sapiens sapiens in the realm of hominids, regardless how incomplete the material handed down to us may be. Our discussions can be summarized in terms of a simple conclusion: 46 | On the hypothesis of enculturation resulting from the demands of hunting, cf. M. H ILDEBRAND -N ILSHON , Die Entwicklung der Sprache, pp. 131ff. 47 | For a systematic discussion, cf. G. D UX , Geschlecht und Gesellschaft.

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Society forms in the process whereby a culturally shared world is formed. The process whereby culture is formed is also the process whereby society is formed. In the present context it is completely impossible to provide a systematic discussion of the entwined character of the two formative processes of language and society. I will limit myself to a somewhat more detailed analysis, within social relations, of the pragmatic aspect of the way in which language permanently shapes this entwined relationship.

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1. THE O NTIC D IFFERENCE One thing is evident from the language-pragmatic genesis of society, as I developed it above: there was never a lack of material for communication. There was also never much to give much thought to what one should communicate about. A world that forms as a shared world on the outer side of that which is found existing (and which includes the needs and interests of the communicants) represents a permanent source of communication. The claim that communication is improbable1 is thus a rumour without substance. It is the outcome of a theory of communication that either tries to give an account of communication without contact to the world or, to concede such contact without knowing how construct and reality come together. However, even in a theory in which the materialization of constructs is entailed (as in constructive realism), society takes on an extremely peculiar ontic status. As we may remember, one reason for discussing the three worlds was to underscore the ontic difference between nature and the social world. There is nothing corresponding in the natural substratum to the forms that organize social systems. There are natural determinants that must be understood as impetus for developing them. This, however, does not mean that the social forms are already inherent in nature and that nature thus serves as a model of their organization. The forms of interaction in which the interaction of the members of society is objectified and reinforced and the exchange processes of goods is organized can only arise in any genuine sense in the medium of thought and language. In this sense, they are part of “objective mind.” The latter materializes in the institutions of existence in which humans conduct their lives. This creates certain presuppositions for communication in society that cannot be annulled, or at least not without some difficulty. Within the organizational forms of society that have materialized around and in which we live, there has arisen, in a literal sense, a second nature. It has absorbed the first one. There is nowhere 1 | N. L UHMANN, Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, pp. 190ff.

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a shoreline anymore, only the infrastructural facilities of vacation resorts (the “holiday paradise”). As much, however, as societal order materializes in organizational forms, the communicative genesis that allowed it to arise perseveres in the organization of society. People continue to need to communicate as well with others in the small communities of everyday life, as in the intercourse of random encounters. Unceasingly the most general of the communicative media, language, is used to make social relations possible. For participation in the exchange processes of society, other communicative media have been specifically created, above all, money. Social relations that are dependent for their form on communication are fragile structures. Sentences are ephemeral constructs. One follows the other and they are connected to what was said previously, may be a while ago. One is never really certain how the connection is done, for, ultimately something is always changing. For this reason, social relationships continuously need to be given shape. The construction of society in the medium of thought and language is a constructio continua. Language provides for this a form of processuality within itself: communication as action. The action-form of communication was discovered decades ago by speech act theory;2 it wins its genuinely sociological significance in that communication by action throws light on a constitutive moment of society.

2. L OCUTION , I LLOCUTION , P ERLOCUTION Speech act theory is based on the observation that some statements represent real actions, such as when the appointed person declares at the christening of a ship: “I christen thee the Queen Mary.” Austin, who provided the initial impetus for speech act theory, distinguished three aspects of a speech act: the locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary. The locutionary aspect stands for the general fact that the speaker S says something. This aspect solely serves to distinguish that which is said— the propositional contents P—from the modus in which it is said. That someone should come (P) can be expressed as a wish, request, or command. At the center of speech act theory is the illocutionary aspect. It is the moment of language that goes beyond language. It represents the real discovery of speech act theory toward which Austin directed our attention. By saying something, one does something. Here Austin had in mind statements such as the ship christening mentioned above, the opening of Parliament, or the exchanging of marital vows. There are institutional 2 | Cf. J.L. A USTIN, How to Do Things with Words. The theory of speech acts was worked out in J.A. S EARLE , Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language; IDEM , Intentionality. Cf. the following presentation to the broad discussion in J. H ABERMAS , Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, 1:388ff. I have not adopted his presentation of speech act theory. The self-sufficiency of illocutionary acts that H ABERMAS propagates strips speech act theory, in my view, of its meaning.

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rules for such expressions. In contrast, it is less clear how one is to define the perlocutionary speech act. It is said to aim at the intended effect of the speech act. Someone reports that the administration is planning to expand a certain road into a highway. The aim is to move the listener to sell his or her house. Even Austin had more in mind with illocutionary acts than the institutionally defined acts of christening, marriage, and the opening of Parliament. There was just as much an effort to cover everyday expressions; performative verbs that require, warn, command and so on are their primary vehicles. If one takes a more careful look, one realizes that all statements that a speaker S makes to a listener L have a certain formative effect on their relationship. The plausibility of speech act theory and its suitability as a general theory of language use is based on the observation that every statement that is made does something, produces some effect. In order to gain certainty about this insight, however, it is not enough just to analyze the individual sentence in formal pragmatic terms. One must also analyze the situation in which the sentence is expressed. The following examples should serve to make the moment of action clear: 1. A woman breaks an hour of silence in the emergency waiting room of a hospital by telling another woman that she enjoys going window shopping with her husband; she looks at wedding dresses, he looks at cars. 2. On a mountain hike, S tells a group of five standing indecisively before a river that has risen sharply after a rainstorm: “The current is too strong; the attempt is too risky.” Without another word being exchanged, the group turns around. 3. S tells H: “I warn you to stop pestering my daughter.” 3´ “I demand that you stop pestering my daughter. Otherwise something is going happen to you. 4. S tells H: “I insist upon the repayment of the loan by 31 December.” 5. S tells H: “I feel good when I am with you.” Each of the statements listed represents an illocutionary act and, as such, harbors two intentions. The first of these is evident for each and every speech act: it seeks to be understood. The second represents the effort to shape the social situation. By saying something in the waiting room (1), the woman frees those waiting from the pressure of silence. It is impossible not to communicate. As S in (2) declares the effort too risky, he makes a factual claim, which, by being made is supposed to clarify the situation and in fact does so. That which is expressed as a statement of fact, however, is intended as a call to turn around. S could just as well have said: 2´“Let’s turn around! The current is too strong!” In short, each of the statements listed, by being expressed, shapes the social situation. This is evident for imperative (3´) or normative demands, but it holds just as much for expressive statements. A statement, such as

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the one in (5), may represent a turning point in someone’s life, simply by being made. We can proceed to clarify how we are supposed to understand illocutionary acts if we take up the case of perlocutionary acts. The warning in (3) and the demand in (3´) are important for understanding the difference between illocutionary and perlocutionary acts. When someone warns someone else, he or she intends to give this other person more than just material for reflection; he or she seeks to create a state of disquiet for this other person. One cannot warn without seeking to create this state. A warning may not, of course, achieve its aim; the person addressed may not take it seriously, may not be worried. But the very failure confirms that that which was meant as a warning was intended to make the person addressed worry. For this reason, it is impossible to accept the standard definition of a perlocutionary act, namely, that the speaker aims at an effect on the listener. Some effect have all illocutionary acts. The suggestion has thus been made in the literature to understand those speech acts as perlocutionary, in which the speaker seeks to hide the effect that he or she attempts to create.3 This does not seem to make much sense to me. By contrast, what does seem to make sense to me is to designate those speech acts as perlocutionary in which the illocutionary aspect of shaping the situation specifically aims at prompting a subsequent action. The person who demands that someone else pay a bill, already shapes the situation with the demand qua reminder. But more is intended: that the payment ensues. Within this understanding, perlocutionary acts are not independent acts in addition to illocutionary ones. They are, instead, aspects that may be entailed as the sense of an illocutionary act. For sociological understanding it is important to see that use continued in communication to which language owes its basis: the shaping of social relationships.

3. THE I NTENTIONALIT Y OF I LLOCUTIONARY A CTS If communications are understood as those processes in which society first forms and in which it thus maintains itself, then the formative aspect that we discover in illocutionary acts must be understood as the condition of the possibility of communication and of society. Communication permanently produces the precondition for its own continuation. That the illocutionary effect plays a constitutive role here can be made clear in terms of the basic structure of communication, intentionality. Communications incorporate a twofold intentionality, and this is precisely the twofold intent that becomes visible in the illocutionary act: on the one hand they convey propositional contents, which are intended to produce understanding in the other. The intentionality of the speech act also includes, however, the intention of shaping the communicative relations themselves with the information conveyed. This is a conditio sine qua non because the social 3 | P. S TRAWSON , “Intention and convention in speech acts,” pp. 439ff.

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relationship continues by means of follow-up communications, which are not in themselves redundant, i.e., they do not merely repeat that which has already been communicated. Communications occur as much in the consciousness that the communicants understand the situation different as in the consciousness of the difference of interests that ego and alter bring into the situation. Whenever a person A requests person B to do something to which A believes she has a legal claim, she is doing more than just providing propositional contents for understanding. Since A is convinced that she has a claim to the behavior demanded, she attempts to influence B’s will. And ipso facto, A does so by means of the propositional contents she provides for understanding. Once again, there is a procedure in language developed specifically for this form of influence and shaping of social relations. The constitutive uncertainty of social relationships allowed expectation to arise as the basic structure of communication. Ego and alter communicate via reciprocal expectations, where each of the actors already integrates the expectations of the other into his or her own expectations. We have been well aware of this processual character of communication since George Herbert Mead.4 We have also understood that this process can have as its outcome a result unintended by any of the communicants. What interests me here is this: expectations are rarely purely cognitive calculations; they usually also include an element of request that goes beyond this: the request the actor involved should make the information conveyed relevant for him. This surplus aspect of each and every communication has received added elaboration in social relations: it has been developed into the basic structure of the normative constitution of society.

4. N ORMATIVE D EMANDS There are few interactions in which normatively supported demands do not go back and forth between the partners of interaction. There is a simple reason for this: all interactions involve interests. These interests are articulated by making demands on the other. Demand is the basic structure that underlies obligation. It is an intensified form of expression of the basic communicative structure of expectation. Norms represent the established form of those expectations for which one can expect consensus support from one’s fellow members of society. Sociologically, they develop out of the structure of communication. One does not leave consideration of one’s own interests up to the intellectual discretion of the other; one seeks to influence the addressee, and the first way to do so involves the form of communication: the demand-laden expectation. Moreover, the demand is, as a rule, backed up by sanctions.

4 | G.H. M EAD, Mind, Self, and Society.

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If one accepts this analysis, the normative constitution of society presents itself as the result of the fact that society is produced and maintained communicatively via the expectations found in the interactional forms of the members of society. The rationale underlying the normative constitution of society is not, as one once believed, the need to tame man’s instincts and regulate interests. It is instead the structure of communication within the medium of language. Approaching the understanding of the formal structure of obligation in the normative character of the constitution of society in this way also allows one to understand the contents of obligation, and thus that which one is called upon to do, as the substantive substratum of that which is expected. One thing is certain in a historicogenetic understanding of the societal form of existence: society did not form as the result of reflections on how relationships should be organized. It lacked (a) cognitive competence and (b) an object for such reflection. The presupposition of a moral substance required by the substantialism of the Durkheimian collective conscience turned Habermas, logically consistent, into a mythical primeval agreement predating the language-based formation of society.5 The construction of society and its normative implementation can not have happened this way. Over all of history, normative obligations and the normative constitution of society were built up because to each of the rules of interaction between members of society that actually developed and to each of the positions that someone was able to create for himself the expectation was linked of being respected. Included in the normative order of what actual existed was the horrific potential for violence that man proved capable of developing in the history of humanity. Surely, a consciousness of equality (which, as we will see later, once defined the beginnings of social order) was still a vague residue even in the constitution of these societies. Yet, rational culture had to undergo a long process of historical development before this consciousness could be translated into material postulates, which, in turn, could be integrated into the constitution of society. Only after the decentering of actors was so far along that a consciousness could develop that the social order was itself a man-made product did an understanding of obligation arise—along with politics—that was separable from factual conditions. I will return to this. In the present context I am simply interested in shedding light on the part played by language in the formative process of society and in making clear the systematic connection between the structures of language and society. Communication in social relationships, and that is the point of these discussions, was only able to develop by means of expectations. By virtue of language, expectations can be articulated as demands and translated into a normative constitution of society. This leads, in a recursive loop, to a situation in which expectation, by means of the substantive contents of the demand, is articulated in communication in such a way that it even pervades one’s habitus. This is clearly perceivable in gestures and 5 | J. H ABERMAS, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, 2:69ff.

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facial expressions. I have already alluded to the fact that the reconstruction of obligation as a structural aspect of language results in an understanding of the normative character of human existence that differs fundamentally from any understanding ever developed in philosophy. The elaboration of a theory of normativity is part of any historico-genetic theory of society. Even in the present context, we must point to one of the constitutive forms of society. In generalized form, it also underlies normativity: power. Power is a ubiquitous aspect of the structuring of society. It is a manifestation of an anthropological constitution in which the subject is constitutionally burdened with the problem of caring for itself. Language-based communication via expectations that are addressed to others in the form of demands conveys power without having to make any real use of one’s power potential. Moreover, this results in the translation of relations created on the basis of power into normative obligation. It is only their combination that first makes it possible for social relationships to gain stability as social structures. There is no need to take “war not language” as your watchword, as Foucault did.6 The more likely watchword is “power through language.” In this sense, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari also overstate their case when they declare: “The basic unit of language—the statement—is the command or the password, the slogan.”7 They, however, also consider constative utterances, affirmations, and negations commands. The basic core of their argument is in accord with our previous arguments: the illocutionary aspect of the speech act, in structuring social relationships, conveys power, both as a plain expression of self-assertion and as power over others. It is this form of communication that serves to counterbalance the fragility of social relationships as they are produced and maintained via communications. Here an aspect comes into play that I referred to when I alluded to the materialization of communication in the organizational forms of society above: communications do not only occur in certain situations, they also make reference to these situations. In other words, the practices of life-forms are incorporated into the determination of the substantive contents of communication. Moreover, this also entails the structures that previously provided stability. In precisely this manner, relationships are stabilized, regardless how they may subsequently develop. It is an important aspect in understanding language that it is not only able to develop because its forms and contents find the materials for crystallizing these forms in reality, also in the established and signified world it only can achieve results from making use of the contents of this world. If the world were the pure construct that postmodern theories hold it to be, language would never even have arisen. Even if one assumed a good spirit had allowed it to come into existence, it would pass just as quickly out of existence if it failed to make reference to the real world.

6 | M. F OUCAULT, Dispositive der Macht. 7 | G. D ELEUZE and F ÉLIX G UAT TARI , Tausend Plateaus, pp. 105-153, 111 (quote).

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19. A Theory of Cognition with Systematic Intent: Résumé III

1. A DVANTAGES OF A R ECONSTRUCTIVE S TR ATEGY The strategy of a historico-genetic theory to go back prior to history in order to learn to understand the entry into history in terms of the conditions under which it was possible produced a number of important insights. Since they are of strategic importance for the development of the theory, I would like to recapitulate them here: Ň To go back prior to history in order to make the entry into history intelligible means making man’s anthropological constitution into the foundation of reconstruction. By demonstrating that the distinguishing feature of the specifically human form of existence is man’s constructive autonomy, a retrospective foundation was provided for the historically achieved knowledge of convergence and constructivism. Ň Of no less importance is the concomitant attention drawn to the ontogenesis of the member of the species in which the constructive process finds its beginning. The anthropological constitution came into being through mutations of the genome. The transformations underwent here, especially those involving the development of the human brain, necessarily take place within the ontogenesis of each and every member of the species. In ontogenetic terms, the constructive process is set in motion autogenously. Ň The relationship between system and environment represents the basic constitutive fact of life for all living creatures. It is as real as life itself. For this reason, if one takes this process up in the way one must, given the knowledge that the human form of existence developed as the organization following upon natural-historical evolution, namely, from an approach that starts from the logical priority of nature, then the relationship between system and environment must be understood as the point of departure for a reconstructive process. We do not introduce this relationship as a decision, but rather as knowledge of

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the real organization of life. “Environment” also includes one’s social others. Ň The historico-genetic approach of connecting the process of enculturation to natural history radicalizes the demands placed on reconstruction. What applies to thought as medium of the constructive process also applies to language: it could only have first formed as a sequel to natural-historical evolution. Thus, as important as it is to realize that enculturation could only have taken place in communicative terms, it is also critical to recognize that the medium in which enculturation could first constructively develop had also first to develop language in conjunction with thought.

2. THE U NIVERSALIT Y OF E ARLY S TRUCTURES The development from a genetic to a historico-genetic theory occurs in a extremely simple way: there are two groups of conditions in the process of enculturation that—ontogenetically speaking—represent the key to understanding a world that is first constructed. One is found in the medium itself: in the conjunction of thought and language. The other is found in what we learn through experiences from reality and which is subject to a process of symbolic mediation. Learning experiences with a nature found preexisting in precategorical forms and in the interactive context with others already involved in the societal nexus define the structures in which the organizational forms of thought and language develop. Structures are the translations of the elementary conditions of construction. That is the finding of ontogenetic research. And, as I have attempted to make clear, it is also the finding of phylogenetico-historical research. Let us try to underline once again something that has been so conscientiously misunderstood: the initial cognitive structures of the world of those Homines sapientes who populated Europe 35,000 years ago can be none other than the ones formed in the developmental process of member of the species in early ontogenesis and have then been developed into viable life-forms on the practical level of adults. Clearly, the development of enculturation out of ontogenesis provides the key to the understanding of the sociocultural organizational forms of human existence. We are acquainted with the structures that form in early ontogenesis. They are universal. They form in the process of acquiring the competence to act and in the concomitant process of acquiring a world, and they can be reconstructed in terms of their (pre-)conditions.

3. N ATURE AND M IND This conclusion gives us the opportunity to clearly underscore the considerable cognitive advantages that the reconstructive procedure of a historico-genetic theory has over fundamentalist sociobiological approaches.

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The attribution of sociocultural life-forms to the genome is based on nothing more than allowing what is good enough for the organizational form of animals to be good enough for man. From the viewpoint of a critical theory of knowledge, this is rather thoughtless. For we have to reckon with the possibility of something new arising in the processuality of life. And, in fact, the development of the brain and of instruments of speech did make possible a new form of organization of life, precisely that form that is constituted in a symbolically mediated fashion. It also arose in an evolutionary manner; there is no question about that. It too is subject to the principle of fitness maximization. Advancing enculturation provided hominids with a fitness advantage over their anthropoid predecessors; the complete development of language provided Homines sapientes the same advantage over Homines erecti. However, this advantage lay precisely in the fact that by virtue of the performance capability of the brain in conjunction with the organizational ability of language, it was possible to constructively develop for the first time sociocultural life-forms. This form of life does not allow man to step outside of nature, but it does provide him with a unique position within evolution.

4. THE R ECONSTRUCTION OF L ANGUAGE In ontogenetic terms, the acquisition of competence sets itself in motion endogenously. The organism simply begins to process experiences and to translate them into various forms of competence. In phylogenetic and historical terms, it was possible to make use of the precursor process of early ontogenesis. It proved possible to transform this process on the level of adult practices of providing for basic needs into culturally organized strategies of action and into a cultural construction of the world. This first became possible with the development of language. The formation of the latter was made possible by the preceding development of a rudimentarily developed competence to act. Along with it, the specifically human form of society formation developed. The development of language and that of society proved mutually reinforcing, mutually beneficial. Language can be reconstructed in terms of the structures of grammar. In this sense, one can get “behind” language to the conditions of its genesis; it is open to explanation here. I have tried to demonstrate this in an exemplary fashion, in terms of the way in which the form of syntax is modeled along the lines of the structure of action. Other syntactic forms can also be reconstructed, such as distinguishing an object by means of its properties: for instance, “The chair is hard”, “The truth will out.” It will have to suffice here to have shown that the reconstruction of syntax is possible. It makes palpable the cognitive benefit that can be gained by adopting a processual form of logic. It is simply not imaginable how man is supposed to come to terms with the dynamism of the external world in the daily routines of his life if there is no collusion between thought and

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language according to which the structure of action furnishes a model for grasping what occurs. The sheer circumstance of taking up the reconstruction of the genesis of language and having recourse to knowledge that promises to allow this reconstruction to be successful makes clear that the epistemological schism between logics is settled. In the speculative architectonics of postmodern philosophy thought is brought to a standstill, since there is simply nothing to think about, except the fact that there is nothing to think about; one must wait for that which arrives out of language and then pursue that which has arrived. This philosophy is based on the absolutism of a language characterized by its “uncircumventability”. According to this understanding, every language game, and every epochal construct of thought as a system of language games represents something revealed and, therefore, not analyzable. The philosophies of “uncircumventability”—and they also include systems theory—become understandable, but outdated constructs in the development of the thought of modernity, when reconstruction reveals the sheer facticity of circumventability. There is no transcendental-logical way to discredit the reconstruction of thought and language. For the fact that anyone who attempts to reconstruct the formative process of thought and language can only do so by virtue of thought and language is simply not germane to, nor part of the argument itself. For the presuppositions of this formative process are natural forms of organization devoid of all thought or language! Just because physicists are only able to develop a theory of gravitation by virtue of thought and language does not mean that language itself is somehow involved in the theory. In other words, as much as language-mediated thought is in the position to come up with explanations of nonlinguistic phenomena, as little are thought and language directly implicated in the natural presuppositions of the evolutionary process out of which thought and language then arise. The fact that we are only in the position to explain anything on the basis of a thoughtand language-mediated process does not hinder us from going back to the time prior to the development of thought and language and providing a comprehensible account of their formative process.

5. THE E NTRY INTO H ISTORY We have but a poor understanding of the constitutive features of an early history in which the process of enculturation manifested itself, until a viable form of life as reached. The most impressive representation of its cultural development is found in a form of expression that is most difficult to interpret: cave and wall painting.1 Tool-related findings speak a clearer 1 | On its documentation, see S.E. A NATI , Höhlenmalerei; J. F LOOD, The Riches of Ancient Australia.

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language.2 The historico-genetic strategy with which we seek to find an access to history makes a conclusion possible that brings us closer to understanding the early societies of the Pleistocene Paleolithic era: whatever the concrete structures of cognition may have been, they cannot be all too different from the ones we know from recent hunting-and-gathering-based subsistence societies. In cognitive terms, the process of enculturation must have already advanced more or less up to the development of their various competencies, since a viable form of life is not imaginable otherwise. It has proven possible to continue the constructive process. Our consciousness of convergence and constructivism will allow us to agree to the conclusion that history presents itself as the continuation of precisely that constructivism which began with enculturation and found its first moment of stability in the sociocultural organizational forms of early societies. The continuation of constructivism, however, is just as subject to conditions as are its beginnings. The development did not run continuously. The reason for this is not hard to understand: the motor of ontogenetic development is, as I have made some effort to show, the fact that the organism is simply unable to interact with the refractory character of the external world in any other way. The accommodation of the schemata of the subject to the learning experiences gained from dealing with the external world is the process that actually generates cognitive advance. The process begins to flag once a livable form is found. Even without knowledge of the studies in crosscultural studies discussed, insight into the mechanism of the acquisition process would have to lead one to suspect that this process begins to stop on the lowest level possible. This is precisely what our studies of time and causality show us. This process gets stuck on the threshold to concreteoperational competence. It needs an impetus to get beyond it. There is at least indirect historical evidence for our theory that ontogenetic development gets stuck at the lowest possible viable level and is then in need of some form of impetus. For even if one only starts counting from the time of the biologically fully developed Homo sapiens of our type in Europe onwards—that is, for about the last 35,000 years—the earliest forms of organization, found on the subsistence level of hunters and gatherers, account for more than two thirds of human history. It clearly took humanity some time to constructively develop the organizational forms of its existence. What moved it to do so? We would not have any problems answering the question of what led out of the early world, if one were able to operate with a quietly working learning instinct or point to man’s curiosity-driven behavior, which has time and again driven him out of the peaceful situation of a fixed cultural routine. A constitutional restlessness of man3 is not enough, however, to explain the driving force and drama of 2 | On the development of tools, cf. the contributions in K.R. G IBSON and T. I NGOLD, Tools, Language and Cognition in Human Evolution. 3 | This is the way that P LESSNER conceived of the impetus. Cf. H. P LESSNER , „Die Frage nach der conditio humana.“

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that which sets history in motion. The impetus arises out of developments in society. Processes that destabilize society are the ones that set history in motion and thereafter also keep it in motion. This in any case turns out to be the case if one gets to the bottom of the conditions under which epochal developments in the structures of society and those of cognition take place. Precisely because constructivism is realized through communication and interaction, it is tied to the societal conditions under which it can be realized. This assumption has extraordinarily far-reaching consequence for the basic structure of a historico-genetic theory: A historico-genetic theory must, if it seeks to follow and reconstruct the process of cognition through history, follow the development of the social structure through the sequence of societies. The development of cognition cannot be understood any other way. That which presents itself as a difficulty has the advantage of taking up the basic constellation of problems of our time. For the problem of gaining an understanding is based not least of all on the inability to explain the conditioned character of the two lines of development, of the sociocultural and the cultural. The questions we have to answer are of some consequence: What made it possible for development to continue? In other words, what allowed disequilibrium to arise again once a state of equilibrium in the relationship between man and the world had been reached? In terms of our reconstruction of the epochal structural transformations of society, what does social-structural development consist of? What kind of cognitive developments accompany these social-structural ones? It is clearly impossible to provide in the present context a historically satisfactory answer to even one of these questions. New and different problems present themselves on the threshold to each epoch. For this reason, our aim must be much more limited: to draw up a strategy that gives us access to these questions and is not restricted to fragmented descriptions of this or that development. We need to redeem the pledge we made at the outset of our study: to win back history taken as a whole within the framework of the way in which modernity views itself. And this also means to make it possible in general to once again embark on a theory of history as a totality. This is the goal of our study: nothing more and nothing less.

IV. Regaining History

20. The History of Society and the History of Culture

1. THE D ISCOVERY OF THE L INK B E T WEEN S OCIE T Y AND C ULTURE It had already become obvious while still under the aegis of reflection based on the philosophy of history that cognitive development and, along with it, the development of culture in general are tied to social-structural development. This occurred under the initial structuring of a way of thinking in which the State was represented as the incarnation of the subject in the process.1 Marx went on from it. In The German Ideology he sought to link the process of acquiring knowledge to the development of the structures of society. As much as Marx tried to divest himself of the metaphysics of absolute spirit here, in terms of the structure of his argument, he remained dependent on a type of causality that arose from a bipolar, relational logic. The semantics of world interpretation became part of the superstructure of societal organization. The critique of Marxian thought is no easy undertaking.2 The epistemological reflections in The German Ideology are somehow chaotic; yet The German Ideology deserves credit for thematizing what the radical shift in thought in modernity means for social theory. The real problem is that thought itself remains unexplained here, both in its genesis and in the development of its structures. Critique of ideology also suffers as a result. There is no doubt that the semantics of world interpretation follows developments in the structures of society. There is also no doubt that there has been a long history of the use of these semantics for the purpose of legitimating conditions as they are (i.e., there are ideologies). Nevertheless, these two indubitable facts do not make it any easier to understand the organization of knowledge and its development in terms of the orga1 | G.W.F. H EGEL , Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. 2 | For a necessary critique of its logic, cf. K. H OLZ , Historisierung der Gesellschaftstheorie.

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nization of society. For the former follow their own logic. Semantics also do not simply represent a copy or reflection of social structures. This is precisely the way, though, that Marxist theory attempted to understand them.3 The question of how society and culture concur to set history in motion and to allow that integrated formation to arise that we find existing as this or that society in this or that epoch represents the unmastered problem just as much of historical as of sociological theory.4 The latter has subjected this problem to a treatment that is simply unsatisfactory in epistemologically critical terms. This applies first of all to one of the two theoretical traditions after Marx: the Durkheimian. Durkheim’s theory of society is unmistakably substantialist. He posits society in the substance of its organization in order to then see its cognitive contents developing out of this substance.5 Their basic organization has, as collective conscience, a spiritual, morally obligatory character in which society recognizes itself as one. It documents the structural identity (that developed via Descartes) of sociological and metaphysical logic. In Durkheim’s famous dictum, one must choose between God and society.6 Durkheim did not hesitate to find an exceedingly crude form for the spiritual substantialism of society. If the aim is to find an explanation for the structures of knowledge, the spatiotemporal organization of society becomes the basis for its cognitive reproductions. For this reason, one can best understand the spiritualism of society as a prepotent substance that develops into society in its real organization.7 The categorical forms then develop in organization, forms that also serve as the basis for the organization of knowledge. Durkheim’s theory found followers across disciplines, much to the disadvantage of the society so studied. For understanding was not furthered in the least by tying knowledge to a society viewed in a substantialist manner. But this is precisely the way that functionalist theory proceeded following Durkheim. Thus, to take one example, Marcel Granet, a sensitive authority on Chinese philosophy, does not hesitate 3 | Cf. in particular, A. S OHN -R ETHEL , Warenform und Denkform; idem, Soziologische Theorie der Erkenntnis. 4 | This discussion was recently rekindled by a discussion of M ARC B LOCH ’S La société féodale. The A NNALES school in France has played an important role in this discussion. Cf. the contributions to J. L E G OFF et al., Die Rückeroberung des historischen Denkens. On the discussion in Germany, cf. H.U. Wehler, “Sozialgeschichte und Gesellschaftsgeschichte,” pp. 33-52. The clarification of the relationship between the history of society and the history of culture is indispensable for any reawakened interest in cultural comparison. See J. Rüsen, “Some theoretical approaches to intercultural comparation historiography,” pp. 5-22. 5 | Cf. E. D URKHEIM, Die elementaren Formen des religiösen Lebens, pp. 27ff. 6 | E. D URKHEIM, Soziologie und Philosophie, p. 105. 7 | J. H ABERMAS has revitalized D URKHEIM in this sense. Cf. J. H ABERMAS , Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, 2:69ff.

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to continuously thwart his own intellectual efforts by thinking he had explained the categorical and semantic configurations of Chinese thinking that are not readily accessible to us, especially the binary centralization of cosmic powers of Yin and Yang, by making recourse to the social order of society.8 The substantialism of the societal totality replaces the construct-based demonstration of cognitive structures and their substantive configurations, and it replaces above all: the explanation of their historical development. The barriers of knowledge, and that is what is involved here, themselves need to be interpreted in terms of developmental logic: the realization that knowledge is a product of society and follows the structures of society represents the cognitive advance of the 19th century. Under the aegis of an absolutist understanding of history and society, this insight, however, leads no further. The undifferentiated totality “society” everywhere moves to the point of convergence of a subject of history as its actual producer. An understanding of the construct-based connection between socialstructural and cognitive development can also not be gained from what is likely the most influential theoretical tradition in sociology, Max Weber’s value-absolutist theory. The striking formulation in the “Introduction” to the “Economic Ethics of the World Religions” gives verbal support to the primacy of interests in the constitution of society. In fact, however, the ideas alongside these interests gain such stature that, not only are they not subordinate to these interests, but actually first provide them with sense and direction.9 Under the absolutist presuppositions of a Neokantian value philosophy, it is in no way clear how societally structuring ideas form and unite with interests. Wolfgang Schluchter found a fitting definition of their status. He states: they are “equally originary” with interests!10 This means: they arise out of ultimate decisions, a perspective which do not even allow the question of their formative process to come up. Naturally, Weber was well aware that ideas develop in conjunction with society. The affinity between ideas and societal formations, however, remained opaque. Ultimately they fall prey to the absolutism of cultural values in a way no different than decisions made about individual value preferences fall victim to the subjectivity of the individual member of society. The theory of the Protestant ethic as a moment in the development of the capitalist spirit does not suffer because Weber ascribed a monocausal or even a predominant influence to the ideational determinants of the Protestant ethic in the genesis of capitalism. It suffers because it fails to address the way in which the Protestant ethic itself formed in dependence on the development of society since the centuries of the Middle Ages, a development that Weber

8 | M. G RANET, Das chinesische Denken, pp. 86ff. esp. p. 106. 9 | M. W EBER, “Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen,” pp. 207-236 (esp. p. 252). 10 | W. S CHLUCHTER, The Rise of Western Rationalism, p. 141.

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himself knowledgeably analyzed elsewhere.11 The problem is that thought and, along with it, religion, remain unexplained. The logical absolutism of cultural values simply blocks the question of connection of levels of the two dimensions and lines of development. Values are understood in terms of a logic of origins and ultimately ascribed to the divine-like creativity of the human mind. The absolutism of logic does not allow more than the establishment of a certain elective affinity.

2. THE S YSTEMIC O RGANIZ ATION OF S OCIE T Y AND C ULTURE IN A H ISTORICO -G ENE TIC THEORY Historico-genetic theory proceeds differently. The strategy of developing the formative process of cognitive structures on the basis of the early ontogenesis of the member of the species has the advantage of being able to make comprehensible why a system of knowledge forms at all and why it forms in the structures we find in history. According to this strategy, the structures of thought do not presuppose society, instead, they develop along with it. In this way, the strategy of historico-genetic theory avoids the tautology that Luhmann claims is, “as the lie of society,” unavoidable: the necessity to presuppose that which actually first needs to be developed and explained. We achieve real knowledge. This strategy can be continued on this side of the threshold of historical development. This is possible once one has begun to tie the genesis of the structures of cognition to the development of society, but to ascribe the structural formation of cognition not to society but instead to the processing of an independent reality under communicative conditions in society. For once one proceeds in this way, one can reconstruct the continuation of this development in terms of a relation between these two lines of development without making one into an epiphenomenon of the other. In short: Though societal structures and structures of cognition develop in mutual dependence, each does so along its own line of development. We can expect that the breaks between epochs that we associate with the development of societal structures will also have repercussions on the development of cognitive structures. What we cannot assume, however, is that there is a simple synchronicity in the structural transformations of society and cognition. This epistemologically critical reflection has practical consequences for the way in which our study will now proceed. It is necessary to discuss these lines of development separately. In our discussions of the development of societal structures, we cannot, of course, do more than make clear what the impetus behind this development is and in which sense a line 11 | M. W EBER, Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus. For a discussion, cf. the contributions in C. S EYFARTH and W. S PRONDEL (eds.) Religion und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung.

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of development or even a logic of development can be demonstrated. In the same way, in pursuing cognitive development, it cannot be our aim to present the cognitive achievements of each of the epochs discussed here. Just as in social-structural development, every epochal transformation of the structure of society, such as the genesis of (political) domination and the State, would require a separate study, the same holds for the presentation of the substantive contents of knowledge, such as in technology, in the development of cognition. My interest is limited to just one thing: to make clear that in history the ontogenetically initiated logic of the constructive process in the development of the organization of action and of the world transforms itself into a logic of historical development. What is involved, we should remind ourselves, is regaining history in terms of a processuality that makes history understandable.

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21. The Development of Societal Structures: From the Early Societies to Archaic Civilizations

1. THE O RGANIZ ATION OF THE E ARLY S OCIE TIES OF H UNTERS AND G ATHERERS 1.1 Familial Organization The structures of early societies on the subsistence level of hunting and gathering were family-based and egalitarian. This finding can be shown to hold for such societies still observable in historical times, though with some interpretive contours and reservations. Theoretical considerations give every reason to believe that the structures of social order in Pleistocene societies were the same as those of recent hunting-and-gathering societies with regard to their constitution: family-based and egalitarian (among men). In the present context, a brief sketch of the reasons for this family-based and egalitarian social order must suffice.1 The systematic reconstruction of enculturation in the symbolically mediated structures of thought and language allows, as we have seen, one insight to move to the forefront: the enculturation process is set in motion by an acquisitional process of constructive competence in the early ontogenesis of the member of the species. The development of the competencies acquired early in ontogenesis can be continued on the level of adults and used for the daily provision of needs. It was only in this process, and thus as the result and not the cause of onsetting enculturation, that the specifically human organizational form of society first arose. The sooften proclaimed social nature of man is a nature first acquired culturally. Admittedly, this nature is preceded by the societal constitution of anthro1 | For a systematic reconstruction of the genesis of the family-based order out of the relation between the sexes, see G. D UX , Geschlecht und Gesellschaft: Warum wir lieben.

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poids, out of which man was able to develop. Moreover, there is not the least doubt that man is dependent upon the social constitutedness of his existence. It develops, however, in the form in which it is actually lived first in the process of enculturation. And this process is defined by the early communication and interaction with the person caring for the child, that is, with its significant other. The development from the natural form of sociability to its specifically cultural form can be impressively shown in terms of the importance of the mother-child relationship for the process of enculturation in this early phase. The emotional bond between mother and child is part of our genetic heritage as mammals; it is the result of a long phylogenetic development. It already achieved a human appearance among nonhuman anthropoids. Once more there can be no doubt that, in phylogenetic terms, the process of enculturation could never have been set in motion if it were not for the natural sociability between mother and child. However, with the onset of enculturation, this relationship also turns into something different from what it was previously. For in the process of acquiring those competencies required for a sociocultural mode of existence, the bond between mother and child in early childhood develops into a specifically human form of intimacy. It forms the stabilizing foundation as much for the development of the competence to act and the self-confidence it is accompanied by as for the construction of the world and the concomitant mastering of the frustrations that arise in the exploration of unknown fields of activity. The stabilizing relating and feedback loops with the mother and/or others in the field of one’s activity are incorporated in sociocultural competencies and in the organizational forms of existence as the source of an emotional stability. They allow these organizational forms to become socially related competencies and organizational forms. The course of this process is well known: the advancing acquisition of the competence to act results, in conjunction with the construction of a world as each of the three subworlds, in an autonomy in life conduct, which bring about a detachment from the family of one’s origin. This leads to a weakening of one’s intimate relations with one’s family, but the relations are not lost altogether as much as they are transformed. If things go well, the transformation of intimacy serves to support the process of detachment. The need for intimacy itself remains. It is the most powerful support of a sociability first developed culturally. Its importance is seen when the process of separation from one’s family of origin is completed. Efforts are made to reorganize the need, on a transformed psychophysical basis and supported by a need for sexuality, in the intimacy of a relationship between the sexes. It endures in family organization as long as the need for intimacy persists, a need which is supposed to grant stability to one’s way of life. Thus there was a necessity, a structural necessity, for a specifically human relationship between the sexes to form in conjunction with the unfolding of the process of enculturation. It provided the basis for the development of family structures and, with family structures,

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of the organizational forms found in early society that go beyond these structures. Family-based interpersonal relations represent the basic sediment of all societies. They differ significantly from the structures that develop beyond them. In family-based relationships, the generalized medium of communication that defines all forms of social organization, namely power, is overlaid by a different medium: morality. The intensity of communication and the social bonding that occurs allows the interests of family members to become one’s own. This can take place in different ways; in one or the other form it can be observed everywhere, however. Translated into normative terms, in the case of conflict, morality proves to be an expression of social rationality. It secures the condition of possibility of the communal interrelationship of life practices in the intense communication and interaction of life conduct. Outside of these forms of communal relations, the conditions are different; outside of them, morality is also different. In society, power takes over as the generalized medium of communication.

1.2 Power and Equality Processes involving power represent the most important impetus in the history of the human species. There is a reason for this in the anthropological constitution: maintenance of self. Self-maintenance is not a specified, i.e., differentiated motivational aspect of an organic system. It is an aspect of systemic biophysical organization itself. As a consequence of constructive autonomy, however, maintenance of self cannot be secured simply on the basis of natural organization, but must be continuously secured in sociocultural forms of organization. For this very reason, it holds: Power must be understood as the form of expression of an anthropological constitution that must conduct its life under the condition of constructive autonomy. The sheer circumstance that there are no natural mechanisms guaranteeing that the interests of each individual in the society are secured in comparison to those of others compels each individual to carefully see to it that his or her interests prevail. Power is an indispensable resource in this effort. Its part in the formative process of society originates in the care of the subject for itself. Just how elementary power is for the construction of society is seen for the first time in the organization of early societies on the subsistence level of hunters and gatherers. The equality of the social positions of the members of such societies, as far as it goes, can be ascribed to the equality of the potentials for interaction of those who bring them to bear on society. Equal interaction potentials combined with equal access to economic resources necessarily lead to an structural equality in social positions. The organizational forms of early societies on the subsistence level of hunters and gatherers were, however, never quite as egalitarian as one

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had first assumed.2 In relations between the sexes, women were never treated as complete equals.3 The reason for this is to be found in a functional differentiation between internal and external relations that arises in a structurally necessary manner under the conditions of early societal organization.4 The allocation of responsibilities results from the distinct demands made on men and women. The internal focus of women is tied to the greater investment they make in parenting and caring for their children. The fact that in early societies interests had to be asserted, if necessary, with brute force represents an important aspect in the external orientation of men. This allows the man to take the lead in external relations. The dependency of women that arises in this way has also consequences for internal relations between the sexes. One may consider both of these reasons rather trivial. Trivial reasons, however, are trivial because they are undeniable and are able to gain validity. The reason for the social equality and inequality of members of early societies—the equality or inequality of power potentials—is confirmed by observing those societies that on a subsistence level of hunting and gathering already maintain provisions of supplies.5 A moderate inequality has also formed among men here. The maintenance of supplies allows some societal members to secure the power to dispose over subsistence goods that others are interested in and that others in certain circumstances are dependent upon. Disposal over provisions produces influence and opens up opportunities to gain the commitments of others. Precisely this strategy, of gaining prestige and influence by increasing one‘s power potential, continues throughout history and becomes the motor of its development.

2. THE N EOLITHIC R E VOLUTION AND THE TR ANSITION TO S IMPLE A GR ARIAN S OCIE TIES 2.1 The Logic in the Sequence of Structures A first threshold of social-structural development was crossed with the transition to agrarian production in the Neolithic Revolution.6 The subsequent historical processes it unleashed were exceedingly dramatic in nature. One can imagine an array of changes in the organizational forms 2 | Cf. the papers in F. K RAMER and C. S IGRIST, Gesellschaften ohne Staat: Gleichheit und Gegenseitigkeit. 3 | On the inequality between men and women, cf. G. D UX , Die Spur der Macht im Verhältnis der Geschlechter and its comprehensive references to the literature. 4 | Cf. ibid., pp. 164ff. 5 | Cf. A. TESTART, Les chasseurs-cueilleurs, ou l´origine des inéqualités. 6 | I attempt to take into account the difference of the media in which the process of historical development proceeds by limiting the concept of evolution to the development in the stratum of biological organization.

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of early societies on the subsistence level of hunting and gathering. Of not one of them, however, could it be said that it could set history in motion without a shift to agrarian production. In this sense the beginning of agrarian production shows for the first time that history follows a developmental logic in the sequence of the structures of society in the sense that no structure could have formed without its immediate predecessor. It would not have been possible for the simple agrarian societies that arose in the Neolithic Revolution to have existed at the beginning of historical development. Moreover, the archaic civilizations that succeeded them with their formations of domination and State would not have been possible without the Neolithic Revolution and the transition to agrarian production. It is only after a developmental sequence of structures has formed does the diffusion of sociocultural achievements allow the recognition of very different lines of development.

2.2 The Problem of the Impetus The transition to agrarian production first occurs sometime around the tenth millennium b.c. in the so-called Fertile Crescent, which stretches from southern Anatolia into the Levant. It occurs later in other regions of the earth. It is practically impossible to give a definitive answer as to what caused it. Scenarios in more recent literature make use of a multitude of factors.7 They allow us to recognize the process of a slow and subtle transition to agrarian production over the course of three thousand years. Climatic changes played their part,8 but do not appear to have been decisive. If one assumes that grasses grew in abundance and could be harvested without prior seeding, this allows one to explain an observable growth in population in terms of the introduction of a settled form of existence. Cultivation would thus only have become necessary as a second step, in the face of population growth. It is not insignificant that climatic factors also play a role in these scenarios. For there is the persistent question as to why this transition did not take place earlier. There is no evidence that a crisis served to trigger the cultivation of grain and the domestication of animals; but there is also no indication that an affluent society9 did either. I will leave aside any discussion of the differences in the multitude of possible scenarios here. For a historico-genetic understanding, ascertain7 | An overview of the literature on the genesis of the Neolithic mode of production is practically impossible. I refer the reader to the discussion of various hypotheses in A.B. G EBAUER and T.D. P RICE , “Foragers to Farmers: An Introduction,” and to the contributions collected in the reader by the same authors, Transitions to Agriculture in Prehistory. Also informative are C. S TRAHM, Ursachen und Folgen der Einführung der produzierenden Wirtschaft; M. B ENZ , Modelle der Neolithisierung im Vorderen Orient. 8 | B. B ENDER , Farming in Prehistory. 9 | Cf. M. S AHLINS , Stone Age Economics, pp. 185-230.

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ing what the first impetus was is less significant than determining which actions and strategies of action served in the assimilation of the changes and which development of structures emerged out of this process. Under the conditions that produced the transition to agrarian production or, in any case, the conditions that allowed it to survive over time, the interest in attaining standing and influence, and thus increasing one’s power potential, by utilizing a surplus production, gained prominence.

2.3 The Development of the Structure of Power The reconstruction of the process of development of the structure of power in, and in the wake of, the Neolithic Revolution will remain incomplete. There is one thing we are certain of, though: under the agrarian production forms of simple agrarian societies we find everywhere that differing allocations of power are connected to a hierarchization of the opportunities to exert influence in the society. This finding is so striking that even in ethnology or cultural anthropology it produced the attempt to develop an evolutionary sequence of structures. Service, in particular, has band societies succeeded by chiefdoms.10 Even though developmental theories have now become discredited in ethnology and are considered politically incorrect in science, chiefdoms represent a type of organization of simple agrarian society that is permanent made use of in the ethnological literature.11 Using the organizations found in later societies to draw conclusions about the process through which such organizations have arisen may arouse misgivings. For it is methodologically dubious to make use of motivations found in later societies to explain their development in earlier ones. This is allowed least of all in the reconstruction of a processual logic, since here one reckons with the emergence of something genuinely new. There is something particular about power, however. As an absolutely constitutive medium of society, it represents an ever-present procedure for organizing society. It is not a question of whether power predates the chiefdoms, but only of the form it took then. The internal logic of its specific formative process make it necessary to expect new possibilities to organize power are also made use of and be accompanied by new kinds of power formations. It appears especially reasonable to make this assumption in the light of the use of power in the societies which, on the subsistence level of hunting and gathering, already practice a rudimentary form of maintaining supplies and provisions. One must simply assume that the slow and subtle transition to agrarian production practically provided a stimulus for achieving standing and influence by “overproducing.” There are empirical indications for making this assumption. Even in very simple 10 | E.R. S ERVICE , Primitive Social Organization. 11 | As one example of many in cultural anthropology, cf. M. S AHLINS , “Poor Man, Rich Man, Big Man, Chief: Political types in Melanesia and Polynesia”; M.H. F RIED, The Evolution of Political Society.

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agrarian societies, in the Nambicuara, for instance, as Lévi-Strauss came across them,12 we already find the beginnings of chiefdoms. The gradual transition to agrarian production, in itself, need not have meant more than an improvement in the provision of subsistence goods. First the use of agrarian production for the development of differing power potentials produced the subsequent development of the hierarchization of society and the structural transformation of society. Thus we have the hypothetical extrapolation—and I do not want it to be understood as anything more—that the interest in the accumulation of power played a defining role, if not in the definitive transition to the agrarian form of production, at very least in its survival over time. And just this hypothesis allows one to recognize the historical tendency that was introduced along with the transition. The process of the accumulation of power did in fact continue. The Neolithic Revolution leads under otherwise favorable conditions to the rise of archaic civilizations and the formation of domination and the State. From the perspective of development theory, one will have to understand the historical process as a rise in organizational competence and the level of organization similar to the way in which one had to understand the process of acquiring the competence to act in early ontogenesis: by means of abstract processes that bring the competence to act forth. In both cases a process of abstract reflection takes place in which opportunities opened up by gains in competence are made use of. As we will soon discuss, the formation of domination and the State also resulted in a tremendous push forward in the development of cognition.

3. THE R ISE OF A RCHAIC C IVILIZ ATIONS AND THE F ORMATION OF D OMINATION AND THE S TATE 3.1 The Organization of the Organization of Power The metamorphosis of power in simple agrarian societies is made possible by the under- or overproductivity of these societies. Underproductivity means here: the production units in these societies normally produce less than they are capable of producing, given the state of their productive forces.13 This can be used for overproduction. The creation of a surplus can bring those interested in it in dependence from the more gifted producer. Relations of dependency can be translated into the accumulation of power. The means of doing so in simple agrarian societies is precisely that which will later define the social order: the use of the labor power of those who live in dependence by those who are interested in the accumulation

12 | Cf. L ÉVI -S TRAUSS , Traurige Tropen. 13 | Cf. M. S AHLINS , Stone Age Economics, pp. 41ff.

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of power. It is not unusual for the use of labor power to first occur in the binding forms of reciprocity, but it tends to go beyond its limits. The intention of the present discussion is to demonstrate that power increasingly rests, since the transition to agrarian production, on the organization of resources of power. For the first time in the history of humanity, use is made of the labor power of others in order to increase one’s own accumulation of power. The increase in the accumulation of power, as we find it in simple agrarian societies, can be further increased, namely, by means of precisely the principle upon which it rests already in earlier societies: organization. This is what occurs with the formation of domination. After all, it took millennia of agrarian production slowly gaining in permanence and the concomitant development of unequal power potentials to create the prerequisites for the formation of domination and the State. Ultimately several or perhaps initially only one of the powerful succeeded in organizing his power such that the others were subject to his dominion. It is striking that at the beginning of domination, a single potentate, a king, is found atop the hierarchy of power—in Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, China, Peru. He succeeds in using the labor power of others by organizing a coercive power that provides him with the capability, if necessary, to forcibly requisition of labor. If under conditions of agrarian production, power means the organization of power, then domination means the organization of the organization of power by means of a ruling staff. This form of organization is granted permanency in the form of the State. The rise of domination and the State contains a lesson for understanding history: functionalism gained acceptance for the notion that epochal changes had become functionally necessary, since there would not have been any other way to solve problems of integration and control.14 Nowhere, however, has it been demonstrated that such problems of integration and control triggered epochal movements or, in particular, triggered domination. There is also no reason to assume this. Ever since hierarchical structures have developed in society, structures in which the organization of power was solidified, all that was required was a little more scope in the individual opportunities for action to push organization beyond the status quo.15 Functional is the “achievement” of a central authority much more for the new and emerging society than for the old one. It was only after domination and the State proved capable of consolidating their hold that central authority became a functional requirement of society.

14 | As in J. H ABERMAS , Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus, p. 133 and passim. K. E DER , Die Entstehung staatlich organisierter Gesellschaften. 15 | Weber knows very well why he made the concept of opportunity (Chance) central in the conceptual definition of action in his historically aimed sociology: M. W EBER, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, passim.

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Domination and the State developed at various times under differing conditions. In some regions, proto-state forms were able to develop out of a conically shaped clan structure, as in Polynesia. If they succeeded, however, in crossing the threshold to statehood, they hardly ever proved capable of breaking out of the family structure in the development of domination. For this reason, these formations were of comparatively short duration.16 The most sustained development was found in places such as Sumer, where townlike settlements had already formed.17 In China, too, during the Hsia and Shang periods, it seems that archaic states were able to first form on the basis of associations between towns.18 It is difficult to reconstruct historically the formative phase of development in its various sequential forms (Verlaufsformen). Prior to written records, material is sparse. In theoretical terms, interest is focused on defining the structural prerequisites in such a way that they encompass all of the various possibilities. Historico-genetic theory does not in any sense involve the search for “laws of history”; it seeks instead to define the sequence of structures of society. Structures restrict the possibilities of development, but also give a certain latitude to actor input in the shaping of structures and events. It is the limits of the possible in the development of structures that are continued in every new structure and that allow anew for specific possibilities. They are what we define ex post facto (!) as the line of development in history and which we seek to explain when we develop a logic of development. Taking advantage of the possibilities given always occurs under specific, concrete conditions in which those historical constellations have formed that have become the definiens of history. In reconstructing this history, the specifically concrete aspects of conditions are chalked up to contingency. Such contingencies do not place in doubt the conditions and limits of development. They merely indicate that there are always additional conditions in each specific, concrete circumstance, which we are unable to reconstruct, let alone generalize upon. In other words, contingencies are conditions that, within generalized structures, help determine the utility and further development of these structures. In ahistorically structured theories, however, contingencies take on a totally different function: they are used as general formula in order to portray processes as completely unknowable to which in fact theoretical constructs have actually blocked access.

16 | On Polynesia, cf. I. G OLDMAN , Ancient Polynesian Society; further, the informative study by G.V. K IRCH, The Evolution of Polynesian Chiefdoms. For Peru, cf. the study by S. B REUER, Der archaische Staat, even though it has a strongly culturalistic bias. 17 | On the development of forms of settlement, cf. the early work of H.J. N ISSEN , Mesopotamia Before 5000 Years; idem, Geschichte Altvorderasiens, pp. 38ff. 18 | Cf. J. Rawson, Ancient China, pp. 42-44; C.Y. H SU and K. L INDUFF, Western Chou Civilization, pp. 9-32.

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3.2 Domination as Organizational Form Raises the Overall Level of Organization of Society The organization of the organization of power qua domination represents a rise not only in the level of power, but also in the level of organization of society. In those instances where power succeeds in accumulating, its force is irresistible and, for this reason, is translated into a generalized medium of communication that defines the structure of society. The communication medium of power becomes, in other words, a medium for organizing society. The organizational medium of domination combines the action potentials of family-based communal groups, which had previously managed separate households and could easily have continued to do so. The extraordinary efficiency of such an organizational form can be reconstructed with regard to the history of political domination in China up until the formation of the empire under the Ch’in in 221 b.c. For almost two thousand years, it proved capable of containing the dynamics of historical development and, after the imperial organization of the empire, of continuing up until modern times.19 In the present context, I am not interested in figuring out the concrete conditions under which domination and the State were able to develop out of simple agrarian societies in each specific case. What interests me is to show in the structural sequence of societies (that which in a stricter sociological sense is understood as social change) a line of development which opens with each constellation new creative horizons for the constructive autonomy of the human form of existence, new possibilities which were then made use of. From the long-term perspective of development from the beginnings of the society of homo sapiens sapiens to the development of archaic civilization, with its organizational form of domination and the State, the process can be given the following short and succinct formulation: The competence in organizing life conduct attained in the process of enculturation is increased and directed toward the organization of social relationships. A lasting transformation of the social order resulted here in that the structurally necessary organization of society by means of power was made use of to create an organization based on subjugation.

3.3 The Increase in the Knowledge of Organization and Domination Organizational competencies can only be improved by coming to terms with actional competencies already developed through a process of abstract reflection and then applying this new-found knowledge. For this reason, an improvement in organizational competence always entails a process of 19 | Cf. L. L EDDEROSE and A. S CHLOMBS, Der Erste Kaiser von China und seine Terrakotta-Armee; C.P. F ITZGERALD, China. Von der Vorgeschichte bis zum 19. Jahrhundert.

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further development of cognitive competence. This process takes place, on the one hand, by taking advantage of the praxis of others, and especially of their labor power. There is a considerable cognitive difference in logistics separating the competence to organize raids to plunder neighboring ethnic groups, endemic in simple agrarian societies, and the development of the military campaigns found in archaic societies. The improvement of organizational competence, however, also takes place in terms of an advance in learning how to organize and to dominate nature. We have already had several occasions to point out that the development of cognition is not driven by a steady pursuit of knowledge, but by the need to assimilate adequately one’s learning experiences. The development of social organization under the impetus of the struggle to accumulate power, which becomes transformed into forms of domination, represents the real motive force behind the continued development of cognitive competencies. As we have discussed above, it is practically unthinkable in the realm of postmodern theories to even broach the general question of the historical development of thought. Especially in cultural anthropology, the slogan of “different but equal” inhibits the very question of a development or developmental logic from earlier to later societies, let alone the study of such phenomena. One reason for resurrecting a theory of history (as attempted here) is to make clear that the theorem of equality has to give adequate recognition to the process of historical development if it is to make any sense. The attempt to understand how cognition developed, however, runs into considerable difficulties. After everything that we have discussed about the distinction between the logico-arithmetic and material structures of thought, it seems advisable to discuss development of each separately up until the archaic civilizations. For this reason, I will first take up the question of the degree to which we can assume universal structures of logico-arithmetic competence in the development of cognition.

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1. THE U NIVERSALIT Y OF THE E ARLY P HASES OF C OGNITIVE D E VELOPMENT 1.1 Theoretical Architectonics and Empirical Findings The ontogenetic turn was supposed to produce (and this was the subtle aim pursued by Piaget) a genetic understanding of modernity’s revolution in the natural sciences. At least in terms of the development of mathematics, Piaget held that an understanding of ontogenetic development provided access to intellectual history. As little as Piaget himself made any additional effort to provide a systematic account of the historical development of thought, one thing did seem indisputable to him: the constructive process of developing the structures of cognition and, in this way, gaining knowledge of the world begins in all societies in the early ontogenesis of each member of the species. The sequence of phases is the same everywhere as well. There are good theoretical reasons for making this assumption. Anyone who considers the anthropological starting point upon which the construction of cultural worlds builds and attempts to provide even a halfway theoretical explanation for the construction process of the first years of life cannot harbor any doubts that, structurally speaking, this process must proceed in the same way everywhere and, for this reason, must result in the same structures everywhere. There is something so elementary about both the conditions under which the initial structures develop and about the tasks that need to be mastered that differences in societal organization do not even come into play at this level. In fact, there is nothing unique about the development of the early ontogenetic structures of cognition in industrialized societies in which this development has been investigated. To document the elementary character of conditions and tasks: Experiences must always be gathered via initially, almost completely unstructured motor activity and assimilated into motor schemata. A limited field of

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action must always be visualized via an initially atemporal pictorial representation. The development of object invariance, that is, of the consciousness that the object exists independently—whether it is presently in view or is being manipulated or not—is a milestone in the development of cognitive structures, and its discovery was a milestone in ontogenetic theory.1 It was also a milestone in epistemology and in history conceived as the intellectual history. For, at the very least, it compels one to acknowledge that the constructive process takes place under hard conditions outside of human control, and this applies just as much on the organismic or subject side as it does on the object side. It is simply inconceivable for object invariance not to develop; and it is also unimaginable for the end of the sensorimotor phase not to lead into the construction of the centeredsymbolic phase (i.e., the preoperational phase). In initial discussions I have made the effort to describe the autogenous mechanism with which the brain begins the operational process. Jonas Langer makes a strong argument for the automatic nature of this process in his already frequently cited studies of the anthropoids and apes most closely related to us.2 They, too, begin the process of development of rudimentary structures of cognition in mathematics and physics in early ontogenesis and develop them—up until their fifth year of life—to a level that roughly corresponds to that of a two-year-old human child. The process starts to falter at this point. One reason for flagging progress at this point can be attributed to the lack of an apparatus for producing speech. There is very simply no possibility to develop at least the beginnings of a symbolically mediated organization of action and of the world on a mediated level. This also accords with the fact that the brain did not develop in such a way as to give constructive autonomy any chance whatsoever to develop. For this reason, it was not possible to develop a reflexive consciousness as highly advanced as one finds in the action-related consciousness of man. Initial tendencies in this direction can be found. Anyone who does not consider himself prevented from recognizing any differences whatsoever in cognitive development will search for them here. Be that as it may. In the long transitional period of the hominids, from animal to man, it has, in any case, been possible for man to develop such competencies. On our side of the virtual threshold, we find logico-arithmetic operationalism developed to a considerable level in all societies.

1 | Cf. J. P IAGET, Psychologie der Intelligenz, pp. 121ff. For a summary, J.H. F LAVELL , Kognitive Entwicklung, pp. 67ff.; M.S. M AHLER et al., Die psychische Geburt des Menschen. 2 | J. L ANGER , “Die universale Entwicklung der elementaren logisch-mathematischen und physikalischen Kognition.”

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As was to be expected, cross-cultural studies have confirmed the assumption that cognitive competencies begin to develop from the cultural position zero of birth via a comprehensible logic of development in the same way in all societies. Listen to what Pierre Dasen has to report from times when findings themselves still defined interpretation: In a just completed longitudinal study of rural Baoulé (Ivory Coast) infants aged 5 to 37 months [...] we have obtained 259 examinations, using an ordinal scale developed in France by Casati & Lézine (1969). Almost no adaptation of the test materials was found to be necessary: whereas most of the objects were unknown to the subjects (toys such as plastic cars and dolls, plastic rakes, etc.) they handled these very efficiently. The usual sequential order of stages was found.3 This is not to say that the different levels of societal development have no impact whatsoever on the way in which the early developmental process proceeds. It has frequently been established that at least some of the motor skills develop more rapidly in simple agrarian societies.4 This is not the least bit surprising; in fact, it allows us to recognize what development depends on in general: on the demands that the external world places upon the organism (or the developing subject). Bearing in mind that the process of development takes place in the context of the development of intense communicative practices, the prevailing demands can result in shifts in the pattern of concrete development. In this early phase, however, this involves little more than shifts in accent. The cognitive structures themselves are left unaffected.

1.2 What Humans Share in Common So much evidence has been gathered in support of the assumption of the universality of the early phases of ontogenetic development that the literature reflects an exhaustion on the part of researchers even to question it. It plays, however, a prominent role in the strategy of achieving understanding of history as the history of the species by developing the formative process of cognition out of early ontogenesis under describable conditions. For it provides impressive documentation of what humans share in common, in other words, what unifies them across history as a species: having followed a universal process of development in early ontogenesis under the same starting conditions. This shared character of early ontogenetic development holds regardless of the previously mentioned differences among societies and social milieus. If we were to include affective development during these early stages in the investigation, it would turn out that the basic emotional constitution of man is permanently shaped by the

3 | P.R. Dasen, “Introduction,” p. 9. 4 | E.E. Werner, “Infants Around the World.”

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intimacy of early years.5 Intimacy is integrated in a wide range of different practices in the relation between mother and child, it has lasting effects on the subsequent character of emotion in the relation between the sexes. The differences among societies and the relates differences of emotional formations in social milieus do not place in doubt the successive developments of cognitive structures.6

1.3 The Logic of Development Claims of development and developmental logic tend to electrify postmodernist thought. This is all the more the case, the more clearly the empirical findings show that though all societies present the same succession of stages in the development of operational (logico-arithmetical) competence, development was not advanced as far in all societies. As we have seen, Piaget himself assumed for the longest part of his research life that operational competence in all societies reached the level of formal-operational competence. Cross-cultural studies, however, proved that this assumption was incorrect. After this initial shock, it was also shown that even in Western societies specific conditions are necessary, especially school-related ones, in order to reach a formal-operational level. And these conditions certainly do not exist everywhere.7 The discussion of findings has remained exceedingly difficult up until today. One reason has already been discussed: there is moral resistance to a cognitive development that is theoretically well grounded and empirically indisputable, but which appears to make a claim to moral superiority, a claim quickly branded as ethnocentric. The other reason is that the theoretical account given for the occurrence of an ontogenetic development is simply not taken up.8 This development exists and this developmental logic does as well. First I refer to the developmental logic in ontogenesis: for the development from the sensorimotor to the preoperational phase with the formation of semiotic functions, the preceding development of the competence to act is a strict condition of possibility. Without it and the development of object invariance connected to it, it would not have been possible in the following phase to develop a grammar or a vocabulary. And it is not different for the development from the preoperational phase to its concrete-operational successor around ages six or seven. It can be proved without any doubt, for instance, in terms of the development of the child‘s understanding of time, that the understanding of time in the sequence of action has to be far advanced before an operational coordination of several

5 | G. D UX , Geschlecht und Gesellschaft., pp. 63Ff, 92ff. 6 | Cf. J. Piaget, Intelligenz und Affektivität in der Entwicklung des Kindes. 7 | Cf. the study by N. P ELUFFO, “Culture and Cognitive Problems.” 8 | This holds for a great number of the contributions assembled by S CHÖF THALER and G OLDSCHMIDT in their Soziale Struktur und Vernunft.

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actions and courses of events by virtue of an operational cognitive competence becomes possible.9 In the process of history, it would also be completely unfounded if one attempted to conceive of the development of cognition solely as an accumulation of knowledge. The process of acquiring knowledge takes place instead in terms of structural necessities. Abstract reflection, which makes previously developed structures comprehensible and subject to human influence (and which we are acquainted with from ontogenetic development), also represents a decisive dimension in the development of cognition in the epochal historical developments. It was the competence of abstract reflection that made the rapid development of cognition since the Neolithic revolution possible, something indisputably shown by a reconstruction of social and cultural change. It should suffice us for the time being to insist that it must at least be valid to ask about a logic that is taken for granted in all the handbooks and textbooks of the history of the scientific disciplines. For a historico-genetic theory of culture, and especially of cognition, all of this results in a clear strategy for making the development of cognition in history understandable: if we assume that the formative process of cognition is set in motion in all societies via the same initial phases, it becomes impossible to avoid the following question. How far was this process advanced in individual societies; in other words, when did this process come to a standstill? Piaget posed this question in exactly this way: On which operational stage are the adults of a tribal society with regard to the technical intelligence that LÉVY -B RUHL completely ignored, with regard to linguistic intelligence, to the solution of elementary logico-mathematical problems and so on? For findings in developmental psychology naturally only gain their full weight with regard to preceding stages if one knows the answer to this question with regard to adults.10 It stands to reason that just as the determination of the universal cognitive structures as they are developed in every ontogenesis depends on the evidence of empirical research, so is the determination of the scope of development of these structures in past societies as well as in our own also a question of empirical research. History provides ample material for such research. Naturally, in the written evidence of history this is only passed down to us in methodologically unprocessed form, and this puts limits on interpretation. Moreover, such evidence only goes back as far as the written form itself does. This is the reason why cross-cultural studies take on a strategic significance in a historico-genetic theory. That which histo9 | Cf. J. P IAGET, Die Bildung des Zeitbegriffs beim Kinde; G. D UX , Die Zeit in der Geschichte. 10 | J. P IAGET, “Notwendigkeit und Bedeutung der vergleichenden Forschung in der Entwicklungspsychologie,” p. 73.

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rical material fails to provide—be it because it does not go far enough or be it because it entails no information about that which we most urgently need to know—we need to obtain from systematic research of still existing societies. With a little care, we can avoid stumbling over the obvious problem of directly equating still existing hunting-and-gathering societies with early Pleistocene societies. It is reasonable to assume, however, that the latter had developed their cognitive competencies almost as far as the former. For the logico-arithmetical competencies of still existing hunters and gatherers are, as we shall see, not very developed. It should be explicitly stated: cognitive capacity is the same in all societies; at least that is our assumption. Competencies, on the other hand, are first gained under the demands of the organization of the world. After a quarter of a century of cross-cultural research it is possible to determine how far along the development of logico-arithmetical competence needs to be advanced.

1.4 A Cross-Cultural View of the Succession of Stages Piaget’s determination of stages came from the very beginning under attack. I expressed my agreement with the criticism above. The stages of operational competence are a methodological construct. And this is a problem because it obscures our real cognitive interest: the logic of development. In a heuristic sense, however, it is nevertheless invaluable for cross-cultural research. The reason for this lies in the logic of development. For the logic of development is a development of logic. In it, stages distinguish themselves in that once a certain logico-operational competence is reached, it produces that unique clarity inherent in logical operations that gives them their character of inevitability. Once one masters the operation of multiplication and knows how to combine the surface area and height of a container, then it becomes clear once and for all that only by means of this operation is it possible to decide which of two containers contains more. Acquisition must not occur simultaneously in all fields of action, but once it has been abstractly grasped, it takes on that logical stringency that provides it with its character of inevitability. This is why the transition to concrete-operational competence that follows upon the initial sensorimotor phase at the age of six or seven gains such extraordinary significance in Piaget’s studies. Here the subjects cross the threshold to algebraic logic, though the latter still remains tied to the concrete. Once the logico-algebraic competence of concrete operationalism is acquired, it displays that sudden change in perception that Piaget established as so characteristic when a new stage is reached (even if it does not necessarily enable the child to make use of it in different fields of action). To repeat: the concept of stage is a construct, but one with an specific substantive reference- (it is sachhaltig). As soon as interest is directed to other developments, let alone to the development of cognition in general, it falls apart. In the case of the development of operational, logico-algebraic competence, it is possible to make a comparatively precise statement

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about the degree to which it was developed in early societies on the subsistence level of hunting and gathering. The operational, logico-algebraic competence is developed in early societies up to the threshold of concrete-operational competence. One cannot say with any certainty whether cognitive development crosses this threshold without any contact with civilization and, if so, when it does so. We will discuss how this threshold competence should be understood.

1.5 First Indications of Limits to Development One of the earliest studies in cross-cultural research in the tradition of Piaget comes from Price-Williams.11 The object of analysis was the examination of the competence of illiterate Tiv children in central Nigeria to conserve a given amount of liquid. Price-Williams repeated, for purposes of comparison, the experiments that Piaget had also made, in a slightly modified form. Here the children took earth instead of water. Two glasses A1 and A2 were filled three quarters full with earth. The contents of A2 were then poured into two glasses of smaller diameter, B1 and B2. The children were asked whether the quantity of earth that was previously in A2 is more, less, or the same amount that is now in B1 and B2. In an ensuing experiment, two further variations were investigated. Price-Williams summarized the results in a table that demonstrated an unmistakable outcome: there is a clear, age-related development toward the competence to establish equivalence, which is also reached between the ages of seven and eight. The acquisition of conservation of volume, quantity, and weight has been investigated in many individual studies. Almost every one of them has its own particular features; more than a few include deviations by individual test persons for which it is difficult to find any ad hoc explanation. The basic facts of the matter remain the same, however: there is a development from a judgment of nonequivalence to equivalence. The study by Price-Williams already shows that there is a slight delay in the acquisition of concrete operationalism on the part of the Tiv. In the age group from 7 to 7.6 years of age, a judgment of an equivalence of conserved quantity can only be found in less than half of the pouring experiments. Other studies confirmed this observation. One of the most noticeable examples of delay (décalage) is seen in the study by Patricia Greenfield.12 She studied three groups of children in Senegal: children who attended a village school in the bush, children in the bush who did not attend this school, and school children in Dakar. In each of these groups, three different age groups were studied: those between 6 and 7 years of age, those between 8 and 9, and those between 11 and 13 (17, 20, 11 | D.R. P RICE-WILLIAMS , “A study concerning concepts of conservation of quantities among primitive children.” 12 | P.M. Greenfield, “On Culture and Conservation,” pp. 234-235.

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and 22 children, respectively). Both the schooled and unschooled children clearly attained conservation later than Western children. Such an delay of development can frequently be observed in nonindustrialized societies. Let us cite another study as evidence, which Dasen carried out in three different ethnic groups.13 With his study, Dasen continues the work of Berry, who sought to determine the influence of ecological and cultural determinants on cognitive development. There is good reason to assume that in nomadic societies that live from hunting sensorimotor discriminations, especially spatial concepts, develop more rapidly than in agricultural societies. Conversely, one can expect in the latter that conservation concepts of amount, weight, and volume develop more rapidly. Dasen investigated this hypothesis in terms of 6- to 14-year-old school children among Eskimos (Cape Dorset), Australian aborigines (Hermannsburg), and in a town on the Ivory Coast (Adiopodoumé). There was a complete confirmation of expectations. There is a spectacular delay in development. Children in industrial societies normally develop concrete-operational competence between 6 and 7 years of age. In Hermannsburg, only 30% of the children had attained a concrete-operational competence by the age of 13. In the present context, I am not at all interested in a discussion of the individual studies. They were always concerned with the particular features of the groups investigated. What I am first interested in is to register the findings made with regard to the focus of our interest: even under developmental conditions that are different and less favorable than those of industrial societies, development follows the logic of development that we are acquainted with from the ontogenesis of industrial societies. This finding represents a significant result. Prior to it, one could at best have speculated; given the apparent differences among societies, it would hardly have been possible to arrive at consensus. Against the backdrop of this finding, however, a scientific-cognitive interest seems to require the examination of a further question: what level did development attain by adulthood. This question has rarely been posed in cross-cultural studies. It is not difficult to understand why: the question of the level on which adults find themselves only gains explosive force within a historical theory that does not let itself be talked out of the finding that there is a development in the history of cognition that follows a virtual line of development. But this is exactly what Patricia Ashton wants to do.14 She belongs to that group of researchers in cultural anthropology who are able to dismiss every difference in development, no matter how apparent, in terms of the motto of “different but equal.” What is observed as development depends—this is her objection to all competence-theoretical interpretations—“upon the effect of surroundings on cognition.”15 Surely, this is exactly what a 13 | Cf. P.R. DASEN, “Concrete operational development in three cultures.” 14 | P. A SHTON, “Kulturvergleichende Piaget-Forschung: Eine empirische Perspektive.” 15 | Ibid., p. 80.

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historico-genetic theory of development asserts. The difference is, however, that the latter theory incorporates a certain amount of sociological understanding of what surroundings mean in its reasoning. For it seeks to demonstrate that the lower level of organization of simple societies does not make any demands on cognition development which would compel it to develop concrete-operational competence qua judgmental competence. Thus according to these demands it is completely possible that one can identify different levels of development within one and the same society. People such as the Adivasi, who we described in our first India study and who live as outcasts on the outskirts of a village in thatch huts with almost no tools, have a different cognitive competence than peasants living 1,000 meters away with all the implements of traditional agriculture. It is solely the inability to view available studies from a developmental-logical perspective, an inability which has crystallized into a taboo on thought, that has stopped researchers from taking such studies as a reason for raising the question as to how far cognitive competence necessarily has to be developed and how far along it is actually driven under further demands. For this reason, one will have to admit that the empirical investigation of this question represents a demand of the hour.16 The state of research has improved in the meantime.

2. THE L IMITS OF O PER ATIONAL C OMPE TENCE OR : THE M ENTAL B LOCK 2.1 Beyond Childhood The vast majority of cross-cultural studies have been performed with school children. This reflects an ontogenetic interest, but not only that. Restricting the groups studied to school children is also a manifestation of the mental blockade discussed above, which does not even allow for a connection between ontogenesis and history. Knowledge is sought about how children acquire operational concepts and which techniques the acquisition of competence is tied to. Differences are, especially in the research group associated with Bruner “differences in the cognitive functioning” of different cultural techniques.17 And there is practically no more to it. This represents an abridging, from the outset, of the historical and epistemological interests pursued by Piaget. In all of Piaget’s ontogenetic research we find the enigmatic question as to why thought has developed

16 | P IAGET had already pointed this out. Cf. J. P IAGET, “Notwendigkeit und Bedeutung,” p. 73; also C.R. E MBER, “Kulturvergleichende Kognitionsforschung,” p. 115. 17 | P.M. G REENFIELD, “On Culture and Conservation,” p. 244.

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in the way we find it in its most advanced state in the science of the West.18 Once this question is taken seriously, one must pose the question: what is to be ascertained beyond the young age groups, to all studies whose sampled populations are limited to children and youth. Greenfield‘s study, mentioned above, practically forces one to suspect that unschooled “bush children” do not attain operational competence even after they grow up. Our conclusion, trivial in itself, that the cognitive level attained by adults always represents a continuation of the development of the level attained by children, clearly brings to light the historical explosiveness of the findings made by Greenfield (and many others). Even if one has no developmental-theoretical ideas in mind and is in fact trying to reduce any differences to the products of cultural-training techniques, the conclusion of development can still not be refuted. Bruner, whose own developmental-theoretical efforts remain clearly in a distance to those of Piaget, was early to point out that formal-operational competence is not developed in less developed societies. He concludes: Let it be explicit, however, that if he [a child] is growing up in a native village of Senegal ..., among native Eskimos ..., or in a rural mestizo village in Mexico ... he may not achieve this “capacity.” Instead, he may remain at a level of manipulation of the environment that is concretely ikonic and strikingly lacking in symbolic structures—though his language may be stunningly exquisite in these regards. 19 Patricia Greenfield substantiated the implications of this conclusion in view of the studies then available. I quite deliberately cite her discussion of this subject in its entirety: It is possible, of course, that development is simply slower without school, so that an adult group might manifest 100 percent conservation behavior. Other results, however, obtained both from these subjects and from subjects in other cultures do not make it seem likely. A study of conceptualizing was done with unschooled adults ... when we found that eleven- to thirteen-year-old children had responded in essentially the same manner as the eight- and nine-year-old group. No further changes in the pattern of conceptual thought were observed in the adults, save for a decrease in the variability of response from subject to subject. That experiment and this one suggest that, without school, intellectual development, defined as any qualitative change, ceases shortly after age nine. An investigator in Niger has made the same observation among unschooled African children on a completely different type of activity—drawing. And another investigator who worked with conservation tasks (albeit different ones) found no difference between minimally schooled Chinese adolescent 18 | This is the way the question is posed, in the tradition of P IAGET, by M.C. B OVET, “Cognitive processes among illiterate children and adults,” pp. 312f. 19 | See J.S. B RUNER, “On Cognitive Growth II,” p. 46.

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boys and a matched group of adults in Hong Kong in the percentage of subjects with conservation (Goodnow 1962). 20 One would think that either of these two conclusions would have to result in the incorporation of a theory of history into the theory of the ontogenetic acquisition of cognitive competence. It seems apparent: there can be no theory of cognitive development without a theory of history. And the converse also seems to hold: without a theory of cognitive development, no theory of history.

2.2 The Mental Blockade The ingeniousness of Piaget’s investigations manifests itself not least of all in his success in making elementary cognitive processes open to empirical testing. The degree to which any given competence is developed can be measured according to whether certain tasks can be mastered or not. Michael Cole raised the objection to this research strategy that in an experimental situation the only thing that can ever be measured is what the test person can do, never what he cannot.21 This conclusion is, in itself, correct. Inability is always a conclusion of the observer, but it is a conclusion that becomes compelling if expectations of logical answers are persistently disappointed. Let us first take into view the ontogenetic process of development again and focus on the development of competence as we have described it above. Stimulated by Piaget’s studies, the first of the cross-cultural studies that we performed in India aimed at examining the understanding of the conservation of a quantity of liquid. We made use of the same experimental procedure as Price-Williams; more specifically, we poured a certain amount of liquid from a beaker with a given diameter (d) into a beaker half its diameter (1/2 d). This much we knew: 4- to 5-year-old children were unable to conserve the amount. If we repeat the experiment 2 years later, we will find that they have in the meantime learned to do so. What justifies the assumption that the observed change results from a difference in competence rather than simply a difference in performance? The conclusion that the test person is unable to do something rests on the compulsory character that operational competencies exert if they exist. Anyone who has this competence at his or her command makes use of it if abnormal conditions do not prevent them from doing so. The experimental situation cannot be judged to be abnormal per se. The elementary character of the cognitive processes that manifest themselves in assessments of volume conservation made us skeptical, prior to our investigation in Beghum Ganj (near Bhopal), about the possibility that they might also be lacking in adults. Our studies in Beghum 20 | P.M. Greenfield, “On Culture and Conservation,” p. 234 (emphasis added!). 21 | M. C OLE , “Eine ethnographische Psychologie der Kognition,” p. 299.

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Ganj taught us otherwise. A. Mukerjee, who carried out the investigation, came to the conclusion that 32% of the illiterate adults were nonconservers and that 30% still found themselves at the beginning of the transitional phase.22 There is good reason to view the experiments critically and to evaluate their results cautiously when one knows the circumstances under which they were carried out and especially when one carries out clinical investigations under nonclinical conditions. Nevertheless, the bottom line is that as participant-observer I possess the certain knowledge that a considerable share of the test persons had not developed the competence to judge the conservation of quantity. The few cross-cultural studies on the development of a concept of time had also already signaled, prior to our studies in Brazil and India, that an operational understanding of time had not developed everywhere. Thus a study by Bovet and Othenin-Girard, which was performed with rural inhabitants of the Ivory Coast, showed that men who had not attended school possessed an operational sense of time, but not women.23 Here, too, our studies are unambivalent: On a low level of societal organization, it is not necessary to develop an operational sense of time, nor does it happen. The Macu, who practically still live along the Rio Uneiuxi, a branch of the Rio Negro, in the state of hunter-gatherers, are completely unaware of such temporal understanding; a significant number of people also do not develop it under the agrarian conditions of production prevalent in parts of India. Let us bring before our minds eye one of the experimental situations upon which we based our study of time in India:24 Two cows walk in a circle. The first time they go around, they are connected by an invisible pole; the second time by a visible one. The questions that we posed read as follows: Did they start walking at the same time and did they stop at the same time? Were they equally fast and did they need the same amount of time, or did one need less time? Is the situation represented foreign to the test persons? Not at all! In India, harnessed water buffalo walk in circles everywhere to draw water or to grind grain. Were the test persons unable to conjure up the real situation in the face of the artificially constructed platform? Every human begins to play symbolic games by the age of two in which he or she lets the things that happen to be around stand for other things. In fact the Indians had no trouble whatsoever imagining the situation. Thus, we the interviewers, whether natives or foreigners, remain the only other possible source of 22 | A. Mukerjee, The Ontogenesis of the Cognitive Structures, p. 192. 23 | M.C. B OVET and C. O THENIN -G IRARD, “Etude Piagétienne de quelques notions spatio-temporelles.” 24 | Cf. G. Dux, Die Zeit in der Geschichte, p. 410.

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confusion. However, what we have here are not chance disruptions, but systematically known causes of confusion! The answers of children who have not yet developed concrete-operational competence are not simply illogical, as one might assume if one takes for granted the logical character of completely developed operationalism. They are logical within the limits of an associative ability, which has only developed to the extent of bipolar relations. This leads to “ typical” mistakes. An example may help illustrate this: A: __________________ x y B: ____________ x‘ y‘

The children were shown two runners who started and finished a race at the same time, though they did not start from the same point. In response to the question of which of the two runners needed more time to complete the race, some of the children answered that the one who ran the shorter distance did (i.e., B).

Why? The answer is: he is said to have dawdled. What is the basis of this answer? In this phase of development, children already have a highly developed sense of time. If Piaget’s studies seem to make the opposite impression, this is once again the result of a methodological construct: Piaget is solely interested in the turn to concrete-operational competence.25 The development of a 5- to 6-year-old child is so far along that it is completely capable of grasping the relationship between time and speed; the only thing is, this competence is tied to the experience of its own action, i.e., to a bipolar relational structure. The child knows that slower movement requires more time. Thus, when the child is asked to compare the movement of A and B, the comparison does not occur as the comparison of two independent movements within the same period of time. Instead, the one movement is assimilated with the other and the judgment is made on the basis of the experience of one course of action: the slower one goes, the more time one needs! What interests me here is the following: The developmental process of thought is tied to experiences that the test person gains on the basis of his or her action and which he or she processes within the relational references of this action. For this reason, the competence to judge initially remains tied to a bipolar relational frame of reference.

25 | Cf. J. P IAGET, Die Bildung des Zeitbegriffs beim Kinde.

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This frame of reference is part of the development of the logic of concrete-operational competence. Apparently, a little logic is also always logical. The judgments made are not simply contingent, let alone illogical. Because these answers are based on a developmental logic, it is not surprising that we also discover them among adult Indian test persons.26 The example discussed also makes the meaning of developmental logic clear: it is the logical moment in the development of a logic, which, in the context of our discussions, is algebraic logic. The discussion of developmental logic has provided me with the prerequisites for meeting an objection found in various criticisms. The objection is simply: it cannot be.

3. P R ACTICE AND J UDGMENT Even before Thomas Kuhn’s studies on the meaning of scientific paradigms, it was clear that results that contradict the prevailing paradigm are in no way suited for overturning this paradigm.27 This conclusion is all the more true, if persistent prejudices stand in the way of recognizing such results. The latter holds for the objection that it is completely illegitimate to pose Western tasks with Western methods in societies that have not followed the course of Western rationality, since every culture produces its own practices with its own customs of thought. Anyone who argues this way has hardly understood what is involved in the examination of operationalism: the development of a type of logic without which the world simply cannot be organized symbolically and thus cannot be understood. It seems to me impossible to claim that the cultures discussed here have not developed any formal logic at all. The other objection is diametrically opposed to the first. Its argument: it simply cannot be that people cannot master such an elementary task as the judgment of volume conservation in the pouring experiment. It can also not be that given two courses of movement that start and end at the same time, but where one overtakes the other, that adult test persons disputed both the simultaneity of the beginning and the end and the fact that both runs needed the same amount of time. But this is exactly what can be observed among the Macu.28 Cole and Scribner are completely at a loss about the findings. They explain: One of the most baffling questions is how we are to interpret the finding that volume conservation is present in only half of the 13-year-olds who had no schooling and is, according to Greenfield, absent in nonliterate adults. As Greenfield herself points out, all people have to come to understand certain basic laws of 26 | Cf. G. D UX , Die Zeit in der Geschichte, pp. 407ff. 27 | THOMAS K UHN , The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 28 | Cf. J.M. M ENSING, “Die Zeit am Rio Uneiuxi.”

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the physical world (or at least behave in accordance with these laws) if they are to survive. Can we imagine an adult who would pour water from a small bucket into a larger one and believe that the amount of water has been decreased by this act? In desert communities where water is a treasured commodity, everyone can be expected to conform to certain laws of conservation. 29 I readily admit that one cannot help thinking along these lines. We also thought, prior to the first India study, that the lower limit of cognitive development that every society reaches must lie somewhere within the concrete-operational stage. Similar ideas will have led Piaget to discuss the question of universalism solely with regard to the formal-operational stage. Literally our first experiment in India showed that we had to rethink our assumptions. A stone-breaker between the age of 50 and 60 instructed us, in a completely unstructured setting, that the water poured into a glass with half the diameter of the first is more than in the first. Disappointed expectations give reason to rethink history. Admittedly, for thought that proves resistant to ideas based on developmental logic, the embarrassment is great. However plausible skepticism may be, it is difficult to maintain in the face of the findings, findings that have been corroborated.30 Moreover, these findings have all the more weight, since the standard objection that the unusualness of the situations and materials produces the lack of judgment proves untenable. Pouring something into new containers is not a daily procedure in all societies, but in most it is hardly something foreign, and water is a material everyone is acquainted with. In addition, Dasen has made it clear that the problem involved did not arise through the experimental situation. In a study he performed, aborigine women in central Australia had to choose between two glasses of sugar. In the glass of wide diameter, there were two portions; in the glass of narrow diameter, there was only one, but the level of sugar was higher. Eight of 12 women chose the narrower glass with one portion.31 I think that in view of these results it is simply a dictate of scientific honesty that the burden of proof should fall to those who stubbornly assert that there are no differences in the competence to judge. Even if one were to provisionally call it a difference in performance, one would still have to explain the difference in judgments of the so called performances. The doggedness with which the test persons maintained their judgments and the ease with which those who enjoyed but a few years of school29 | M. C OLE and S. S CRIBNER , Culture and Thought: A Psychological Introduction, 151f.; in the same sense, M. C OLE, “Eine ethnographische Psychologie der Kognition,” p. 295. 30 | DE L EMOS , “The Development of Conservation in Aboriginal Children”; P.R. DASEN, “Cross-Cultural Piagetian Research: A Summary”; M.C. B OVET, “Cognitive Processes among Illiterate Children and Adults”; A. M UKERJEE , The Ontogenesis of the Cognitive Structures; G. D UX , Die Zeit in der Geschichte, pp. 373ff. 31 | P.R. DASEN, “Are the cognitive processes universal?,” p. 172.

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ing crossed over the threshold allow me to assume that it does not make any sense to understand the competence to judge merely as a question of performance rather than one of competence. If a competence has been developed in this stage of the development of operationalism, it is also made use of.32 It would seem to me to be completely absurd if one sought to explain the development of operationalism with the standard argument made by theoreticians who seek to be “culturally correct”: that it is simply a question of different value standards that resulted in different cultures. For such differences in values are not apparent in one‘s water requirements or in one‘s preference for sugar or honey. Moreover, it is also not understandable how value preferences might play any role at all in the assessment of quantities. The fact that the very same “misjudgement” are found in children in the preoperational stage is also something that is completely incompatible as well with the performance hypothesis as with the cultural correctness thesis. More generally, the typical character of the errors is the best indicator that we are dealing with the same structures in cross-cultural studies that we find in the ontogenesis of both their and our children.33 The problem of practical life can be resolved without having to assume that the test persons would have to perish if they lacked operational competence. There is, namely, no simple congruence between practical competence and judgemental competence. The cognitive process is initiated by motor activity in the early stages of ontogenesis and driven forward by the slowly developing competence to act. Piaget’s succinct statement is worth recalling: in the beginning there was action.34 Attaining actional competence is the true impetus behind ontogenetic development. The result is that all cognitive structures and all knowledge are initially embedded in the praxis of action.35 Before a child can start to think about something, i.e., before it can make something the subject of its thought, it already knows about it from practical enactment. I can cite an impressive example, which once again originates in the development of a sense of time: if a 4- to 5-year-old child is told to 32 | I will refrain from discussing the theory of performance developed by C OLES and his fellow researchers. U. W ENZEL has treated it at greater length (in press). It should only be noted that the indiscriminate acceptance that Cole’s theory has found in J. H ABERMAS is surprising. His assumption that “primitive and archaic cultures” had developed a formal-operational competence is also surprising. The opposite is now the agreed-upon position in cross-cultural research. J. H ABERMAS , Die Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, vol. 1, pp. 74f. 33 | This observation also negates the objection of an anxious philosopher that the same statements when made by children and adults are based on completely different conceptions. Conceptions are determined by structures! It would be a very mysterious finding indeed if, while judgments remained the same from cradle to grave, there was nonetheless a metamorphosis in the source of error. 34 | J. P IAGET, Abriß der genetischen Epistemologie, p. 33 35 | Emphatically stated in J.S. B RUNER , “On Cognitive Growth: I,” p. 1.

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come home quickly once nursery school ends because one wants to go on a trip, one can be sure that the child will grasp the situation easily and run home. It thus knows that it needs less time for the same route taken with greater speed. If one asks the same child to judge whether it needs more or less time if it runs, one may hear that it needs more time.36 Some of our Indian test persons answered in the very same way. I will not once again discuss here why both the one group and the other fall for this solution.37 This much is certain: those persons are not able to abstract that of which they are practically capable from the concrete relational field of action. After all of this is it still necessary to comment on the objections of the relativist culture theorists cited above? They claim that it simply cannot be that such elementary tasks as conservation of volume and amount are not developed and have not been mastered. There is a characteristic inexactitude to Cole’s argument. He argues: can one imagine an adult who believes he has more water when he pours it into a narrow vessel?38 Of course not! No one who pours water from one container into another has to think about whether it is the same amount. Everyone takes this for granted. The necessity of making a concrete assessment of the matter does not arise. The identity of the object, as Bruner’s descriptions have shown, is developed prior to the conservation of volume.39 Even in the development of the identity of an object, one must also distinguish practical competence from judgmental competence. In the same way, the establishment of identity, when it involves the assessment of the identity of volumes, is simpler than the operation of compensation, that is, simpler than the comparison between the product of surface area times height.40 Thus there can be no doubt about it: the cognitive competencies suffice for all practical purposes and definitely for ensuring survival. It is only when quantitative equivalence becomes the topic of discussion that the judgment of quantity takes on existential significance. Until that point, the simple identity of the object can be the end of the matter. This does not jeopardize survival; one actually needs to think less that one supposes. The observation made by many anthropologists that the native peoples had no interest in such theoretical questions is a result of the practical fixation of their thought. Let us summarize our discussion.

36 | Cf. J. P IAGET, Die Bildung des Zeitbegriffs, p. 62. 37 | G. D UX , Die Zeit in der Geschichte, pp. 407ff. 38 | M. C OLE, “Eine ethnographische Psychologie der Kognition,” p. 305. 39 | J.S. B RUNER , “On the Conservation of Liquids.” 40 | This is one of the results of the study by A. M UKERJEE , The Ontogenesis of the Cognitive Structures.

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4. C ROSS -C ULTUR AL R ESE ARCH AND THE THEORY OF C OGNITION The state of research is unambiguous. Even Piaget already had to concede that the level of cognitive organization in so-called primitive societies did not go beyond the concrete-operational level, that the originally assumed universality of the formal-operational stage did not exist.41 We must go a step further and conclude that at least some of the cognitive features of the concrete-operational stage are also not attained. An examination of the ethnographic material accessible in written form led C.R. Hallpike to the general conclusion that operational competence remained preoperational in these societies.42 I would like to be a little more cautious in formulation, for preoperational is a negative conceptualization that is supposed to cover a wide range of development. With support from my own studies, I favour the assumption that operational competence is developed up to the threshold of a concrete-operational competence. For the intrinsic logic of the answers shows that the development of operational competence is so far along that the judgmental aspects are highly developed in the context of any singular action. This holds, at any rate, for simple agrarian societies. What is lacking is the detachment of this judgment from the structure of the singular action. For this reason I consider E. Bates right in preceding the actual concrete-operational phase with a proto-concrete-operational phase.43 We will see that this finding is in keeping with what anthropologists have always reported about the ideational world of the societies they have studied. It just has not been so succinctly defined up until now. The state of research as I have described it here does not, however, also represent the state of theory. This is seen in the discussion of the operational competence that is developed in nonindustrialized societies. Psychological theory seeks to chalk up every distinction as simply something “different.” “Different, but equal”—that is the magic formula. Dasen, whose work has contributed important impulses to cross-cultural research, initially resisted the prevailing mental blockade with the argument that his opponents had yet to provide evidence of other structures.44 In the meantime, theory has in large part buckled under in the face of the accusation of ethnocentrism. The differences between cultures are ascribed to the differences between cultures. Scientific correctness demands that cultures be understood differently because they adhere to difference cultural values. Anyone who has followed the argument developed here and has become aware of the way in which an absolutist logic has persisted in the explanatory structure of the social and human sciences cannot har41 | J. P IAGET, “Notwendigkeit und Bedeutung,” p. 13. 42 | C.R. H ALLPIKE , The Foundations of Primitive Thought, p. 40. 43 | E. Bates, Language and Context, pp. 217ff., 342f. 44 | P.R. Dasen, “Introduction,” p. 10.

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bor any doubts that this circular definition points to the structural-logical remnants of a logic that seeks to explain the relationship between the explanans and the explanandum in a deductive way. Insofar as the question of a universal developmental sequence is still entertained at all, ascertainable differences are chalked up as simply differences in developmental speed.45 Here no proof is given that those competencies which require 5 years of abstract training in industrial societies are actually acquired at an advanced age by adults, even without schooling. Conversely, the completely unambiguous findings of a not inconsiderable number of studies in which no formal-operational competence can be recognized are simply not cited. The discussion gives one many opportunities to conclude that science can sometimes be a very bizarre undertaking. It does not make any sense in the present context to give an account of the multitude of studies and of the diffuse approaches of everything that goes under the name of neo-Piagetian theory. I am interested in a dimension of theory that cannot be abandoned if ontogenetic and historical development are to be comprehensible. For this reason and in view of the state of research cited above, I will formulate four essentials of the development of operationalism qua development of algebraic logic. 1. One can consider the logico-algebraic structures, the development of which Piaget followed in terms of the concept of operationalism, either as inherent or as the result of an experience-based development. If the first alternative can be excluded for reasons I need not repeat here, then every developmental theory must make clear by which means development occurs and in which sequence of development. 2. If the orthodox reading of Piagetian theory is taken to be the one that Piaget himself held for the longest time, namely, that cultural differences play no role in ontogenetic development, then the historico-genetic theory that I seek to develop here is far removed from all orthodoxy. For it postulates precisely that the differing ranges in the development of operational competencies is the expression of the differing developmental demands that originate in societies or in the sociostructural developments of societies. 3. In the preceding discussion I deliberately sought to understand those achievements designated as preoperational as part of a threshold syndrome. It is worth reiterating that cognitive competencies are far advanced in early and archaic societies—precisely as far as the practice of material reproduction demands. The findings, moreover, allow clear recognition of something else: societies find themselves at different distances from the threshold to concrete-operational competence. The Macu, who in the case of staggered runners who started and arrived at the same time also designated the start as unequal, are further from this threshold than the Indian agricultural test persons who had no 45 | Cf. J.W. B ERRY et al., Cross-Cultural Psychology, p. 120.

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trouble with this. In principle, it is completely plausible to assume that the training of test persons in threshold societies could produce the concrete-operational achievements.46 This is especially true for school attendance. The only thing is: gains made in this way do not speak for an interpretation based on the difference between performance and competence, but rather for the development of competence! 4. Even if I do not see any possibility—in my own studies of the development of time47 —to attribute a concrete-operational competence to the stubbornly proto-concrete-operational answers of our test persons, this conclusion has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with a deficit theory. Quite the opposite: a developmental theory whose interest is focused on tying the development of logic to the development of organizational competence both in the realm of nature and in that of the social world must insist that competence always advances as far as the developmental state of society requires it to for the maturing members of the species.48 5. The historical dimension in the development of operationalism is thus of such outstanding significance, because it enables us to understand foreign cultures. That which every history of mathematics shows, namely, that what we understand under mathematical logic today is the product of a long history,49 is placed back into that stratum from which all thinking makes its beginning: the ontogenesis of every member of the species. Even in cross-cultural research that presents itself as emphatically ahistorical there can be no doubt: the formal-operational competence that children in industrial societies first attain after years of school training is lacking in those members of premodern societies that lack such training. For this reason, the ontogenetic theory of cognition must be translated into a historico-genetic theory. It is not inordinately important for the latter theory, whether one considers cognitive competence in early and archaic societies to be developed up to a protophase of cognitive-operational competence or, at least in some capacities, to have already reached the concrete-operational phase itself. The dispute can first be laid to rest only in a sociology of knowledge that demonstrates in which way practical demands can be met, even without the development of operational competence. For 46 | P. DASEN and L. N IGINI, “Cross-cultural training studies of concrete operations”; J.W. B ERRY et al., Cross-Cultural Psychology, p. 120. 47 | Cf. G. D UX , Die Zeit in der Geschichte. 48 | Unfortunately, the mental block of developmental-logical thinking leads textbooks in cross-cultural studies to mention unsavory racist theories in the same breath as culturalist theories. Racist theories assume a biological basis and thus make assertions about capacities, not competencies. For a conflation of difference in perspectives, cf. M.H. S EGALL , Human Behavior, p. 100; J.W. B ERRY et al., Cross-Cultural Psychology, pp. 211ff., 292ff. 49 | Cf. H. G ERICKE , Mathematik im Abendland.

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a sociology of knowledge, however, acknowledgment of the historical dimension is a conditio sine qua non. The development of operational competence only represents the development of a competence that remains, as it were, intrinsic. The operational structures are the equivalent of tools by virtue of which actions and the external world can be organized. As we have discussed above, these structures must be kept separate from the material structures of actions and of the external world. With the latter, humans develop those structures in which the world presents itself. It is worth our while to make this distinction clear: it is obvious that these structures are just as intrinsically mental as their operational counterparts. The only difference: they are built into the world of objects and events. The development of these structures comprises the real process of world mastery. This is where societies and structures differ with regard to the presentation of their worldviews.

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23. Worldview and Material Logic from Early Times to the Time of Archaic Civilizations

1. M ATERIAL L OGIC AND C ATEGORICAL S TRUCTURES We have already taken up the material logic of the world twice in our previous discussions. We did so at the outset of our discussions in order to establish that the (natural) scientific understanding of the universe as found in modernity represents a shift in logic. We took it up a second time in order to make clear that the old logic was also the logic of philosophical reflection underlying understanding of the social world in all of history prior to our time and that it managed to prevail in precisely this form all the way up to sociological theories of our time. We must come to terms with it yet again, and this time a decisively systematic reconstruction of this logic is called for. We must make equally explain why this logic developed and why in modernity it must be laid to rest. Our previous discussions should provide the basis for these two tasks. The strategic significance of this procedure is evident: the systematic reconstruction of material logic enables us to satisfy the demand that the critique of knowledge posed for us at the outset of our discussions: to take up the tracks left by our history of mind as species and, by doing so, to catch up, as it were, with ourselves. Under material logic we understand the basic organizing pattern or order in which the world of objects and events presents itself to us according to its ontogenetic construction. We established at the very outset of our efforts that what we need to understand is the built-in structure that objects and events display. This structure reveals itself in each and every category. In other words, there is a relation of reciprocal implication between material logic and categorical structures. As we stated above, categorical structures are the organizing, the ordering forms through which we perceive and conceive the external world. They define what the world “is,” as long as we are not explicitly reflecting on its constructed character. Precisely because they make up, what we term the world, they can be discovered

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in that world. The world consists of the objects and events that are systematically organized in terms of the categorical structures of substance, causality, space, and time, to name the most important. The structure that is built into them and that they share as an underlying material logic has a comprehensible genesis.

2. THE G ENESIS OF THE M ATERIAL L OGIC OF P REMODERNIT Y If one takes the acquisitional process of sociocultural forms of life to be determined by the interaction with an always already preexisting external reality, then it strikes every observer that the condition of possibility for this process lies in the interaction with the significant others of the environs into which the maturing member of the species is born. As a matter of fact the object in terms of which the maturing member of the species makes an absolutely overwhelming number of experiences and, above all, which sets the conditions that allow these experiences to also be assimilated is always an already more competent other. It is not only that the process of constructing the world is tied to the development of structures of action when regarded from the side of the maturing member of the species in this process. Rather, it is that the organism or the developing subject makes experiences on the external side of this process that are defined by the very structure that this subject seeks to develop, even if he or she is not capable of perceiving this structure as such initially. In processual terms, the constructive process consists to develop this structure in the child’s relations to social others as the structure of interaction and thus at the same time as the cognitive structure for that which in others makes up the world. Since dealings with the social other are completely dominant precisely in the earliest phase of development, the explanatory structure developed in one’s dealings with him functions as the operating mechanism which each and every object and each and every event is subjected to. In a substantial sense, the world is constructed in terms of the structure of action. Hereafter it is made comprehensible using the logic of action as its explanatory structure. It is the absolutely dominant structure in the worldview of the child.1 The form of action is not only built into the structure of events, what is more it is also built into the form of objects. The predominant structure of the latter, however, is the materiality of their substance.2 Substance, however, is conceived of as a capacity. That which Piaget in his early study 1 | J. P IAGET, Das Weltbild des Kindes, pp. 145ff. 2 | FALK WAGNER’S remark on the incorporation of the structure of action in the categorical form of substance appears to me legitimate: due to the materiality of the latter it is less clear than in the categorical forms of causality and time. F. Wagner, “Kritik und Krise der Religion” pp. 17ff.

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of the worldview of the child termed animism and artificiality3 owes its existence to a developmental process of cognition in which the logic of action becomes the initial logic with which the world is understood. In the philosophy of modernity in which the categorical structures become the object of reflection and discussion, this action-logical feature can be clearly seen. The structures have undergone an abstract development and elaboration, but they have not lost their action-logical genesis. As Leibniz puts it: “a substance can by its nature not be without activity.”4 Consequently, this is precisely what Hegel meant with the origin as absolute: as the unity of subject and substance.5 The high degree of reflexiveness with which the structure of logic is raised into consciousness documents the thesis of two ages: for an entire history, the subjectivist logic was the dominant logic for understanding the world. In modernity it is initially overcome as the logic for explaining natural phenomena. We are still far from recognizing the ramifications that this has on the way in which the mind-based character of the human form of existence is to be understood, and how thought and language in particular are to be grasped. Otherwise, this study itself would not have been necessary. Let us return to the beginnings.

3. THE S TRUCTURE OF A CTION AS M ATERIAL L OGIC There can be no doubt that in the early societies on the subsistence level of hunting and gathering, but also in the following societies up until modernity the structure of action represents the absolutely dominant structure of explanation. It serves as paradigm for everything that is found to exist and for everything that occurs. Even insofar as rule-governed knowledge is attained, the understanding of these rules remains subject to a subjectivist structure. On the level of phenomena, there is no dispute about the findings, but their structural-logical significance has yet to be recognized. In this regard, however, it is once again indisputable that if one holds thought to be determined at all by structures and if one seeks to understand these structures genetically, that this genesis must be developed from out of early ontogenesis. There is an unbroken continuity in these societies between the structure developed in early ontogenesis and the way it develops up to and including on the level of adults. The embarrassing situation for thought when it finds itself completely unprepared for the historico-theoretical translation of ontogenetically attained insights can be seen in an early cross-cultural study of subjectivist logic: Dennis’ study of the animism of the Hopi.6 3 | J. P IAGET, Das Weltbildes des Kindes, pp. 145ff. 4 | G.W. L EIBNIZ , Neue Abhandlungen über den menschlichen Verstand, p. 161. 5 | G.W.F. H EGEL , Phänomenologie des Geistes, p. 20. 6 | W. Dennis, “Animism and Related Tendencies in Hopi Children,” pp. 21-37. Hereafter page numbers referring to this article will appear in square brackets.

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3.1 The Animism of the Hopi In the study already cited on the worldview of the child, Piaget distinguished four stages in the development of animistic thought.7 In the first stage, anything that is useful, holy and in a good state is held to be alive; in the second stage, anything that moves is held to be alive; in the third stage, anything that moves on its own; and in the fourth stage, life is reserved for plants, animals, and humans. Dennis examined this development in Hopi children. This yielded an impressive result: the Hopi children went through the same development as children in industrialized societies, with the minor difference that the development took place at a different age (horizontal >decalageworld-timeworld-timeorigins< of the Greek Polis, in: Lynette G. Michell and P. J. Rhodes (ed.), The Development of the Greek Polis in Archaic Greece, London. Dawkins, Richard (1978), Das egoistische Gen, Berlin. Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari (1992), Tausend Plateaus. Kapitalismus und Schizophrenie, Berlin. Dennis, Wayne (1943), Animism and related tendencies in Hopi Chi1dren, in: Journal of Subnormal and Social Psychology, vol. 38, pp. 21-37. Descartes, Rene (1960), Discours de la Methode, Hamburg. —(1964), CEuvres, ed. by Charles Adam and Paul Tannery, Paris. Descharnes, Robert, and Gilles Néret (1993), Salvador Dali, Köln. Deuchar, Margret (1996), Spoken language and sign language, in: Andrew Lock and Charles R. Peters (eds.), Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution, Oxford, pp. 553-570.

L ITERATURE Diels, Hermann, and Walther Kranz (51971), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 2 vols., Dublin-Zürich. Dihle, Albrecht (2000), Die Legitimation sozialer Ordnung im griechischen Denken, in: Günter Dux and Frank Welz (eds.), Der Diskurs über Moral und Recht in der Moderne, Opladen. Dodds, Eric R. (1977), Der Fortschrittsgedanke in der Antike, Zürich. Donald, Merlin (1991), Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition, Cambridge, Mass. Donlan, Walter (1997),The relations of power in the prestate and early state polities, in: Lynette G. MicheIl and P. J. Rhodes (eds.), The Development of the Greek Polis in Archaic Greece, London, pp. 39-48. Drews, Robert (1983), Basileus. The Evidence for Kingship in Geometric Greece, New Haven. Dschuang Dsi (1969), Das wahre Buch vom südlichen Blütenland, transl. by Richard Wilhelm, Köln. Durkheim, Emile (111950), Les Regles de la methode sociologique. Paris; German: Die Regeln der soziologischen Methode, Neuwied 21965. 8 —( 1967), De la Division de la travail social. Paris; German: Über soziale Arbeitsteilung, Frankfurt am Main 21988. —(1967), Soziologie und Philosophie. Frankfurt am Main. —(1989), Die elementaren Formen des religiösen Lebens. Frankfurt am Main. Dux, Günter (1982), Die Logik der Weltbilder. Sinnstrukturen im Wandel der Geschichte, Frankfurt am Main. —(1988), Der Täter hinter dem Tun. Zur soziologischen Kritik der Schuld, Frankfurt am Main. —(1989), Die Zeit in der Geschichte. Ihre Entwicklungslogik vom Mythos zur Weltzeit, Frankfurt am Main. —(1990), Denken vom Vorrang der Natur. Zur Naturalisierung des Geistes, in: Klaus Holz (ed.), Soziologie zwischen Moderne und Postmoderne. Untersuchungen zu Subjekt, Erkenntnis und Moral, Gießen, pp. 66-81. —(1992), Die Spur der Macht im Verhältnis der Geschlechter. Über den Ursprung der Ungleichheit zwischen Frau und Mann, Frankfurt am Main. —(1992), Liebe und Tod im Gilgamesch-Epos, Wien 1992. —(1994), Für eine Anthropologie in historisch-genetischer Absicht. Kritische Überlegungen zur philosophischen Anthropologie H. Plessners, in: Günter Dux and Ulrich Wenzel (eds.), Der Prozeß der Geistesgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 92-115. —(1994), Geschlecht und Gesellschaft. Warum wir lieben. Die romantische Liebe nach dem Verlust der Welt, Frankfurt am Main. —(1994), Die ontogenetische und historische Entwicklung des Geistes, in: Günter Dux and Ulrich Wenzel (eds.), Der Prozess der Geistesgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 173-203. —(1997), Wie der Sinn in die Welt kam und was daraus wurde, in: Jörn Rüsen (ed.), Historische Sinnbildung, Reinbek, pp. 195-217.

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A H ISTORICO -G ENETIC T HEORY OF C ULTURE —(1998), Anthropologie als Grundwissenschaft, in: Freiburger Universitätsblätter, March 1998, number 139, pp. 9-19. —(2000), Historisch-genetische Theorie der Moral, in: Ethik und Sozialwissenschaft, number I, pp. 1-13. —(2000), Zeit der Handlung, Zeit des Systems, Zeit der Geschichte. Strukturen der Zeit in der prozessualen Logik der Moderne, in: Festschrift für Wolf-Dieter Stempel. —and V. Puspha Kumari (1994), Studien zur vorindustriellen Kausalität. Untersuchungen zur historischen Entwicklungslogik des Geistes, in: Günter Dux and Ulrich Wenzel (eds.), Der Prozess der Geistesgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 436-471. The Economist, London: “Culture Club”, June 19th 1999, p. 102. Edelman, Gerald M. (1992), Göttliche Luft, vernichtendes Feuer. Wie der Geist im Gehirn entsteht, München. Eder, Klaus (1976), Die Entstehung staatlich organisierter Gesellschaften, Frankfurt am Main. Eggebrecht, Arne, et al (1980), Geschichte der Arbeit. Vom Alten Ägypten bis zur Gegenwart, Köln. Einstein, Albert (1952), Aus meinen späten Jahren, Stuttgart. Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. (1969), Sozialer Wandel, Differenzierung und Evolution, in: Wolfgang Zapf (ed.), Theorien des sozialen Wandels, Köln, pp. 75-91. —(1987), Kulturen der Achsenzeit, 2 vols., Frankfurt am Main. —M. Abitbol and N. Chazan (1988), The Early State in African Perspective, Leiden. Elkana, Yehuda (1987), Die Entstehung des Denkens zweiter Ordnung im antiken Griechenland, in: Shmuel N. Eisenstadt (ed.), Kulturen der Achsenzeit, vol. I, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 52-88. Ember, Carol R. (1984), Kulturvergleichende Kognitionsforschung, in: Traugott Schöfthaler and Dietrich Goldschmidt (eds.), Soziale Struktur und Vernunft. Jean Piagets Modell entwickelten Denkens in der Diskussion kulturvergleichender Forschung, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 112-137. Ennen, Edith (1987), Die europäische Stadt des Mittelalters, Göttingen. Epicurus (1956), Philosophie der Freude, transl., comm. on and introd. by Johannes Mewaldt, Stuttgart. Fetz, Reto L. (1978), Piaget als philosophisches Ereignis, in: Gerhard Steiner (ed.), Piaget und die Folgen. Die Psychologie des 20. Jahrhunderts, vol. 7, Zürich, pp. 27-40. —(1982), Naturdenken beim Kind und bei Aristoteles, in: Tijdschrift voor Filosofie, vol. 44, pp. 473-513. —(1988), Struktur und Genese. Jean Piagets Transformation der Philosophie, Bern. Feuerbach, Ludwig (1959), Zur Kritik der HegeIschen Philosophie (1839), in: idem, Sämtliche Werke, newly ed. by Wilhelm Bolin and Fredrick Jodl, vol. 2, Stuttgart, pp. 158 sec.

L ITERATURE —(1959), Notwendigkeit einer Reform der Philosophie, in: idem, Sämtliche Werke, newly ed. by Wilhelm Bolin and Fredrick Jodl, vol. 2, Stuttgart, pp. 215-222. Fichte, Johann G. (1971), Grundlagen der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre, in: Fichtes Werke, ed. by Immanuel H. Fichte, vol. I, Berlin, pp. 83-328. —(1971), Das System der Sittenlehre, in: Fichtes Werke, ed. by Immanuel H. Fichte, vol. 4, Berlin. Finkielkraut, Alain (1989), Die Niederlage des Denkens, Reinbek bei Hamburg. Fitzgerald, C. P. (1975), China. Von der Vorgeschichte bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, Essen. Flavell, John H. (1979), Kognitive Entwicklung, Stuttgart. Flood,Josephine (1993), The Riches of Ancient Australia, Queensland, Australia. Fodor, J. A. (1983), The Modularity of the Mind, Cambridge, Mass. Fortin, Ernest L. (1990), Dantes Göttliche Komödie als Utopie, München (Privatdruck der Siemens-Stiftung). Foucault, Michel (1974), Von der Subversion des Wissens, München. —(1974), Nietzsche, die Genealogie, die Historie, in: idem, Von der Subversion des Wissens, München, pp. 83-109. —(1978), Dispositive der Macht, Berlin. Fränkel, Hermann (31968), Ephemeros als Kennwort für die menschliche Natur, in: idem, Wege und Formen frühgriechischen Denkens, ed. by Frank Tietze, München, pp. 23-39. Fried, Morton H. (1967), The Evolution of Political Society, New York. Fukuyama, Francis (1992), Das Ende der Geschichte. Wo stehen wir? München. Gadamer, Hans G. (21965), Wahrheit und Methode, Tübingen. Gebauer, Anne B., and T. Douglas Price (1992), Foragers to farmers: an introduction, in: idem (eds.), Transitions to Agriculture in Prehistory. Monographs in World Archaeology, Madison, Wisc., Nr. 4, pp. 1-10. Gehlen, Arnold (81966), Der Mensch. Seine Natur und seine Stellung in der Welt, Frankfurt am Main. Gericke, Helmuth (1990), Mathematik im Abendland. Von den römischen Feldmessern zu Descartes, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York. Gibson, Kathleen R. (1990), New perspectives on instincts and intelligence: Brain size and the emergence of hierarchical mental constructional skills, in: Sue T. Parker and Kathleen R. Gibson (eds.), Language and Intelligence in Monkeys and Apes. Comparative Developmental Perspectives, Cambridge, pp. 97-128. —(1996), The ontogeny and evolution of the brain, cognition and language, in: A. J. Lock and C. R. Peters (ed.), Handbook of Symbolic Intelligence, Oxford, pp. 407-431. —and Tim Ingold (1993), Tools, Language and Cognition in Human Evolution, Cambridge.

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A H ISTORICO -G ENETIC T HEORY OF C ULTURE Glasersfeld, Ernst von (1987), Wissen, Sprache und Wirklichkeit. Arbeiten zum radikalen Konstruktivismus, Braunschweig. Goldman, Irving (1970), Ancient Polynesian Society, Chicago. Graeser, Andreas (21993), Sophistik und Sokratik. Plato und Aristoteles, Die Philosophie der Antike, vol. 2, München. Granet, Marcel (1985), Das chinesische Denken, Frankfurt am Main. Greenfield, Patricia M. (1971), Über Kultur und Invarianz, in: Jerome pp. Bruner (ed.), Studien zur kognitiven Entwicklung, Stuttgart, pp. 271-306. —(1976), Cross-cultural research and Piagetian theory. Paradox and progress, in: Klaus F. Riegel and John A. Meacham (eds.), The Developing Individual in a Changing World. vol. I: Historical and Cultural Issues, The Hague, pp. 322-333. —and Josua H. Smith (1976), The Structure of Communication in Early Language Development, New York. Grönbech, Wilhe1m (1954), Kultur und Religion der Germanen, ed. by Orto Höfler, transl. by Ellen Hoffmeyer, Hamburg. Grossmann, H. K. (1935), Die gesellschaftlichen Grundlagen der mechanistischen Philosophie und die Manufaktur, in: Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, vol. 4, pp. 161-231. Guitton, Jean (1995), Kosmos im Wassertropfen. Spiegel-Gespräch, in: Der Spiegel, number 7, pp. 142-145. Guthrie, W. K. C. (1969), Die Entwicklung der Theologie Aristoteles I und II, in: Fritz-Peter Hager (ed.), Metaphysik und Theologie des Aristoteles, Darmstadt, pp. 75-113. Habermas, Jürgen (1976), Zur Rekonstruktion des Historischen Materialismus, Frankfurt am Main. —(1981), Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, 2 vols., Frankfurt am Main. —(1992), Faktizität und Geltung. Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats, Frankfurt am Main. Hager, Fritz-Peter (1969) (ed.), Metaphysik und Theologie des Aristoteles, Darmstadt. Hallpike, Christopher R. (1979), The Foundations of Primitive Thought, Oxford. Harlow, Harry F. (1969), Die Evolution des Lernens, in: George G. Simpson, (ed.) Evolution und Verhalten, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 70-99. Harris, Edward M. (1977), A new solution to the riddle of the seisachteia, in: Lynette G. MicheIl und P. J. Rhodes (eds.), The Development of the Polis in Archaic Greece, London, pp. 103-112. Hassenstein, Bernhard (1972), Das spezifisch Menschliche nach den Resultaten der Verhaltensforschung, in: H.-G. Gadamer und Paul Vogler, (eds.) Neue Anthropologie, vol. 2, Stuttgart, pp. 60-97. Hawking, Stephen W. (1984), Eine kurze Geschichte der Zeit. Die Suche nach der Urkraft des Universums, Reinbek bei Hamburg. Hegel, Georg Wilhe1m Friedrich (61952), Phänomenologie des Geistes, Hamburg.

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A H ISTORICO -G ENETIC T HEORY OF C ULTURE Jauss, H. R. (11969), Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaften, Konstanz. Johnson, C., H. Davis and M. Macken (1996), Symbols and structure in language acquisition, in: Andrew Lock and Charles R. Peters (eds.), Handbook of Symbolic Evolution, Oxford, pp. 686-746. Kälble, Karl (1997), Die Entwicklung der Kausalität im Kulturvergleich, Opladen. Kanitscheider, B. (1976), Singularitäten, Horizonte und das Ende der Zeit, in: Philosophia Naturalis, vol. 10, number I, Meisenheim am Glan, pp. 480-511. Kant, Immanuel (1968), Kants Werke. Reprint of the Akademie-Textausgabe, Berlin. Engl. Edition (1929), Translation by Norman Kemp Smith, London. Keller, Hagen (1976), Die Entstehung der mittelalterlichen Stadtkommunen als Problem der Sozialgeschichte, in: Frühmittelalterliche Studien, vol. 10, pp. 169-211. Kelsen, Hans (1982), Vergeltung und Kausalität, Wien. Kettler, David, Volker Meja and Nico Stehr (1980), Karl Mannheim Strukturen des Denkens, Frankfurt am Main. Kimura, Doreen (1979), Neuromotor mechanismus in the evolution of human communication, in: H. D. Steklis und M. J. Raleigh (eds.), Neurobiology of Social Communications in Primates, New York, pp. 197-219. Kirch, Patrick Vinton (1989), The Evolution of the Polynesian Chiefdoms, Cambridge. Klier, Peter (1990), Im Dreieck von Demokratie, Öffentlichkeit und Massenmedien. Beiträge zur Politischen Wissenschaft, vol. 56, Berlin. Koestler, Arthur (1959), Die Nachtwandler. Die Entstehungsgeschichte unserer Welterkenntnis, Bern. Kramer, Fritz, and Christian Sigrist (1983), Gesellschaften ohne Staat. Gleichheit und Gegenseitigkeit, 2 vols., Frankfurt am Main. Kriedte, Peter (1982), Die Stadt im Prozeß der europäischen ProtoIndustrialisierung, in: Die alte Stadt. Zeitschrift für Stadtgeschichte, Stadtsoziologie und Denkmalpflege, pp. 19-51. Kriedte, Peter, Hans Medick and Jürgen Schlumbohm (1978), Industrialisierung vor der Industrialisierung, Göttingen. Krüger, Lorenz (1970), Über das Verhältnis der hermeneutischen Philosophie zu den Wissenschaften, in: R. Bubner, K. Cramer and R. Wiehl (eds.), Hermeneutik und Dialektik, Tübingen, pp. 3 seq. Kuchenbuch, Ludolf (1977) (ed., in cooperation with Bernd Michael), Feudalismus. Materialien zur Theorie und Geschichte, Frankfurt-Berlin. Kues, Nikolaus von, v. Nicolai de Cusa. Kuhn, Thomas pp. (1967), Die Struktur wissenschaftlicher Revolutionen, Frankfurt am Main. Kulischer, Josef (31965), Allgemeine Wirtschaftsgeschichte des Mittelalters und der Neuzeit, 2 vols., München.

L ITERATURE Kullmann, W. (1991), Zum Gedanken der Teleologie in der Naturphilosophie des Aristoteles und seiner Beurteilung in der Neuzeit, in: Jürgen-Eckardt Pleines (ed.), Zum teleologischen Argument in der Philosophie, Würzburg, pp. 150-171. Laitman, J. T., und. S. Reidenberg, (1988), Advances in understanding the relationship between the skull base and larynx. With comments on the origins of speech, in: Human Evolution, vol. 2, number 3, pp. 101-111. Langer, Jonas (1994), Die universale Entwicklung der elementaren logischmathematischen und physikalischen Kognition, in: Günter Dux and Ulrich Wenzel (eds.), Der Prozeß der Geistesgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 119-172. Lao-tzu (1982), Tao te King, transl. by Richard Wilhe1m, Düsseldorf. Lau, Ulrich (1985), Altchinesische Vorstellungen über die Ur- und Frühgeschichte, Part I: Das sakrale Geschichtsbild, in: EAZ 1985, vol. 26, number 2, pp. 201-222. Ledderose, Lothar, and Adele Schlombs (1990) (ed.), Der Erste Kaiser von China und seine Terrakotta-Armee, Gütersloh. LeGoff, Jacques (1977), Zeit der Kirche und Zeit des Händlers, in: Claudia Honnegger (ed.), Schrift und Materie der Geschichte, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 393-414. —(2I987), Die Intellektuellen im Mittelalter, Stuttgart. —(1987), Für ein anderes Mittelalter. Zeit, Arbeit und Kultur im Europa des 5.-15. Jahrhunderts, transl. by Johanna Kümmel and Angelika Hildebrandt-Essig, Weingarten. LeGoff, Jacques, et al (1994), (ed.), Die Rückeroberung des historischen Denkens, Frankfurt am Main. Leibniz, Georg Wilhe1m (1873), Neue Abhandlungen über den menschlichen Verstand, Berlin. Lemos, Marion M. de (1969), The development of conservation in Aboriginal children, in: International Journal of Psychology, vol. 4, number 4, pp. 255-269. Lenneberg, Eric H. (1972), Biologische Grundlagen der Sprache, Frankfurt am Main. Leroi-Gourhan, Andre (1980), Hand und Wort. Die Evolution von Technik, Sprache und Kunst, Frankfurt am Main. Levi-Strauss, Claude (1968), Das wilde Denken, Frankfurt am Main. —(1978), Traurige Tropen. Frankfurt am Main. —(1981), Die elementaren Strukturen der Verwandtschaft, Frankfurt am Main. Levy-Bruhl, Lucien (1966), Die geistige Welt der Primitiven, Darmstadt. Lieberman, Philip (1984), The Biology and Evolution of Language, Cambridge, Mass. —(1991), Uniquely Human: The Evolution of Speech, Thought, and Selfless Behavior, Cambridge, Mass. Lock, Andrew (1980), The Guided Reinvention of Language, London.

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A H ISTORICO -G ENETIC T HEORY OF C ULTURE —and Kim Symes (1996), Social relations, communication, and cognition, in: Andrew Lock and Charles R. Peters (eds.), Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution, Oxford, pp. 204-235. Lloyd, G. E. R. (1979), Magie, Reason and Experience. Studies in the Origin and Development of Greek Science, Cambridge. Löther, Rolf (2000), Moral und Evolution, in: Ethik und Sozialwissenschaften, number I. Löwith, Karl (41953), Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschehen, Stuttgart. Lorenz, Konrad (1937), Über die Bedeutung des Instinktbegriffs, in: Die Naturwissenschaft, vol. 35, pp. 289-300, 307-318, 325-331. —(1943), Die angeborenen Formen möglicher Erfahrung, in: Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, vol. 5, pp. 235-409. Lovejoy, Arthur O. (1993), Die große Kette der Wesen, Frankfurt am Main. Lovejoy, Arthur O. (1981), The origin of man, in: Science, vol. 211, number 4480, pp. 341-350. Luckmann, Thomas (1970), On the boundaries of the sociaJ world, in: A. Natanson (ed.), Festschrift für Alfred Schütz, New York. Ludwig, Karlheinz (1997), Technik im Hohen Mittelalter zwischen 1000 und 1350/1400, in: Propyläen Technik-Geschichte, vol. 2, Berlin, pp. 11-205. Lübbe, Henning (1984), Soziologische Aspekte einer Theorie des Spracherwerbs, Freiburg. Luhmann, Niklas (1976), Evolution und Geschichte, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft, vol. 2, pp. 284-309. —(1984), Soziale Systeme, Frankfurt am Main. —(1990), Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main. —(1997), Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main. —(21998), Die Kunst der Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main. Lukrez (1993), Von der Natur, ed. and transl. by Hermann Diels, München. Lumsden, Charles J., and Edward O. WiJson (1981), Genes, Mind, and Culture. The Coevolutionary Process, Cambridge, Mass. Lurija, Alexandr R. (1976), Cognitive Development. Its Cultural and Social Foundations, Cambridge, Mass. Lybyer, Albert H. (151963), Feudalism: Saracen and Ottoman, in: Edwin R. A. Seligmann (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 6, New York, Sp. 203-220. Lyotard, Jean-F. (1983), Le Differend, Paris; German: Der Widerstreit, München 21985. —(1989), Das UndarsteIlbare – wider das Vergessen, in: Christine Pries (ed.), Das Erhabene, Weinheim, pp. 319-347. MacNeilage, Peter F. (1987), The evolution of hemospheric specialization for manual function and language, in: Steven P. Wise (ed.), Higher Brain Functions. Recent Explorations of the Brain’s Emergent Properties, New York, pp. 285-309. Mahler, Margaret S., et al (411989), Die psychische Geburt des Menschen, Frankfurt am Main. Maier, Anneliese (1940), Die Impetus-Theorie der Scholastik, Wien.

L ITERATURE —(1958), Zwischen Philosophie und Mechanik. Studien zur Naturphilosophie der Spätscholastik, Rom. Mann, Michael (1986/93), The Sources of Social Power, 2 vols., Cambridge; German: Geschichte der Macht, Frankfurt/New York 1990 seq. Marsilus von Padua (1958), Der Verteidiger des Friedens (Defensor Pacis), 2 vols., Darmstadt. Marquardt, Odo (1982), Schwierigkeiten mit der Geschichtsphilosophie, Frankfurt am Main. Martin, Gottfried (1953), Platons Lehre von der Zahl und ihre Darstellung durch Aristoteles, in: Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung, vol. VII, number 2, pp. 191-203. Martin, Jochen (1974), Von Kleisthenes zu Ephialtes, in: Chiron. Mitteilungen der Kommission für Alte Geschichte und Epigraphie des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, vol. 4, pp. 5-42. Marx, Karl (1969), Zur Kritik der HegeIschen Rechtsphilosophie (Einleitung), in: MEW, vol. I, Berlin, pp. 378-391. —(1969), Das Kapital, 3 vols., in: MEW, vol. 23-25, Berlin. —and Friedrich Engels (1969), Die deutsche Ideologie, in: MEW, vol. 3, Berlin, pp. 9-530. —and Friedrich Engels (1969), Manifest der kommunistischen Partei, in: MEW, vol. 4, Berlin, pp. 459-493. Maschke, Erich (1967), Die Unterschichten der mittelalterlichen Städte Deutschlands, in: idem and Jürgen Sydow, Gesellschaftliche Unterschichten in den südwestdeutschen Städten. Veröffentlichungen der Kommission für geschichtliche Landeskunde in Baden-Württemberg, Row B, vol. 41, pp. 1-74, Stuttgart. Maturana, Humberto R. (1982), Erkennen: Die Organisation und Verkörperung von Wirklichkeit. Ausgewählte Arbeiten zur biologischen Epistemologie, Braunschweig. —(1990), Gespräch mit Humberto Maturana, in: Volker Riegas und Christian Vetter (eds.), Zur Biologie der Kognition, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 11-90. —and Francisco J. Varela (1982), Autopoietische Systeme: eine Bestimmung der lebendigen Organisation, in: idem (ed.), Erkennen: Die Organisation und Verkörperung von Wirklichkeit, Braunschweig, pp. 170-235. —and Francisco J. Varela (1987), Der Baum der Erkenntnis, Berlin. Maurer, Reinhart (1965), Hegel und das Ende der Geschichte, Stuttgart. Mauss, Marcel (1968), Die Gabe. Form und Funktion des Austauschs in archaischen Gesellschaften, Frankfurt am Main. Mayntz, Renate (1997), Die gesellschaftliche Herausforderung als theoretische Herausforderung, in: idem, Soziale Dynamik und politische Steuerung, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 15-37. McNeil, D. (1976), The acquisition of language, in: Patricia Greenfield and Josua Smith (eds.), The Structure of Communication in Early Language Development, New York.

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A H ISTORICO -G ENETIC T HEORY OF C ULTURE Mead, George H. (1965), Mind, Self, and Society, Chicago; German: Geist, Identität und Gesellschaft, Frankfurt am Main 1973. Meier, Christian (31977), Entstehung des Begriffs Demokratie, Frankfurt am Main. —(1980), Die Entstehung des Politischen bei den Griechen, Frankfurt am Main. Meinefeld, Werner (1995), Realität und Konstruktion, Opladen. Meinhardt, H. (1976), Stichwort »Idee«, in: Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, vol. 4, Darmstadt, 55 pp./seq. Mensing, J. M. (1998), Die Zeit am Rio Uneiuxi (Amazonas), in: Günter Dux, Die Zeit in der Geschichte, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 373-406. Michiels, Marie-Paul, and Anne-Sylvie Vauclair-Visseur (1978), Piaget und seine Zeit, in: Gerhard Steiner (ed.), Piaget und die Folgen. Die Psychologie des 20. Jahrhunderts, vol. 7, Zürich, pp. 8-26. Mitteis, Heinrich (1953), Der Staat des Hohen Mittelalters, Weimar. Mittelstraß, Jürgen (1995), Machina mundi. Zum astronomischen Weltbild der Renaissance, Basel-Frankfurt. Montaigne, Michel de (1962), Essais. CEuvres completes, ed. by Albert Thibaudet and M. F. Rat, Paris. Müller, Claudius C. (1980), Die Herausbildung des Gegensatzes: Chinesen and Barbaren in der frühen Zeit, in: Wolfgang Bauer (ed.), China und die Fremden, München, pp. 43-76. Mukerjee, Alvin J. (1983), The Ontogenesis of the Cognitive Structures and their Significance for the Intellectual Cultural History of Mankind, Dissertation, Freiburg. Murray, Oswyn (1982), Das frühe Griechenland, München. Nashef, K. H. (1987), Rekonstruktion der Reiserouten zur Zeit der altassyrischen Handelsniederlassungen, Wiesbaden. Needham, Joseph (1988), Wissenschaft und Zivilisation in China, vol. I, Frankfurt am Main. Nelson, Kaherine (1985), Making Sense: the Acquisition of Shared Meaning, New York. Nicolai de Cusa (1964), De docta ignorantia. Die Belehrte Unwissenheit, Book 1, Hamburg. Niethammer, Lutz (1989), Posthistoire: Ist die Geschichte zu Ende? Reinbek bei Hamburg. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1980), Die Genealogie der Moral. Sämtliche Werke (Kritische Studienausgabe), ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, vol. 5, München. —(1980), Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Sämtliche Werke (Kritische Studienausgabe), ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, vol. 5, München. —(1980), Der Anti-Christ. Sämtliche Werke (Kritische Studienausgabe), ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, vol. 6. München.

L ITERATURE —(1980), Die fröhliche Wissenschaft. Sämtliche Werke (Kritische Studienausgabe), ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, vol. 3, München. Nissen, Hans J. (1987), Mesopotamia before 5000 years, Roma. —(1999), Geschichte Altvorderasiens, München. Oresme, Nicole (1968), Le Livre du ciel et du monde, ed. by Albert D. Menuet and Alexander J. Denomy, trans. and with an introduction by A. D. Menuet, Madison-Milwaukee-London. Ostwald, Martin (1969), Nomos and the Beginnings of Athenian Democracy,Oxford. Parmenides (1969), Vom Wesen des Seienden, ed. by Uvo Hölscher, Frankfurt am Main. Parsons, Talcott (1951), The Social System, London. —(1968), The Structure of Social Action, 2 vols., New York. —(1980), Zur Theorie der sozialen Interaktionsmedien, ed. and with an introduction by Stefan Jensen, Opladen. Pascal, Blaise (1978), Pensees. Über die Religion, Heidelberg. Patzig, Günther (1994), Aspekte der Rationalität. Jenaer philosophische Vorträge und Studien, vol. 4, Erlangen. Paul, Andreas (1998), Von Affen und Menschen: Verhaltensbiologie der Primaten, Darmstadt. Peluffo, Nicola (1967), Culture and Cognitive Problems, in: International Journal of Psychology, vol. 2, number 3, pp. 187-198. Piaget, Jean (1924), L’experience humaine et la causalite physique de L. Brunschvicq, in: Journal de Psychologie, vol. 21, pp. 586-607. —(1947), Psychologie der Intelligenz, Zürich. —(1955), Die Bildung des Zeitbegriffs beim Kinde, Zürich. —(1967), Biologie und Erkenntnis, Frankfurt am Main. —(1968), Sprechen und Denken des Kindes, Düsseldorf. —(1971), Les explications causales, Paris. —(1973), Das moralische Urteil beim Kinde, Frankfurt am Main. (Engl. Transl.: The moral judgment of the child, London, 1975.) —(1974), Abriß der genetischen Epistemologie, Olten/Freiburg. —(1975), Der Aufbau der Wirklichkeit beim Kinde, Stuttgart. —(1975), Die Entwicklung des Erkennens, 3 vols., Stuttgart. —(1975), Biologische Anpassung und Psychologie der Intelligenz, Stuttgart. —(1976), Die Äquilibration der kognitiven Strukturen, Stuttgart. —(1978), Das Weltbild des Kindes, Stuttgart. —(1978), Die historische Entwicklung und die Psychogenese des ImpetusBegriffs, in: Gerhard Steiner (ed.), Piaget und die Folgen. Die Psychologie des 20. Jahrhunderts, vol. 7, Zürich, pp. 64-73. —(1980), The psychogenesis of knowledge and its epistemological significance, in: Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini (ed.), Language and Learning. The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky, Harvard, Mass.

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A H ISTORICO -G ENETIC T HEORY OF C ULTURE —(1984), Die intellektuelle Entwicklung im Jugend- und im Erwachsenenalter, in: Traugott Schöfthaler and Dietrich Goldschmidt (ed.), Soziale Struktur und Vernunft, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 47-60. —(1984), Notwendigkeit und Bedeutung der vergleichenden Forschung in der Entwicklungspsychologie, in: Traugott Schöfthaler and Dietrich Goldschmidt (ed.), Soziale Struktur und Vernunft, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 61-74. —(1991), Das Erwachen der Intelligenz beim Kinde, in: Gesammelte Werke, vol. 1, Stuttgart. —(1995), Intelligenz und Affektivität in der Entwicklung des Kindes, Frankfurt am Main. —and Rolando Garcia (1983), Psychogenese et histoire des sciences, Paris. (Engl Transl.: Psychogenesis and the History of Science, New York 1989). —and Bärbel Inhelder (1951), La genese de l’idee de hasard chez I‘enfant, Paris. Piattelli-Palmarini, Massimo (1981) (ed.), Language and Learning: The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky, Cambridge, Mass. Pichot, André (1995), Die Geburt der Wissenschaft. Von den Babyloniern zu den frühen Griechen, Darmstadt. Pirenne, Henry (21971), Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte Europas im Mittelalter, München. Planitz, Hans (1972), Die deutsche Stadtgemeinde, in: Carl Haase (ed.), Die Stadt des Mittelalters, vol. 2: Recht und Verfassung, Darmstadt, pp. 55134. Platon (1972 seq.), Werke in acht Bänden, ed. by Gunther Eigler (Greek-German), Darmstadt. Plessner, Helmuth (1981), Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch. Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 4, Frankfurt am Main. —(1982), Macht und menschliche Natur. Ein Versuch zur Anthropologie der geschichtlichen Weltansicht, in: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 5, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 135-234. —(1983), Die Frage nach der conditio humana, in: Gesammelte Schriften, vol. 8, pp. 136-217. Popper, Karl (1973), Objektive Erkenntnis. Ein evolutionärer Versuch, Hamburg. Price-Williams, D. R. (1961), A study concerning concepts of conservation of quantities among primitive children, in: Acta Psychologica, vol. 18, pp. 297-305. Prigogine, Ilya (21989), Die physikalisch-chemischen Wurzeln des Lebens, in: H. Meier (ed.), Die Herausforderung der Evolutionsbiologie, München, pp. 19-52. —and Isabelle Stengers (1993), Dialog mit der Natur. Neue Wege naturwissenschaftlichen Denkens, München. Rawls, John (1975), Eine Theorie der Gerechtigkeit, Frankfurt am Main. Rawson, Jessica (1980), Ancient China, London.

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A H ISTORICO -G ENETIC T HEORY OF C ULTURE Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm (1991), Geschichte als absoluter Begriff. Der Lauf der neueren deutschen Philosophie, Frankfurt am Main. Schöfthaler, Traugott, and Dietrich Goldschmidt (eds.) (1984), Soziale Struktur und Vernunft. Jean Piagets Modell entwickelten Denkens in der Diskussion kulturvergleichender Forschung, Frankfurt am Main. Schott, Rüdiger (1968), Das Geschichtsbewußtsein schriftloser Völker, in: Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, vol. 12, pp. 166-205. Schütz, Alfred (1964), Dimensions of the social world, in: Collected Papers, vol. 2, The Hague, pp. 20-63. —(21960), Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt, Wien. —and Thomas Luckmann (1975), Strukturen der Lebenswelt, NeuwiedDarmstadt. Schulin, Ernst (1974), Universalgeschichte, Köln. Schulte, Günter (1993), Der blinde Fleck in Luhmanns Systemtheorie, Frankfurt am Main. Scott, John P. (1989), The Evolution of Social Systems, New York. Scribner, Sylvia (1984), Denkweisen und Sprechweisen, in: Traugott Schöfthaler and Dietrich Goldschmidt (eds.), Soziale Struktur und Vernunft. Jean Piagets Modell entwickelten Denkens in der Diskussion kulturvergleichender Forschung, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 311-335. Searle, John R. (1971), Sprechakte, Frankfurt am Main. English edition: (1969), Speech Acts, Cambridge. —(1987), Intentionalität, Frankfurt am Main. English edition: (1983), Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge. Segall, Marshall H., et al (1990), Human behavior in global perspective, New York. Selman, Robert (1984), Die Entwicklung des sozialen Verstehens, Frankfurt am Main. Service, Elman R. (1962), Primitive Social Organization, New York. Seyfarth, Constans, and Walter M. Sprondel (1973) (ed.), Religion und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung, Frankfurt am Main. Shoemaker, Sydney pp. (1968), Self-reference and self-awareness, in: The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 65, number 19, pp. 555-567. Sieyès, Emmanuel J. (1975), Was ist der dritte Stand? Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, Politische Schriften 1788-1790, ed. by Eberhard Schmitt and Rolf Reichhard, Darmstadt-Neuwied. Sinclair-de-Zwart, H. (without year [1974]), Psychologie der Sprachentwicklung, in: Helen Leuninger, Max H. Miller and Frank Müller (ed.), Linguistik und Psychologie, vol. 2, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 73-92. Sinha, Ch. G. (1996), The role of ontogenesis in human evolution and development, in: Andrew Lock and Charles R. Peters (ed.), Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution, Oxford, pp. 400-406. Slobin, Dan I. (1974), Kognitive Voraussetzungen der Sprachentwicklung, in: Helen Leuninger, Max H. Miller and Frank Müller (ed.), Linguistik und Psychologie, vol. 2, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 122-165.

L ITERATURE Snell, Bruno (31955), Die Entdeckung des Geistes. Studien zur Entstehung des europäischen Denkens bei den Griechen, Hamburg. Sohn-Rethel, Alfred (1971), Warenform und Denkform, Frankfurt am Main. —(1985), Soziologische Theorie der Erkenntnis, Frankfurt am Main. Specht, Rainer (1979), Die Vernunft des Rationalismus, Leipzig. Stegmüller, Wolfgang (1956/1957), Das Universalienproblem einst und jetzt, in: Archiv für Philosophie, vol. 6, pp. 192-225, vol. 7, pp. 45-81. Steiner, Gerhard (ed.) (1978), Piaget und die Folgen. Entwicklungspsychologie, Denkpsychologie, genetische Psychologie. Die Psychologie des 20. Jahrhunderts, vol. 7, Zürich. Stein-Hölkeskamp, Elke (1989), Adelskultur und Polisgesellschaft. Studien zum griechischen Adel in archaischer und klassischer Zeit, Stuttgart. Strahm, Christian (1997), Ursachen und Folgen der Einführung der produzierenden Wirtschaft (Ms.). Strawson, Peter (1964), Intention and convention in speech acts, in: Philosophische Revue, 439 pp./seq. Sutter, Alex (1988), Göttliche Maschinen. Die Automaten für Lebendiges bei Descartes, Leibniz, La Metrie und Kant, Frankfurt am Main. Tenbruck, Friedrich H. (1975), Das Werk Max Webers, in: Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, vol. 27, pp. 673 seq. —(21990), Die kulturellen Grundlagen der Gesellschaft. Der Fall der Moderne, Opladen. Testart, Alain (1982), Les chasseurs-cueilleurs, ou l’origine des inégalités, Paris. Topitsch, Ernst (1958), Vom Ursprung und Ende der Metaphysik, Wien. —(1969), Mythos, Philosophie, Politik. Zur Naturgeschichte der Illusion, Freiburg. Underhill, Ruth M. (1965), Red Man’s Religion. Beliefs and Practices of the Indians North of Mexico, Chicago. Voland, Eckart (1993), Grundriß der Soziobiologie, Stuttgart. Vuyk, R. (1981), Overview and critique of Piaget’s genetic epistemology 19651980, London. Vygotsky, Lev pp. (1981), The genesis of higher mental functions, in: J. Wertsch (ed.), The Concept of Activity in Soviet Psychology, New York, pp. 144-188. —Cf. Wygotsky, Lew pp. Wagner, Falk (1996), Kritik und Krise der Religion, in: idem and Michael Murrmann-Kahl (eds.), Ende der Religion – Religion ohne Ende? Zur Theorie der “Geistesgeschichte” von Günter Dux, Wien 1996, pp. 17-123. Walther, H. G. (1990), Die Legitimität der Herrschaftsordnung bei Bartolus von Sassoferrato und Baldus de Ubaldis, in: Erhard Mock and Georg Wieland (eds.) Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie des Mittelalters, Frankfurt am Main, pp. 115-130. Weber, Max (1963), Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, in: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, vol. I, Tübingen, pp. 17-206.

393

394

A H ISTORICO -G ENETIC T HEORY OF C ULTURE —(1963), Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen, in: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie, vol. I, Tübingen, pp. 207-236. —(1991), Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen: Konfuzianismus und Taoismus, ed. by Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer, Tübingen. —(1964), Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Köln. —(1968), Die ›Objektivität‹ sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis, in: Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre. Tübingen, pp. 146-214. Wehler, Hans-U. (1986), Sozialgeschichte und Gesellschaftsgeschichte, in: Wolfgang Schieder and Volker Sellin (ed.), Sozialgeschichte in Deutschland, vol. I, Göttingen, pp. 33-52. Weischedel, Wilhelm (1972), Der Gott der Philosophen, 2 vols., Darmstadt. Weizsäcker, Carl Friedrich von (1991), Der Mensch in seiner Geschichte, München. English edition: (1996), Medival Technology and Social Change, Oxford. Welz, Frank (1996), Kritik der Lebenswelt, Opladen. Wenzel, Ulrich (1994), Dynamismus und Finalismus. Zur Strukturlogik der aristotelischen Naturphilosophie, in: Günter Dux and Ulrich Wenzel (eds.), Der Prozeß der Geistesgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main, S. 336374 —(2000), Vom Ursprung zum Prozeß. Kausalität in der Geschichte der Naturphilosophie, Opladen. Werner, E. E. (1972), Infants around the world: Cross-cultural studies of psycho-motor development from birth to two years, in: Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, vol. 3, pp. 111-134. Werveke, H. van (1971), The rise of towns, in: Michael M. Postan, E. E. Rich and Edward Miller (Hg)., The Cambridge Economic History of Europe, vol. 3, Cambridge, pp. 3-41. White, Lynn T. (1968), Die mittelalterliche Technik und der Wandel der Gesellschaft, München. English edition: (1996), Medieval Technology, Oxford. White, RandeIl K. (1996), On the evolution of human socio-cultural patterns, in: Andrew Lock and Charles R. Peter (eds.), Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution, Oxford, pp. 239-262. Whitehead, Alfred N. (1979), Prozeß und Realität, Frankfurt am Main. Wieland, Wolfgang (1970), Die aristotelische Physik, Göttingen. Wilhelm, Richard (1974) (ed.), I Ging. Das Buch der Wandlungen, transl. from the Chinese by Richard Wilhelm, Düsseldorf. Willke, Helmut (2000), Die Gesellschaft der Systemtheorie, in: Ethik und Sozialwissenschaften, number I, pp. 1-15. Wilson, Edward O. (1975), Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, Cambridge, Mass. —(1981), Cf. Charles J. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson. Wimmer, Hannes (2000), Transzendentalität und Rationalität der Moral, in: Ethik und Sozialwissenschaften, number I.

L ITERATURE Winch, Peter (1964), Understanding a Primitive Society, in: American Philosophical Quarterly, pp. 307-324. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (71990), Philosophische Untersuchungen. Werkausgabe, vol. I, Frankfurt am Main. Wolff, Michael (1978), Geschichte der Impetustheorie. Untersuchungen zum Ursprung der klassischen Mechanik, Frankfurt am Main. Wright, C. E. (1961), Schöpfung im Alten Testament, in: 3 RGG, vol. 5, pp. 1473-1476, Tübingen. Wunder, Heide (1974), Der Feudalismus-Begriff. Überlegungen zu Möglichkeiten historischer Begriffsbildung, in: idem (ed.), Feudalismus, München, pp. 10-76. Wygotsky, Lew pp. (1969), Denken und Sprechen, ed. by Johannes Helm, Frankfurt am Main. Xu, Yuanzhong (1994), An Unexpurgated Translation of Book of Songs. Translated, versified and annotated by Xu Yuanzhong, Beijing (Chinese Literature Press/Panda Books). Zanden, J. L. van (1993), The Rise and Decline of Holland‘s Economy, Manchester.

395

Index of Names

Abramowski, G.â•… 334fn Adelard of Bathâ•… 25fn Adorno, T. W.â•… 111fn, 355 Alexander, A. jr.â•… 43fn Alexander, C. N.â•… 165fn Anati, S. E.â•… 252fn Anaximeneâ•… 123 Apel, K.-O.â•… 127fn Archilochosâ•… 124 Aristotelesâ•… 26, 63, 101, 105-108, 120, 124, 169, 176f., 179, 195ff., 315, 319, 320, 322, 325, 329-331, 341, 350f. Ashton, P. T.â•… 282 Assmann, J.â•… 18fn Austin, J. L.â•… 242f.fn Bacon, F.â•… 34fn Baldus de Ubaldisâ•… 343f., 349 Bates, E.â•… 174fn, 227fn, 292 Bauer, W.â•… 308fn Bechert, J.â•… 222 Bellugi, K.â•… 228 Bender, B.â•… 267fn Benz, M.â•… 267fn Berry, J. W.â•… 282, 293f.fn Bickhard, M. H.â•… 150fn, 172fn Blaschke, K.â•… 339fn Bleicken, J.â•… 124, 315fn, 317 Bloch, Marcâ•… 258fn, 334, 335f.fn Bloch, Mauriceâ•… 311f.fn Blumenberg, H.â•… 26f.fn, 37fn, 123

Boutroux, P.â•… 181 Bovet, M. C.â•… 192fn, 284fn, 286, 289fn Boyd, R.â•… 43fn Brainerd, C. J.â•… 172fn Breit, H.â•… 337fn Breuer, S.â•… 271fn Brown, R.â•… 233fn Bruner, J. S.â•… 190fn, 192, 193fn, 224, 283, 284, 290f.fn, Buck, G.â•… 37 Bürgin, A.â•… 340fn, 343fn Buridanus, J.â•… 24f., 352 Butler, J.â•… 355fn Campbell, R. L.â•… 150fn, 172fn Casimir, M. J.â•… 136fn Cassirer, E.â•… 63fn, 93fn, 301fn Chomsky, N.â•… 215, 217, 219-222, 224, 229f. Clito, W.â•… 342 Cohen, G.â•… 315fn Cole, M.â•… 285fn, 288, 289, 290fn, 291 Coleman, J. S.â•… 74fn Collingwood, R. G.â•… 326 Crystal, D.â•… 229fn Culican, W.â•… 336fn Damerow, P.â•… 304fn, 370fn Danteâ•… 37, 80, 336, 341 Darwin, C.â•… 30

398

A H istorico -G enetic T heory of C ulture

Dasen, P. R.â•… 194fn, 277, 282, 289, 292, 294fn Davies, J. K.â•… 314fn Davis, H.â•… 229fn Dawkins, R.â•… 44fn, 134fn, 202 Deleuze, G.â•… 235, 236fn, 247 Delpos, M.â•… 44fn Demokritâ•… 319, 345, 355 Dennis, W.â•… 299-301 Derrida, J.â•… 355 Descartes, R.â•… 23, 25, 27, 30, 34, 36, 64, 97, 109, 131, 145, 147fn, 258, 331 Deuchar, M.â•… 228fn Diels, H.â•… 213fn, 355fn Dihle, A.â•… 319fn Dodds, E. R.â•… 124fn Donald, M.â•… 236fn Dondi de, G.â•… 25 Donlan, W.â•… 314fn Drews, R.â•… 313fn Durkheim, E.,â•… 39, 73fn, 75, 178, 185, 189, 194, 197, 246, 258f. Dux, G.â•… 19fn, 23fn, 25fn, 27fn, 42ff.fn, 54fn, 66fn, 71fn, 93fn, 97fn, 107fn, 122fn, 124fn, 132fn, 144fn, 171fn, 188fn, 197fn, 238fn, 263fn, 266fn, 278f.fn, 286fn, 288f.fn, 291fn, 294fn, 308fn, 319fn, 347ff.fn, 351fn, 355fn, 357fn Edelman, G. M.â•… 48fn, 160fn, 163 Eder, K.â•… 270fn Eggebrecht, A.â•… 26fn Einstein, A.â•… 28fn Eisenstadt, S. N.â•… 306f.fn, 337fn Elkana, Y.â•… 306 Ember, C. R.â•… 283fn Engels, F.â•… 200fn Ennen, E.â•… 338f.fn, 343fn Ephialtesâ•… 318fn Epikurâ•… 345f. Fetz, R. L.â•… 157fn, 176fn, 179fn

Feuerbach, L.â•… 142, 355 Fichte, J. G.â•… 35, 66, 82, 101f., 109f. Finkielkraut, A.â•… 114fn Fitzgerald, C. P.â•… 272fn Flavell, J. H.â•… 276fn Flood, J.â•… 252fn Fodor, J. A.â•… 229fn Fortin, E. L.â•… 341fn Foucault, M.â•… 76fn, 235fn, 247, 364fn Fränkel, H.â•… 124fn Frazer, J. G.â•… 177 Fried, M. H.â•… 268fn Fukuyama, E.â•… 38 Gadamer, H. G.â•… 119fn, 182fn, Galilei, G.â•… 23, 27 Garcia, R.â•… 55fn, 187fn, 195fn, 197fn, 207fn Gebauer, A. B.â•… 267fn Gehlen, A.â•… 46fn Gericke, H.â•… 126fn, 294fn Gibson, K. R.â•… 47fn, 253fn, Glasersfeld, E. vonâ•… 170fn Goldman, I.â•… 271fn Goodnowâ•… 285 Graeser, A.â•… 123, 329 Granet, M.â•… 258f., 305fn, 311fn Greenfield, P. M.â•… 182fn, 192fn, 232f.fn, 281, 283f., 288 Grönbech, W.â•… 311fn Grossmann, H. K.â•… 24fn Guattari, E.â•… 235, 247 Guitton, J.â•… 28 Guthrie, W. K. C.â•… 331fn Habermas, J.â•… 38, 61fn, 117f.fn, 200, 242fn, 246fn, 258fn, 270fn, 290fn, 361fn, 367f.fn Haeckel, E.â•… 214 Hager, F.-P.â•… 331fn Hallpike, C. R.â•… 93fn, 292 Harlow, H. F.â•… 46fn Harris, E. M.â•… 315fn

I ndex of N ames

Hassenstein, B.â•… 46fn Hawking, S.â•… 15fn, 55fn, 207fn Hegel, G. W. F.â•… 15, 31, 87, 97, 105, 110f., 112fn, 115, 125, 142fn, 157fn, 299 Heidel, A.â•… 104fn Heinimann, F.â•… 319fn Heisenberg, W.â•… 34fn Henrich, D.â•… 78fn Herodotâ•… 18f. Hesiodâ•… 108, 124 Hildebrand-Nilshon, M.â•… 238fn Hinde, R. A.â•… 53fn Hobbes, T.â•… 29, 36, 82 Hohn, H.-W.â•… 349fn Holenstein, E.â•… 234fn Holloway, R.â•… 223fn Holz, K.â•… 257fn Homerâ•… 119f., 123 Hornung, E.â•… 327fn Hsu, C.-Y.â•… 271fn Huizinga,J.â•… 338fn Husserl, E.â•… 112, 115, 348fn, 355 Ibarra García, L.â•… 192fn, 197fn Ingold, T.â•… 128fn, 253fn Inhelder, B.â•… 183fn Jaspers, K.â•… 306 Jauss, H. R.â•… 119fn Johnson, C.â•… 229fn Kälble, K.â•… 108fn Kanitschneider, B.â•… 15fn, 133fn Kant, I.â•… 27fn, 34f., 42fn, 63, 82, 87, 109f., 115, 139, 211, 308, 374 Keller, H.â•… 339, 343fn Kelsen, H.â•… 93fn, 301fn Kepler, J.â•… 23 Kimura, D.â•… 226 Kirch, G. V.â•… 271fn Kleisthenesâ•… 315 Klier, P.â•… 368fn Klima, E.â•… 228 Koestler, A.â•… 123fn Kopernikus, N.â•… 35, 374

Kramer, F.â•… 266fn Kranz, W.â•… 213fn, 355fn Kriedte, P.â•… 340fn, 344fn Krüger, L.â•… 119fn, 182fn Kuchenbuch, L.â•… 334fn Kuhn, T. S.â•… 288 Kulischer, J.â•… 335fn Kullmann, W.â•… 322fn, 331fn Laitman, J. T.â•… 236fn Langer, E. J.â•… 165fn Langer, J.â•… 51fn, 57fn, 145, 161fn, 210fn, 214fn, 276fn Lao Ziâ•… 33, 33fn, 106f., 310 Laplace, P. S.â•… 132 Lau, U.â•… 18fn Ledderose, L.â•… 272fn LeGoff, J.â•… 258fn, 337, 344fn, 348fn Leibniz, G. W.â•… 97, 299 Lemos, M. M. deâ•… 289fn Lenneberg, E.â•… 226fn Leroi-Gourhan, A.â•… 51fn Lévi-Strauss, C.â•… 31, 269, 303 Lévy-Bruhl, L.â•… 122f., 279 Liebermann, P.â•… 51fn, 223fn, 226fn, 236fn Linduff, K.â•… 271fn Lloyd, G. E. R.â•… 304fn, 372fn Lock, A.â•… 223fn, 224, 230 Löther, R.â•… 362fn Lorenz, K.â•… 44, 46fn, 217 Lovejoy, A. O.â•… 30fn, 44fn, 326fn, 328fn Löwith, K.â•… 38fn Luckmann, T.â•… 302fn, 305fn Ludwig, K. H.â•… 24fn Lübbe, H.â•… 219fn Luhmann, N.â•… 68fn, 74f., 87, 102fn, 114f., 125, 128, 148, 163fn, 165fn, 171fn, 201fn, 204, 211fn, 234fn, 236fn, 241fn, 260, 354fn, 361fn Lukrezâ•… 26, 29, 145, 345f. Lumsden, C. J.â•… 44, 47fn, 134fn

399

400

A H istorico -G enetic T heory of C ulture

Luria, A. R.â•… 144, 150, 205 Lybyer, A. H.â•… 334fn Lyotard, J.-F.â•… 113f., 129, 136fn, 355fn

Nietzsche, F.â•… 25, 76, 231, 355, 364 Nikolaus von Kuesâ•… 55fn, 328 Nissen, H. J.â•… 271fn, 304fn

Macken, M.â•… 229fn MacNeilage, P. F.â•… 226fn Mahler, M. S.â•… 161fn, 231fn, 276fn Maier, A.â•… 350fn Mann, M.â•… 365fn Marquardt, O.â•… 37fn Marsilius von Paduaâ•… 336 Martin, G.â•… 169fn Martin, J.â•… 318fn Marx, K.â•… 38, 84, 111, 200, 257f., 340, 355 Maschke, E.â•… 340fn Maturana, H.â•… 45fn, 64fn, 163ff. fn, 209fn Maurer, R. K.â•… 112fn Mayntz, R.â•… 141fn McNeil, D.â•… 233fn Mead, G. H. 245 Meadow, K.â•… 228fn Medick, H.â•… 340fn, 344fn Meier, C.â•… 316fn, 317 Meinefeld, W.â•… 163fn Meinhardt, H.â•… 326fn Mensing, J. M.â•… 288fn Michiels, M.-P.â•… 155fn Mitteis, H.â•… 334fn, 337fn Mittelstraß, J.â•… 26fn, 107fn, 330fn Monod, J.â•… 331 Montaigne, M. E. deâ•… 25, 34ff., 32fn, 132fn, 165 Müller, C. C.â•… 309fn Mukerjee, A. J.â•… 286, 289fn, 291fn Murray, O.â•… 108fn, 124

Oetter, R. M.â•… 165fn Oresme, N.â•… 24f. Ostwald, M.â•… 319fn Othenin-Girard, C.â•… 286 Parmenidesâ•… 33f., 120, 319f., 373 Parsons, T.â•… 74, 361fn Pascal, B.â•… 36 Patzig, G.â•… 28fn Paul, A.â•… 44fn Peluffo, N.â•… 192fn, 278fn Periklesâ•… 315 Piaget, J.â•… 53, 55, 77, 144, 150f., 155-160, 161fn, 162- 174,175-191, 193-197, 206-209, 212-214, 221fn, 226, 229, 275, 276fn, 278f., 281, 282fn, 283ff., 286fn, 287, 289f., 291fn, 292f., 298-301, 304, 316, 351fn, 369f. Piatelli-Palmarini, M.â•… 229fn Pichot, A.â•… 126fn, 303fn Pindarâ•… 124 Pirenne, H.â•… 338fn Planitz, H.â•… 339fn Platoâ•… 63, 131, 169fn, 320-331, 341 Plessner, H.â•… 43, 48, 53, 56fn, 77, 79, 232fn, 253fn, 355fn Popper, K.â•… 69 Price, T. D.â•… 267fn Price-Williams, D. R.â•… 281, 285 Prigogine, I.â•… 132f.fn Protagorasâ•… 123, 181 Pushpa Kumari, V.â•… 197fn, 351fn

Nashef, K. H.â•… 336fn Needham, J.â•… 333 Nelson, K.â•… 233fn Newton, I.â•… 23f., 196 Ngini, L.â•… 294fn Niethammer, L.â•… 112fn, 356fn

Rawls, J.â•… 366fn Rawson, J.â•… 271fn Reidenberg, J. S.â•… 236fn Rensch, B.â•… 45fn Ribeiro, D.â•… 335fn Riedl, R.â•… 44fn

I ndex of N ames

Richerson, P. J.â•… 43fn Röd, W.â•… 123 Röttgers, K.â•… 235fn Roetz, H.â•… 305fn Rorty, R.â•… 113fn Rousseau, J.-J.â•… 36f., 141, 237fn Rüsen, J.â•… 258fn, Rumbaugh, E. S. und D. M.â•… 57fn, 145fn

Stegmüller, W.â•… 341fn Steiner, G.â•… 157fn Stein-Hölkeskamp, E.â•… 314fn Stengers, I.â•… 132fn Strahm, C.â•… 267fn Strawson, P.â•… 244fn Steible, H.â•… 308fn Sutter, A.â•… 25fn Symes, K.â•… 223fn

Sacks, O.â•… 161fn SahIins, M.â•… 267ff.fn Saussure, F. deâ•… 63fn, 232fn Scheler, M.â•… 82, 209, 304fn Schelling, F. W. J. vonâ•… 28 Schlegel, F.â•… 15, 31 Schlesinger, H.â•… 228fn Schlombs, A.â•… 272fn Schluchter, W.â•… 259, 334fn Schlumbohm, J.â•… 340fn, 344fn Schmidt, S. J.â•… 163fn Schmidt-Biggemann, W.â•… 31fn Schmidtchen, V.â•… 24fn Schöfthaler, T.â•… 278fn Schott, R.â•… 18fn Schütz, A.â•… 78, 113, 204fn Schulin, E.â•… 356fn Schulte, G.â•… 115fn, 163fn Scott, J. P.â•… 62fn Scribner, S.â•… 180fn, 288f. Searle, J. S.â•… 79fn, 242fn Segall, M. H.â•… 294fn SeIman, R.â•… 172fn Service, E. R.â•… 268fn Seyfarth, C.â•… 260fn Siéyes, E. J.â•… 38fn Sigrist, C.â•… 266fn Sinclair-de-Zwart, H.â•… 233fn Sinha, C. G.â•… 204fn Slobin, D. J.â•… 230fn Smith, J.â•… 232fn, 233fn Snell, B.â•… 119, 123, 320 Sohn-Rethel, A.â•… 258fn Sokratesâ•… 319 Solonâ•… 314f. Specht, R.â•… 28fn

Tenbruck, F.â•… 58fn, 202, 334fn Testart, A.â•… 266fn Thomas von Aquinâ•… 342 Topitsch, E.â•… 93fn, 302fn Underhill, R. M.â•… 92fn Varela, F.â•… 64fn, 163, 165fn Vauclair-Visseur, A.-S.â•… 155fn Vico, G.â•… 308 Visconti, G.â•… 343 Voland, E.â•… 48fn, 134fn Vuyk, R.â•… 159fn Vygotsky, L. S.â•… 144, 150, 204fn, 205 Wagner, F.â•… 298fn Walther, H. G.â•… 343fn Weber, M.â•… 259f., 270fn, 305fn, 334, 336, 368 Wehler, H.-U.â•… 258fn Weischedel, W.â•… 105fn, 345fn Weizsäcker, C. F. vonâ•… 28fn Welz, F.â•… 113fn Wenzel, U.â•… 108fn, 171, 179f.fn, 197fn, 290fn, 330fn Werveke, H. vanâ•… 338fn Werner, E. E.â•… 277fn White, L. T.â•… 24fn, 336f.fn White, R. K.â•… 226fn Whitehead, A.â•… 317fn Wieland, W.â•… 107fn, 330 Wilson, E. O.â•… 43fn, 44, 47fn, 134fn Wimmer, R.â•… 51fn Winch, P.â•… 118, 121

401

402

A H istorico -G enetic T heory of C ulture

Wittgenstein, L.â•… 113 WoIff, M.â•… 350fn, 352fn Wright, G. E.â•… 104fn Wunder, H.â•… 334fn Xenophanesâ•… 212 Xu, Y.â•… 305fn Zanden, J. L. vanâ•… 340fn Zhuang-ziâ•… 30fn, 78fn, 107fn, 107, 310

Index of Subjects

absolute as mindâ•… 103 absolutism, in the structure of argumentâ•… 87-88, 98, 102, 114, 116, 329 absolutism, of the structure of justificationâ•… 20, 98 absolutist idealismâ•… 66 absolutist logicâ•… 28, 30-31, 41, 89, 95-96, 105, 107, 111, 113-116, 136, 148, 149, 150, 201-203, 209, 220, 292, 326, 341, 354, 356, 364, 370, 374 abstract reflexion/abstraction réfléchissanteâ•… 158-159, 189, 161-162, 172, 189 abstract timeâ•… 348-349 accommodationâ•… 53, 167, 190, 227, 253, 358 action as material logicâ•… 299 action competence/ competence to actâ•… 50, 52-53, 55-56, 58, 62, 64, 71, 77, 80, 92, 96, 101, 135, 165-166, 202, 206, 210, 218, 223, 225-233, 250-251, 264, 269, 278, 290, 306, 316, 347, 358, 362, 370, 372 adult cultureâ•… 301 animismâ•… 299fn, 300-301, 330fn, 351 anthropoid/anthropoidalâ•… 45, 52, 57, 68, 71, 210, 213, 227, 237, 251, 264, 276

anthropomorphicformâ•… 104-105 anthropology - biologicalâ•… 42-43, 53, 57, 58 - sociologicalâ•… 43 aporia in the understanding of historyâ•… 128 arbitrariness of subjective powersâ•… 305 archaic civilizationsâ•… 21, 104-105, 123, 179, 263, 267, 269, 273, 297, 307-309, 311, 333, 372 argumentative structureâ•… 92, 110, 134, 310, 326, 345 assimilationâ•… 53, 167, 170, 190, 235, 268, 331, 358 Athenian polisâ•… 124, 313fn atomist, ancientâ•… 209, 344, 345 autonomization of the townâ•… 343 autonomy, constructiveâ•… 21, 45-46, 48-50, 54-55, 71, 80-81, 85-86, 91-92, 127, 129, 132, 140, 218, 230-231, 249, 265, 272, 276, 308, 315 axiom of linguisticsâ•… 219

black boxesâ•… 67, 68, 204 blind constructivistsâ•… 83 blind spotâ•… 78, 125, 148 body and mindâ•… 30, 81 boxologyâ•… 204

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brainâ•… - development of theâ•… 45, 48, 51, 53, 57, 213, 237, 251 - growth of theâ•… 44 - operationalism of theâ•… 162 - organization of theâ•… 261, 344, 349, 369 brain, self-organizingâ•… 48, 163

categories/categorical forms/categorical structuresâ•… 87, 93, 169, 173, 206-212, 222, 334 causalityâ•… - structure ofâ•… 168, 196, 209, 350 chiefdomâ•… 268, 269, 271fn children and primitivesâ•… 177 Chinaâ•… 21, 270, 271fn, 272, 305, 307, 308fn, 309, 309fn, 333, 373 city - development of theâ•… 337-338 cognition - categoricalforms ofâ•… 44 cognition in history - cognition in mathematics and physicsâ•… 276 - cognitive competenceâ•… 51, 55, 57fn, 64, 145,fn, 162, 173, 176, 194, 197, 206-207, 210, 210fn, 224, 228, 237, 246, 273, 279, 283, 285, 294, 351 cognitive systems of adultsâ•… 188 cognitive structuresâ•… 50, 158, 161, 162-163, 167, 172-173, 176, 187, 191-193, 195, 214, 218, 250, 259260, 276-279, 286fn, 289, 290, 291fn, 347, 371 communication between mother and childâ•… 68, 237 communicative system of societyâ•… 354 comparability of structuresâ•… 176

competence in action/ competence to actâ•… 45 competence of primatesâ•… 51, 64, 145, 161 concept and objectâ•… 331 concrete-operational level/ stageâ•… 164fn, 180-181, 194, 289, 292 conditions of constructivismâ•… 21, 67, 91-92, 371 connection between socialstructural and cognitive developmentâ•… 124, 259, 350, 360 consciousness of - historicityâ•… 17, 36, 127 - modernityâ•… 15, 18, 86, 372, 374 - originâ•… 18 consciousness of cultureâ•… 308 Consciousness/conscious of oneselfâ•… 78 constraint, exercised by adultsâ•… 184-185 construction of the worldâ•… 44, 49, 52, 55, 58-59, 62-63, 65, 67, 68, 91-93, 98, 101, 110, 162, 173, 190, 202, 208, 210-213, 225, 231-232, 235, 251, 264, 316, 326, 358, 362 constructivism - blindâ•… 70, - radicalâ•… 66, 163, 166 170, 234 constructivism of human mindâ•… 230 constructivism versus nativismâ•… 229 constructive autonomyâ•… 21, 45-46, 48-50, 54-55, 71, 80-81, 85-86, 91, 127, 129, 132, 140, 218, 230231, 249, 265, 272, 276, 308, 315 constructive realismâ•… 66-67, 69, 80, 94, 148, 157-158, 165, 167, 169-170, 209, 234, 241, 371, 374 convergence/constructivism/ historicityâ•… 17-18, 20, 28, 33,

I ndex of S ubjects

34-39, 54, 57, 64, 66, 83, 85, 88, 98, 103-104, 109, 111-113, 116, 118, 122, 126-127, 129, 136, 165, 177, 187, 201, 209, 217, 249, 253, 259, 310-311, 341, 345, 373-374 Copernican turnâ•… 33-35, 110, 374 copy theories of realityâ•… 165 correspondence of macrocosm and microcosmâ•… 309 cosmologyâ•… 207, 309, 312 creation mythâ•… 309-310 critique - epistemologicalâ•… 27, 114, 121, 132, 136, 202, 353-354 - of absolutismâ•… 111, 355 -of knowledgeâ•… 34, 126, 139, 143, 147, 148, 150-151, 156, 157, 171, 182, 204, 297, 355-356 cross-cultural researchâ•… 182fn, 280-281, 290, 292, 294 cross-cultural studiesâ•… 194, 277279, 282-283, 285-286, 290, 294fn, 301fn cultural position zeroâ•… 46, 50, 61, 63, 71, 156, 161, 163, 173, 214, 230, 277, 359 cultural evolutionâ•… 43fn, 51 culture, concept ofâ•… 16, 59 cultures of othersâ•… 18, 301, 302

development in history/ historical developmentâ•… 73, 84, 88, 122, 127, 135, 139, 140, 156, 173, 177-178, 187, 191, 195, 197, 205, 207, 213-214, 246, 259, 271 development of logico-arithmetical competenceâ•… 260, 280, 304 development of numbersâ•… 304, 304fn development of operationalismâ•… 162164, 164fn, 172, 290, 293-294 developmental - theoryâ•… 189, 194-195, 293294, 372 - process of societyâ•… 200, 362 developmental psychologyâ•… 157, 279 different, but equalâ•… 292, 304 discovery of the symbolically mediated character of the worldâ•… 325, 346 disenchantment of natureâ•… 26 dissipating structuresâ•… 133 disequilibrium, constitutionalâ•… 53, 77, 166 divination - of ancestorsâ•… 311 - of the rulerâ•… 311 domination and stateâ•… 267 double contingencyâ•… 68, 204, 205

decrying of the subjectâ•… 76 deep structureâ•… 215, 217, 219-222, 227, 230, 233-234 delay (décalage)â•… 281 demythologization of mythâ•… 370 deontologization of reasonâ•… 328 depersonalization of logicâ•… 105 destabilization of the worldâ•… 340 development of cognitionâ•… 56-57, 155, 161, 164, 166-167, 179, 205, 214, 254, 261, 269, 273, 279, 280, 302, 309, 318, 348

early societiesâ•… 253, 263, 265, 266-267, 281, 299, 302-303, 309, 360, 365 eccentric positionalityâ•… 79 empirical abstractionsâ•… 158-161 enculturation, enculturational - onset ofâ•… 44, 264 - process ofâ•… 42, 44, 45, 53, 57, 61, 62, 68, 70, 72, 76, 116, 136, 140, 143, 150, 156, 200-201, 207, 212-213, 218, 223, 225, 228, 238, 250, 252, 264, 272, 316, 359, 361 - theory ofâ•… 202

405

406

A H istorico -G enetic T heory of C ulture

energetic system of the universeâ•… 134, 302, 323 enlightenmentâ•… 76, 305, 369, 372 entry into history/ entrance into historyâ•… 139, 200, 213, 249, 252 environment/environmentalâ•… 46, 49, 53, 57, 61-63, 67-68, 71, 76, 93, 147, 155, 160, 165-167, 172, 192-193, 213, 218, 224, 249, 284, 357-358, 360 epigenesis of biological developmentâ•… 192 epistemology/epistemologicalâ•… 35, 91, 122, 159fn, 180, 185, 188, 197, 207, 276, 321 epistemological critiqueâ•… 27, 33, 114, 121, 132, 136, 202, 353, 354, ethnocentrismâ•… 126-127, 292 ethnocentric prejudiceâ•… 127 evolution/evolutionaryâ•… 16-17, 20, 29-31, 38, 41-45, 43fn, 44fn, 46fn, 47fn, 48, 50-52, 54, 56-57, 62fn, 64, 67, 70-71, 83, 85, 8788, 92, 125fn, 128, 128fn, 129, 132-133, 136, 139, 143-144, 150, 156, 157, 159, 163, 164, 166, 173, 175, 190, 192, 199, 200, 202, 204, 207, 214, 221, 223fn, 225, 226, 226fn, 231, 236-237, 249, 250-253, 266, 266fn, 267-269, 271, 275, 317, 335, 353, 359, 362 equalityâ•… 38, 126-127, 246, 265266, 273, 303, 314, 364-365, 368 explanation of motionâ•… 350

feudalism - europeanâ•… 334, 334fn, 335, 335fn, 336, 336fn, 337-339 feudal organizationâ•… 333, 336 feudal relationshipâ•… 335 first causeâ•… 323 fitness maximizationâ•… 44fn, 45, 48, 52, 134, 134fn, 221, 251 foreign worldsâ•… 18, 128

formal-operational stageâ•… 164, 164fn, 180-182, 187-188, 192193, 289, 292 formative processâ•… 30, 38-39, 41, 43, 47, 49, 56-57, 62-65, 70, 73, 74, 80-82, 84, 86, 113, 117-118, 128, 135, 137, 139, 141-144, 149-150, 156, 163, 166, 194, 201203, 218-219, 224-231, 234-239, 246, 252, 259-260, 265, 268, 277, 279, 307, 354, 356-357, 370 formative process of society/ societal structuresâ•… 38-39, 128, 218, 237, 246, 260, 263, 307, 316, 336, 338, 361, 364, 366 formative process of sociocultural worldsâ•… 135, 141, 201-202 form and contentâ•… 170 forms - mind-basedâ•… 133, 165, 358 - organizationalâ•… 41, 165 - sociocultural symbolically mediatedâ•… 16-17, 22, 28, 42, 57-58, 134, 136, 355, 356 - symbolically mediatedâ•… 16, 29, 49, 56-57, 59, 63, 78, 83, 96, 116, 134, 143-144, 148, 158, 162, 210, 228, 232, 234-236, 251, 263, 276, 306, 309, 320, 322-323, 325, 331, 346, 358, 361, 365, 371 freedomâ•… 38, 82, 207, 314, 342, 368 free willâ•… 29, 82 functional interrelationâ•… 303-304

generalized medium of communicationâ•… 265, 272, 307, 316, 336, 349, 361, 364 generative transformational grammarâ•… 217, 219, 229 genesis of absolutist logicâ•… 109 genesis of mindâ•… 357

I ndex of S ubjects

genesis of the material logic of premodernityâ•… 298 genesis of societyâ•… 70, 203, 237238, 241 german idealismâ•… 110 God of philosophersâ•… 345 Good, idea of theâ•… 30fn, 317, 326, 328 Greece/Greek - philosophers/ philosophyâ•… 107, 179, 123, 181, 312, 317-318, 321, 324 - thoughtâ•… 107-108, 120, 123, 179, 180-181, 321, 328, 330, 341

hermeneutics/ hermeneuticalâ•… 119, 182, 182fn historical consciousnessâ•… 15, 18, 18fn, 86, 127, 201 historical development of cognitionâ•… 214 historical sciencesâ•… 121 historical understandingâ•… 18, 38, 54, 117, 118, 119, 129, 132, 139, 180, 214 historical worldsâ•… 19-20, 125, 126, 128, 140, 158, 185, 205 historicityâ•… 17, 20, 28, 33, 36-39, 86, 111-112, 122, 126, 127, 199, 373 historico-genetic perspectiveâ•… 58, 70, 218, 362 historico-genetic theoryâ•… 22, 55, 72, 75, 98, 129, 137, 143, 145, 157, 170, 182, 184, 187, 189, 197, 199, 200-201, 203, 211-212, 214215, 219, 223-224, 227, 229, 247, 249, 250, 254, 260, 271, 279, 283, 293-294, 307, 355356, 359, 361, 364, 365, 369 history of mindâ•… 31, 92, 120, 124, 173, 297, 354, 357 homeostasisâ•… 49, 64

homo sapiensâ•… 16, 45, 50, 57, 61, 134, 137, 144, 175, 200, 213-214, 226, 236, 238, 253, 272, 360 homunculus in the brainâ•… 163

idea of progressâ•… 124 ideas as substance of the worldâ•… 321 identityâ•… 33, 72-73, 78, 97, 187, 211, 258, 291, 309-310, 311fn, 319, 324, 326, 328-329, 331, 347, 358â•… identity of structuresâ•… 358 identity of an objectâ•… 291 impetus theoryâ•… 24, 191, 350-352 Iliad and the Odysseyâ•… 119, 120 illiterate adultsâ•… 286 immanence of mind in the worldâ•… 97 implementation of meaningâ•… 221 preindustrial revolutionâ•… 340fn information processing capacityâ•… 47 innate linguistic structuresâ•… 225, 229 innate theoryâ•… 220 instabilities of organizationâ•… 132 instinct/instinctiveâ•… 46, 46fn, 47, 47fn, 53, 231, 246, 253 instinct reductionâ•… 46, 46fn, 53 intellectualforms of mindâ•… 42 intellectual historyâ•… 29, 155, 276, 326, 328, 371-373 intentionality of illocutionary actsâ•… 244 interpretive matrixâ•… 26, 28, 94 interrelation between ontogenesis and historyâ•… 197 intersubjectivityâ•… 112, 354 isotropicâ•… 132 isomorphism between the resspective of orders of nature and social worldâ•… 131

Kleisthenesâ•… 315

407

408

A H istorico -G enetic T heory of C ulture

lack of equilibrium/disequilibriumâ•… 53, 77, 166-167, 254 language - acquisitionâ•… 220-221, 224, 224,fn, 225, 228, 229fn, 230, 232, 233 - development ofâ•… 48, 51, 223, 226-228, 236-237, 251 -formation ofâ•… 44 - gamesâ•… 113, 125, 217, 252, 354 - genesis ofâ•… 31, 217-218, 223224, 232, 252 language as mediumâ•… 218, 362, 363 lateralizationâ•… 226 level of organization of societyâ•… 272 lie of thefirst decisionâ•… 128 life - socioculturalâ•… 29-30, 35, 38, 41-42, 51, 58, 61, 135, 140-143, 149, 150, 156, 161, 202, 217, 223, 229, 251, 358, 359â•… - intellectualâ•… 30-31, 51, 165 limits of operational competenceâ•… 283 limits to developmentâ•… 281 lingustic theoryâ•… 217 linguistic turnâ•… 113, 113fn, 114, 354 logic - absolutistâ•… 28, 30-31, 41, 9596, 105, 108-109, 113-116, 136, 148-150, 201-203, 209, 220, 292, 326, 341, 354, 356, 364, 370, 374 -functional-relationalâ•… 23, 26, 35 - metaphysicalâ•… 73, 75, 258, 346, 354 - processualâ•… 84, 88, 98, 116, 129, 131-137, 141-142, 145, 149150, 161, 200-203, 217-218, 230, 237-238, 268, 354, 356-359, 361, 364-365, 369



- subjectivistâ•… 23, 27-28, 93, 94-95, 102-104, 108-110, 131, 299, 310, 312, 346, 370, 373 - systemicâ•… 23, 132, 142 - traditionalâ•… 37, 44, 88, 97, 110, 133, 136, 236, 331, 342, 352, 357â•… logic of absolute mindâ•… 102 logic of actionâ•… 23, 26, 29, 102103, 106-108, 298-299, 301, 304-305, 312, 321-322, 330, 340, 345, 346-347, 351, 370, 374 logic of identityâ•… 33, 72-73, 97, 324, 347 logic of originâ•… 96, 97, 260, 310, 319-321, 324, 327, 348, 355 logic of substanceâ•… 96 logic of development/ developmental logicâ•… 125, 158, 174, 199, 261, 271, 277-278, 280, 282, 306, 312, 318, 333, 349, 356, 357, 366 logic of social systemsâ•… 366 logical priority of an absolute mindâ•… 355 logico-arithmetical structuresâ•… 209, 212, 275 logico-mathematicalformâ•… 159160, 206 locution, illocution, perlocutionâ•… 242244

machine/mechanicalâ•… 24-27, 2930, 75, 132, 202, 352 machina mundiâ•… 25, 26fn, 107fn, 330fn maintenance of selfâ•… 265 malleability of the social orderâ•… 315-316 market economyâ•… 338, 344, 368 market societyâ•… 86, 338, 343-344, 365-366, 368-369

I ndex of S ubjects

mathematicsâ•… 115, 125-126, 145, 155, 160-161, 163, 171, 179, 193, 207, 275-276, 294, 370 mathematico-logical competenceâ•… 188 materialityâ•… 96, 102-105, 212, 298, 298fn, 310, 322, 327 material logicâ•… 23, 91-92, 94, 98-99, 106, 112, 120-121, 195, 297-299, 326, 331, 351, 370 meaning - aprioriâ•… 35 mechanisms of selectionâ•… 46 media as organizingformsâ•… 361 medieval townâ•… 343-344, 347-348 mediumâ•… 20, 41-42, 44, 45, 48, 58, 62, 63, 72, 79, 81, 111, 158, 162, 171, 190-191, 199, 201, 210, 211, 218, 225, 233-235, 241-242, 246, 250, 265, 268, 272, 307, 316, 320, 336-338, 349, 358, 361-367, 369, 372, 374 medium as aformedformâ•… 362 mental blockadeâ•… 87, 99, 116, 125, 137, 283, 285, 292 metalevel of interpretationsâ•… 59 metaphysic, metaphysicalâ•… 30, 73, 75, 87, 99, 101-103, 105fn, 110, 115, 258, 322, 346, 349, 354, 359 metaphysicsâ•… 35, 56, 84, 87, 99, 101, 105fn, 110, 257, 318-319, 326, 329, 331, 347-348, 356, 374 method of historical understandingâ•… 139 middle ageâ•… 24-26, 165fn, 197, 259, 324, 333-334, 336, 338-339, 343-344, 348-352 mind, absoluteâ•… 19, 70, 87, 102, 111, 131-132, 142, 326, 355 mind-based constitution of the humanformâ•… 131, 346, 353, 369 mind-based constitution of the organizationalformsâ•… 353 mind-based life-formsâ•… 159, 221 mind based processâ•… 27

mind-based sociocultural modeâ•… 16 mind-based intellectual organizationâ•… 43 mind-bases processual understanding ofâ•… 54 Modernityâ•… 15, 17-25, 29-31, 33-34, 36-38, 41, 43, 54, 66, 70-71, 79, 83-88, 92, 94, 96-99, 102103, 105, 108-112, 120, 122, 123, 125-129, 131-133, 135, 139, 141, 147-148, 155-156, 163, 173, 179, 180-182, 191, 195, 202-203, 207, 209, 212, 214, 217-219, 221, 252, 254, 257, 275, 297, 298-299, 304, 307-308, 313, 318, 323, 331, 333-334, 336-337, 340, 347, 350351, 353, 354-355, 359, 368-369, 372-374 moral realismâ•… 183-184 mother and childâ•… 71-72, 237, 264, 278 motor schemataâ•… 275 mythâ•… 18, 21, 104, 118-119, 123, 309310, 312, 322, 370

nature and mindâ•… 30, 222-223, 250 natural historyâ•… 16-18, 20-21, 29, 41, 43-44, 49, 54, 56, 58, 67, 70, 77, 83, 117, 128-129, 144, 149, 157, 165, 200, 214, 250, 353, 356, 359 negation of the subjectâ•… 203 negative numbersâ•… 182 Neokantian value philosophyâ•… 259 Neolithic revolutionâ•… 266-269, 279, 360, 365 natural-scientific revolutionâ•… 19, 26, 29, 33, 35, 92 naturalismâ•… 157-158, 161-162, 165, 219, 355 naturalism of cognitionâ•… 157

409

410

A H istorico -G enetic T heory of C ulture

nature - priority ofâ•… 82, 131, 140, 142, 217, 219, 249, 357 - understanding ofâ•… 23, 25, 2729, 36, 41, 66, 87, 92, 94, 136, 142, 149, 195, 302-303 naturalist theoryâ•… 161, 175 nominalismâ•… 341 normativityâ•… 139, 211, 247 normsâ•… 36, 74, 245 nothingnessâ•… 104-105, 310

obligation,formal structure ofâ•… 246 objectivityâ•… 48, 63-64, 67, 211 observerâ•… 67-68, 115, 137, 157, 285, 286, 298 ontic differencesâ•… 33, 241 ontic statusâ•… 65, 68-69, 241 ontogenesis and historyâ•… 150, 175, 178, 182, 187, 190-191, 197, 212, 214, 283, 316, 359 ontogeny/ontogeneticâ•… 47fn, 357 ontogenetic process of enculturationâ•… 150, 213 ontogenetic stagesâ•… 183, 187-188, 196 ontogenetic turnâ•… 53, 155, 223, 275 ontology of conceptsâ•… 342 ontology of ideasâ•… 374 ontology of reasonâ•… 317 open systemâ•… 76 operativeformsâ•… 162 operational structuresâ•… 150, 161, 175, 177, 188, 207, 295 operationalism of the brainâ•… 232 other culturesâ•… 19, 20, 107, 309, 323, 373, 284, 323, 373 order - narrativeâ•… 176, 309 organic consciousnessâ•… 78, 135 organizing mediaâ•… 363-364, 366 origin of languageâ•… 224 origin as subject and substanceâ•… 97

other, always more competentâ•… 92, 173, 357

perfomative contradictionâ•… 126127, 127fn, 128 phenomenologyâ•… 112-113, 115 philosophy - of historyâ•… 19, 31, 36, 38fn, 111-112, 126, 257, 360 - of natureâ•… 111, 123, 346 phylogenesy/phylogeneticâ•… 42, 48, 50-52, 61-62, 67-68, 72, 141, 160-161, 204, 210, 212fn, 223-224, 226-228, 230, 237, 250-251, 264 Pleistocene societiesâ•… 263, 280, 360 polisâ•… 124, 313, 313fn, 314-316, 318, 320 postmodernâ•… 49, 63, 83, 84, 91, 126, 137, 143, 148, 231, 233, 235fn, 247, 252, 273, 278, 354, 370, 374 postmodern philosophyâ•… 252 postmodern theoriesâ•… 91, 231, 233, 247, 273 postmodern understanding of communicationâ•… 137 power as a generalized communication mediumâ•… 374 practice/practicalâ•… 20, 46-47, 49, 52, 56, 70, 73-75, 77, 79, 93fn, 96, 98, 113, 148, 149, 170, 173, 176, 183, 205, 207, 218, 228, 230, 234, 247, 251, 265, 268, 277-278, 288, 293-294, 298, 301, 303-305, 307-309, 316, 343, 349 practical reasonâ•… 38, 82, 368 pragmatism/pragmaticsâ•… 62, 166, 210, 229 pragmatics of languageâ•… 241 precategoricalâ•… 250 preexisting realityâ•… 80, 161, 163, 165-166, 206, 210, 234-235, 358

I ndex of S ubjects

prehistoryâ•… 16, 23, 119, 140, 267fn prehuman/prehuman timesâ•… 42, 45, 48-49, 71, 136, 145, 200, 213-214, 227 prelinguisticallyâ•… 77-78, 225, 232 premodernity/premodernâ•… 91-92, 94, 98, 106, 129, 142, 195-196, 209, 294, 298, 323 preoperational competenceâ•… 195 preoperational stageâ•… 164fn, 177178, 190-191, 290 primitive peoplesâ•… 177 primitive thoughtâ•… 93, 122, 292 priority of mindâ•… 91, 98, 327, 364 priority of natureâ•… 82, 131, 140142, 217, 219, 249, 357 process, constructivepracticalâ•… 42 processual logicâ•… 84, 88, 98, 116, 129, 131-137, 141-142, 145, 149150, 161, 200-203, 217-218, 230, 237-238, 268, 354, 356-359, 361, 364-365, 369 processual logicâ•… 98, 116, 129, 131-137, 141-142, 145, 149-150, 161, 200-203, 217-218, 230, 237238, 268, 354, 356-359, 361, 364, 369 propositional contentsâ•… 218, 237, 242, 244-245 psychogenesis of conceptsâ•… 183

rational organization of life conductâ•… 334 realism of ideasâ•… 341 reality - of becomingâ•… 120, - of the conceptâ•… 63, 374 reconstruction/reconstruct/ reconstructingâ•… 17, 21, 35, 3839, 43, 64, 70, 80, 83-84, 8788, 94, 98, 107, 117-118, 120-121, 129, 135, 139, 174, 182, 184, 185, 188-189, 190-191, 200-201, 204, 212, 217-218, 223-225, 229, 232,

236-237, 247, 249, 250- 252, 254, 260, 263, 268, 271-272, 279, 297, 302, 321, 328, 336, 350, 355-357, 363, 369, 370-371, 373-374 reconstruction of enculturationâ•… 144, 263 reconstruction of thought and languageâ•… 252 reconstructive strategy of explanationâ•… 143 reflexive consciousnessâ•… 78, 135, 276 reflexive structuresâ•… 201 reflexiveness in actionâ•… 77, 141 regaining historyâ•… 261 reductionism, reductionistâ•… 30, 43, 44, 47, 149, 165, 186, 201, 217 reductionism of sociobiologyâ•… 201 reflexion, reflective, reflexivenessâ•… 53, 55, 56, 59, 64-65, 77-79, 87, 95-96, 98, 101, 104, 108, 110, 112, 127, 131, 135, 141, 145, 159-162, 166, 181, 196-197, 201, 203, 205, 221, 225, 227, 232-233, 235, 276, 299, 306-308, 316, 344, 348, 361, 367-370, 372-373 relation between organism and environmentâ•… 160 revolutionâ•… 19, 22, 23-26, 29, 33-35, 66, 86, 92, 98, 132, 150, 156, 157, 266-269, 275, 279, 288, 336, 342, 344, 354-356, 359, 360, 365 revolution in cognitive theoryâ•… 150, 157 rule-governed knowledgeâ•… 94, 299

schism of logicsâ•… 22 secularisationâ•… 25-26, 35, 38, 125, 304-305, 312, 333, 335, 342-343, 371-372

411

412

A H istorico -G enetic T heory of C ulture

secular worldâ•… 20, 129 self-organisation, self-organizeâ•… 45, 48, 161, 163 school-based trainingâ•… 191 sensual apprehensionsâ•… 96 sequence of structuresâ•… 119, 266-, 268 schism of the two logicsâ•… 89 shift in logic/change in logicâ•… 2224, 84, 86-87, 98, 102, 121, 131, 132, 195, 297, 353, 355 significant othersâ•… 71, 92, 298 social bondsâ•… 72, 335 social prerequisitesâ•… 193-194 societal structuresâ•… 38, 260, 263, 265, 307, 316, 336, 338, 361, 364, 366 societal structures and structures of cognitionâ•… 260 society, specifically humanâ•… 21, 42, 72, 236 sociobiologyâ•… 16, 43, 43fn, 44, 47fn, 57, 83, 201, 223, 229, 357 sociocultural life-formsâ•… 29, 30, 35, 41, 42, 51, 58, 61, 140-143, 149, 150, 161, 202, 217, 223, 251, 359 sociomorphic explanationâ•… 185 solidarity - mechanicalâ•… 75, 178 Solonian constitutionâ•… 314, 315 soulâ•… 131, 324, 327-328 spiritâ•… 20, 87, 93, 103, 104, 106107, 114, 123, 142, 247, 257, 259, 305, 324, 326 spiritualityâ•… 70, 132, 324, 326, 335 stage/stages of operationalismâ•… 172, 175, 177-183, 185-197, 214-215, 227fn, 277-279, 280, 289, 290, 292, 300-301, 304, 306, 309, 330fn, 335, 345, 347, 359, 373 state of equilibriumâ•… 133, 177, 180, 187, 192, 254 strategy



- epistemological and methodologicalâ•… 145 - reconstructiveâ•… 143, 150, 249 structure - argumentativeâ•… 92, 110, 134, 310, 326, 345 - categoricalâ•… 92, 94, 141, 173, 206-207, 209, 212, 297-299 - legalâ•… 342 - logicalâ•… 37, 55, 87, 92, 207 - societalâ•… 38, 260, 263, 307, 316, 336, 338, 349, 361, 364, 366 - subjectiveâ•… 94 structures of cognitionâ•… 155, 157158, 161, 180, 182, 205-206, 219, 253, 260, 275-276, 371 structure of expectationâ•… 245 structures of mindâ•… 22, 27-29, 41, 54, 83-84, 87-88, 134-135, 221, 353-355, 357, 358 structure of objects and eventsâ•… 210, 370 structure of powerâ•… 268 structure of subjectivityâ•… 19, 103, 328 structure of syntaxâ•… 227, 233, 234 structures of languageâ•… 246, 141, 217-218, 223, 228, 235 structures of moralityâ•… 183 structures of thoughtâ•… 59, 110, 119, 120-121, 141, 144, 158, 163, 175, 218, 260, 263, 273, 321, 360 subject as constructorâ•… 202 subjects in the limits of societyâ•… 75 subjective powersâ•… 24-26, 93, 305 subjectivist understanding of natureâ•… 302 subjectivity and alterityâ•… 71 subject logic and subjective logicâ•… 93 subject-object-differenceâ•… 231 subject, transcendentalâ•… 65, 110, 112 subject-verb-object relationâ•… 222

I ndex of S ubjects

substanceâ•… 19, 30-31, 50, 73, 75, 76, 78, 87, 93-94, 96-97, 103-104, 142, 203, 210, 212, 241, 246, 258, 298-299, 309-311, 317, 320-321, 323, 325, 327-329, 331, 345, 353, 354, 356-357, 359â•… substance of mindâ•… 103 surface structureâ•… 220, 223, 234 symbolic mediumâ•… 48 symbolically mediated organizationâ•… 49, 56, 78, 83, 134, 144, 228, 234, 236, 276, 322, 328, 358, 361 symbolically mediated system of knowledgeâ•… 232 syntactic organizationâ•… 219 syntax - development ofâ•… 227 - genesis ofâ•… 227-228, 230, 236 - structure ofâ•… 227, 233-234 system-environmentâ•… 45, 147-148 systemic causalityâ•… 140 systemic coherenceâ•… 305 systemic logicâ•… 23, 132, 142 systemic-processual explanationâ•… 141 systemic-processual explanationâ•… 141 systems theoryâ•… 114-115. 128, 148, 203-204, 252, 354, 359

Taoâ•… 33fn, 106, 106fn, 107, 107fn, 310 teological thoughtâ•… 105 teological natural processesâ•… 160, 329, 330, 346 theory - of communicationâ•… 241 - of enculturationâ•… 202 - of knowledgeâ•… 50, 53, 148149, 158-159, 161, 165-166, 173, 182, 184, 232, 251 - of motionâ•… 29 theologyâ•… 111, 324, 331, 340-341

tie between mother and childâ•… 71 time - linearâ•… 347-348 - of the churchâ•… 348 - of the townâ•… 347 time of metaphysicsâ•… 348 tools of languageâ•… 57 town citizenryâ•… 340, 342-343, 352 town - autonomization of theâ•… 343 - medievalâ•… 343-344, 347-348 tracks of ourselvesâ•… 21 traditional logicâ•… 37, 44, 88, 97, 110, 133, 136, 236, 331, 342, 352, 357 traditional worldviewâ•… 217 transcendentalism/ transcendentalâ•… 20, 22, 35, 44, 65-66, 88, 109-113, 115-116, 133, 139, 159, 178, 201, 252, 305, 306, 353-354 transcendental idealismâ•… 66 transcendental subjectivityâ•… 65, 112 transition -from natural to cultural historyâ•… 17 -from animal to manâ•… 57, 61, 92 threshold syndromeâ•… 293 threshold to concrete-operational competenceâ•… 293 triangle of communications between communicants, ego and alter ego, and their interactions with an external realityâ•… 68, 235 truth and doxaâ•… 320 two-part relational logicâ•… 95 two-sided relational interpretationâ•… 96 two-sided relational logicâ•… 97, 109

413

414

A H ISTORICO -G ENETIC T HEORY OF C ULTURE

wage-earning labor force 340 world/worlds - inner 21, 59, 61, 62, 75-77, 79, 80-82, 85, 140 - meaningfully constructed 19 - physical 45, 71, 179, 289 - social 29, 59, 61-62, 66-67, 69, 70, 72, 81, 85, 94, 113, 131, 134, 141, 143, 161, 172, 204, 211, 218, 241, 294, 297, 302-303, 308, 312, 319, 330, 341, 346, 352, world time 347-349 worldview - of modernity 22, 33, 36, 102, 108-109, 131, 195, 221, 350, 373 - traditional 217 worldview of the child 298-299, 300