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possible understanding between human actors. Undistorted truth
between human actors can only be attained when not only language
but also speech is purged of distorting elements so that fully communi–
cative competence can be attained. The notion of communicative
competence closely parallels Chomsky's notion of linguistic compe–
tence. But while Chomsky wants to explain the skills of each particular
language user, Habermas is concerned with the skills that underlie the
dialogical utterances of interacting speakers. As Norbert Hiener once
put it (with much greater clarity than Habermas), "Speech is a joint
game by the talker and listener, against the forces of confusion."
Habermas assumes, counterfactually, an ideal speech situation in
which complete understanding has been achieved, and uses this as a
baseline against which barriers to communicative patterns can be
measured. His is a consensus theory of truth which has, at the same
time, a critical edge in as far as it rejects all elements, such as coercion
and ideological distortion, which interfere in the rational pursuit of
dialogical communication.
In later portions of this vo lume, Habermas supplements his theory
of communicative distortions and their overcoming by borrowing from
Piaget and his Harvard disciple Kohlberg a theory of the ontogenetic
stages of moral development. Here he argues that the ability to make
autonomous moral judgments, far from being "given," arises only in
the last stage of a person's moral development which starts with an
egocentric view, in the early years, and proceeds by several stages,
through communicative interactions with others, to reach a flexible,
autonomous and post-conventional maturity. Pushing beyond Piaget
and Kohlberg, Habermas then proceeds to argue that a fully mature
and autonomous ego development can only be attained in an emanci–
pated society of the future that does away with blocked communica–
tions and distorted forms of human interaction.
The next two chapters of the work constitute an ambitious attempt
to develop a novel theory of human evolution. This theory is meant to
supplement historical materialism, but seems, in fact, largely to
supplant it. Stressing parallels between individual (ontogenetic) devel–
opment and the evolution of the human race, Habermas argues that
Marxism, by putting undue emphasis on the development of produc–
tive forces and productive relations, has failed
to
take into account the
evolutionary maturation of structures of thought and of norms of be–
havior. "I am convinced," he writes, "that normative structures do not
simply follow the path of development of productive processes ... but
have an internal history." Though aware of the pitfalls that have
attended previous attempts to draw parallels between individual and
