JURGEN HABERMAS

AN INTERSUBJECTIVIST CONCEPT OF INDIVIDUALITY

I would like to read the title of our plenary seesion - History, Society and Person - backwards and focus on the notion of a person who is individuated via socialization processes within a historical context. I shall develop this intersubjectivist concept of individuality in three steps. Firstly, I will briefly remind you of the difficulties encountered by all attempts to explain the meaning of the term individual within the limits of metaphysical thought - from Plato to Hegel. The emphatic meaning of individuality, articulated in religious traditions, was not duly incorporated into the language of philosophy until the late 18th century. With reference to Rousseau, J shall, secondly, defend the thesis that the full meaning of individuality can only be saved if we reserve the term for its performative usage and distinguish it from the descriptive meaning of singularity. Finally, I shall indicate the direction of a linguistic analysis of the performative use of the first-person personal pronoun. I.
In the language of philosophy individual is the translation of the Greek atomon and signifies in logical terms an object of which something can be said, ontologically speaking a particular entity. The expression individuality does not primarily bear the meaning of something atomic or indivisible, but rather that of the singularity or specificity of something that is numerically single. In t h i s sense we call every object an individual that can be selected and recognized, i.e. identified from amongst the set of all possible objects an individual. In the tradition of

Journal of Chinese Philosophy I8 (1991) 133-141 Copyright 0 1 9 9 1 b y Diologue Publishing Company, Honolulu, Hawaii,USA,

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metaphysics, such properties, as can be attributed to an object have always been understood in both a logical and an ontological sense. The predicates were supposed to reflect ideas, forms or substances that individuate particular entities by their fusion with material substrates. Thus, individual chairs are the more or less exemplary embodiments of the same idea or form that determines the purpose chairs have in the first place. Irrespective of how the relationship between universals and single things is conceived, this idealist approach favours a strange priority of the universal over the individual. For the qualities, by virtue of which one individual thing is different from other things, arise from ideas or from substantive forms which are per se universal and cannot mark the individual off as unique. This path leads fmally t o John Duns Scotus who raised that which makes an individual an individual, makes Socrates Socrates, to the status of a substantive form He supplements the chain of genusses and species with what is ultimately but an individuating idea, namely haecceita& In this paradox of the Socratitas of Socrates, the universal triumphs inadvertently over any individual, which, in its uniqueness and non-substitutability cannot be expressed in the metaphysical concepts of form and matter. Leibniz assigns an affirmative meaning to t h i s ineffable quality of the individual without albeit forfeiting the metaphysical approach According to his view, every individual is a mirror of the world as a whole; in principle it can be determined through the conjunction of all the predicates that apply to it. Such a characterization would amount to what Leibniz called a complete concept of theindividual. He realized, however, that such a concept is never in fact at our disposal, as it would have to contain an infinite number of propositions, but rather represents, as Kant was later to say, a Vernunftidee. It is no longer space and matter that have an individuating power instead individuality is explained in terms of the fact that every self-representing subjectivity is centred in itself and represents the world as a whole in its own unique manner. Thus Leibniz introduced an ontological model for the individual substance which, as a mere programme of infinite designations that cannot be exhausted discursively, defies complete explication. Hegels dialectical logic can be understood as the promise nevertheless to put t h i s programme

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into practice. However, with h m too, the universal continued to triumph i, over the individual, which was exiled to the realm of ineffability. On the path taken by metaphysical thought, the jeopardized individual reveals itself, if a t ail, then ironically as the non-identical- as the Marginal that remains beyond reasoning every time we attempt to grasp an individual in its very core - that was the starting point of Adomos Negative Dialectics. Ficlite opened up a new avenue of access to the concept of individuality. But before his intuitive insights could bear fruit, they had to be extricated from the architectonics of his transcendental philosophy. Wilhelm von Humboldt then examined the interconnection of individuality and inter-subjectivity by referring to that uncoerced synthesis which is brought about in the communicative process of reaching understanding. Furthermore, Kierkegaard, with his notion of a responsible reappropriation of radical self-choice, that is of ones own life history, developed the idea that each individual has to first make itself what it is. Finally, that fusion of world-constituting activity and self-determination which Fichte once preempted with the productivity of a self-positing Ego became fruitful for the idea of a performative claim to individuality. b t me begin by explaining this performative concept of individuality with reference to Rousseads Confessions before proceeding to ground it in formal-pragmatic terms.

IL
As early as the middle of the 18th century Jean Jacques Rousseau had secuiarized the idea of the Last Day, that is the confession of sin made before an adjudicating God; he transformed it into a self-confession disseminated by a private person among the audience of a public sphere. In January 1762 Rousseau wrote Monsieur de Malherbes four letters in which he presented and projected himself as the person he was and whom he authentically wished to be. He was to continue this existential selfrevelation with increasing intensity and despair in his Confessions, later in h s Conversations and finally in the Reveries of u Solimy Walker. Even i in his early letters, the communicative preconditions are already stated for a public process of self-understanding and self-ascertainment. The

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epistolary form admittedly points to the private nature of the contents, but the claim to radical sincerity, which Rousseau makes when writing these letters, demands that they be made public without reservation. The real addressee is - even beyond the bounds of his contemporary audience - the universal audience of a justly adjudicating posterity. There still is, to be sure, a religious background, but only in the shape of a metaphor for an inner-worldly scene robbed of all transcendence, a Scene in which no one knows the author better than he himself. H alone e possesses privileged access to his inner being. The experience of conversion, which can be dated in terms of time and place, finds an equivalent as well as the awareness or sin and the hope for salvation. However, transformed into the wish to be recognized before the forum of all fellow humans as what one oneself is and wishes to be, those secular equivalents invert the religious sense of justification the release from sin by the grace of God. Rousseau knows that he depends on the judgement of his audience. Their recognition is something he wishes to gain; without this, no confirmation would be forthcoming for h s radical choice of self. Once i the vertical a i of prayer has tilted into the horizontal of interhuman xs communication the single person is no longer in a position to make good h s emphatic claim to individuality solely by himself; whether or not i the reappropriation of his own life history succeeds hinges on the yes or no of the others. The performatively used concept of individuality has, from this secularized point of view, become utterly detached from its descriptive use. The claim to individuality raised by a first person vis-8-vis a second person gains a meaning different from singularity. The justificatory confessions, by means of which accreditation is to be obtained for a performatively-raised claim to an identity of ones own, are not to be confused with the descriptions of an individual. Letters, confessions, diaries, autobiographies, and didactically presented self-reflections the literary genres preferentially used by writers such as Rousseau and Kierkegaard attest to the different illocutionary mode, These are namely not reports and statements from the perspective of an observer, and not selfsbserva tions, but interested self-presentations by means of which a complex claim is justified vis-his an audience: the claim to recognition of the non:

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substitutable Ego-identity that manifests itself in a consciously conducted life. The performative attempt to render this c a m plausible by fragmenli tary accounts of the totality of ones life must not be confused with the unworkable descriptive endeavour to give a total narrative of an individual in terms of the entirety of all the statements that might possibly be applicable to it. Rousseaus confessions can best be understood as an ethical process of self-understanding, submitted with justificatory intention to the public for evaluation. They belong to a genus different from that which a historian can give of Rousseaus life. They are to be assessed not in terms of the birth of an historical narrative, but in terms of the authenticity of self-presentation. As Rousseau well knows, they may be accused of being mauvaise fois and self-illusion, but not exactly of being untrue. Leibniz had preserved a descriptive meaning for the t r individuem ality which went beyond that of mere singularity, but of course under the proviso that no complete concept could actually be explicated for a single individual. Our brief discussion of the history of the concept has shown that the full meaning of individuality can only be saved if we reserve this term for performative usage and use it in all descriptive connections only in the sense of singularity. In other words, our discussion of the concepts history results in the recommendation that the meaning of the term individuality be explained with reference to the selfconception of a subject, a subject that presents and eventially justifies itself vis-h-vis other parties as an unmistakable and non-substitutable person. This self-conception, however diffuse it may remain, grounds ones own Ego-identity. In Ego-identity, self-consciousness articulates itself itself not as the self-reference of a knowing subject, but as the ethical self-ascertainment of a responsible person. The individual person projects itself within the framework of the intersubjectively shared horizon of a lifeworld as someone who vouches for the more or less clearly outlined continuity of a more or less consciously appropriated life history. In the light of his acquired individuality he wishes to be identified also in the future as the person who she has made herself to be. In short, the meaning of individuality is to be explained by means of the ethical self-understanding of first persons in relation to second persons. Only a person who

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knows who she is and wishes to be - vis-his herself and others - can
possess a concept of individuality that points beyond sheer singularity. This identity-generating self-conception of a person has no descriptive meaning; it has only the sense of a guarantee; and the addressee has fully gathered the meaning thereof once he knows that the other person vouches for her being-able-tebe-herself. This in turn manifests itself in the course and continuity of a more or less consciously conducted life. Such a conception of self needs c o n f i i t i o n by others. The fact that Rousseau and Kierkegaard both remained so dependent on the reaching of their audience points beyond their contingent character traits. &endangered identity structures must be anchored in relations of intersubjective recognition. The explanation for this is that the structure which someone vouches for w t his claim to individuality by no ih means comprises the innermost part of a person. No person can dispose over his identity as if it were his property. Such a guarantee should not be conceived of as if it were modelled on a promise by which an autonomous speaker binds his will; in such a manner no one can oblige himself to remain identical with himself or to be him himself. And there is a simple explanation why it is not in his power to do so. The self of ethical self-understanding is not the absolute inner property of the individual. This only appears to be the case from the view point of a philosophy, which takes the abstract self-reference of the knowing subject as its hn starting-point rather t a understanding it to be the result of a social and historical process. The self in ethical self-understanding has to rely on recognition from addressees, since the Ego forms itself first of all as an answer to the expectation of Alter Ego. Since the others impute responsibility to me, I gradually make myself the person I have become through interactions with the others. I cannot simply just for myself maintain the Ego which in my self-consciousness appears to be given to me it does not belong) to me. Rather, this Ego retains an intersubjective core because the process of individuation is channeled through the network of socialization and history.

IIL
The first person singular plays a key role for communications

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theory, just as the Ego of Ego cogito did for its predecessor, the philosophy of the subject. Yet until now linguistic analysis has mainly concerned itself with two grammatical roles played by the personal pronoun I that only indirectly touch on our problem One discussion concerns the I as a self-referential expression by means of which the speaker identifies himself numerically as a particular entity. The other discussion focuses on the grammatical role of the I in first-person sentences where t i expression signals that the speaker has privileged hs access to his own subjective world. It is the epistemic self-reference manifest in expressive speech acts that is the topic here. By contrast, the self of a practical self-reference comes to the fore only when we examine the grammatical role which the first person assumes in performative sentences. The self in such a practical self-relation is relying on the intersubjective recognition of its claim to identity. These claims must not be confused with the validity claims that an actor raises with his speech acts. For the no with which a listener rejects an offered speech act affects the validity of a specific utterance, but not the identity of the speaker. What is at stake here is a different claim. The one must have recognized the other as a responsible actor the moment he expects the other to take a Yes or NO position on h s offered speech act. Thus, in communii cative action, each person recognizes in the other his own autonomy. However, not only the speakers interpretation of himself as an autonomous will, but also and equally her conception of herself as an individual that is distinct from all others are part and parcel of the performative usage of the personal pronoun in the first person singular. Ihe performative meaning of I is an interpretation of the speakers Ego with regard also to her own non-replaceable position in the nexus of social relations. Normative contexts determine the set of all possible interpersonal relations considered to be legitimate w t i an intersubjectively shared ihn lifeworld. Entering an interpersonal relationship with a hearer, a speaker also resumes the role of an actor who behaves with respect to a network of normative expectations. However, as long as the interaction operates under the constraints of language, fulfiiing social roles can never amount to simply reproducing them. The first and second person perspectives are

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interlinked, but the one participant can adopt the other's perspective only m the first person, which is to say; never simply as a substitute, but m propria persona Thus, the actor is prompted by the mere structure of linguistic intersubjectivity to remain herserf even in the context of behaviour that conforms to norms. In norm-regulated interactions no one can in principle be relieved of the initiative to realize himself - and no one can delegate ti initiative to someone else. It is intrinsic to the hs logic of the use of personal pronouns - in particular from the perspective of the speaker who takes a performature attitude - that the speaker i cannot in actu cast off h s non-replaceability, cannot escape into the anonymity of a third person, but must rather claim to be recognized as an individuated being. It is one of the general and unavoidable presuppositions of communicative action that the speaker lays claim as an actor to being recognized both as autonomous will and as individuated being. It is the identity of an intersubjectively recognized Ego that expresses itself in the meaning of the performatively-used first-person personal pronoun under both the aspect of autonomy and individuality. To what extent in the hs concrete case t i meaning is either articulated or remains implicit, indeed is cancelled out, depends clearly on the situation of the action and the wider context involved. But the general pragmatic presuppositions of communicative action form semantic resources from which historical societies, each in its own way, can draw and articulate conceptions of the spirit and the soul, notions of the person, concepts of action, moral consciousness, etc. ' The actor's claim to recognition as a responsible subject is interpreted different& in the framework of a conventional morality than it would be in the light of a religious ethics of conviction, a secular morality of principles or a procedural ethics of discourse. The concept of individual being can be radicalized just as that of autonomous will can. As we have seen, in the Western tradition it is only since the 18th century that the idea of a completely individuated being has diiested itself of the connotations of a history of salvation. Of course, this conception of self vanes according to situations of action and action systems even in modern societies where people are expected to share a radicalized conception of

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autonomy, to lead their lives consciously and to let themselves be guided by these intuitions in communicative action. In areas where social relations have been more or less formalized, be it in business or administration, legal norm relieve one of responsibilities of a moral nature; anonymous and stereotype behavioural patterns leave little room for individual selfpresentation. Yet, reciprocally-raised claims to recognition of ones own identity are never completely cancelled out even in strictly formalized relations as long as it is still possible to have recourse to legal norms. Both elements are, for example, incorporated in the concept of a legal person as the holder of subjective rights. The presuppositions of autonomy and individuality both retain a strictly intersubjective meaning in communicative action: he who perform moral judgements and actions must count on the final agreement of an unhmited communicative community, he who realizes a responsibly shouldered life history must count on the final recognition of this ideal auditorium Accordingly, my identity, namely my conception of myself as an autonomously-acting and completely individuated being, can only stabilize if J receive this kind of confirnation and recognition as both a person in general and t h i s individual person.

UNIVERSITY OF FRANKFURT GERMANY