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I've written repeatedly about Robert Kegan's developmental model of cognitive complexity, based on the earlier work of Piaget and Kohlberg. Among other things, it can provide a useful perspective on an aspect of debates about ideology. Kegan uses the term "ideology" in a very particular sense, which isn't necessarily the same thing we mean in talking about political ideologies, but it's a useful sense, nonetheless, and provides an angle of attack that illuminates some issues better than anything else I'm aware of.
Kegan's model seeks to explain common aspects of cognition across the entire range of areas studied--including reasoning about physical sciences (Piaget's forte), moral reasoning (Kohlberg), psychotherapy (Kegan's own area of expertise), and personality development (Erick Erickson), among others. It's essence is a common structural relationship connecting each successive developmental stage to the stage before: What is the background, subject or context of consciousness in one stage becomes the foreground, object or content of consciousness in the next.
Stage 3, which Kegan identifies with adulthood in a relatively static traditional society, has the social roles and relationships of that society as its background, subject or context. Other things identified as subject at this level include abstractions, inner states, subjectivity, and self-consciousness. At Stage 4, all of these become object-capable of being reflected upon and manipulated. Critically reflecting on abstractions as content requires a context of abstract systems, while reflecting on social roles and relationships as objects requires a context of self-authorship. Combined, these two produce an ideology (an abstract system of ideas) supporting personal autonomy (self-authorship)-otherwise known as liberalism. Only this last step is my own. All the rest is directly from Kegan.
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| One can also speak of this structure of consciousness as a structure of self-perception: what is object, the self has, what is subject, the self is,, according to its perception at that level.
Here is a comprehensive chart of how Kegan's levels inter-relate, for reference purposes:
| Kegan's Subject/Object Schema of Cognitive Development | | Stage | We Are:
Subject
(structure of knowing) | We Have:
Object
(content of knowing) | Underlying Structure | | 1 | Perceptions
SOCIAL PERCEPTIONS
Impulses | Movement
Sensation |  | | 2 | Concrete
POINT OF VIEW
Enduring Dispositions | Perceptions
SOCIAL PERCEPTIONS
Impulses |  | 3
Traditionalism | Abstractions
MUTUALITY/
INTERPERSONALISM
Relationship
Inner states | Concrete
POINT OF VIEW
Enduring Dispositions
Needs, Peferences |  | 4
Modernism | Abstract Systems
INSTITUTION
Relationship-Regulating Forms
Self-authorship | Abstractions
MUTUALITY/
INTERPERSONALISM
Relationship
Inner states
Subjectivity
Self-consciousness |  | 5
Post-
Modernism | Dialectical
INTER-
INSTITUTIONAL
Self-transformation | Abstract Systems
Ideology
INSTITUTION
Relationship-Regulating Forms
Self-authorship
Self-regulation
Self-formation |  |
At any stage, it is normal to reflect on the content of that stage-what one has-but it is also possible to reflect on the subject as well-what one is-provided that such reflection is free of contradiction. For example, one aspect of Level 2 subjectivity is point of view. One has a point of view, as distinct from other points of view. Yet, it is possible to reflect on, and even adopt another's points of view, provided that the two are compatible. One cannot mediate between them, because doing so requires a context that only becomes available at level 3. But if they compatible, then mediation is not necessary, and so they can be observed as object, even though one is not fully grasping them. To fully grasp them, one would have to appreciate their capacity to differ, even when they do not.
There is a further developmental stage. As Stage 3 is traditional, Stage 4 is modern, and Stage 5 is post-modern. It is the stage at which ideology and self-authorship become objects within the context of dialectical processes and self-transformation. Thus, one could say that at Level 4 one is one's ideology, and that ideology's most natural expression is that of liberal individualism. At level 5, however, one has an ideology-or two or three or even more. At Level 4, it is possible to reflect on ideology in general, and liberal individualism, in particular. But only if fundamental contradictions do not arise.
In contrast, at Level 3, one is still embedded in an abstract system of ideas, or ideology-the context of Level 4, But one is embedded in it so deeply-the context of one's context-that it cannot be reflected on, even when there is no contradiction involved. Because this context is a level deeper than can ever be perceived, I refer to it as a buried context.
From this perspective, most talk of pragmatism at Level 3 refers to pragmatism within the buried context of an ideology that would take the existing social structure as it's object and would accept it uncritically, despite having the capacity to do otherwise. What is pragmatic is pragmatic within the existing framework of social roles and relationships. It does not question or challenge them.
What does question or challenge them either comes from challenges to the existing order resulting from social forces driving cultural change, or it comes from those responding to those same forces.
Historically, an example of such forces was the gradual development of bourgeois individualism over a period of centuries, leading up to the Protestant Reformation, which eventually lead to the religious wars of Reformation. Those responding to these forces were the theorists who developed the core arguments of modern liberalism centered on tolerance and liberty of conscience. They were not the cause of the conflict. Rather, the ideas they developed were a way of dealing with the conflict, by virtue of being able to reflect on it. Nonetheless, they, too, represented a challenge to the existing order, eventually reshaping it to varying degrees in different places.
As religious tolerance became an established principle, it served to provide the social stability that previously had depended on religious uniformity. Thus, had been unthinkable-tolerance for a different religious belief system, first became a radical idea, then a liberal one, as it was theorized into a system of ideas, and finally a conservative one, as it became absorbed into the existing social system.
In general, those at Level 3 tend to not distinguish clearly between the forces disrupting the existing social order and those individuals trying to mediate and tame those forces. Thus liberals are blamed for global warming, rather than appreciated fro trying to deal with it before it becomes a catastrophic problem.
What this perspective suggests is that conservatives think of themselves as pragmatists, and think of liberals as ideological troublemakers, whom they cannot clearly distinguish from problems that beset their society for which there are no existing coping mechanisms. Because they cannot take those problems as object, they cannot perceive them as real. What they can see are the individual liberal actors, and their strongest tendency is to treat them as maladjusted, treating them as if they were functioning at Level 2, failing-or perhaps more properly refusing--to adjust to the social roles and relationships that define Level 3 reality. This is (at least one reason) why conservatives tend to think of themselves as grown-ups and think of liberals as naïve and childish. Level 4 liberals clearly do not fit neatly into Level 3. Level 3 conservatives cannot comprehend Level 4. Therefore they assign Level 4 liberals to Level 2. (Which is actually more appropriate for libertarians-a subject for another day.)
The further complication comes about when Level 4 itself is insufficient to deal with even more fundamental changes. This is the situation today. But for the purposes of clarity of exposition, I leave that topic as well to some future date.
For now, my conclusion is simply that Kegan's perspective strongly suggests that Level 4 liberals must adopt solutions that Level 3 conservatives will initially oppose as rigid, ideological, disruptive, etc., but will eventually come to accept-with varying degrees of grumbling, provided they actually solve the problems at hand. This does not, however, take into account ideological conservatives, that is, conservatives who try to consciously theorize systems of ideas in opposition to liberalism. Most such theorizing is utterly bogus-see the vanishing objections to massive government intervention, for example. And yet it does exist as a complicating force that intensely resists accepting liberal solutions that can otherwise become perfectly normal stabilizing parts of a newly reshaped social order. |
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