Toward a Rational Society E-Book

Jürgen Habermas

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 213

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Universities must transmit technically exploitable knowledge. That is, they must meet an industrial society's need for qualified new generations and at the same time be concerned with the expanded reproduction of education itself. In addition, universities must not only transmit technically exploitable knowledge, but also produce it. This includes both information flowing from research into the channels of industrial utilization, armament, and social welfare, and advisory knowledge that enters into strategies of administration, government, and other decision-making powers, such as private enterprises. Thus, through instruction and research the university is immediately connected with functions of the economic process.

Leseprobe

Contents

Translator’s Preface

Chapter One: The University in a Democracy—Democratization of the University

Chapter Two: Student Protest in the Federal Republic of Germany

Chapter Three: The Movement in Germany: A Critical Analysis

Three Intentions

First Justification: The Theory of Imperialism

Second Justification: Neoanarchism

Third Justification: Cultural Revolution

The Actual Results

The Source of the Protest Potential

What Is to Be Done?

Chapter Four: Technical Progress and the Social Life-World

Chapter Five: The Scientization of Politics and Public Opinion

Chapter Six: Technology and Science as “Ideology”

Notes

Index

German text © 1969 Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am

Main English translation © 1987 Polity Press

The first three essays were published in Protestbewegung und Hochschulreform (1969) by Suhrkamp Verlag. The first and third essays were abridged for the English edition by the author. The last three essays were published in Technik und Wissenschaft als ‘Ideologie’ by Suhrkamp Verlag in 1968.

This English translation first published in 1971 by Heinemann Educational Books. This edition first published in 1987 by Polity Press in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd.

Reprinted 1989, 1997

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ISBN 0–435–82381–7 (pbk)

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Translator’s Preface

The reader has a right to be informed about the noise level of the translation channel. One way to do this is to comment on some discrepancies between the codes:

1) In current English, “practical” often means “down-to-earth” or “expedient.” In the text, this sense of “practical” would fall under “technical.” “Practical” (praktisch) always refers to symbolic interaction within a normative order, to ethics and politics.

2) Although German has adopted to some extent the corrupt usage of “technology” (Technologie) to mean technics rather than its study, the adjective technisch means technical and technological. That is, it emphasizes the form of making and controlling as well as the machines used in these processes. It has been translated in both ways. Similarly, Technik means technique, technics, and technology.

3) Zweckrational, that is rational with regard to purposes or ends, has been translated as “purposive-rational.”

4) There are several German words whose extensions are wider than the English words with which they often must be translated. In consequence, important connotations get lost.

a) Wissenschaft means knowledge and science. Because of the English equation of science and natural science, “science” is frequently too restricted a translation and “knowledge” too loose.

b) Bildung literally means “formation,” but also “education” and (cultural) “cultivation.” In German these narrower meanings always connote an overall developmental process. Willensbildung, literally the “formation of will,” has been translated as “decision-making.” Given the meaning of Bildung, Willensbildung emphasizes the process (of deliberation and discourse) through which a decision was “formed,” not the moment at which it was “made.”

c) As an abstract noun, die Öffentlichkeit literally means “publicity” in the sense of publicness. For obvious reasons, it has been translated instead as “the public realm.” But, as a concrete noun, it also means the public. Thus its use in German bears a more concrete connotation than the former and a more abstract one than the latter.

d) Herrschaft literally means “lordship,” i.e. generally “domination’ and thus by extension “political power,” “authority,” or “control.” No one of these terms is univocally adequate, especially because of differences between their implicit valuations. in this translation, Herrschaft has often been rendered as “political power,” but also as “domination” or “authority.”

5) It is unfortunate that there is no English equivalent for Naturwüchsigkeit, since the concept is of importance for critical thought. Literally meaning “growing-out-of-natureness,” the term refers to entities or structures that just develop spontaneously in continuity with what came before, without ever having been subjected to consciously directed human will. It is a concise way of saying le mort saisit le vif (the dead seizes the living). In the text it is usually rendered as “unplanned, fortuitous development.”

6) Two important hermeneutical terms are Selbstverständnis (self-understanding) and Vorverständnis (preunder-standing).

a) “self-understanding” means a person’s or group’s own interpretation of its motives, norms, and goals.

b) “preunderstanding” is the analogue in the sphere of understanding and interpretation to a priori knowledge in the sphere of cognition. That is, it refers to structures of meaning and intention already operative in our approach to what we interpretively understand, which both make possible our understanding and significantly predetermine it.

7) By this time the “life-world” (Lebensweli) has become an accepted term in English. Derived from Husserl, it refers to the irreducible fabric of meanings of everyday life, in which the meanings of specialized, constructed, or formalized languages are embedded.

8) “Mediatization” (Mediatisierung) of the population refers to the suspension of the latter’s substantive decisionmaking power through its encapsulation in organizations and political parties that predefine its needs with regard to the stability of the political system.

9) “Actionism” (Aktionismus) means not activism but the policy of direct political action as a compulsive response to all conflict situations.

10) “Critical” retains the Kantian sense of self-reflective examination of the limits and validity of knowledge.

The preparation of this translation called upon the resources of a number of people, all of whom participated not only in the work but in the desire to have the works of Jiirgen Habermas available in English. I am particularly grateful to Paul Breines, Charlotte Riley, and Shierry M. Weber for reading parts of the manuscript, making useful revisions, and discussing the substance of these essays with me at length. Barbara Behrendt was helpful by typing and by providing what is still called “moral support.” I should also like to thank Volker Meja, Claus Muller, Claus Offe, and Rusty Simonds for clearing up some difficulties.

Jeremy J. Shapiro

CHAPTER ONE

The University in a Democracy—Democratization of the University*

In the vicinity of Sde Boker in the Negev, Israel’s large desert, Ben-Gurion wants to found a university town to serve the exploitation of this desert area. The new town is being planned for ten thousand students and the corresponding number of faculty and is to bring Israeli youth into contact with the development of the desert through the acquisition of the necessary knowledge of the natural sciences and technology. It is intended primarily to develop the trained personnel who will be necessary for future industry in the desert. In particular, the development of such industry will involve enterprises that require much scientific knowledge and little raw material.

This news item appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of January 11, 1967. If, without additional knowledge, we read it correctly, a university is to serve as an instrument for the industrial development of an almost inaccessible region. From the very beginning industrial production will be initiated at the level of the most advanced technology. For the future of Israel this is probably a vital project. For us, however, the idea of a university as the starting point for the industrialization of a strip of desert is unusual. Yet the Israeli example is not so out of the way. Our educational institutions also have tasks to fulfill in the system of social labor.