Theme: Pathway to Meltdown
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
Information provided by the strictly empirical sciences can be incorporated in the social life-world only through its technical utilization, as technological knowledge, serving the expansion of our power of technical control. 1 Thus, such information is not on the same level as the action-orienting self-understanding of social groups. Hence, without mediation, the information content of the sciences cannot be relevant to that part of practical knowledge which gains expression in literature. It can only attain significance through the detour marked by the practical results of technical progress. 1 Taken for itself, knowledge of atomic physics remains without consequence for the interpretation of our life-world, and to this extent the cleavage between the two cultures is inevitable. Only when with the aid of physical theories we can carry out nuclear fission, only when information is exploited for the development of productive or destructive forces, can its revolutionary practical results penetrate the literary consciousness of the life-world: poems arise from consideration of Hiroshima and not from the elaboration of hypotheses about the transform.
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
The problematic relation of literature and science is only one segment of a much broader problem: How is it possible to translate technically exploitable knowledge into the practical consciousness of a social life-world? 2 This question obviously sets a new task, not only or even primarily for literature. The skewed relation of the two cultures is so disquieting only because, in the seeming conflict between the two competing cultural traditions, a true life-problem of scientific civilization becomes apparent: namely, how can the relation between technical progress and the social life-world, which today is still clothed in a primitive, traditional, and unchosen form, be reflected upon and brought under the control of rational discussion? 2
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
Today, the self-understanding of social groups and their worldview as articulated in ordinary language is mediated by the hermeneutic appropriation of traditions as traditions. In this situation questions of life conduct demand a rational discussion that is not focused exclusively either on technical means or on the application of traditional behavioral norms. The reflection that is required extends beyond the production of technical knowledge and the hermeneutical clarification of traditions to the employment of technical means in historical situations whose objective conditions (potentials, institutions, interests) have to be interpreted anew each time in the framework of a self-understanding determined by tradition. 3
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
The only type of experience which is admitted as scientific today according to positivistic criteria is not capable of this transposition into practice. The capacity for control made possible by the empirical sciences is not to be confused with the capacity for enlightened action. 4 But is science, therefore, completely discharged of this task of action-orientation, or does the question of academic education in the framework of a civilization transformed by scientific means arise again today as a problem of the sciences themselves?
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
If technology proceeds from science, and I mean the technique of influencing human behavior no less than that of dominating nature, then the assimilation of this technology into the practical life-world, bringing the technical control of particular areas within the reaches of the communication of acting men, really requires scientific reflection. The prescientific horizon of experience becomes infantile when it naively incorporates contact with the products of the most intensive rationality. 5 Culture and education can then no longer indeed be restricted to the ethical dimension of personal attitude. Instead, in the political dimension at issue, the theoretical guidance of action must proceed from a scientifically explicated understanding of the world. The relation of technical progress and social life-world and the translation of scientific information into practical consciousness is not an affair of private cultivation. 5
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
Even if technical control of physical and social conditions for preserving life and making it less burdensome had attained the level that Marx expected would characterize a communist stage of development, it does not follow that they would be linked automatically with social emancipation of the sort intended by the thinkers of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century and the Young Hegelians in the nineteenth. For the techniques with which the development of a highly industrialized society could be brought under control can no longer be interpreted according to an instrumental model, as though appropriate means were being organized for the realization of goals that are either presupposed without discussion or clarified through communication. 7
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
In the face of research, technology, the economy, and administration—integrated as a system that has become autonomous—the question prompted by the neohumanistic ideal of culture, namely, how can society possibly exercise sovereignty over the technical conditions of life and integrate them into the practice of the life-world, seems hopelessly obsolete. In the technical state such ideas are suited at best for “the manipulation of motives to help bring about what must happen anyway from the point of view of objective necessity.” 8
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
The assertion that politically consequential decisions are reduced to carrying out the immanent exigencies of disposable techniques and that therefore they can no longer be made the theme of practical considerations, serves in the end merely to conceal pre-existing, unreflected social interests and prescientific decisions. As little as we can accept the optimistic convergence of technology and democracy, the pessimistic assertion that technology excludes democracy is just as untenable. 9
From p. [INSERT PAGE NUMBER] in Social Theory Re-Wired
The fact that this is a matter for reflection means that it does not belong to the professional competence of specialists. The substance of domination is not dissolved by the power of technical control. To the contrary, the former can simply hide behind the latter. The irrationality of domination, which today has become a collective peril to life, could be mastered only by the development of a political decision-making process tied to the principle of general discussion free from domination. Our only hope for the rationalization of the power structure lies in conditions that favor political power for thought developing through dialogue. The redeeming power of reflection cannot be supplanted by the extension of technically exploitable knowledge. 10
Habermas argues that unreflective technology is anti-democratic, changing our lives as “inevitable progress” or through technocratic control. The PEW Research Center recently served nearly 1000 experts on technology about the consequences of new communication tech for democracy. Read through the findings of that study. Experts pointed toward two broad themes leading to democratic disruption--further empowerment of the powerful and erosion of trust in public institutions--and three reasons for democratic optimism: the inevitability of innovation, human agency, and technology as a solution to its own problems. Which of these disruptions are most concerning to you, and why? Which themes of optimism give you the most hope for democratic systems, and why? Ultimately, do you think that new technologies are undermining democratic decision-making? Why or why not?
In this first section, Habermas is differentiating between two different ways of knowing the world. On the one hand, we live mundane, daily lives that are full of common sense, involve subjectively intense emotions and experiences, and are heavily shaped by culture. Habermas calls this way of knowing the life-world. But science isn’t a part of the life-world. It perceives the world in intersubjectively rational ways—that is, it uses the scientific method to come to systematic, rational conclusions about the world that we can, if we know how to read the empirical data, mostly agree on (this agreement is called intersubjectivity). For example, the experience of witnessing a nuclear explosion might inspire distinct feelings in different people: some might feel awe over its power, others horror over its potential to kill, and still others terror over its potential to end all life on earth. But with the right training, anyone could understand the science behind nuclear fission in the same way, through a series of mathematical formulas. Habermas says that the rational, scientific world doesn’t affect the life-world unless science is applied in ways that change the life-world. Nobody writes poems about the awesome power of nuclear fission based on a bunch of formulas; it’s only when scientists use that power to create bombs or powerplants that people start to experience fission in their lives.
Here Habermas is raising a central question: how does the rationality and progress of science come to be integrated into the culturally specific, historically contingent, a-rational life-world? Put differently, how does science’s empirical, systematic, objective understanding of the world get translated into our non-technical, mundane daily lives, which are driven by cultural stuff that’s passed down over generations?
Habermas in this section admits that societies have always drawn on rational thinking in some areas of life, especially administration. But today, rationality gets applied to everything in two ways. First, we think rationally about how to apply science to improve life through technology. The result is a sense that science is always progressing. Second, we don’t blindly accept tradition; rather, we question it based on whether it’s rational. The result of these two applications of rationality—technology and the questioning of tradition—is that we’re constantly rethinking the relationship between the two. Put differently, we have to constantly interpret how our historically contingent cultures (tradition) and new applications of science (technology) fit together. For example, think about social media. This new technology—based on the rational sciences of computer engineering and programming—helps us communicate and build communities across distances and times in ways that we couldn’t in the past. Yet at the same time, social media can undermine traditional relationships. You may talk everyday through social media with friends across the globe but not know the names of the people who live in the apartment next to yours. Or perhaps your parents had a rule of “no cellphones at the table” so that you had to talk together as a family. These examples illustrate how the technology of social media has to be interpreted and integrated within different traditional social relationships like friendship and family.
In this section, Habermas is arguing that there’s been a change in how scientific theory gets applied to our daily lives. In the past, science was primarily disseminated within contexts where tradition was really important. Habermas uses university education as an example. At universities, people learned about science alongside humanistic and theological understandings of the world, and they had to fit scientific findings into these traditions. Today, in contrast, tradition and science have become uncoupled, with many applied scientists working to uncover rational approaches to get stuff done, regardless of the philosophical or social traditions that these technologies disrupt. Habermas is saying that today, we often imagine as progress our raw technical ability to control the world through science when, in reality, that control should be filtered through ethical and humanistic ways of understanding the world.
Habermas is arguing here that the process of incorporating science into the life-world necessarily makes pre-scientific understandings of the world seem obsolete, simple, or just wrong, requiring careful reflection as to which aspects we want to maintain and which we want to rationalize. That process, Habermas argues, is political, requiring us to dialogue together.
Habermas here states the central concern of this writing: how can we incorporate the rationality of science into a democratic society.. Note that democracy for Habermas is ultimately communicative; that is, a democratic society is one where people use logical, carefully thought-out arguments to persuade each other, rather than coercing or manipulating each other. Democratic institutions, for Habermas, are meant to protect spaces for logical communication and persuasion.
Habermas is critiquing Marxism by arguing that its solutions to capitalism’s problems are too technocratic—that is, they give control of society over to technical experts, assuming that everyone shares the same goals in terms of societal development. The problem is that we don’t all agree about what it means to live a good life. A technocratic solution to societal development—even when it allows a society’s members to live better lives materially—can inhibit people’s ability to exercise the true freedom and agency that the enlightenment promised. In this sense, technocracy opposes democracy as technical solutions replace the communicative deliberation that’s fundamental to a democratic society.
Here Habermas is articulating another view of the relationship between technology and society: rather than technocrats directing society, technology itself advances in an automatic, rational way, forcing society to figure out applications for new technologies. We might think of this approach to tech and society as the “technological progress approach,” as it imagines technology inevitably directing and changing society positively. This approach is anti-democratic, says Habermas, because it posits social change as inevitable, not as a series of political decisions growing out of a particular culture and tradition. For example, think of Facebook. Nobody voted that we should adopt Facebook, and a small group of shareholders decide how the company runs. Facebook is inherently undemocratic. Yet the platform has drastically changed how we live, with its public relations and marketing team framing those changes as inevitable and positive, not as choices that come with both positives and negatives to our lives.
Habermas makes the point that in framing changes caused by new technology as inevitable, the technological progress approach really just hides the interests of people invested in particular technologies. The inevitability frame makes it seem like there’s no point in asking whether a technology is bad for democracy because the technology will develop and change society no matter what we do.
Habermas concludes that we need to talk logically and collectively about the potential consequences of new technologies on our society rather than simply accepting them without question. In other words, we need democracy to control technological change, not the other way around.