Habermas chose to think with and against his Frankfurt predecessors who had resulted in what we can call in the context of this work a “theoretical pessimism”
From the outset, it must be said that Jürgen Habermas is among the last philosophers of the Frankfurt School, this great neo-Marxist research institution which was created in the first half of the 20th century with the aim of diagnosing different pathologies. of Western modernity.
Habermas is a direct heir of Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno who were, in principle, the first thinkers in the German tradition to have reflected in depth on the crisis of European civilization in the context of the Great War by mobilizing, of course , the philosophy of Karl Marx.
In this case, we can say that Jürgen Habermas is both an heir and a continuation of these theorists who succeeded in implementing an interdisciplinary research project with a view to understanding the evils of their times and above all to explaining why the revolution did not take place as predicted by orthodox Marxism.
Habermas chose to think with and against his Frankfurt predecessors who had resulted in what we can call in the context of this work “theoretical pessimism”. Since, after much reflection, they have not been able to find remedies for the perpetual crisis of the liberal economy which has plunged a large part of the world’s population into the most abject suffering. Habermas, who wanted to give hope, began where these philosophers had left off, remaining, of course, on the path that had been traced. Habermas wrote a body of works in which he took up some of the concerns of Horkheimer, Adorno, and several other Frankfurt School thinkers.
Jürgen Habermas is both an heir and a continuation of these theorists who succeeded in implementing an interdisciplinary research project with a view to understanding the evils of their times and above all to explaining why the revolution did not take place as it did. foreseen by orthodox Marxism.
In “Technology and science as “ideology””, written in German in 1968 and published in French in 1973 by Gallimard editions thanks to a translation and a very long preface by the philosopher Jean René Ladmiral, Habermas proposed to reflect on a problem that we already found in the writings of the two great thinkers cited above in “The Dialectics of Reason” of 1944.
This common concern is none other than the problem of science and technology in capitalist societies. In my opinion, the problem arises for him in this way in the text in question: are science and technology really an instrument of liberation such as the philosophers of the Enlightenment had postulated or do they make a contribution in this enterprise of domination, exploitation and alienation implemented in the liberal economy?
In “Technology and science as “ideology””, Jürgen Habermas wonders whether science and technology in capitalist societies constitute a source of enrichment and happiness or tools that we have in our hands which contribute to our decline. That is to say, a source of misfortune.
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These questions must be formulated in a much more radical manner in order to remain in the spirit of the thesis developed by Habermas: are science and technology not what should emancipate us from the various constraints of life, but affect , control by liberal economics conceiving social relations exclusively in terms of calculations comes to sacrifice humans in the interest of the great masters of the world to speak like Jean Zigler? But, is there not the possibility of bringing technology and science under the control of the liberal economy to arrive at thinking simultaneously about knowledge and human freedom, technical knowledge and the emancipation of all?
Starting from these fundamental questions in this work of reflection on these two human activities, Habermas began his reasoning with a radical critique of what Jean René Ladmiral calls technicism and of the positivist tradition which have this unfortunate tendency to want to explain social facts using the theoretical and methodological grid proposed by applied sciences such as: chemistry, physics and mathematics to name but a few.
Habermas is a direct heir of Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno who were, in principle, the first thinkers in the German tradition to have reflected in depth on the crisis of European civilization in the context of the Great War by mobilizing, of course , the philosophy of Karl Marx.
However, according to Habermas, the nomological sciences that we have just mentioned, which must explain the laws of nature, differ greatly from the praxeo-hermeneutical sciences which are responsible for making us understand the social world. In the preface he proposed, Jean René Ladmiral writes following Jürgen Habermas that “Positivism is this way of hypostasizing science to the point of making it the equivalent of a new faith, giving an answer to All. Technicism results in making scientific knowledge and even more so technology, which is its application, function as an ideology and in expecting solutions for all the problems that arise” (p.6) .
In this passage, we can say that Ladmiral killed several birds with one stone. He clarified the concepts in question while taking up the critique of positivism made by Habermas which is much more systematized in “Knowledge and Interest”. Furthermore, this conceptual clarification allows us to say that there exists, in the thought of the author of “Technology and science as “ideology””, a close relationship between positivism and scientism which consists of this tendency to wanting to explain everything through science.
According to the followers of this belief who are very similar to any Christian who believes that everything can be explained by the Bible, nothing should escape science which becomes, at this moment, a religion in the same way as the others. . For these believers, philosophy has no value.
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These positivist-scientists, taking up the hypothesis supported by Galileo and several other scientists according to which the world is written in mathematical language, firmly believe that they could explain everything by using the method of modern physics. We remember the position adopted by Emile Durkheim in “The rules of sociological method” taken up by a whole group of sociologists which consists of saying that we must “analyze social facts as things”.
In Haiti, in the faculties of human sciences in particular, there is the predominance of this theoretical gesture. Some students and professors tend to naively say in public debates that they do not have to take a position. According to them, their only duty is to highlight the mechanism of social laws. Despite the fact of not positioning oneself could be considered in a certain sense as a position. They would adopt what Max Weber calls in “The Scholar and the Politician” a sort of axiological neutrality.
In Haiti, in the faculties of human sciences in particular, there is the predominance of this theoretical gesture. Some students and professors tend to naively say in public debates that they do not have to take a position.
In the history of ideas, we find this same impulse in certain works of philosophers, notably that of Thomas Hobbes in his “Leviathan” in which he tried to apply the method of emerging physics to his political philosophy. (The principles of science according to Hobbes, Martine Pécharman).
It must be said that this theoretical and methodological choice “is akin to a doctor who wants to treat his patient who has blood and flesh in the same way that a mechanic tries to repair an automobile, an object which is devoid of sensitivity” (Saintyl Shelton, State and Public Security in Haiti, p.28)
However, these theorists are often faced with a set of important questions that they are not able to address from a scientific point of view and provide satisfactory answers. Scientific disciplines which are largely limited unfortunately do not allow them to answer a set of questions which have consequences on the ethico-political level that some philosophers call existential and fundamental questions such as: where do we come from? Why does man exist in the universe? What meaning is given to his life? Is there life after death? Is man exclusively a being of blood and flesh or does he also have a spiritual dimension? Should we legalize abortion? What should be the purpose of School in a society? What should we do to do well? What is justice? What does it mean to be free in a political community? What is a successful education? Should we train the individual for himself or for the society in which he operates?
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How should society be organized to achieve social peace? What is a good life? The complexity of these fundamental questions shows us the limits of those who have blind faith in science and who think that everything could be explained by resorting to mathematical calculations. Science must help us understand what is (meaning) to a certain extent, but ought-to-be (solen) escapes its investigation. Moreover, we can be content to base the duty to be on what exists in reality (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract).
The complexity of these fundamental questions shows us the limits of those who have blind faith in science and who think that everything could be explained by resorting to mathematical calculations.
Furthermore, in the passage that we cited above which is rich on the heuristic level, there is a critique of technology which seeks to solve all human problems by seeking to apply scientific knowledge in the most varied fields. In relation to what has just been said, we come more precisely to a much more global critique of Western modernity, it is said, which has not kept its promise.
In “Technology and science as “ideology””, Habermas tried to place scientific and technical progress in the modern era in tension with the problem of the emancipation of the human race which constitutes the Ariadne’s thread of philosophy. social studies of the Frankfurt School. This text puts us in the presence of a political epistemology or a critical epistemology which has social and political consequences.
Indeed, from the introduction of “Technology and science as “ideology””, Jürgen Habermas set out to discuss the thesis proposed by Herbert Marcuse according to which science and technology turn against humans. With the advent of science and technology, the moderns would have opened Pandora’s box. This point of view presupposes a rejection of the project of the thinkers of the Enlightenment. Marcuse believed that instead of real progress, modern science alienates us.
There would be much more regret and despair than social development l and politics with the advent of modernity. According to Habermas “As early as 1956, in a completely different context, Marcuse had underlined this particular phenomenon which means that in industrially developed capitalist societies domination tends to lose its character of exploitation and repression to become “rational”, without domination politics disappears” (p.6).
In “Technology and science as “ideology””, Habermas tried to place scientific and technical progress in the modern era in tension with the problem of the emancipation of the human race which constitutes the Ariadne’s thread of philosophy. social studies of the Frankfurt School.
What exactly does it mean to make domination and exploitation “rational” in a political community? Is it possible to rationalize the domination of man by man? It seems that the fragment above confronts us with a paradox. And yet. It seems to me that Marcuse used the concept of rationality in the sense of legitimation or foundation to be much clearer.
Unlike Rousseau who showed in “The Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men” by what ceremonial vein the rich had managed to found social inequality in law after the advent of property, Herbert Marcuse manages to lay bare in his works how we managed to legitimize the domination of people in capitalist societies by resorting to science and technology.
This working hypothesis, which we find very daring, already existed in a degraded form in Rousseau’s “Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts”, a text in which he supported the position which consists of saying that progress at the level of knowledge and Moral depravity go hand in hand. Brief ! In Herbert Marcuse, there is a whole critique of this legitimization of domination in force in the capitalist economy. Since we moved from hard to soft power. Dominance becomes much more difficult to combat.
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Jürgen Habermas subscribes to this idea while criticizing it. He does not completely reject the thesis supported by Herbert Marcuse. His work is part of a perspective of transcendence to take up this Hegelian concept; a kind of difference in repetition to say like Deleuze.
Habermas only wanted to show the insufficiency and gaps in the Marcusian thesis on the problem of knowledge in the modern era. Because, according to the author of “Technology and science as “ideology””, Marcuse’s point of view is not sufficiently dialectical and this idea put forward by his predecessor at the Frankfurt School would have an issue that he cannot accept for its consequences on the political level and on the theoretical level. What is this issue? According to Habermas, by wanting to demonstrate the relevance of the thesis of technical and scientific domination on the sociological and philosophical level in a radical manner, this had led Marcuse at the same time to the temptation of a new science.
To the extent that, according to Marcuse, the emancipation we dream of would require the establishment of a new science. There had to be a total change in the way science was done. It seems that we cannot make positive use of the latter.
Brief ! In Herbert Marcuse, there is a whole critique of this legitimization of domination in force in the capitalist economy. Since we moved from hard to soft power. Dominance becomes much more difficult to combat.
Since modern science would have been contaminated by the interests of the capitalist economy, nothing good is possible with it. Marcuse does not wonder whether there is no possibility of comparing modern science with the two sides of Janus, this character having a positive side and a negative side. That is to say, he doesn’t even consider it a double-edged sword. According to Habermas, Marcuse did not see the possibility of reforming, reorienting, let’s say taking science and technology out of capitalist domination so that they were no longer at the service of capital, but at the service of humanity.
Jürgen Habermas’ project was to show the impossibility of the birth of this new science recommended by Marcuse. “My intention here is only to draw attention to a certain ambiguity which manifests itself in Marcuse himself,” writes Habermas (p.10). According to the latter, all is not lost contrary to what was imagined by the author of “The One-Dimensional Man”.
He sees in the temptation of a new science in Marcuse the seeds of Jewish mysticism which postulates the imminent arrival of a superior being with the aim of regenerating the world, of bringing it definitively under the domination of Satan. This new science would be, according to Habermas, the profane version of God who is responsible for saving humanity from original sin. Marcuse’s position being restored in “Technology and science as “ideology””, Habermas was going to pose the question of emancipation in relation to modern science from an original point of view. He wonders, for his part, how to reorient technology and science so that they are no longer a danger for humanity.
Since modern science would have been contaminated by the interests of the capitalist economy, nothing good is possible with it.
But before showing how Habermas answered this question, let’s see some harmful effects of science on our existence and the points of convergence between the two philosophers.
Indeed, instead of controlling them, technical objects instrumentalize us without realizing it. They have disastrous consequences on our everyday lives according to Marcuse and Habermas. For example, every morning we wake up, even before brushing our teeth and washing ourselves, we run to our phones to see what is happening on the internet. People are so alienated, some people don’t feel good when their cell phones are dead. Fake news assail us. Today, pornographic films are becoming much closer to our children than twenty years ago.
With the advent of New Information and Communication Technologies (NICT), young people read less and less according to several studies. They spend much more time in front of screens than in libraries, which are spaces for training critical thinking. The mass media constantly put us in the presence of sex, sport, blood and scandal, to use the 4 S theory developed by Claude Paris and Yves Bastarache. Since we are always busy, we no longer have time to think about the big problems of our existence.
Indeed, instead of controlling them, technical objects instrumentalize us without realizing it.
We are instrumentalized by a set of technical objects that we have created in order to facilitate our comfort. Today studies reveal a deficiency in social connections. What binds us now? People are becoming more and more atomized, Zygmunt Bauman tells us in “Liquid Life”. We can be in a space for hours without speaking to each other because each person is busy with their gadgets. The direct effects of technology on interpersonal relationships have become much more palpable.
There is a kind of weakening of human life. Illnesses due to the installation of devices, particularly satellite dishes, are increasing more and more; traffic accidents caused by the use of telephones and the depravity of youth are increasing. There are currently ecological disasters caused by the industrialization of the economy which prevent us from living in a viable and livable environment, and which cause thousands of deaths each year.
Furthermore, the contemporary Haitian historian Vertus Saint-Louis has just shown in a monumental work the existing relationship between the colonial enterprise implemented by Europeans between the 15th and 18th centuries with the advent of modern sciences. According to Vertus “the growth of modern science went hand in hand with the overseas expansion of Europe” (Vertus Saint-Louis, Sciences et overseas, p.16). On the other hand, Yves Lacoste taught us that geography is primarily used to wage war.
Thanks to the science and technology that allowed us to make nuclear bombs, today we have the opportunity to destroy this civilization that we have created over many thousands of years. We remember the question posed by Hannah Arendt in “What is politics?” She wondered if politics still makes sense when we have the ability to destroy everything in the blink of an eye.
We are instrumentalized by a set of technical objects that we have created in order to facilitate our comfort. Today studies reveal a deficiency in social connections.
With progress in science and technology, it seems that we have lost power over ourselves and the things around us. Descartes’ project which consists of making us “as masters and possessors of nature” has almost no meaning currently. Because, “In man-machine systems,” Habermas explains, “it is ultimately the machine that has the upper hand; there is a sort of reversal at the end of which the program instructions are dictated by the machine” (p.15).
In this case, there is a complete challenge to this idea according to which “Thanks to the extension of the domains of scientific and technical rationality, human subjects find themselves put back in possession of the freedom which defines them and they access well-being. be” (p.15)
Furthermore, Habermas believes that there is indeed a tendency in modern capitalist societies to give all political power to experts to the detriment of the proletarian class. We are moving more and more from democracy to technocracy. Because it is the technicians and scientists who say this is what we must do, taking into consideration, of course, the interests of the bosses who only seek to increase their profits even when people lack the basics.
Since democracy is replaced by technocracy, individual freedom is violated. People feel that they are free, autonomous while they are largely controlled. They are purely and simply subject to decisions adopted by people who are generally subordinate to the interest of capital: the competent (Jacques Bidet, L’école du commun du peuple). People are no longer subjects, but objects of politics and economics. They must consume the goods produced by the market and internalize the choices of decision-makers who are much more interested in what the experts say than in the popular will (Jean Baudriard, The Consumer Society).
With progress in science and technology, it seems that we have lost power over ourselves and the things around us.
“A depoliticization of the large mass of the population and a deterioration of what made public opinion political, these are two elements which are an integral part of a system of domination tending to exclude from public discussion the problems of practice,” according to Habermas (123).
This depoliticization of the population is due to the scientization of politics and the politicization of science and technology. We have known for a long time that in the United States the army and university centers work together. Ladmir al tells us that in the United States the Department of Defense and NASA are the two largest sponsors of scientific research. There is currently a marriage between science-technology-industry-army-administration. Science and politics have a close relationship in the capitalist economy. The two come together to reduce as much as possible the influence of the proletariat which is in principle, in orthodox Marxism, the true subject of history.
In “Technology and Science as “Ideology”,” Habermas revised this hypothesis. Because, according to him, the liberal economy no longer has salaried work at its base. That is to say, the work carried out by the proletarian class. “After a few others, J. Habermas draws the conclusion that the Marxist theory of labor value will have to be revised, because it is intellectual work (which we can say, in Franglais, more or less “sophisticated”) which is now the effective basis of our economy,” writes Lamiral following Jürgen Habermas. (p.9)
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Science and technology reduce the importance of the labor force of proletarians in industries. We are even trying to replace it with technical devices, particularly robots, which would be much more efficient. Which creates much more unemployment in our capitalist societies.
At the same time, with the development of the human sciences, in particular the research carried out in social psychology, we have a body of knowledge which allows capitalists to manipulate, let us say to manufacture, the consent of people, to borrow in part the title of a work by the linguist and American philosopher N. Chomsky.
People would turn into toys in the hands of scientists and capitalists with the development of the human sciences which showed what could be done to have total control over individuals. “It is therefore not surprising that industry takes charge of a part of scientific and technical research,” wrote Jean René Ladmiral.
This use of science and technology is truly blind and puts modern society on the brink of the abyss. We risk losing everything when everything is subordinated to the capitalist economy. What to do in this case? Is there an alternative solution? By seeking to control everything by resorting to science, don’t we risk losing control of everything?
People feel that they are free, autonomous while they are largely controlled. They are purely and simply subject to decisions adopted by people who are generally subordinate to the interests of capital: the competent.
According to Habermas this problem is not insurmountable. He tells us that “we must not confuse the ability to dispose of things (VerfÜgenkönnen) that the empirical sciences make possible and the skills to enlightened action (aufgerklart)” (p.86). This clarification is of capital importance in Habermasian philosophy. Empirical sciences help us to exploit nature, to revolutionize production processes, but unfortunately they do not tell us how we should guide action. They do not teach us how to make our world much more human.
“To the extent that sciences are effectively implemented for the benefit of political practice, the obligation is objectively increasingly strong for men to also reflect now, beyond the technical recommendations they give, on the consequences that this entails on the practical level”, estimates Jürgen Habermas (p.129)
We are at another level of analysis. We move from description to a much higher level which is prescription. The fragment just cited presupposes the whole problem of the moralization of scientific and technical practice in modern societies.
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Habermas promotes an ethics of science and technology. In relation to this requirement for control of scientific activity, he implemented three solutions of unequal importance in “Technology and science as “ideology””.
First, there is “the decisionist model” which consists of giving decision-making power in the community to those who represent the people. The disadvantage is that these so-called representatives of the people risk governing according to their most immediate interests. Then, Habermas implemented “the technocratic model” which we have already developed extensively. In the case of this model, governing consists less and less of “practicing an art” and more and more of “applying a science” according to Ladmiral. The politician becomes a simple executor.
Finally, according to Habermas, the alternative to the instrumentation of science and technology in the capitalist economy is found in the “pragmatic model” which consists of the dialectic of knowledge and power leading to a dialectic of power and of wanting. So that there is not an exclusive instrumentalization of science and technology for economic purposes, there must necessarily be collaboration between scientists, politicians, and the lived world.
Habermas promotes an ethics of science and technology.
According to Habermas “a scientific society could only constitute itself as an emancipated society to the extent that, passing through the minds of men, there would be mediation between science and technology on the one hand and daily practice on the other” (p. 131). There needs to be control in the application of scientific knowledge in the political community. “According to the pragmatic model, technical and strategic recommendations can only be effectively applied in practice through the political mediation of public opinion”, selon Habermas (p.109).
With the integration of the concept of public opinion in this passage, we are again in the presence of a questioning of the pretension of positivist epistemology tending to separate science and politics, knowledge and interest. According to Habermas, scientific research must be carried out according to the will and needs of all citizens, in the interest of the general will as Rousseau would say. This requirement implies the subordination of scientists and technicians to the social life world. From this perspective, Habermas asks “How can the power to dispose of things be reintegrated within the consensus of citizens engaged in different actions and negotiations” (p.88).
To achieve this, according to Habermas, “it seems […] that a certain form of reciprocal communication is both possible and necessary, so that on the one hand scientific experts “advise” the bodies which make decisions and conversely politicians “place orders” on scientists depending on the need for practice” (p.106-107). It is through communication and public discussion that people will be able to understand the harmful consequences of science and technology on nature and man, and even at the same time how to remedy them. This requires a democratization of knowledge. This is what Habermas calls the formation of public opinion through the popularization of scientific and technical knowledge. This thesis implies the need for the implementation of a real public education system.
With the integration of the concept of public opinion in this passage, we are again in the presence of a questioning of the pretension of positivist epistemology tending to separate science and politics, knowledge and interest.
To the extent that knowledge becomes accessible to everyone we are able to reduce, let’s say make inoperative, the power of bureaucracy and capitalist domination over people. Habermas’ gesture, in this case, consists of giving power back to the population. People must be able to think about their emancipation themselves by using a set of knowledge produced about the social world and the surrounding world. We must move from bureaucracy, from technocracy to what I call in the context of this work a “ enlightened democracy » in which politicians, scientists and people decide by mutual agreement.
In short, we can say that this idea developed inTechnology and science as “ ideology »is innovative. Habermas tried to reduce the effects of instrumental reason widely developed and explained by his predecessors: Adorno, Horkheimer and Marcuse to name just a few. Habermas believes that it is still possible to move from this instrumental reason which conceives everything that exists in terms of means to a communicative reason with a view to thinking about the emancipation of people. However, we must ask ourselves if such a possibility actually still exists when we know that the neoliberal economy manages to integrate everything today.
How can we think about the emancipation of people in capitalist societies through the democratization of knowledge when we know that the market comes to increasingly control the spaces for the production and popularization of knowledge, and that scientists and politicians depend greatly more of the logic of capital? Can we make this ethic of science and technology effective while remaining within the capitalist economy?
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Doesn’t the liberation of people from bureaucratic domination require an exit from the capitalist economy? Doesn’t the thesis developed by Jürgen Habermas, while original, seem a little idealistic, and even utopian to a certain extent? Marcuse’s thesis was too radical, but we find that of Jürgen Habermas too complacent towards the capitalist economy. One might wonder if there is not a better way to combat the liberal economy and its pathologies.
Par Saintyl Shelton
Cover image: Habermas during a discussion at the Munich School of Philosophy in 2008. | © Wolfram Huke
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