94 Habermas: An intellectual biography
Habermas named this the “decisionist” model, in which techno-
cratic recommendation was harnessed to a politics unconstrained
by ethics. The problem with the decisionist model, Habermas
explained, is that in the movement from technē (technique) to tech-
nology, decisions are “painfully isolated from reason”^18 :
For when this type of science attains a monopoly in the guidance of
rational action, then all competing claims to a scientific orientation
for action must be rejected.... Any theory that relates to praxis in
any way other than by strengthening and perfecting the possibili-
ties for purposive-rational action must now appear dogmatic... The
goal is to respond to every dogmatic assertion with the decisionistic
thesis that practical questions cannot be discussed cogently and in the final
instance must be simply decided upon, one way or another... Action still
requires orientation... but now it is dissected into a rational imple-
mentation of techniques and strategies and an irrational choice of
so-called value-systems. The price paid for economy in the selection of
means is a decisionism set wholly free in the selection of highest-level
ends.^19
More than many continental thinkers, Habermas was receptive
to currents emanating from England and the United States. In this
respect, Habermas is best known for adopting aspects of the prag-
matism of George Herbert Mead, John Dewey, and Charles Sanders
Pierce. Karl-Otto Apel, a philosopher and colleague at the University
of Heidelberg, encouraged Habermas to read the American prag-
matists when they were translated into German in the early 1960s.^20
But a contextual reading shows that the question of decisionism
was the central motivation for Habermas’s interest in the pragma-
tists. As he explained in the 1964 essay: “It was the great discovery
of pragmatism to insist upon the analysis and rational discussion
of the relationship between available techniques and practical deci-
sions, which were completely ignored in the decisionist model.”^21(^18) Habermas, Theory and Practice, 216.
(^19) Ibid., 317–8 (emphasis added).
(^20) See “Interview with the New Left Review”[orig. May 1985], in Die Neue
Unübersichtlichkeit (Frankfurt /Main: Suhrkamp, 1985; DNU hereafter), 215;
for a broader discussion and interviews with Habermas on his reception
of the American pragmatists, see Habermas and Pragmatism, eds. Mitchell
Aboulafia, Myra Bookman, and Catherine Kemp (London: Routledge,
2002 ).
(^21) Habermas, “Verwissenschaftliche Politik und öffentliche Meinung,” 126.