98 Habermas: An intellectual biography
that the development of a long-term research policy in the Federal
Republic of Germany was an important impetus behind Habermas’s
questioning of the relationship of science and democratic decision-
making in this period. Committees and ministries designed to
discuss the industrial implementation of scientific research were
established in 1957, 1962, and 1963. In the early 1960s, Minister
Erhard arranged for regular exchanges between representatives of
university and industry to promote useful scientific innovation.^40
In addition to these trends in German social planning, the
challenge posed by nuclear power and weaponry was another key
context informing Habermas’s first reflections on technocracy.
Habermas was an outspoken participant in the movement against
the arming of the German Army with atomic weapons in 1957–9.
His codirector at the Max Planck Institute was Carl Friedrich von
Weiszäcker (1912–2007), a physicist and philosopher with ties to the
peace movement. Weiszäcker had signed the Göttingen Manifesto
in 1957 against the atomic weapons deployment and was a founding
member of the Association of German Scientists.
The leading idea behind the foundation of the Max Planck
Institute in Starnberg^41 was “... the danger to humanity posed by
the atom bomb.”^42 Habermas read the first critiques of Schelsky’s
lecture in the forum for reform scientists, Atomzeitalter (Atomic
Age).^43 The mobilization of German and international atomic scien-
tists in the public sphere became Habermas’s model for how scientists
could challenge technocracy: “Scientists are objectively compelled
to go beyond the technical recommendations that they produce and
reflect upon their practical consequences.” This was especially and
dramatically true for atomic physicists.^44 While examples of such(^40) Thornhill, Political Theory, 147–8.
(^41) Max Planck Institute for the Study of the Life-Conditions of the Scientific-
Technical World in Starnberg (der Lebensbedingungen der wissenschaftlichen-
technischen Welt); the institute’s name itself illustrates the discourse under
discussion here. Senghaas, Abschreckung und Frieden. Studien zur Kritik
organisierter Friedlosigkeit [1969], revised ed. (Frankfurt: Europäische
Verlagsanstalt, 1981). Senghaas described deterrence as a “technocratic”
doctrine.
(^42) Cited in Jeffrey Herf, War by Other Means: Soviet Power, West German
Resistance, and the Battle of the Euromissiles (New York: Free Press, 1984 ), 93.
(^43) Habermas cites, for example, Hans P. Bahrdt, “Helmut Schelskys technis-
cher Staat,” Atomzeitalter 9 (Frankfurt, 1961 ), and other essays from issues
of Atomzeitalter in 1961 and 1963.
(^44) Habermas, “Verwissenschaftliche Politik,” 143; Towards a Rational Society:
Student Protest, Science and Politics, 78–9, TRS hereafter,