100 Habermas: An intellectual biography
Into this debate stepped Hermann Lübbe (b. 1929), a young
conservative whose career eventually would form the mirror image
of Habermas’s: Lübbe became the most recognized conservative phi-
losopher and public intellectual in postwar Germany. For Habermas,
Lübbe’s essay, “On the Political Theory of Technocracy”(1962),
revealed nascent tensions in the new conservativism.^53 Lübbe
followed Schelsky in observing an increase in the power of experts
vis-à-vis politicians. Like Habermas, however, Lübbe reproached
the advocates of the technocratic model for what Habermas called
“camouflaging” political questions with the “logic of reality” (als
Logik der Sachen tarnen). Ironically, it was from his political oppo-
nent Lübbe that Habermas borrowed the insight that while the
scope of decision had narrowed somewhat, technocratic rationaliza-
tion of the procedures of decision, “... [had reduced] the decision
to its pure form, purging it of every element that could be made... accessible to rational analysis.”^54 In other words, Lübbe saw that
the ideology of technical decision-making was poised to become the
new ideological justification for the politician’s refusal to submit his
or her values to discussion. The difference between them, accord-
ing to Habermas, was that Lübbe “[maintained]... the antithesis
between technical knowledge and the exercise of political power as
defined by Weber and Carl Schmitt,”^55 whereas Habermas sought to
overcome the antinomy.
Habermas’s critique of the antithesis of technical knowledge and
political power was that it relied on a static concept of values that
obscured the way in which values and techniques evolved dialecti-
cally over time. Technical progress could produce new interests and
values. For a dialectical solution to what he envisioned as a static
opposition of values and techniques, Habermas looked to Dewey’s
pragmatism. In pragmatism, Habermas found a model for the
critical interaction of expert and politician. Since the development
of new techniques was already governed by a “horizon of needs”
and values, this horizon need only be made explicit.^56 Sketching^
(^53) Hermann Lübbe, “Zur politischen Theorie der Technokratie”[1962],
in Theorie und Entscheidung: Studien zum Primat der praktischen Vernunft
(Freiburg: Rombach, 1971), 32–53. The essay was published originally in Der
Staat: Zeitschrift für Staatslehre, öffentliches Recht und Verfassungsgeschichte.
(^54) Habermas,“Verwissenschaftliche Politik,”124.
(^55) Ibid.
(^56) Ibid.,136; TRS, 74.