The “Great Refusal” and Social Theory, 1961–1981 117
Habermas credited the student protesters with insight: “[P]rotest
has brought to consciousness the distinction between technical and
practical problems.” But, on the other hand, he is critical of their
blind spots: “Mistrust of technocratic developments [at the univer-
sity] is warranted. But it gets mixed with exaggerated generalizations
that can turn into sentiment directed against science and technol-
ogy as such.”^127 In this manner, Habermas distinguished between
a valid critique of “the technical” (and its corollary, technocracy)
and a critique of science and technology tout court, which he con-
sidered invalid. Because both technocracy and the technological
utopianism of the left seemed to erase the sphere of political action,
Habermas shifted into the role of supportive critic of the student
movement. The obverse of his critical scolding of the actionist
descent into illegality, however, was his almost florid praise for the
“New Sensibility” of the student generation – “its special sensitiv-
ity to the untruth of prevailing legitimations” of the social order.^128
The students were the first to question the values of possessive indi-
vidualism, competition, status-seeking, and an orientation toward
achievement.^129 Habermas found in their sympathy for these values
an affinity with what classical Western philosophers called the quest
for the good life.^130 Their “New Sensibility”^131 (Neuen Sensibilität)
was a product of a generational experience of scientific-technical
progress and material abundance that enabled them to ask the right
questions. “Why,” they asked, “despite the advanced stage of tech-
nological development is the life of the individual still determined
by the dictates of professional careers, the ethics of status competi-
tion, and by values of possessive individualism?”^132
Their goals represented a laudable break with the histori-
cal objectives of German social democracy and the post–World
War II European welfare state: “Not for a higher portion of social
c ompensations – income, free time – do they struggle, but against
these categories of ‘compensation’ themselves.... It is ever more diffi-
cult to make status assignment on the basis of individual achievement
appear even subjectively convincing [to them].”^133 H ab e r m a s d i s c e r ne d
(^127) Ibid., 16.
(^128) Habermas, “Studentenprotest,” in PuH, 170.
(^129) Ibid.
(^130) Ibid.
(^131) Habermas, “Einleitung,” in PuH, 36.
(^132) Habermas, “Technik und Wissenschaft als ‘Ideologie,’” in TWI, 103.
(^133) Ibid., 85.