120 Habermas: An intellectual biography
and science today also take on the function of legitimating politi-
cal power, is the key to analyzing the changed constellation.”^143
The problem, they agreed, was the opacity of the “technocratic
consciousness” that legitimated excluding practical questions from
public deliberation. Habermas also agreed with Marcuse that sci-
entific-technical progress blurred the boundary between techni-
cal power and institutional framework, or technology and political
decision. The “technocracy thesis [serves as] an ideology for the new
politics” and as “... a background ideology that penetrates into the
consciousness of the depoliticized mass of the population.”14 4 W hile
Habermas was convinced by Marcuse’s argument that technology
was an effective ideology of advanced capitalism, he dissented from
Marcuse on two major points, and these dissents helped to sharpen
Habermas’s own evolving positions.
First, Marcuse proposed that science could be something other
than an expression of “instrumental reason.” He envisioned a mode
of scientific mastery that was liberating rather than repressive: “The
viewpoint of possible technical control would be replaced by one of
preserving, fostering and releasing the potentialities of nature.”^145
Habermas asserted that “Marcuse is tempted to pursue this idea of
a New Science... [that]... today constitutes the central thought of
[Ernst] Bloch’s philosophy, and in reflected forms, directs the more
secret hopes of Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer and Theodor
Ador no.”14 6 However, since modern science is inherently oriented
to technical control, this “fraternal” view of nature, Habermas
explained, has no place within it: “For scientific-technical prog-
ress in general, there is no more ‘humane’ substitute.” Technology
is not a “historically surpassable project,” as Marcuse had argued,
but “a ‘project’ of the human species as a whole.”^147 In other words,
nature would remain disenchanted, science would remain rational,
and technology would remain an inescapable part of the human
condition.
By refusing to be compensated for work with money and lei-
sure or to be assigned status on the basis of achievement, wrote
Habermas, the students were the first generation that(^143) Habermas, “Technik und Wissenschaft,” 100–1.
14 4 Ibid.,105.
(^145) Ibid., 54.
14 6 Ibid.
(^147) Ibid., 86–8.