Abstract

ZATTI, Vicente. The Issue Of Technique And Science In Jürgen Habermas. Rev. iberoam. cienc. tecnol. soc. [online]. 2016, vol.11, n.31, pp.29-47. ISSN 1850-0013.

By making a diagnosis of society, Habermas does not criticize the technical reason per se, but its universalization, the overestimated value placed upon scientific and technological thinking that leads to the loss of a more comprehensive concept of reason. This is not about upholding the radical rapture with technical reason, but about correctly placing it within a theory of the understanding of rationality. In order to place the technical and scientific issue within the Habermasian theory of reason, we analyse some central themes in the German thinker’s first period, such as positivism, technocracy, the colonization of the lifeworld, the philosophy of consciousness. The delimitation of a legitimate space for technology and science becomes relevant in the material reproduction of society, while the lifeworld is established as an unattainable sphere for instrumental reason, being legitimately ruled by communicative reason. The non-distorted action of instrumental reason is restricted to the system; and its ethical, political and aesthetical legitimacy is determined by something external to the lifeworld.

Keywords : Technology and science; Instrumental reason; Communicative reason.