TOWARD A RATIONAL SOCIETY: Student Protest, Science and Politics

by Jurgen Habermas ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 13, 1970

Selected essays by a Berlin Free University sociologist, lesser-known here than other Frankfurt Schoolers, but highly prized in some academic circles. The first, a 1967 lecture on ""The University In a Democracy,"" begins with a pure clear list of university functions in ""the system of social labor,"" describes two tendencies in German university reform (depoliticized integration or democratic self-assertion), and rather anticlimactically concludes that school is the place for discussion, not acting-out. The next paper on student protest remarks the faculty's Hobbesian bargain with society; offers a compressed explanation of students' antipathy to a highly-developed order still ruled by values of competition and scarcity; contrasts German and American liberal education; and compares family and social structures in advanced and backward regions. A 1969 essay on the German student movement sketches counterworld-building, scorn for political efficacy, distance from the sphere of production, mistrust of science itself as well as technocracy--not terribly original but cool and strong. Another paper, difficult and suggestive, asks how technologically exploitable knowledge can be translated into practical consciousness; elsewhere the technical/practical distinction remains too opaque. The final essay clinches an impression that Habermas' pronouncements on the world at large need an empirical booster--right after the French May Days, he is talking about state capitalism's suspension of class conflict through foolproof ""systems of rewards."" More serious than Henri Lefebvre on such topics, more lucid than Marcuse (two obvious comparisons), Habermas has much to offer. . . not here, however, neither the Hegelian depths nor the inspired transcendence of philistine ""fields"" which distinguish the Frankfurt School.

Pub Date: Oct. 13, 1970

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Beacon

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970

Categories: NONFICTION