Habermas grounded the value-freedom of empirical science in an anthropological interest in technical control.

Evidence

This technical interest, in Habermas’s opinion, was what defined the normative power of the type of science that was equated, both by neopositivism and by critical rationalism, with scientific rationality, and presented by them as being in principle value-free. The dispute concerning value-freedom in the sciences was thus resolved by Habermas using anthropological arguments: the empirical-analytic sciences formed an element of social reproduction, and their specific function for social reproduction was virtually a condition of their possibility. What Habermas was producing was therefore a kind of transcendental-pragmatic foundation for the positivist type of science, orto be preciseof those sciences for which a positivist philosophy of science provided a largely accurate account. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 600

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Habermas’s ‘technical interest’ and the notion of a transcendental-pragmatic foundation.
• QUESTION: If positivism is transcendentally grounded by its life-interest, does that concede its accuracy for a whole class of sciences — or relativize its claim to be science as such?
• DEEPTHINKING: Habermas partially concedes the positivist self-description while relocating its validity inside an anthropology of labour — a move that cuts both against and for critical rationalists.