Habermas openly deployed ‘democracy’ as a radical normative measure unlike his predecessors

Evidence

The wide-ranging, axiomatic quality of the introduction, its combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis (with the latter predominating) and the assurance with which it defended a phenomenological methodology were reminiscent of Adorno. The systematic treatment given to studies in political science and constitutional law by bourgeois' scholars, and the replacement of depth-psychological and social-psychological interpretations of the interviewees' responses with an exposition of their images of society’ (following in the steps of the research on workers done by Heinrich Popitz and his colleagues)this was all new. What was also new was that the concept of democracywhich in The Authoritarian Personality, and even more so in Group Experiment, had been a concession to research clients and the prevailing situation, concealing radically anti-capitalist, utopian-revolutionary criteriawas invested with radical content by Habermas and overtly made into an explicit standard of measurement. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2335

Categorization

• XREF: Key moment in the book’s account of how the second generation (Habermas) broke from the first (Adorno/Horkheimer) on openly normative political research. — connects to: Democracy is power’s technical character normalized in moral terms — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 745; Democracy is a mode of associated living, not just a form of government; Democracy and liberalism can be decoupled and even opposed — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 235
• DEFINE: Clarifies how ‘images of society’ methodology replaced depth-psychological interpretation in Frankfurt School empirical work.

Broader Connections

• Democracy is power’s technical character normalized in moral terms #complicates (0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 745
• Democracy and liberalism can be decoupled and even opposed #qualifies (0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 235
• Democracy is a mode of associated living, not just a form of government #expands (0.72)