Habermas saw the student path as a tightrope between apathy and revolutionary oversimplification

Evidence

Habermas then turned to the subjective dangers that threatened the student movement, or which it would have to be aware of. These lay in the fact that the gap between theory and praxis had become unusually large; and the students’ role was characterized by tensions, on the one hand, between political commitment and preparing for a career and, on the other hand, between the positivist academic system, which could no longer offer guidance for action, and their need for practical general guidance. He described the difficult, but correct, path as being like walking a tightrope between indifference, excessive conformism and political apathy, or irrational guidelines for action, on the one handthis was the mass of the studentsand activism, uncontrolled permanent preparation for revolution and theoretical oversimplification, on the other handthis was a group of students so small as to be hardly worth mentioning. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2615

Categorization

• XREF: Recalls ch80’s Habermas essayistic free thought and his recovering of science’s practical link — the same concern reappears here as the student movement’s ‘compensatory function.’ — connects to: Habermas’s account of student protest merged conflict-displacement theory with Marcuse’s new sensibility thesis — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2650; Learning paths must engage students’ hearts, minds, and hands to end apathy — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1910
• SEED: Angle: the tightrope as the characteristic posture of Critical Theory in praxis — between a mass sunk in conformism and a vanishing activist fringe.

Broader Connections

• Habermas’s account of student protest merged conflict-displacement theory with Marcuse’s new sensibility thesis #expands (0.80) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2650