The 1960s protest movements demonstrated a distinct praxis rationalization worth strengthening
Evidence
Habermas had sharply criticized the protest movement, because of the significance his own interpretation attributed to it. The direction in which he now restated more precisely his distinction between technology and praxis, however, and linked it to current social tendencies, had been indicated to him before the protest movement arose. What he took from the protest movement and its continuations in various formslocal grassroots groups, the alternative movement, the women’s movement, citizens’ initiatives of every sortwas that there were good grounds for assuming that a peculiar form of rationalization in the dimension of praxis existed, and that what mattered was to strengthen this peculiar form of rationalization through collaboration between the critical theory of society and protest against technocratic reforms. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2714
Categorization
- XREF: Shows how Habermas’s technical–practical rationality distinction (technology/praxis) anticipates the system/life-world split; ties to communicative action later. — connects to: Movements transformed ideologies from justification into organizational principles; Occupy’s slogans and reforms recycled 1980s-era proposals rather than novel ideas — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 905; Justice theory expanded because real movements first broadened justice’s meaning — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice:…, 174