The decline of the public sphere and the instrumentalisation of the politics: the diagnosis of technocracy on Jürgen Habermas

• Grant number: 17/22613-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): February 01, 2018
• Effective date (End): July 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Political Science - Political Theory
• Principal Investigator: Rúrion Soares Melo
• Grantee: Artur Passos Ruivo
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

In the present work, we will discuss the Technology and Science as "Ideology" conference by Jürgen Habermas. With its reading, we will try and understand in which way the initial preoccupations of the author, especially those regarding to the public sphere and the democratization of society, are present in this which is considered a turning point in Habermas' work. We will have as a task to explore the continuities and the discontinuities within the author's though as a way to relocate the importance of his previous works to the understanding of the one at matter. Our hypothesis is that the concept of technocracy developed by the author would be a new and more comprehensive way to formulate the diagnosis of the decline of the public sphere - as it initially appears on The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere book - within the post-second World War democratic societies, which main effect would be the reduction of the discursive practices of political decision-making into technical matters of public administration. (AU)