Ellul 4.pdf

10.1177/0270467603253964

Goudreau / HABERMAS ON PURPOSIVE-RATIONAL

ACTION

Habermas on Purposive-Rational Action:

A Contribution to the Understanding

of Ellul’s Technique

ARTICLE

BULLETIN OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY / June 2003

Kim A. Goudreau

Highland Community College

The term technique , as I use it, does not mean

machines, technology, or this or that procedure

for attaining an end. In our technological society,

technique is the totality of methods rationally ar-

rived at and having absolute efficiency (for a

given stage of development) in every field of hu-

man activity. Its characteristics are new; the tech-

nique of the present has no common measure

with that of the past.

there is the long-standing and visceral issue of one’s

attempt to grapple with the meaning and purpose of

life. The second pertains to the awakening that results

from taking on a sociological perspective as it relates

to the aforementioned issue. The third point pertains to

the steadfast and compelling insights drawn from

Jacques Ellul’s analysis of technological societies.

From the early 1970s to the present, these elements

have coalesced for me again and again in a search to

understand our situation.

The first issue is actually a paradox. Born as I was in

mid-20th-century America, I find myself surrounded

by ever-more services and products pouring forth from

the reciprocal relationship between science and tech-

nology. Ostensibly, this world is a spectacular place.

One need only observe technology reaching its zenith

with the awesome power of military aircraft or witness

the plethora of 24-hour communications systems

around the globe. In other areas, we find entertaining

and convenient consumer goods of every sort and the

seemingly limitless promise of medicine and biotech-

nology. Granted enough time and resources, engineers

will resolve and improve on the human condition with-

out end. This is the best of times. However, it is also a

world of great human and ecological destruction, dev-

astating loneliness, and psychological tension, as well

as the replacement of rooted communities with short-

term lifestyle associations (Bellah, 1996). It is a world

where meaningful purpose, direction, and communal

obligation are in question.

In the midst of this malaise, two commonplaces

from social/cultural studies prove helpful. The reading

of ethnographies illustrates that the “world” or “real-

ity” one occupies permeates the individual as a social

This definition is not a theoretical construct. It is

arrived at by examining each activity and observ-

ing the facts of what modern man calls technique

in general, as well as by investigating the differ-

ent areas in which specialists declare they have a

technique.

—Jacques Ellul (1964, p. xxv)

It has often been claimed that literature is thinly dis-

guised autobiography. Perhaps the same claim could

be made of theoretical work in the social sciences. As a

matter of fact, a central tenet of social scientific analy-

sis is the clear articulation of social/cultural context as

the precursor of thought and action. In this brief arti-

cle, I have simply applied this tenet to a reflective

recounting of my encounter with elements of the writ-

ing of Jürgen Habermas. These elements contribute

significantly to Jacques Ellul’s concept of technique.

Ellul proposed that technique as defined above is the

monolithic sociological phenomenon at the hub of

technological societies.

To account for the continuing relevance of

Habermas’s early work to my understanding of the

modern condition, three points are noteworthy. First,

Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Vol. 23, No. 3, June 2003, 174-179

DOI: 10.1177/0270467603253964

Goudreau / HABERMAS ON PURPOSIVE-RATIONAL ACTION

175

being. This finding can be translated as “I am as we

are.” Furthermore, one can see that different contexts

of culture and social structure provide a wide range of

possibilities for living a life—a life in terms of mean-

ingful purpose, direction, and collective obligation. I

hold no illusion of finding a halcyon setting. Yet

despite this caveat, the premodern setting does reveal

examples of contexts for living a meaningful life. This

meaningful life arises from a pattern of activity joined

with myth and vibrant ritual. It is also true that these

premodern sociocultural systems are fragile and sub-

ject to rapid degeneration. What at least some of these

examples illustrate in comparison with the modern set-

ting is that there is no necessary correlation between

genuine human progress and technological growth.

At this early crossroads, I was introduced to the so-

bering work of the late Jacques Ellul. This introduction

was deeply personal. It being deeply personal is un-

questionably necessary to understanding the thesis

presented here from start to finish. The conveyance of

Ellul’s critique of technology requires a prerequisite

orientation toward the gravity of the human condition.

Only with this prerequisite orientation will the heart of

the critique resonate. Ellul (1978) abhorred the

“game” of theorizing about the human condition.

Ellul’s analysis led him to conclude that by the mid-

20th century, human activity was either in service to

the expansion and facilitation of technique or compen-

sating for its debilitating and unforeseen conse-

quences. For evidence of the latter, we need only

remind ourselves of the state of the ecosystem, the

myriad of problems associated with urbanization, and

the lifeless drone of work within a mechanized system.

In this analysis, we are advised to recognize that the

machine or complex organization is a subordinate

component within a much larger technological sys-

tem. Our attention should be directed toward the real

human costs and requirements of this general system.

Only then does it become clear that humans must con-

form. The nature of the situation and the unending

demands for conformity and adjustment surface with

the proliferation of a new facet of technique: human

techniques. In this regard, it is best to focus our atten-

tion on the phenomena of exacting procedure. From

infomercials to the quality control of production to

education, the driving principle is identification of,

and adherence to, the most effective method. Yet there

are always unanticipated consequences, such as, for

instance, alienation and loss of motivation within com-

plex organizations. Here, human techniques drawn

from the behavioral and social sciences provide the

instruments for the psychological shaping of thought

and behavior. These methods are veiled procedures for

the managing of human “objects” in compliance with

the dictates of the technological system. This is one of

Ellul’s most poignant observations. It confirms the

negative fallout of technique’s infiltration of our lives

while at the same time showing us that an array of

“redundant sensors” mitigate against collapse or sus-

tained resistance.

In truth, whether one finds Ellul’s overall theory

compelling, sobering, and most likely devastating

hinges entirely on an accurate comprehension of tech-

nique. Adherents to this theory—of which I am one—

must come to terms with the fact that Ellul’s position is

for the most part marginalized, if not offhandedly dis-

missed. Certainly, this exclusion can be at least par-

tially explained by the fact that this position

demystifies the pervasive myth of our time that tech-

nology is our salvation. Nonetheless, clarity and

appropriate links to other significant theoretical strains

are a reasonable course on which to embark. With this

in mind, let us now turn to aspects of Habermas’s early

work that contribute to an understanding of tech-

nique’s monolithic tendencies and destruction of

essential cultural components.

Today, however, like stupid oxen that slowly

shake their heads from side to side, the intellectu-

als and the artists are only capable of the No;

beyond that nothing—except the void that is

their work. Fragmentary theater and deciphered

Moliere, poetry without words and music that is

sheer noise, destructured language, Lacan,

Derrida, and all their second-rate imitators who

think that absolute incomprehensibility offers a

way out, when in fact we have shut the door on all

possibilities and hopes, and have sunk into a res-

ignation that knows no future. There is no longer

anything to live for: that is what these intellectu-

als are saying without realizing it; the blinding

light they shed is that of a sun on the point of

sinking into the sea. (pp. 196, 197)

I continue to hold that Ellul’s broad social/historical

analysis provides the best vantage point for the ad-

vancement of insights into the human condition within

modern society. This analysis hinges on identifying

the sociological phenomenon of technique as defined

at the opening of this article. Ellul found that a techni-

cal system had come to penetrate every aspect of hu-

man existence (e.g., social, political, economic, etc.).

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BULLETIN OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY / June 2003

Three of Habermas’s early books make decisive

contributions to the formation of a sociological per-

spective relevant to today. Knowledge and Human

Interests (Habermas, 1971) recasts the potential in

Freud for the role of revealing or uncovering in the

practice of critical social science. The collective con-

scious of a given social context could or would predict-

ably blind its members to suppressed motives. The

blindness is not an inadvertent error but an essential

outcome facilitating the existing social structure. Only

within the protected oasis of reflection and unre-

stricted communication (psychoanalytic model) will

the revealing or uncovering have a chance. This bor-

rowing from psychoanalysis yields the possibility for

critical theory to unveil ideology.

In the same text is offered one of the most succinct

restatements of the foundation of theory. As is his

inclination, Habermas went to the etymology of the

word. Here, we find the origins of theory in the act of

“looking on” in order to bear witness to pattern or

structure set before us. Once again, reflection is legiti-

mated as a productive human endeavor. Only through

occasions of respite from absorption into the preoccu-

pying matters of the world will the uncovering pro-

ceed. This necessity is, however, not a call for the

equally erroneous path of absorption into theoretical

abstraction.

Among other ideas, Theory and Practice

(Habermas, 1973) masterfully identifies the relevance

of intersubjectivity. At many levels, positivism and

empiricism serve as the underpinning for the definitive

truths in a modern world that is essentially the opera-

tion of technology. This orientation elevates the find-

ings of scientific research and its “facts” to the level of

supreme truths whereas reducing values and ideas of

“the good” to subjective whim. To this assumption,

Habermas administered a critical blow with the obser-

vation that scientific truths are also contingent on

intersubjective support or validation. In the course of

the critique, the covert presence of human interests is

reestablished as is the credibility of critical social sci-

ence.

One of the earliest and perhaps most informative of

Habermas’s publications is Toward a Rational Society

(Habermas, 1970). Segments of this book provide riv-

eting accounts of the process of modernization repre-

sented by the consolidation of technological society.

of the institutional framework is necessitated

under the pressure of relatively developed pro-

ductive forces, for that is the mechanism of the

evolution of the species from the very beginning.

What is new is a level of development of the pro-

ductive forces that makes permanent the exten-

sion of subsystems of purposive-rational action

and thereby calls into question the traditional

form of the legitimation of power. The older

mythic, religious, and metaphysical worldviews

obey the logic of interaction contexts. They

answer the central questions of men’s collective

existence and of individual life history. Their

themes are justice and freedom, violence and

oppression, happiness and gratification, poverty,

illness, and death. Their categories are victory

and defeat, love and hate, salvation and damna-

tion. Their logic accords with the grammar of

systematically distorted communication and

with the fateful causality of dissociated symbols

and suppressed motives. The rationality of lan-

guage games, associated with communicative

action, is confronted at the threshold of the mod-

ern period with the rationality of means-ends

relations, associated with instrumental and stra-

tegic action. As soon as this confrontation can

arise, the end of traditional society is in sight: the

traditional form of legitimation breaks down.

(Habermas, 1970, p. 96)

Just as in the case of Ellul, Habermas’s real contribu-

tion lies in the articulation of the nonmaterial side of

technological societies. The astute intellectual or con-

ceptual vehicle employed by Habermas involves the

splitting of human thought and activity into two

spheres: purposive-rational action and communicative

action. This separation—itself a complex matter—is

identified as a living reality today. We must therefore

note at the outset that we are not speaking of a heuristic

tool. This bifurcation of human thought and action is

the lived reality in technological societies. More im-

portant, purposive-rational action is expanding at the

expense of communicative action.

It is best to pursue the comparative nature of these

two spheres with a brief digression into the nature of

science with its attendant mind-set and methods essen-

tial to the development of technology. A cardinal fea-

ture of “scientific work” is experimentation. A hypoth-

esis is formed about the relationship between two or

more variables, and the experiment follows. A sup-

ported hypothesis indicates an understanding and

What characterizes the passage from traditional

society to society commencing the process of

modernization is not that structural modification

Goudreau / HABERMAS ON PURPOSIVE-RATIONAL ACTION

177

capacity to exercise control over variables. I see this as

the pathway to understanding Habermas on instru-

mental or strategic action. This process, whether for-

mally experimental or not, is about effective control

and manipulation of the human environment in an

ever-widening circle. One might just as well character-

ize this as the total management of the environment.

Purposive-rational action is the sphere of action that

is coextensive with technological societies. Is it not the

case that the functioning and “improvement” of tech-

nology in transportation, communication, and medi-

cine result from the scrupulous application of purposive-

rational action? Yes. However, Habermas suggested

that we must recognize several features and limitations

tied to this form of action. One analysis of the work of

Habermas puts the matter as follows:

Today, our lives are permeated by instrumental

action at a number of levels. As a case in point, what is

my immediate situation as I write these words? It is, in

fact, a humid, 97° day. In this house, I sit writing at a

comfortable 78°. Within my vision is the five-disk CD

player set on random, the ceiling fan is making its

rounds, the refrigerator hums, my feet touch the pre-

fabricated floor, and I drink bottled water and peer

through my continuous lenses. All of these conditions

are made possible by a sequence of “studies.” In short,

purposive-rational thought and action are perpetually

building and rebuilding our environment. All well and

good. However, there are additional inroads and corol-

laries bound up with purposive-rational action. It

would be fair to say that therein lies the grist for the

authentic criticism (i.e., Ellul, Habermas, and

Marcuse) of technological societies. One such corol-

lary is the fact that purposive-rational action is only

subject to human evaluation with respect to effective-

ness and degree of efficiency. For example, the air con-

ditioner is capable of cooling the interior of the 1,700-

square-foot building to a designated temperature, or it

is not. The continuous lenses of a pair of eyeglasses

improve vision to set standards, or they do not. It is

imperative to note that this form of human evaluation

is “objective” and context free with regard to culture,

personality, and history. Objective testing can resolve

discrepancies within this domain—but not outside this

domain. Not only is this corollary the source of our

evolving environment, it also requires that the inhabit-

ants of this environment perform according to its dic-

tates. Virtually everything we come into contact with

requires that we follow its rules of operation (e.g.,

automated phone systems, the DVD/VCR, automatic

teller machine, the case worker at the public aid office,

and the guide to a great relationship with your partner,

etc.). Work, leisure, and daily functioning are largely

directed by exacting procedure.

Habermas (1970) made a point of mulling over the

nature of deviations from exacting procedure.

Habermas (1970) regards science and technol-

ogy as sources of systematically distorted com-

munication. Because of their sheer pervasive-

ness, they are a serious form of ideology,

reflecting rational-purposive action, and con-

flicting with communication oriented toward

social solidarity and the attainment of consensus.

While promoting economic growth through

manipulation of the physical and social environ-

ment they pay no attention to promoting self-

conscious reflection about values. Advances to

science and technology substitute manipulative

rules and context-free knowledge for norms of

solidarity and reciprocity, and lead to an empha-

sis on technical skills at the expense of roles and

values defining moral obligations. In traditional

societies, dominant institutions (family, ethnic-

ity, and religion) were oriented toward moral

obligations, not the instrumental manipulation of

nature. (Wuthnow, Hunter, Bergesen, &

Kurzweil, 1984, pp. 224, 225)

For one, this form of action is inextricably tied to an

evaluative criterion of effectiveness. In the sequence of

refinements, one does not end up with a bad result in

the sense of being morally reprehensible. Further-

more, meaningful aspects of culture should play no

role with regard to an appropriately conducted experi-

ment. The results are context free in terms of culture.

In some sense, this brings us to a heightened awareness

of the fact-value dichotomy, though in a different light.

The new light is that in a technological society, human

action is steadily absorbed into the sphere of purposive-

rational action (e.g., work, leisure, and entertainment).

By “interaction,” on the other hand, I understand

communicative action , symbolic interaction. It is

governed by binding consensual norms , which

define reciprocal expectations about behavior

and which must be understood and recognized

by at least two acting subjects. Social norms are

enforced through sanctions. Their meaning is

objectified in ordinary language communica-

tion. While the validity of technical rules and

strategies depends on that of empirically true or

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BULLETIN OF SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY & SOCIETY / June 2003

analytically correct propositions, the validity of

social norms is grounded only in the

intersubjectivity of the mutual understanding of

intentions and secured by the general recognition

of obligations. Violation of a rule has a different

consequence according to type. Incompetent

behavior, which violates valid technical rules or

strategies, is condemned per se to failure through

lack of success; the “punishment” is built, so to

speak, into its rebuff by reality. Deviant behavior,

which violates consensual norms, provokes

sanctions that are connected with the rules only

externally, that is by convention. Learned rules of

rational-purposive action supply us with skills ,

internalized norms with personality structures .

Skills put us in a position to solve problems;

motivations allow us to follow norms. (p. 92)

efforts promise results through the proper implemen-

tation of procedure. We see purposive-rational action

colonizing the historical domain of communicative

action. This invasion of social reality occurs with little

realization. In the case of modern organizations, Howe

(2000) saw Habermas “arguing that values such as sys-

tem efficiency ought not to be allowed to simply slide

into the place of those such as democracy—at least not

without some hard thinking, and arguing, about it”

(p. 14). Similarly, the rogue youth becomes

maladaptive and the reprehensible family dysfunc-

tional. In these and numerous other cases, intervention

occurs but under the new formula of inefficiency or

technical standards within a technological society. As

technological society displaced customary values and

morality, reducing them to subjective whim, these new

criteria for conduct emerged.

Purposive-rational action or instrumental reason is

applied to means-ends relationships but only in a very

narrow sense. It is particularly useful and only useful

in circumstances in which effective control and effi-

ciency are concerned. If the question pertained to the

engineering of an automobile for maximum fuel effi-

ciency, this mode of reasoning and human action is ap-

plicable. However, if the questions to be addressed

probe matters of meaning, purpose, and ultimate ends,

instrumental reason is of no help whatsoever. One

might say that this mode of reasoning is blind to the

qualitative spectrum of human reality. Yet the qualita-

tive spectrum is that which nurtures the development

of personality, meaning, and communal moral obliga-

tion. Seldom do we find propositions about the appar-

ent malaise at the individual or collective level tied to

the technological side of modernization. With Ellul

and extrapolations from Habermas, we find just such

an argument.

The consequence of deviation from exacting proce-

dure is incompetent or unsuccessful behavior. The fail-

ure to properly install the thermostat results in the fail-

ure or improper functioning of the air-conditioning

system. Thus, the pivotal human behavior is substan-

dard in terms of the skill requirement and setting of the

thermostat. This corollary is significant if we interject

a normative standard of conduct. Normative standards

of conduct operate within the realm of culturally medi-

ated prescriptions and proscriptions. Their criterion is

good and evil, right and wrong. They derive their po-

tency from shared lived morality that is also the sub-

stance and setting for nurturing personality and char-

acter. These latter exigencies are facilitated by

communicative action, according to Habermas. By

contrast, purposive-rational action excludes many of

the elements integral to culture. A culture subsumed

by purposive-rational action (i.e., Ellul’s technique) is

destined to be devoid of core cultural components that

serve as the foundation for collective meaning and sta-

ble character development.

We can turn to another level in which purposive-

rational action obliterates communicative action. This

is the level of human interaction and social relation-

ships. Today, we seldom give a second thought to the

commonplace description of a person as a skilled man-

ager, parent, or lover. The behavioral sciences have

yielded techniques for the engineering of human rela-

tionships parallel to the engineering of nature in the

natural sciences. There is a book, videotape, or semi-

nar for nearly every form of human interaction (e.g.,

traditionally communicative action) absorbing it into

the arena of purposive-rational action. All of these

Much of the knowledge produced in modern

society is rational-purposive knowledge, con-

sisting of factual information about the material

world, technical information about the efficiency

and effectiveness of alternative techniques for

manipulating the world, and administrative ideas

about how best to make technical decisions and

how best to organize people for instrumental

goals. Knowledge of this type is regarded as

being “true” if it actually “works” in manipulat-

ing the material world. This is the criterion of

truth that is used to judge natural scientific

knowledge, technological information, and most

of the social scientific knowledge that is pro-

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