Power, knowledge, morals: Society in the age of hybrid research

Abstract

In this chapter, I will try to discuss what specific practices, intrinsic value bases, and spheres of competence should ideally characterize three of the most important and interrelated, but yet separate collective arenas or systems of authority that, in my view, still constitute the “necessities permanents” in modern liberal-democratic society: politics, systematic research or science, and public administration. I will further argue that precisely by strictly upholding and respecting their respective and specific normative systems and institutional practices, their separate and joint contributions to society will become optimal. I will also, at least, briefly touch upon the role played by modern media as a fundamentally new type of arena of authority in western democratic society and particularly what I consider to be its distorting impact on the existing, traditionally, democratically based systems of authority and power.