Instrumental rationality carried to its extreme leads to totalitarian barbarism.

Evidence

The Enlightenment’s treatment of nature, and by extension of men, as objects was fundamentally in accord with the extreme formalism of the categorical imperative, despite Kant’s injunction to consider men as ends rather than means. Carried to its logical extreme, calculating, instrumental, formal rationality led to the horrors of twentieth-century barbarism. De Sade was one of the way-stations along the route. His Histoire de Juliette was the model of functional rationality - no organ left idle, no orifice unplugged. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 797

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the instrumental reason thesis in Dialectic of Enlightenment and to later Habermas on communicative vs. instrumental rationality. — connects to: Truth-bearing worldviews become instruments of organized barbarism once wielded as power.; Totalitarian terror weaponizes ideology by enforcing its extreme logical consequences — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1069; Totalitarianism spreads complicity through the population to organize collective guilt — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 920 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Totalitarian terror weaponizes ideology by enforcing its extreme logical consequences #expands (0.85) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1069
• Totalitarian ideology becomes as untouchable as arithmetic to members. #expands (0.80)
• Totalitarianism spreads complicity through the population to organize collective guilt #expands (0.75) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 920
• Restless hyperactivity is driving civilization toward barbarism #expands (0.72) — Byung-Chul Han, The Burnout Society, 43