Positivists reserved reason for nature-control while excluding social critique as mere evaluation.
Evidence
Although protest against authoritarian states, for example, was not excluded by positivists, it was treated as an `evaluation’, which was beyond the boundaries of rationality or irrationality. The positivists were thus reserving the prestige and clarification provided by thought and reason for procedures which served to control processes governed by natural laws. For the purposes of clarifying and carrying through what was rational for society, they could be eliminated. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 204
Categorization
- DEFINE: Clarifies the fact/value boundary as Horkheimer saw it operating: value judgments bracketed out of rationality altogether.
- XREF: connects to: Positivism’s calculative thought is itself built on a nature-control interest; Positivist sociology borrows natural-science criteria and lacks the dialectical principle — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1524; Logical positivism functioned regressively by abandoning reason’s constructive power over nature and society. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 749 (+6 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Positivism’s calculative thought is itself built on a nature-control interest; Positivist sociology borrows natural-science criteria and lacks the dialectical principle — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1524; Logical positivism functioned regressively by abandoning reason’s constructive power over nature and society. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 749 (+6 more)
Broader Connections
- Nature is the object of reason as liberation, not only domination
#complicates(0.82) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 826 - Logical positivism began as an egalitarian political and social program
#complicates(0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 59