Reason itself becomes an instrument of domination in late industrial society
Evidence
In Marcuse’s view, the powers of reason and freedom are declining in “late industrial society”: “With the increasing concentration and effectiveness of economic, political, and cultural controls, the opposition in all these fields has been pacified, co-ordinated, or liquidated.” Indeed, reason has become an instrument of domination: “It helps to organize, administer, and anticipate the powers that be, and to liquidate the ‘power of Negativity.’ Reason has identified itself with the reality: what is actual is reasonable, although what is reasonable has not yet become actuality. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 34
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines the reversal of Enlightenment reason into domination — the Frankfurt School’s core dialectic, where ‘what is actual is reasonable’ collapses critique.
- XREF: Connects to Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment and to the reader’s broader attention/consumption economy work — control operating through apparent rationality. — connects to: Reason becomes a mere instrument of the economic apparatus once consciousness is removed. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 47; Modernity’s disaster is not backwardness but the domination machinery itself.; Industrial progress destroys the conception of the person as a bearer of reason (+12 more)
Broader Connections
- Scientific rationalism becomes an instrument of social domination
#expands(0.90) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 141 - Domination in advanced capitalism is masked as neutral administration and objectivity
#expands(0.88) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 186 - Socializing production without breaking technological domination yields authoritarianism
#corroborates(0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 493 - The system’s celebrated freedoms function as instruments of domination
#expands(0.82) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 45