Scientific rationalism becomes an instrument of social domination
Evidence
With the gradual closing of this dimension by the society, the self-limitation of thought assumes a larger significance. The interrelation between scientific-philosophical and societal processes, between theoretical and practical Reason, asserts itself “behind the back” of the scientists and philosophers. The society bars a whole type of oppositional operations and behavior; consequently, the concepts pertaining to them are rendered illusory or meaningless. Historical transcendence appears as metaphysical transcendence, not acceptable to science and scientific thought. The operational and behavioral point of view, practiced as a “habit of thought” at large, becomes the view of the established universe of discourse and action, needs and aspirations. The “cunning of Reason” works, as it so often did, in the interest of the powers that be. The insistence on operational and behavioral concepts turns against the efforts to free thought and behavior from the given reality and for the suppressed alternatives. Theoretical and practical Reason, academic and social behaviorism meet on common ground: that of an advanced society which makes scientific and technical progress into an instrument of domination. — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 141
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The claim that operational thought, precisely by barring ‘oppositional operations,’ makes historical transcendence look like unscientific metaphysics — and that the ‘cunning of Reason’ thus works for the powerful — is a densest payoff of the chapter.
- XREF: Directly serves the reader’s stated purpose: technological rationality as ideology, the chapter’s endpoint that bridges to attention/consumption as control in modern terms. — connects to: Scientific neutrality is itself metaphysical and masks domination — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 43; Scientific rationality reduces individual life to statistical ratios; Science is subordinated to industry within the social division of labor (+25 more)
- SEED: An essay could extend Marcuse’s 1964 point to the platform era: smart algorithms perform ‘the cunning of Reason’ today — optimizing behavior is not neutral engineering but a choice of whose interests the optimization serves.
Broader Connections
- A rationality geared to domination shapes how we construe the Other
#expands(0.85) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 464 - Social organization displaces autonomous moral drive with instrumental and procedural rationality
#expands(0.82) — Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, 612 - Rational productivity and social control are welded together in new forms of manipulation
#expands(0.78) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 551 - Socializing production without breaking technological domination yields authoritarianism
#expands(0.72) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 493