On The Conflicts Between The Value Reason And The Instrumental Reason In Huxley's Brave New World

With the development of science and technology, the emphasis of the instrumental reason had surpassed that of the value reason, which led to the ecological imbalance and the various crises of modern society; human beings had also been alienated by the tech-led era. Therefore, human beings had been facing the great threats and challenges.In twentieth century, the Frankfurt School had paid attention to the serious social crises and showed the great concerns to the existential situations of man and man's destiny. The theory of social criticism exposed and explained the serious social problems of the capitalist society, expressing the concern about the fate of mankind in the future.At the same time, the writers began to reflect the fate of mankind with the anti-utopian novels under the condition of the emphasis of the instrumental reason over the value reason leading to the various crises of modern society in the development of science and technology; the writers also attempted to deal with the various social crisis and explored the way-out of man's fate. The Russian writer Yevgeni Zamyatni (1884-1937) had created the anti-utopian works "We" (1924); the British writer Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894-1963) had written the novel "Brave New World" (1932);. George Orwell (1903-1950) had finished the representative works "1984" (1949). These anti-utopian novels such as "We" (1924), the "Brave New World' (1932), and "1984"(1949) were known as "the trilogy of anti-utopian literature" in the twentieth century.In the Brave New World, science and technology had created a completely artificial world; everything was dominated by science and technology. People were created through the synthetic way, people's emotions were regulated by the science and technology, all the appliances in daily use were artifacts, and human beings had become the "One-Dimensional Man" of the high unification and specifications completely alienated by machines. Besides, the whole morbid and decayed society was completely regulated by the science and technology. The highest goal and guiding ideology in the use of technology was not the Value Reason, but the motto in the New World "Community, Identity, Stability", which was the embodiment of totalitarianism in the novel and the roots of social degradation caused by science and technology.