Re-consideration On Marcuse's Criticism Of The Technical Rationality

Confronted by the negative consequences brought by the rapid development of science and technology and their large-scale application, many western scholars attribute them mainly to technical rationality. In reflecting over the rationality of science and technology, the theoreticians of the Frankford school combined science and technology, rationality and the capitalist system, thus realizing, to a certain extent, the association of the alienation of science and technology with the capitalist system and forming a richer and more profound ethical outlook of science and technology. The flaw of technical rationality lies in the deviation of tool rationality from value rationality and the fundamental approach to overcoming this flaw is to the unification of the two.Herbert Marcuse was one of the most significant representative figures of Frankford school. One Dimensional Man is his representative works on criticizing the ideology in developed industrial society, in which Marcuse held that contemporary science and technology was a kind of new ruling form, not being neutral but functioning as the ideology. Marcuse carried forward the critical theory traditions of Frankford school, who wished to eliminate the totalitarianism domination in developed industrial society by means of restoring the rationality. Marcuse exposed the fact that the capitalist class had availed itself of contemporary science and technology in order to maintain the capitalist system in developed industrial society, so discovered the ethical characteristics of science and technology in the capitalist application. However, Marcuse confused the ethical and social effects of science and technology by the specific society or historial phrase with their ethical nature. Thus, he exaggerated the potential and destructive effects of science and technology, and increasingly criticized contemporary science and technology instead of capitalist politics and economics system.