On the Hegemony of Technical Rationality and the Importance of Distinctions

Abstract

The point of departure in this article is the hegemony of technical rationality when it comes to the justification of music education. This is considered as an example of uniformity, sameness, and homogeneity, or worse, simplicity and naivety—or even worse, a sweet innocence—regarding understanding and thoughts about life, society, and culture in societies proclaimed to be characterized by pluralism, diversity, and heterogeneity. This discussion is related to my previous and ongoing work concerning rethinking the concept of the intrinsic value of musical experience. This work draws on Hannah Arendt's critical thinking about the modern understanding of the active human life, Martin Heidegger's discussion of the fundamental technical understanding of the world of the modern era, and Max Weber's ideas on how the rationality of technology and economy seems to have become an essential part of modern bourgeois society's ideals of life as a whole. When it comes to the importance of differences or, maybe better, distinctions, I relate to Jacques Derrida's deconstructionism.