Critique Of Instrumental Reason Research Articles

Postmetaphysical Conundrums: The Problematic Return to Metaphysics in Horkheimer’s Critique of Instrumental Reason

Postmetaphysical Conundrums: The Problematic Return to Metaphysics in Horkheimer’s Critique of Instrumental Reason

Disenchanting Trust: Instrumental Reason, Algorithmic Governance, and China’s Emerging Social Credit System

Digital technologies have provided governments across the world with new tools of political and social control. The development of algorithmic governance in China is particularly alarming, where plans have been released to develop a digital Social Credit System (SCS). Still in an exploratory stage, the SCS, as a collection of national and local pilots, is framed officially as an all-encompassing project aimed at building trust in society through the regulation of both economic and social behaviors. Grounded in the case of China’s SCS, this article interrogates the application of algorithmic rating to expanding areas of everyday life through the lens of the Frankfurt School’s critique of instrumental reason. It explores how the SCS reduces the moral and relational dimension of trust in social interactions, and how algorithmic technologies, thriving on a moral economy characterized by impersonality, impede the formation of trust and trustworthiness as moral virtues. The algorithmic rationality underlying the SCS undermines the ontology of relational trust, forecloses its transformative power, and disrupts social and civic interactions that are non-instrumental in nature. Re-reading and extending the Frankfurt School’s theorization on reason and the technological society, especially the works of Horkheimer, Marcuse, and Habermas, this article reflects on the limitations of algorithmic technologies in social governance. A Critical Theory perspective awakens us to the importance of human reflexivity on the use and circumscription of algorithmic rating systems.

The Critique of Reason and Biopolitics in William Blake’s The Four Zoas

Abstract This article examines William Blake’s critique of instrumental reason in The Four Zoas to rethink the politics of his later poetry. Rather than signaling his quietism, Blake’s poem registe...

Zambrano’s poetic reason in the light of Frankfurtian Critical Theory

ABSTRACTMaría Zambrano's biggest contribution to intellectual history is, without a doubt, her poetic reason; her unique attempt to overcome the limiting coordinates of the framework of rationality established by the Enlightenment. Having spent forty-five years in exile, the relevance of this Republican thinker has only been acknowledged in recent decades. Since then, the political content of her early work, as well as her engagement with the Republic's cause prior to and during the Spanish Civil War are well known. Nevertheless, although Zambrano still wrote some political books after the Civil War, most notably, Persona y democracia (1958), the political component of her thought after this period has passed largely unnoticed. This article intends to take a wider approach to Zambrano's political engagement by exploring the political significance of her poetic reason. Here I contend, first, that poetic reason, far from being an isolated attempt at developing an alternative rationality, is actually in line with the critique of instrumental reason proposed by the Frankfurt School and, second, that, in fact, there are meaningful parallels between poetic reason and Frankfurtian Critical Theory. Thus, the purpose of this article is to explore such parallels and their significance in revealing the political dimension of Zambrano's thought.

Kant's Critique of Instrumental Reason

AbstractI argue against the prevalent view that in addition to the categorical imperative of morality, Kant accepts a further law of practical reason, ‘the’ Hypothetical Imperative. Kant rejects the idea that instrumental reason can be a source of a priori, objectively necessary normative requirements. His critique of instrumental reason is a central component of his argument for the supreme rational authority of morality: only moral reason can provide genuine, objective normative‐practical necessities. There are no objective practical necessities in our pursuit of empirical ends and desires. Hence, non‐moral agency is a rationally impoverished form of agency.

A Critique of Max Horkheimer’s Critique of Instrumental Reason

I produce a critique of Marx Horkheimer’s book Critique of Instrumental Reason as a way to introduce the concept of pragmatic critical theory. I start by mentioning that C. Wright Mills’s concept of “The Sociological Imagination” has many of the qualities of critical theory while emphasizing its potential for pragmatic solutions to social problems. I discuss some of the qualities of German social theory including its tendency toward over-philosophizing, before going on to discussing this book as well as the work of such scholars as W. I. Thomas and Emile Durkheim who produced morally-relevant social analysis, and especially the work of Max Weber whose exposition on the nature of rationality is used to provide background information that puts the work of Max Horkheimer in broader sociological context. I discuss how fantasies and substitute satisfactions are substitutes for a well-balanced life. I emphasize why Horkheimer and the Frankfurt School in general did not appreciate the American concern for pragmatism, but I nevertheless show the importance of a pragmatic approach to social reform. His critique of nationalism that runs as a theme throughout this book as offering a poor substitute for a sense of community is also pertinent. I end by emphasizing that Horkheimer’s emphasis on authoritarianism as a reaction to modernization, and Christopher Lasch’s emphasis on narcissism as a reaction to modernization, both emphasize negative aspects of their own societies, and learning how to avoid both extremes is a useful lesson to take away from both of their writings.

On the One Hand, and the Other

The critique of instrumental reason is here complicated to grasp how the value of the humanities might be reworked at a moment when its founding concept, the human, is under pressure from many quarters. Drawing on a paleontological and technogenetical analysis that links the being and the concept of the human through the organ of the hand, this essay turns to consider how the “preeminence of the right hand” lends a certain critical force to the work of the left hand, a hand thought to gesture toward an other arising on the outer edge of the human. If the presumed homology of the two hands grounds the relation between the humanities and society, then “the other hand” urges us to think and engage the work sustaining this relation diff erently. Here the “Left” points to more than a space in a general assembly.

From Hamburg to Belem: the limits of technocratic thinking in adult learning education

This article discusses some of the generalized analyses of adult learning education, mostly informed by technocratic thinking, highlighting perceived trends in adult learning education between CONFINTEA V and CONFITEA VI. Those trends could be understood as challenges. Employing a political sociology of adult learning education as a critique of instrumental reason is advanced.

Habermas, Discourse Ethics, and Normative Validity

This paper is an exploration of Habermas' critical reconstructions of the problematic of rationality via critical theory's critique of instrumental reason. It brings together several key ideas ranging from the dialectic of instrumental reason and how it leads to epistemological dissonance to the discursive redemption of the normativity of reason. It sketches, as a concluding reflection, whether or not his ideas may be situated within the larger methodological trajectory of Philippine social science research. The paper thus considers the concepts of discourse, discourse ethics and normative validity as crucially important.

Dialectic of the university: a critique of instrumental reason in graduate nursing education

Our analysis in this paper unfolds on two levels: a critique of the 'realities' of graduate nursing education and an argument to sustain its 'ideals'. We open for discussion an aspect of graduate nursing education dominated by instrumental reason, namely the research industry, using an internal critique approach developed by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno of the Early Frankfurt School. As we explain, internal critique arises out of, and relies on, the mismatch between goals, or 'ideals', and existing realities. Thinking about 'ideals' of the academy, we draw on Hans-Georg Gadamer's view of the university as a place to think freely, creatively, and critically. The contemporary realities of the university, on the other hand, that emphasize the market values of the research industry forcefully shape nursing academic scholarship in a particular direction. In our attempt to recognize and disrupt the forces of the research industry with its instrumental reason, we consider Judith Butler's writings on how norms operate in society. We show that our growing involvement in the research industry makes it very difficult to disentangle ourselves from that situation. The values of the research industry actually suppress the very ideals of education and scholarship that we would like to uphold. As a contra-force, the internal critique of the 'existing realities' in the graduate nursing education unmasks the tyranny of the research industry and makes visible the importance of sustaining the higher goals and ideals in nursing scholarship.

Dewey, Hegel, and Causation

Dewey, Hegel, and Causation Jim Good and Jim Garrison [Cause and effect], if they are distinct, are also identical. Even in ordinary consciousness that identity may be found. We say that a cause is a cause, only when it has an effect, and vice versa. Both cause and effect are thus one and the same content: and the distinction between them is primarily only that the one lays down, and the other is laid down.1 In the quote above, Hegel claims that cause and effect are only distinct from a particular point of view. A cause only becomes a cause when it has an effect, thus the two apparently opposing terms reverse their roles. The effect is the cause of the cause, and the cause is the effect of its own effect. This article begins with a discussion of what we believe to be an effect, Dewey's theory of causation, and then proceeds to Hegel's theory, arguing that the two philosophers clarify one another. Both philosophers' ruminations on causation provide a provocative challenge to the standard view that cause and effect are discrete and independent from one another. Although both philosophers accept the utility of analyzing events as cause and effect [End Page 101] for particular purposes, both contend that a more complete view of such events shows that they are reciprocal moments within an ongoing process. By drawing attention to the similarities in their theories of causation we also hope to advance our larger project of promoting a rapprochement between present-day Dewey specialists and Hegel specialists. In the context of the long-standing debate about Dewey's debt to Hegel, we emphasize the Hegelianism of Dewey's mature philosophy much more than most Dewey scholars.2 Nonetheless, an essay by Alan Hance may well pinpoint an important sticking point for both groups.3 Hance correctly criticizes Richard Rorty's claim that pragmatism is "naturalized Hegelianism" by showing that Rorty incorrectly assumes that Hegel's rejection of Kant's thing-in-itself commits him to subjective idealism.4 Although we choose to leave Rorty aside in our article, we agree with Hance's argument that Hegel rejects representational epistemology much more successfully than Rorty. We disagree, however, with Hance's apparent equation of naturalism with the reduction of reality to efficient causes and the subjects studied by the natural sciences. Whether this characterization is true of Rorty's naturalism or not, it is not true of Dewey's. It is possible, however, that whenever Hegel scholars think of Dewey most of them think of his "instrumentalism" and his "naturalism" as reductionistic (the Frankfurt school's critique of instrumental reason may be in the back of their minds).5 Conversely, when Dewey scholars think of Hegel, it is possible that most of them think of reductionistic subjective idealism. Perhaps both groups see the other philosopher as trapped on one side of Cartesian dualism and believe that their philosopher successfully bridges that divide. If this generalization is accurate, we are convinced that both groups err because Dewey and Hegel share a nonreductionist, emergent conception of process that is apparent in their theories of causation. Hegel's potential alliance with pragmatism is more evident to those familiar with the nonmetaphysical interpretation of his thought, now accepted by many contemporary Hegel scholars.6 Whether or not this reading is correct, there is compelling evidence that it is the way Dewey himself in fact read Hegel.7 On the nonmetaphysical reading, the moment of "absolute knowing" at the end of The Phenomenology of Spirit is not perfect knowledge of eternal truth; it is knowledge that does not reach beyond itself to posit a metaphysical foundation for itself. Hegel's absolute knowing sublates the dualism between the self and its objects by seeing those two terms as moments within an ongoing, unified process. Both knower and the known are constructs, momentarily posited for specific purposes [End Page 102] in the process of knowing. This standpoint is absolute precisely because it is a complete whole that does not exceed itself; Hegel's idealism is absolute because, contra Kant, he refuses to posit anything that transcends experience in order to explain thought.8 For...

What is critical urban theory?

What is critical urban theory? While this phrase is often used in a descriptive sense, to characterize the tradition of post‐1968 leftist or radical urban studies, I argue that it also has determinate social–theoretical content. To this end, building on the work of several Frankfurt School social philosophers, this paper interprets critical theory with reference to four, mutually interconnected elements—its theoretical character; its reflexivity; its critique of instrumental reason; and its emphasis on the disjuncture between the actual and the possible. On this basis, a brief concluding section considers the status of urban questions within critical social theory. In the early 21st century, I argue, each of the four key elements within critical social theory requires sustained engagement with contemporary patterns of capitalist urbanization. Under conditions of increasingly generalized, worldwide urbanization, the project of critical social theory and that of critical urban theory have been intertwined as never before.

Legitimacy Chasing its Own Tail: Theorizing Clinical Governance through a Critique of Instrumental Reason

Clinical governance was introduced in The New NHS: Modern, Dependable in 1997. Through changing structures and systems around the management of risk, knowledge and performance, the policy essentially seeks to mould the working culture of the NHS, yet there is inconclusive evidence as to its success, with many studies suggesting its impact has been highly limited. While modifying the system and structures within which practitioners operate is straightforward, cultures of shared norms and values cannot be so easily, or indeed successfully, shaped. Applying Habermasian social theory as an analytical framework, clinical governance is seen as responding to a constructed legitimacy crisis following NHS dysfunctions such as Bristol Royal Infirmary. Paradoxically, this misnomer has led to a policy that undermines its own legitimation among the professionals it seeks to control through its separation of purposive-rational interests from norms and values. Thus, a reliance on sanctions rather than norms to orient the actions of individuals working within the NHS elicits superficial rather than substantive compliance, undermining the effectiveness of auditing/accountability mechanisms. Whereas intra-organizational trust is more efficient in managing transactions, clinical governance, as it functions currently, represents a form of control which is not only more expensive, but ultimately ineffective and self-defeating.

Can Strategic Reasoning Alone Account for the Formation of Social Norms?

Joseph Heath'sCommunicative Action and Rational Choicestands out clearly as one of the most astute and original of the several critiques of Jurgen Habermas's theory of communicative action to have emerged in the last decade. Heath refrains from engaging merely in skirmishes with various details of Habermas's theory; he rather aims directly at its core issue: the critique of instrumental reason. Heath argues that Habermas's key criticism—that instrumental reason cannot account for successful communication—is not critical enough. Heath argues that instrumental reason cannot account even for the successfulmonologicalaction. Heath then claims that one can construct a critical rational theory without much of the problematic addenda that Habermas requires, particularly the need for a tripartite theory of validity claims.

Environmental Markets vs. Environmental Deliberation: A Hayekian Critique of Green Political Economy

(2001). Environmental Markets vs. Environmental Deliberation: A Hayekian Critique of Green Political Economy. New Political Economy: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 171-190.

Instrumental reason's unreason

In this article I argue that Adorno makes an internal critique of instrumental reason. I depict Adorno's notion of instrumental reason by showing how he combines Freud's materialistic epistemology with his own German Idealist inheritance. I outline his argument for the decline of instrumental reason into mythic ‘animism’.

Culture and Democratic Theory: Toward a Theory of Symbolic Democracy

Since the late 1970s, a highly productive strand of critical theory has emerged which has largely abandoned the Frankfurt School’s critique of cultural domination. Influenced by the work of Habermas, which replaces the problem of individual happiness with “a concentration on the problem of political democracy and on the analysis of institutions permitting individual autonomy and democratic interaction,” 1 this strand has turned to democratic theory and discourse ethics as a means to resuscitate the transformative potential of existing political institutions. Civil society, the public sphere, and the domain of law (as opposed to the culture industry and the critique of instrumental reason) figure centrally in reconstructive projects aimed at the articulation of institutional remedies for chronic forms of economic and political injustice. It is noteworthy, however, that in the search for post-Marxist foundations for the critique of “really existing democracy,” critical democratic theory has not adequately taken stock of the fact that the symbolic order of society, which shapes the meaning and status of social identities, is implicated in these forms of injustice. While this emergent strand of critical theory has remained distant from a critique of cultural domination, it does not stand alone in this failure to conceptualize all the significant features of modern relations of power. The constitutive force of the symbolic order of society, enacted at the macro-level through the institutions of the public sphere and at the micro-level in face-to-face interactions, is difficult to capture in the terms of existing political and social theory. Such theory, as Foucault emphasized, is capable of recognizing social injustice in only two registers: economic domination and the illegitimate exercise of sovereign authority. Consequently, the symbolic force that structures the formation and hierarchization of social identities fails to be understood as a type of political power. Because it is unequally distributed across the social order,this symbolic force is an undemocratic structural constraint on the social identity, social valuation, and symbolic practices of individuals and groups, a constraint which always already impacts the quantity and quality of individual and group participation in the political, economic, and cultural life of society. Moreover, the one-solution-fits-all approach to instances of social injustice that is favored by liberal and social democratic reform projects (legal equality and economic egalitarianism) inhibits the development of a theory which can articulate

Critique of Instrumental Reason: Lectures and Essays since the End of World War II. By Max Horkheimer. Translation by Mathew J. O'Connell and others. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974. Pp. x, 163. $7.95.)

Critique of Instrumental Reason: Lectures and Essays since the End of World War II. By Max Horkheimer. Translation by Mathew J. O'Connell and others. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974. Pp. x, 163. $7.95.) - Volume 71 Issue 2

Critique of Instrumental Reason: Lectures and Essays since the End of World War II. By Max Horkheimer. Translation by Mathew J. O'Connell and others. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974. Pp. x, 163. $7.95.)

Critique of Instrumental Reason: Lectures and Essays since the End of World War II. By Max Horkheimer. Translation by Mathew J. O'Connell and others. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974. Pp. x, 163. $7.95.)