Technological rationality or technical rationality is a philosophical idea postulated by the
Frankfurt School
The Frankfurt School (german: Frankfurter Schule) is a school of social theory and critical philosophy associated with the Institute for Social Research, at Goethe University Frankfurt in 1929. Founded in the Weimar Republic (1918–1933), dur ...
philosopher
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse (; ; July 19, 1898 – July 29, 1979) was a German-American philosopher, social critic, and political theorist, associated with the Frankfurt School of critical theory. Born in Berlin, Marcuse studied at the Humboldt University ...
in his 1941 article, "Some Social Implications of Modern Technology," published first in the journal Studies in Philosophy and Social Sciences, Vol. IX.
It gained mainstream repute and a more holistic treatment in his 1964 book ''
One-Dimensional Man
''One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society'' is a 1964 book by the philosopher and critical theorist Herbert Marcuse, in which the author offers a wide-ranging critique of both contemporary capitalism and the ...
''.
It posits that
rational decisions to incorporate
technological advances into society can, once the technology is ubiquitous, change what is considered rational within that society.
Overview
Marcuse writes that technological progress has the potential to free humanity from its requirement to labor for survival.
Freedom
Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving on ...
from labor is true freedom for humanity, and this freedom from labor can be achieved from technological rationality.
But instead of embracing this freedom, humanity has been subsumed by a new system of
reason
Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, ...
rooted in technological innovation. This new rationality, technological rationality, encompasses all elements of life and replaces
political rationality.
Under this new system, technology and industry control the structure of the economy, intellectual pursuits, and leisure activities.
False needs, which are defined by Marcuse as needs created by technological rationality, become inseparable from true needs, which are needs that are life sustaining.
Reason in its pre-technological form collapses as opposition to the norms of technological society is denied under the new system of rationality.
Complacency within the status quo replace Reason as people grow content with the better life offered by technology.
This contentment and the subsequent loss of opposition makes humanity one-dimensional, which in turn makes humanity less free than before the onset of technological rationality. In this way technological rationality becomes
totalitarian
Totalitarianism is a form of government and a political system that prohibits all opposition parties, outlaws individual and group opposition to the state and its claims, and exercises an extremely high if not complete degree of control and regul ...
.
Effects of technological rationality
Because of the totalitarian nature of technological rationality, Marcuse demonstrates in ''One-Dimensional Man'' the various ways that technological rationality has changed various facets of life.
Labor
Technology, rather than freeing the
proletariat
The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philo ...
class, has instead entrenched their enslavement to the classist system.
The worker no longer has to labor with the same intensity due to
mechanization, and this decreases the laborers feelings of enslavement.
The ratio of
white collar White collar may refer to:
* White-collar worker, a salaried professional or an educated worker who performs semi-professional office, administrative, and sales-coordination tasks, as opposed to a blue-collar worker, whose job requires manual labor ...
to
blue collar workers increases as fewer workers are needed to produce goods.
Progress has created a "technological veil" between the worker and his or her work, and the distinction between blue collar and white collar workers breaks down as technology reduces the labor gap between the blue collar and white collar worker.
The worker associates himself or herself more strongly with the factory rather than his or her class, and the factory owners become "bureaucrats in a corporate machine."
The
Master-Slave relationship between worker and factory owner no longer exists, and the factory owner loses his or her power.
Under technological rationality, the technicians and scientists become the new authority.
Government
Under technological rationality, the Welfare State rises in both need and prominence.
Increased productivity, the rational goal under technological rationality, requires planning on the scale that only the Welfare State can provide.
This new Welfare State is less free.
It requires the restriction of leisure time, the availability of goods and services, and the cognitive ability to understand and desire self-realization.
Yet as long as one's quality of life is improved under the new state as compared to the previous one, the people will not revolt.
This society is driven to increase production by fear of the Enemy, which causes the state to exist constantly as a "defense society."
The Enemy can take the form of an idealized pure
communism
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
or pure
capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their operation for Profit (economics), profit. Central characteristics of capitalism include capital accumulation, competitive markets, pric ...
.
This Enemy does not truly exist, but its constant feared presence drives the society to greater productivity.
Art
Under technological rationality, high art has desublimated.
Culture and social reality have flattened from two dimensions into one.
Artistic
alienation, which inspired the artistic works of the past, has disappeared due to this flattening.
The high culture before technological rationality no longer makes sense to the modern onlooker. Art under technological rationality instead becomes common and mass-produced.
This mass-produced art is integrated into everyday life, thus fully removing the distinction between high culture and social reality.
Responses to technological rationality
Over 300,000 copies of the first-edition of ''One-Dimensional Man'' were sold.
The book was a ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...
'' bestseller and launched Marcuse's career as a leftist public intellectual.
His conception of technological rationality and its negative societal consequences were a direct critique to the industrial capitalist society of the time. This critique was incorporated into the ideology of the
New Left
The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, g ...
that rose in the 1960s.
Many politicians on the right, such as
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan ( ; February 6, 1911June 5, 2004) was an American politician, actor, and union leader who served as the 40th president of the United States from 1981 to 1989. He also served as the 33rd governor of California from 1967 ...
and
William F. Buckley
William Frank Buckley Jr. (born William Francis Buckley; November 24, 1925 – February 27, 2008) was an American public intellectual, conservative author and political commentator. In 1955, he founded ''National Review'', the magazine that stim ...
, and philosophers, such as
Alasdair MacIntyre
Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (; born 12 January 1929) is a Scottish-American philosopher who has contributed to moral and political philosophy as well as history of philosophy and theology. MacIntyre's '' After Virtue'' (1981) is one of the most ...
, attacked Marcuse's idea of technological rationality.
Marcuse received death threats, and Brandeis and the University of California system attempted to fire him from his teaching positions due to ''One-Dimensional Man''.
Ultimately, the conception of technological rationality and Marcuse's book ''One-Dimensional Man'' fell out of favor with the left in the 1990s.
A small uptick in interest did resurface when ''One-Dimensional Man'' reached its fiftieth anniversary of publication in 2014.
Reference
See also
*
Communicative rationality
{{DEFAULTSORT:Technological Rationality
Philosophy of technology
Technology in society