Critical Theory of Technology and Possible Emancipation. A Contemporary Reading of Herbert Marcuse

Abstract

Although undoubtedly influenced by Adorno and even Heidegger, Marcuse was not the romantic technophobe for which he is often identified. He certainly holds that instrumental reason is historically contingent, but unlike Critical Theory and Heidegger, he thinks that human action can change the temporal structure of technological rationality and the designs that flow from it. A new kind of reason would generate new scientific discoveries and technologies more benign to humanity. Marcuse is an eloquent advocate of this ambitious stance, although today the notion of a political transformation of science has a dwindling audience and this detracts attention from much of his approach.