Critical Theory and Technology
“As a historical project, technicity has an internal sense of its own:
… instrumentality as a way to release man from labour and
anxiety, as a way to pacify the struggle for existence. … [But]
insofar as society has made an abstraction of technology’s
ultimate purpose, technology itself perpetuates misery, violence
and destruction”
Marcuse (From Ontology to Technology, 124)
Preamble
 Marcuse’s warning: In both capitalist and
socialist societies, “an entire dimension of
human reality” has been suppressed (119).
 We can’t look at individual ideological forms
alone to diagnose the problem; rather, we need
to consider the assumptions underpinning all
ideological forms.
 For Marcuse, this requires us to consider what
made possible “both the technological
domination of the world and the universal
administration of society” (119-120).
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From Ontology to Technology
 What does ‘ontology’ mean?
 A sub-field of metaphysics. It examines the
idea of ‘what there is’—the kinds of objects and
their nature in the universe.
 For example, what kind of being is man?
 Heidegger: we are the being for whom the
question of being matters.
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From Ontology to Technology
 In a science-dominated worldview, there is no
room for these sorts of questions. For Popper, a
hypothesis is ‘scientific’ if it is potentially
falsifiable. Are metaphysical claims scientific, i.e.
falsifiable?
 How do we falsify claims?
 Empirically, but can metaphysical claims be
decided empirically?
 No. They are conceptual issues. So, according to
Popper, metaphysics is not science.
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From Ontology to Technology
 Marcuse: under science, “an entire dimension
of human reality is … suppressed” (119).
 How did the metaphysical questions fall by
the wayside?
 Scientific reasoning focuses on explanations
based on efficient causes.
 It abandoned the Aristotelian four-fold notion
of ‘cause’: formal, material, efficient and final.
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From Ontology to Technology
 The table is made of wood (material cause)
 Having four legs and a flat top makes this
artefact a table (formal cause)
 The carpenter made the table (efficient cause)
 Providing a surface to work is what a table is
for (final cause)
 Final causes—reasons for why certain things
are the way they are.
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From Ontology to Technology
 In science, explanation in terms of final causes
have been abandoned. We no longer ask: why
does the heart beat?
 For Marcuse, this is fundamental for it means we
no longer ask questions like, does what is life for?
Does life have meaning?
 This is not a scientific question, but that doesn’t
mean we can’t ask it.
 He is, of course, unfair here for those sorts of
questions are being asked. Or is he being unfair?
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From Ontology to Technology
 One consequence of the emergence of the ‘new
science’: “In its effort to establish the physical
mathematical structure of the universe,
[science] also abstracted itself from the concrete
individual and its ‘sensuous body’. … [Science
has become] a logical system of propositions
which guide the use and the methodological
transformation of nature and which tended to
produce a universe controlled by the power of
man” (120)
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From Ontology to Technology
 For Marcuse, ‘technology’ concerns what we can
do with things.
 Things—mere objects—are instruments for our
projects.
 The world in which science/technology operates
consists just of ‘matter’. Why are values
excluded?
 Science seeks only quantifiable results.
 The kind of reasoning that matters most here is
instrumental, means-end. It has a hypothetical
form: If … then …
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From Ontology to Technology
 “The universe of discourse [is filtered] for the use
of … specialists and experts who calculate,
adjust … without ever asking for whom and for
what. The occupation of the specialists is to
make things work, but not to give an end [i.e. a
telos] to the process. … Being assumes the
ontological characteristic of instrumentality, by its
very structure this rationality is susceptible to any
use and to any modification” (122).
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One-Dimensionality
 Man and Nature have become one-dimensional.
What does one-dimensional mean?
 The context of “efficient, theoretical and practical
operations” (122). Efficiency is the new mantra.
 Whereas in “pre-technological” times, man
existed in two dimensions:
 “The capacity to envisage another mode of
human existence within reality, and the ability to
transcend facticity [i.e. what the situation is now]
towards its real possibilities” (121).
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Scientific ‘neutrality’
 For Marcuse, the present course of science lies
with its self-understanding: as a ‘neutral’, or
‘objective’, engagement with ‘nature’.
 Such understanding leads to further domination of
man and of nature, where “life itself has become
merely a means of living” (125).
 Marcuse rejects that science/technology is
‘neutral’: Science is not an abstract enterprise—it
reflects “a way of existing between man and
nature” (123). Science has a ‘trajectory’.
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What price neutrality?
 The question that Marcuse poses is: what price
did we pay when science is understood as a
“logical system of propositions”?
 Traditionally, technology had an end, a telos: to
satisfy man’s basic needs, to “release man from
labour and anxiety, as a way to pacify the
struggle for existence” (124). But now ‘man’
appears as a variable in an equation governed
by efficiency.
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What price neutrality?
 What remains in this view of science/technology is
a double domination: the technological domination
or control of nature, and the domination or control
of man insofar as man is part of nature.
 How is man dominated by science/technology?
 “Universal administration of society” (120).
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Technology and subjugation
 Marcuse: “all progress … is accompanied by a
progressive repression and a productive
destruction” (125). This path is driven by a
particular understanding of science/technology:
 “pure instrumentality deprived of its ultimate
purpose has become a universal means of
domination. … Technology itself perpetuates
misery, violence and destruction” (124).
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Technology and subjugation
 So called progress brings about even further
subjugation.
 Individuals in contemporary industrial societies
are required to turn away from “satisfaction and
rest” (125) as their instincts tell them: “The
human organism ceases to exist as an
instrument of satisfaction … instead it has
become an instrument of work and renunciation”
(ibid).
 Civilization becomes just “man’s subjugation to
work” (ibid.).
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Marcuse: “a new reality principle”
 Yet, “there is a control over man [and nature]
which is repressive, and there is a control over
man [and nature] that is liberating” (127). How
so?
 Marcuse hints at a “new reality principle” (126).
 He acknowledges that all societal forms require
individual to labour and some form of
‘repression’ on those individuals (ibid.)—imagine
a society in which every individual is free
express his/her desires and passions.
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Marcuse: “a new reality principle”
 But once we recognize the end of technology, then the
need to labour can be eased, if not abolished.
 Life is not “merely a means for living” (125). What does
that mean?
 Instead of struggling for existence, existence can be
enjoyed (126).
 This makes possible “an upheaval in the order of
instincts and needs (ibid.), which will have
consequences for the need to treat it merely as an
instrument for production.
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