Philosophies of Technologies

ConclusionMarcuse’s Critique of Technology Today

C.1. Introduction¹

I start with the question, why Marcuse? I would not have to ask that question for Adorno’s critique of technology or Deleuze’s critique of technology, supposing they had one. These are the fashionable thinkers who everybody is sure have something important to tell us. Marcuse has been eclipsed by them in the last 30 years or so. However, there was a time when he was the most famous philosopher on Earth with the possible exception of Sartre. Something happened and I think this is partly connected to his very radical critique of science and technology.

Under the influence of Habermas, critical theory dropped the critique of “instrumental rationality”, especially in the form it took in Marcuse’s work. The new field of science and technology studies rejected his critique along with that of Heidegger and other critical predecessors as technophobic. Yet Marcuse addressed issues involving science and technology that are even more pressing today than when he developed his approach. The main lines of his radical stance are validated by the multiple crises we face.

Habermas rejected the “secret hope” of the early Frankfurt school for the re-enchantment of nature in a socialist society. For him and his many followers, technology is just a practical convenience that has no capitalist bias, no relation to the problem of domination, unless it intrudes into the lifeworld, that is, the communicative sphere. We can agree that ...