Critical Theory and Technology

1. 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)

2. 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).

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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?

8. 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)

9. 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 …

10. 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).

11. 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).

12. 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’.

13. 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.

14. 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).

15. 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).

16. 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.).

17. 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.

18. 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.