Critique Of Instrumental Reason

These essays, written between 1949 and 1967, focus on a single theme: the triumph in the twentieth century of the state-bureaucratic apparatus and ‘instrumental reason’ and the concomitant liquidation of the individual and the basic social institutions and relationships associated with the individual.

These essays, written between 1949 and 1967, focus on a single theme: the triumph in the twentieth century of the state-bureaucratic apparatus and ‘instrumental reason’ and the concomitant liquidation of the individual and the basic social institutions and relationships associated with the individual.

Tackles a question as old as Plato and still pressing today: What is reason, and what roles does and should it have in human endeavor? The eminent intellectual historian Martin Jay surveys Western ideas of reason, particularly in German philosophy from Kant to Habermas.

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The portentous terms and phrases associated with the first decades of the Frankfurt School – exile, the dominance of capitalism, fascism – seem as salient today as they were in the early twentieth century. The Routledge Companion to the Frankfurt School addresses the many early concerns of critical theory and brings those concerns into direct engagement with our shared world today. In this volume, a distinguished group of international scholars from a variety of disciplines revisits the philosophical and political contributions of Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and others. Throughout, the Companion’s focus is on the major ideas that have made the Frankfurt School such a consequential and enduring movement. It offers a crucial resource for those who are trying to make sense of the global and cultural crisis that has now seized our contemporary world.

We live in a world of technical systems designed in accordance with technical disciplines and operated by technically trained personnel—a unique social organization that largely determines our way of life. Andrew Feenberg’s theory of social rationality represents both the threats of technocratic modernity and the potential for democratic change.

Horkheimer was the founder of the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt. Much of what became known as the New Left can be directly traced to his work and that of the Frankfurt School. Written between 1949 and 1967, these essays focus on a single theme: the triumph in the 20th century of the state-bureaucratic apparatus and "instrumental reason".