The idea of technique and technology in an early paper of Herbert Marcuse

Abstract

In the thinking of Herbert Marcuse, three stages can be distinguished from the dominant interests in his production: the first deals with the history and historicity as ontological concepts; the second focuses its interest in the delimitation of the critical theory of society; and the third is an application of the theory outlined in the second stage to the critic of the advanced society. In the third stage are his most famous writings; the notions that stand out are the dimensionality and the technique and technology as a political project domain. This paper analyses aspects of the notions of technique and technology related to the second period of his production, which bear little relation to the last stage. In a paper published in 1941 (the year in which he also published Reason and Revolution) in Studies in Philosophy and Social Sciences Vol. IX, Some Social Implications of Modern Technology, Marcuse presents an investigation about what technology and technical efficiency accounted for the history of critical theory. Interestingly, not only there is no clue to his subsequent development of non-neutrality policy of the technique, but it also seems to take advantage of the technique and technology for its progressive use in favor of the stabilization of democracy. Another topic discussed is the rationality of traditional bourgeois society destroyed by authoritarian regimes and the emergence of a new rationality that accompanies the profile of a highly developed society, rationality which will attempt to delegitimize critical rationality.