| Critique of instrumental reason is a main component of critique of modernity. The critique of modernity, in some sense, is the critique of Enlightenment reason, to which many creative thinkers pay special attention. Dialectics of Enlightenment which is written by M.Horkheimer and T.W.Adorno is one of the masterpieces of Frankfurt School, and it has had great influence upon their followers and admirers. This paper points out that their critique goes like this: firstly, the scientific picture of nature is a kind of domination upon nature. The Enlightenment tries to replace fantasy with knowledge, however, the knowledge's essence is technology; it is only an instrument or means. The Enlightenment reason evolves into instrumental reason. Secondly, in the secular world, i.e., in the completely enlightened world, reason has become a new myth. Exactly speaking, this is a myth of instrumental reason, and the human beings are chained to it. This is the inevitable result of the domination on nature. According to M.Horkheimer and T.W.Adorno, what Enlightenment has brought to us is opposite to what it had expected, and this is so-called'dialectics of enlightenment'.In the second and third parts of this paper I make a critical discussion of this book's main ideas as shown above. Firstly, I believe that M.Horkheimer and T.W.Adorno's understanding of scientific picture of nature is wrong. In the cognitive sense, science makes no domination upon nature. I make a defense for'scientific-technological system'further from the perspective of cultural anthropology, and point out that it is the only symbol of human beings as a whole. Then, I elaborate the complexity of the idea of'progress'in the age of enlightenment, and demonstrate that the progress of reason does not absolutely lead to moral progress, which shows the eclipse of the myth of progress. And finally, I believe that M.Horkheimer and T.W.Adorno face a daunting dilemma. They refuse to base their critique on reason, so...
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