Research On Horkheimer's Critical Thought Of Instrumental

Horkheimer is a famous German philosopher and sociologist.He is the pioneer and founder of critical theory of Frankfurt school.When Frankfurt school began to study critical theory,his theoretical thought represented the academic theory level of Frankfurt School in a period of time.Horkheimer's critical thought of instrumental rationality mainly comes from Max Weber's rationality theory,Lukacs' Materialization Theory and Marx's alienation theory.Horkheimer creatively combined their critical spirit and formed his own unique critical theory based on the background of developed capitalist socialist industrial society.From the perspective of history,Horkheimer made a profound analysis of the enlightenment spirit from its emergence to its development,and recognized that the essence of enlightenment is to make people get rid of fear,establish independent consciousness and establish a complete independent personality.In this process,with the relationship between man and nature as the core and the relationship between myth and enlightenment as the clue,he made an overall reflection and profound criticism on the spirit of enlightenment.After selectively absorbing Weber's "rationality" theory,Lukacs' s "materialization" theory and Marx's "alienation" theory,Horkheimer formed his own "rationality" theory.He divided rationality into objective rationality and subjective rationality.Objective rationality takes the realization of human liberation,social fairness and justice,and people's access to freedom as the highest goal.It adopts a critical and transcendent attitude towards the existing social reality,so it is also critical rationality and liberation rationality.Objective is only a part of procedural process for subjective reason.Purpose directly serves the existing order.Subjective reason emphasizes the importance of means and the reconciliation between means and ends.Therefore,it is also instrumental rationality and technical rationality.Horkheimer thinks that instrumental rationality,as the ruling rationality,has its positive progress.It promotes the development of industrialized society and makes science and technology achieve unprecedented achievements.Of course,Horkheimer's critical thought of instrumental rationality inevitably has negative and negative effects.Instrumental rationality pays too much attention to the procedure,which makes it develop into the rule rationalization,which leads to the hegemony of instrumental rationality to form the totalitarian rule,and makes the society fall into the current situation of the supremacy of purpose rationality.The supremacy of instrumental rationality not only causes the alienation of human social relations,but also worsens the relationship between human beings and living environment,which leads to the loss of human nature and the depression of personality.Facing such a social situation,Horkheimer began to rethink and criticize the instrumental rationality,and pointed the spearhead of criticism to science and technology.Horkheimer's critique of instrumental rationality opened a new chapter in the history of capitalist criticism.His theory has a lot of positive and desirable progressive significance,of course,it is difficult to escape the shortcomings and defects caused by the limitations of the social environment in which we live.We should always stand on the historical point of view,prudently evaluate it fairly and objectively,and draw useful theories from it,so as to obtain our own development and progress.