Marcuse's Critical Theory Of Technical Rationality And Its Practical Enlightenment

With the rapid development of western science and technology,great changes have taken place in the way of production and life of human beings.Although technological progress has brought people rich material enjoyment,improved production efficiency and improved people's living standard,under the disguise of technological rationality,people seem to enjoy the fruits of the victory brought by technology,but its essence is bound by technological rationality is particularly serious,and gradually evolved into a slave of technology.Herbert Marcuse witnessed all this in a specific historical background and became one of the typical representatives of the Frankfurt school of western marxism.Influenced by the criticism of many scholars since the Frankfurt school,Marcuse used Marx's critical psychoanalysis and formed a set of relatively complete and standard Marcuse's critical theory of technical rationality through systematic and extensive analysis.Starting from Marcuse's technological rationality,firstly,the concept,characteristics and the ideological essence and alienation performance of technological rationality are analyzed.secondly,Marcuse's technological rationality criticism theory,including political criticism,cultural criticism and rational basis criticism are analyzed.Political criticism is reflected in changing work way,maintaining the social system of depressive,leading to control of the people;Cultural criticism is manifested in the triumph of technological rationality over pre-technological rationality,the elimination of the distance between western high-level culture and reality,and the weakening of critical thinking;Rational basis criticism is manifested in the critique of logical basis of technical rationality and the critique of instrumental characteristics.Thirdly,based on the actual analysis of the limitation of the theory of rational criticism,Marcuse is failed to clarify the nature of technical rationality,leads to a negative view of technology and holds a pessimistic attitude to the person's freedom,and social liberation.Finally,the real value and the enlightenment of Marcuse's technological rationality criticism theory are illustrated,that is,correctly recognizing the two sides of technology,unifying tools property and value property of the technology,and establishing people's subjectivity in the process of the in the technology development.Marcuse's technological rationality criticism theory reveals that the technological rationality seems to bring substantial material,but essentially it becomes nonviolent controlling toos used by the ruling class to suppress and exploit people,becomes culprit of people alienation,makes the individual of society really be one-way person,help people to see reality,to build a harmonious society with the certain reference value.However,there are certain limitations,that is,the one-sidedness of the marxist view of science and technology being questioned,the excessive emphasis on the characteristics of tool attributes,the negation of the humanistic value and spiritual pursuit of technical rationality,and the extremely pessimistic and negative attitude towards social development and liberation.Today's society is in the transition of modernization,the positive value and negative impact of technological progress as the people's production and life changing gradually emerge,we have to rationally grasp the stakes of technological rationality,combine tool rationality and value rationality,and avoid the effects of technological progress and problems as much as possible.Therefore in the future,we should use the perspective of development and dialectical unity to view and analyze the realistic enlightenment of Marcuse's technological rationality criticism theory to the harmonious and healthy development of today's society.