Habermas and the Instruments of Domination

Science and technology are often celebrated as engines of human progress, promising greater freedom, prosperity, and control over our environment. But what if technological progress also serves to reinforce existing structures of power? What happens when political and moral questions are increasingly treated as technical problems to be solved by experts?

In his influential 1968 essay Technology and Science as "Ideology," Jürgen Habermas builds on the work of Max Weber and Herbert Marcuse to examine how scientific and technological rationality can become instruments of political and economic domination. He distinguishes between instrumental action, concerned with efficiency and control, and communicative interaction, through which people establish shared norms and determine how society ought to be organized. We'll discuss whether science and technology are inherently political, whether technological progress necessarily produces human progress, and whether Habermas's critique remains relevant in an age of artificial intelligence and algorithmic governance. Are we becoming more rational as a society, or simply more efficient at pursuing goals we've never collectively chosen?

The reading can be found here