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volume of water; or when, in later times, Stahl changed metal into lime, and lime again into metals by withdrawing and restoring some-thing, a new light flashed on all students of nature. They comprehended that reason has insight into that only, which she herself produces on her own plan, and that she must move forward with the principles of her judgments, according to fixed law, and compel nature to answer her questions, but not let herself be led by nature, as it were, in leading strings, because otherwise, accidental observations, made on no previously fixed plan, will never converge towards a necessary law, which is the only thing that reason seeks and requires. Reason, holding in one hand its principles, according to which concordant phenomena alone can be admitted as laws of nature, and in the other hand the experiment, which it has devised according to those principles, must approach nature in order to be taught by it; but not in the character of a pupil who agrees to everything the master likes, but as an appointed judge, who compels the witness to answer the questions which he himself proposes." (3)

The age of enlightenment has indeed fulfilled its program. The process of enlightenment was achieved by a progressive elimination of all mythical residua in the human mind. None of the categories of the old philosophy like mind, will or final cause have survived the critical purge of skepticism. The notion of cause was perhaps the last residuum of old metaphysics which remained in the general consciousness of the age of enlightenment until Hume dispelled and exorcised this spook. Since Hume, however, the skeptical motor has gained momentum until at the end of the process of rationalization the concept of reason itself is abandoned as a mythical residuum. Skepticism has purged the idea of reason of so much of its content that at the end the very idea of reason appears like a ghost that has emerged from cloudy linguistic usage. What philosophy had originally done to the ancient mythologies boomeranged as a revenge upon philosophy itself. The categories of classic philosophy were unmasked as being tainted by memories of ancient mythology. In the pre-Socratic cosmologies we can still discern openly the moment of transition from mythical figures to ontological elements. But the rationalist critique has in the course of the centuries unmasked even the platonic chain of being. The hierarchy of the Olympian pantheon emerges

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as the model for Plato's theory of ideas. The nominalistic critique suspects all
universals as spooks. Ockham's razor, indeed, succeeded, as Mr. Quine remarked,
to shave Plato's beard.

In modern times the structure of the universe was studied without illusions,
without imputing occult powers, and be it even innocent ontological categories
into nature. Whatever did not fit into the quantifying measure, into more arithmetico,
becomes suspect to modern reason. There is a liberating function in the mathematization
of the cosmos which started in the seventeenth century and formal logic has worked as
a great catalyst towards coordinating and unifying the scientific operation.
Ignoring the various qualities man can dominate the world, rule nature and society.

The birth of the Ego in the modern period is bound up with the recognition of
power, the principle of power as the ultima ratio in all relations between man and
man and between man and nature. Is not the rule, Si inaequalitas aequalia addas,
omnia erant inequlia an axion as well of justice as of the mathematics? And is
there not a true coincidence between commutative and distributive justice, and
arithmetical and geometrical proportion? (5)

Bacon and Kant have spelled out reason in terms of the principle of power.
Knowledge is power which knows no limit and will not halt at an arbitrary point.
But man pays a price for this knowledge in the horizon of power. In exercising
power over nature and society, man is alienated from the elements he dominates. He
knows only what he can manipulate. He knows only insofar as he can plan and construct.
The elements of dis-qualified nature and dis-qualified society become substitutable
and exchangeable.

It is important to inquire into the archaic beginnings of the attitude that
shapes out modern scientific operation in order to be able to understand the meaning
of our "self-evident" procedures. Already in the mythical stage of human consciousness
the basic elements of the logic of substitution are present: the sacrifice of an

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animal is a substitute for the sacrifice of the first born son. In the substitution at the act of sacrifice, however, the sacrificial animal still represents the son in a singular and unique way. The animal becomes a sacred being which is not inter-changeable. This element of singularity, this representational function of the was sacrifice/more and more eclipsed in the operation of substitutional logic. Representation is turned into universal exchange. An atom is not split in representation of another atom, but merely as a specimen, merely as a substitutional element. Nevertheless the substitution in the act of sacrifice is a step toward discursive logic. It is therefore illusory to imagine that we can return to more archaic stages of human consciousness in which we would be freed from the yoke of logic, as some romantics or hierophants like C. G. Jung, Martin Heidegger or Ludwig Klages would suggest.

The mythic experience of an imminent destiny ruling over all beings human or divine lives on in a veiled form in the modern notion of imminent necessity. Not by return to earlier stages of human consciousness does man break the yoke of logic. An inquiry into the genealogy of logic should not be conducted for a return to primitive stages, but to bring on the ruling principle in its nakedness and overcome the principle that rules both primitive and developed forms.

Hans Kelsen in his study on Society and Nature has offered a pertinent study of the origin and development of modern scientific concepts and shown how from the principle of retribution the ideas of causality, and therewith the modern concept of nature, have developed. This study of Hans Kelsen seems to me a pertinent historic commentary on the central theme of the last great continental philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche: "The spirit of revenge, my friends, has so far been the subject of man's best reflection; and where there was suffering, one always wanted punishment too". (Zarathustra II, on Redemption.) Nietzsche tears the webs of human categories so that the motif of revenge may leap from behind our words like justice and reason.

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"For that man be delivered from revenge, that is for me the bridge to the highest hope and a rainbow after long storms." (Zarathustra II on the Tarantulas.) Nietzsche does not deal in the theme on the redemption from revenge with a specific problem of ethical theory or moral education. The quest beyond the nexus of retribution concerns, according to Nietzsche, logic, epistemology, as well as ethics.

The operation of substitution which we have shown to be central to the technological concept of reason bears, however, the mark of the structure of domination between man and man: he is the most powerful among men who can manage to have his work done by substitutes. Hegel, in the fourth chapter of the Phenomenology of the Spirit, in his analysis of the genesis of human self-consciousness, has fully developed the dialectic between the master and the slave, emphasizing how crucial the relation between master and slave is for the constitution of the human consciousness. According to Hegel, power and work break asunder in the developing division of labor. Power is on the one side and obedience on the other.

Durkheim has based the entire logical structure of primitive classification on the forms of the social division of labor and has shown how the basic categories of reasoning reflect the particular form of tribal organization and its power over the individual. I do not think, however, that Durkheim was justified in assuming that the forms of thought reflect the structure of solidarity in the tribal community. It is rather the command of the ruling group that is incarnated in the basic forms of thought.

It might be that even the ontological great chain of being is marked by the hierarchical structure of the Athenian society; but the metaphysical apology of the status quo betrayed at least the injustice inherent in such a society through the glaring incongruity between the conceptual universal frame of reference and the divided social structure. In the impartiality of modern scientific language, however, the suppressed, the unprivileged and the persecuted can find no expression

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at all. Such neutrality of language might become more apologetic for the status quo than all traditional metaphysics.

The neutrality of modern technological reason, far from signifying an increasing consciousness of universal solidarity, expresses the skeptical separation of reason from the human realm. Even in the organization of the curriculum at our universities we perpetuate the division of truth into science and humanities, thus admitting that the sciences are following a procedure that is emptied of human content and that the humanities preserve perhaps some human content, but only as an ideology at the expense of truth.

In the technological concept of reason the universality of reason among men is travested into a neutrality toward the human concern with justice or freedom. They are neglected to an irrelevant domain, to an irrelevant realm of "values". It must then be regarded as a matter of subjective preference whether one chooses liberty or slavery - justice or injustice.

In the perspective of the technological concept of reason, man as a person becomes a medieval atavism that has to be more and more obliterated. The ego of the individual subject is a luxury in the realm of technological reasoning. It is a residuum of a theological period. God, justice, man, become meaningless concepts in the grammar of a technological language. The "philosophy" of technological reason is occupied in exposing the bankruptcy of all ideas that go beyond the brute and naked realm of facts. In the realm of technological reason, the basic Cartesian distinction between *res cogitans* and *res extensa* is obliterated and superceded by a net of interrelations between man and nature. The technical apparatus becomes a part of man's "nature". It belongs to him like the snailshell to the snail.

Wilhelm Ostwald yet tried to formulate an "energetic imperative" to substitute for Kant's "categorical imperative". In his grotesque endeavor we can measure best the difference of niveau between the juridical and technological realm of reason. Be

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reasonable (translated into the language of an "energetic imperative") can mean
only: try to avoid any collision with the mechanical apparatus, try to accommodate
yourself to the bureaucracy and management of the society.

The "disenchanted world" of technological reason can serve as religion for masses in the same way as the world of miracles. For the masses technological progress becomes a substitute for human progress. Technological reason can attain for the great masses the evidence of a magical ritual. And as a ritual of a more powerful God it is breaking the taboos of all other civilizations. Its language is simple and universal. Its message is the *tabula rasa* of a universal machine in an iron age.

The enthusiasm of the masses for the technological progress is only equalled by the despair of individuals who are not yet used to consider the question of meaning an an "emotive" problem, but who are aware of the social impotence of all religious and cultural values in a universal socio-economic bureaucracy. The question that haunted Max Weber through all his herculean work — how is it possible to save some remnants of some individuality while the tendency to a universal bureaucracy is becoming the inescapable destiny of a technological society? — is today even more pressing than in 1917. What was for Max Weber still a question within the limits of Western society has today acquired universal relevance, since Western technological reason is on its way to conquer the globe. Where the imperialism of Western theological reason failed, as in China and Japan, the imperial conquest of Western technological reason seems likely to succeed. The Asiatic and African nations were not converted to Western religion, but they are convinced by the methods of Western technological reasoning. The "miracles" of Western industrial production are more impressing than the "miracles" of Western religion. The "converted" nations are embracing the new faith in technology with the neophytic fanaticism which tends to propel the consequences to the utmost.

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It is only natural that those who live on the residue of the past are shocked by the courage of the neophytes who are not "inhibited" by such memories to draw the last consequences. It is also understandable that such a period abounds in efforts of restoration to save the remnants of the *humanum* in a universal technological society. I doubt if timid and tired restorations can counteract such a universal development. The disease has reached the marrow of our spiritual and social existence. The development from the theological concept of reason to the technological interpretation of reason is not accidental; it reveals the inner structure of the Western concept of reason: in all its forms this basic concept reveals one structure - the structure of dominion and the principle of power. The technological manipulation of reason reveals the secret of its theological origins. Already the *creator coeli et terrae* is interpreted in the entire Western tradition in technological terms. Such a concept of reason must complete its cycle according to the principle of its origin.

Therefore it is illusory to seek a balance between tradition and revolution by regressing to earlier stages of the same concept of reason. Such a regression, which lurks behind all romantic remedies of our generation would not break the basic equation between reason and power that rules the Western concept of reason in all its ages, but would rather perpetuate more archaic forms of domination. Technology cannot be brought under control by a magical formula. The technical rationalization that is on the way to becoming the universal ritual of mankind can only be challenged by an idea of reason that has overcome the *element of domination itself*.

In the development of technology, man has reached the stage where the barrier of nature is pushed back to such a degree that man stands for the first time only over and against himself. There is no other object to conquer any longer but man himself. Therefore, the supreme question which confronts our generation is not the technological problem, but the place of reason in the relation between man and man.

In the technological frame of reference the universality of reason has become

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purely formal: one element can be substituted by another element. Even men become
interchangeable parts. Individuals are stripped of their individuality not by
external compulsion but by the very rationality under which they live and act. The
point is that today the apparatus to which individuals are to adjust and to adapt
themselves is so rational that individual protest and liberation appear not only as
hopeless, but as utterly irrational. (4)

Against such a formal neutrality of reason philosophy can protest only by
emphasizing the concrete conditions for the universality of reason. So long as
structures of dominion hinder the mutual recognition between man and man, so long
reason remains enchained to rationalizations of interests and conflicts. The claim
of philosophy to the universality of reason contains a promise that relations between
man and man, between man and nature, are possible that are not tainted by the
structure of master and slave, by the structure of subject and object. The claim of
philosophy to the universality of reason is not exhausted in the technical substitution
of one element by another, but it contains a promise, a program to redeem man in his
historic existence. If this promise is eclipsed in the philosophic pursuit, then
philosophy has forfeited its birthright and justly should abdicate its claim to an
organization for the unification of the technical sciences.

The place of science is established in our social organization. Science has
to assemble facts and to organize them according to principles of rationalization.
Its features can be summarized as the optimum adaptation of means to ends. Thus
reason becomes an energy-conserving operation. Philosophy today seems easily to
accept the scientific standards as a yardstick and functions as a Taylor
system of the spirit, rationalizing the assembled knowledge hindering waste of
energy and effort-philosophy becomes a science like chemistry and physics. Surely
there are some historical residues in the teaching of philosophy left, but they are
kept alive for ornamentation.

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Yet it seems to me that philosophy has a function beyond the Tayloring
operation among sciences, in that philosophy does not capitulate before the social
division of labor, accepting it as if it were a destiny of man. It is the power
of matters of fact that they coerce man not only by overt violence and pressure,
but also by covert persuasion. Philosophy is not a synthesis of all sciences that
state matters of fact, but with Nietzsche I would agree against positivism "which
stops before phenomena saying there are only facts". No, it is precisely facts
that do not exist - only interpretations.

Technological reason has succeeded to disenchant nature and society. Philosophy, however, will have to withstand the charm and persuasion of the disenchantment and remember that the social division of labor, the specialization of science is in the service of man, and not man in the servitude of the division of labor.

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NOTES

1) Theodor W. Adorno: "Kritik des Lugischen Absolutismus" in *Archiv fuer Philosophie*, Volume 2 (1954), p. 130 ff.

2) Francis Bacon: *Novum Organum* - Summary of the II part: On the Interpretation of Nature and the Empire of Man, XIV, 31 (ed. Basil Montague, London, 1925).

3) Kant: *Critique of Pure Reason*, translated by F. Max Müller, 1881, Volume I, p. 368.

4) Max Horkheimer: *Eclipse of Reason*, New York, Oxford University Press, 1947, p. 162 ff.

5) Francis Bacon: *Advancement of Learning*, II, 126 (ed. Basil Montague, London 1825).

6) Max Horkheimer: *Eclipse of Reason*, New York, Oxford University Press, 1947, p. 128 ff.

7) Hans Kelsen: *Society and Nature*, Chicago University Press, 1943, p. 49.

8) Emil Durkheim: "De quelques formes primitives de classification", *L' Année Sociologique*, IV, (1903), p. 66
of Max Horkheimer: *Eclipse of Reason*, p. 106.

9) Herbert Marcuse: *Some Social Implications of Modern Technology: Studies in Philosophy and Social Sciences*, Volume IX, (1941), p. 421.