Ontology to Technology Fundamental Tendencies Industrial Society

Herbert Marcuse
The following pages contain ideas developed during a course held in 1958-1959 at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. They are part of a soon-to-be-published book, dedicated to the study of some basic tendencies in the most advanced industrial societies, particularly the United States.' These tendencies appear to engender a system of thought and behavior which represses any values, aspirations, or ideas not in conformity with the dominant rationality. An entire dimension of human reality is therefore suppressed: the dimension which permits individuals and classes to develop a theory and technique of transcendence by which they might envisage the "determinate negation" of their society. The radical critique and effective opposition (intellectual as well as political) are now integrated into the status quo; human existence seems to become "onedimensional." Such an integration cannot be explained by the emergency of mass culture, the organization man, the hidden persuaders, etc. These notions belong to a purely ideological interpretation that neglects the analysis of the most fundamental processes which

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undermine the base upon which a radical opposition might have developed. Are this same atrophy of historical transcendence and this neutralization of the negating forces, which appear as the supreme achievement of industrial society, rooted within the same structure of technical civilization, or are they only the work of its repressive institutions? Did these technics so deeply transform capitalism and socialism as to invalidate Marxist and anti-Marxist notions? Is the atrophy of transcendence furthering the absorption of negating forces, announcing the control of its inherent contradiction by both the technological domination of the world and the universal administration of society? Or is this process rather inaugurating the phase in which quantitative change is becoming qualitative? Those are the questions which have guided our analysis. Starting with the political economic transformation of modem technical society, this analysis will examine the different ways that the process of transcendence atrophied in normal behavior, language, traditional culture, as well as in neopositivist and analytical philosophy. While the new scientific method destroyed the idea that the universe was ordered in relation to a goal, to a teleological structure, it also invalidated a hierarchical social system in which occupations and individual aspirations were predetermined by final causes. The new science, in its neutral form, abstracted itself from an organization of life which deprived the immense majority of human beings of their liberty. In its effort

to establish the physical mathematical structure of the universe, this new science also abstracted itself from the concrete individual and its "sensuous body." Such an abstraction was fully validated by its result: a logical system of propositions which guided the use and the methodological transformation of nature and which tended to produce a universe controlled by the power of man. The reality being reduced (or reducible) to its physical mathematical structure entailed that "truth" became defined by what could be measured or calculated, or by propositions which fulfilled these conditions. This formal reality realizes itself according to its own laws (even though these laws are purely "statistical" in character). Man can understand them, act upon and use them without making them part of his own individual or social existence. For these laws govern human beings insofar as they are purely physical and biological matter. In all other aspects, humans are eliminated from nature; or rather the reality aimed at and acknowledged by the scientific method becomes a reality independent of individual and social facticity. One can justifiably speak of the "metaphysical foundations" of modem science. In this respect, Alexander Koyre recently strongly emphasized the nonempirical and the ontological aspects of Galilean science. The Pythagorean, the Platonic, and the Aristotelian traditions remained, at least up to Newton, powerful enough to provide the scientific method with a "philosophy." One might say that the very notion of

physical universal laws, susceptible to unification, from the start preserves a certain version of finality. Soon, however, this idea of finality will become ever more empty-a finality of calculable order, evaluated purely for its ability to predict events. It will become divorced from a telos and from a structure tending towards a telos. This predictive calculable rationality will define all actions in its ten-ns, relative to what will constitute an "order" based on calculability and predictability (even if only a statistical order). The density and the opacity of "objects," and Of objectivity as well, seem to evaporate. Nature and human reality are no longer considered as a substantial cosmos. According to advanced scientific method, thinking is purified of the objects which it opposes: these latter remain only as convenient intermediaries," as "models" and "invariables" or "obsolete cultural postulates. "' Or, quoting again another operative formula: Physical matter can no longer Provide an objective for "the external and the material world, those are only the results obtained by the achievement of such operations.3 The totality of objects of thought and practice is now projected" as organization: beyond any perceivable certitude, truth becomes a matter of convention, efficiency, and "internal coherence." The most fundamental experience is no longer concrete experience, overall social practice, but rather the administrative practice organized by technology. This development reflects the transformation of the natural world into a technical world. It is more than a

pun if I say that technology has replaced ontology. The new mode of thought annuls the ontological tradition . Hegel summarized the idea which lies at the core of this tradition: Logos, Reason, is the common denominator of the subject and the object and it is perceived as the synthesis Of opposites; this synthesis develops and realizes itself in the theoretical and Practical struggle to transform the given world into the free and rational world. This is the work of history. With that idea, the idealist ontology comprehends the tension between subject and object, and the opposition between them. The reality of reason is the tension between different modes of being. Thus, the most resolutely monist system maintained the idea of a substance which deploys itself into subject and object, that is to say, the idea of a dual and antagonistic reality. The modem transformation from natural to technical reality undermines the very foundation of this dualism. It is true that scientific, modem philosophy begins with the Cartesian notion Of two substances: res cogitans and res extensa. However, since the "Matter" of which the latter is constituted is more and more comprehended by mathematical formulas (whose application, in turn, "remolds" this matter), the res extensa loses concrete character. While the res extensa becomes the world of mathematical structure in itself, the Ego, as the res cogitans, even more surely becomes the subject of observation and quantitative computation. A new monism appears, but a monism devoid of substance. The tension between subject and object, the dualist and antagonistic character of reality,

tend to disappear and with them the "twodimensionality" of human existence, the capacity to envisage another mode of human existence within reality, and the ability to transcend facticity towards its real possibilities. The ability to live in two dimensions was one of the constitutive characteristics of man in pretechnological civilization. The capacity to transcend facticity from the perspective of a qualitative change of reality within reality was quite different from the belief in religious transcendence which transcended the same reality, and even more so from scientific transcendence, which only transforms the factual in quantitative terms - The ability to comprehend and live historical transcendence is seriously atrophied in the technological world. Man can no longer exist in two dimensions; he has become a one-dimensional man. There is now one dimension of reality which is, in the strict sense of the word, a reality without substance, or rather, a reality in which substance is represented by its technical form which becomes its content, its essence. Every signification, every proposition is validated only within the framework of the behavior of men and things-a onedimensional context of efficient, theoretical, and practical operations. At first, it was possible to believe that the "denaturation" of reality is masked by the terrible force through which the technical world resists the will and the thinking of the individual; that the pure and simple power of the matter which man should transform and

which transforms him was never so overwhelming. But this power is the very power of man. It is through this same human practice that the technical world has congealed into a "second nature," or a false immediacy, schlechte Unmittelbarkeit [bad immediacy], more hostile and destructive than this original pretechnical nature. The technical reality does not have any substance other than subject-who would make out of this technical reality the world of his liberty exists only potentially "in itself and not "for itself." Consequently, technical reality is deprived of its logos, or, more precisely, that logos appears as deprived of reality, as a logical form without substance. Contemporary positivism, semantics, symbolic logic, and linguistic analysis define and filter the universe of discourse for the use of technicians, specialists, and experts who calculate, adjust, and match without ever asking for whom and for what. The occupation of these specialists is to make things work, but not to give an end to this process. Neither science nor technics have values in themselves; they are "neutral,, with respect to values or ends that might have been attributed to them from outside. This neutrality is nonetheless positive: reality is value, and it is evaluated precisely as if it were conceived in its pure form (or as pure matter: in this context these two terms, although opposite, converge) and lent itself to all ends. Being assumes the ontological character structure this rationality is susceptible to of instrumentality; by its very structure this rationality is susceptible to any use and to any modification.

Are those notions inherent in science ? Don't they too easily correspond to the social conditions of experience in which scientific method developed? Demonstrating the link which exists between mathematical and operative science on one hand, and ascending capitalism on the other, does not exhaust the question. This link deserves to be reexamined. The link existing between science and society is well known. As science was liberating itself, liberating nature from its "external" forces and constituting objectivity as a means in itself, a pure and universal means, all analogous liberation was produced in social relations: man found himself liberated from any individual and "external" dependence. Man entered into the social process as an abstract and universal element, quantifiable in terms of labor power. In the course of this process, the concrete aspect of having different intellectual faculties and individual needs (the secondary qualities!) became reduced to a common denominator, a quantifiable, objective base of exchange, of money, and of means in a universal milieu. The parallel between social development and scientific development discloses a common principle: efficiency. The scientific method sees in this principle the most certain warranty of its correctness. But there isn't, there couldn't be, efficiency per se! In the social process, the end [of efficiency] is the production of consumer goods, which purports to satisfy needs and an exchange value which integrates subjects and objects according to a universal, quantifiable standard. It seems, however, that science wasn't originally indebted

to such ends; this is a great illusion. Conceptually speaking, science tended towards a different end. First, science made ends abstract-as processes which appeared themselves incompatible not with "reality," but with the ascending industrial reality in which ends become means in a system of "technicity4 . In this way, science constructed the universe of intellectual and physical instrumentality, a system truly "hypothetical." Nevertheless, a system of instrumentality depends, as such, on another system: on a universe of ends. What appears as external, foreign to the terminology of science, is actually part of its structure, its method, and its concepts: of its objectivity. One should therefore reject the notion of technical neutrality, which offers a perspective on techniques beyond good and evil and which appears as objectivity itself, susceptible to social usage in all its forms. Indeed, a machine, a technical instrument, can be considered as neutral, as pure matter. But the machine, the instrument, does not exist outside an ensemble, a technological totality; it exists only as an element of technicity. This form of technicity is a "state of the world," a way of existing between man and nature. Heidegger stressed that the "project" of an instrumental world precedes (and should precede) the creation of those technologies which serve as the instrument of this ensemble. People should therefore conceive of reality as a technical ensemble (technicity) before attempting to act upon it as a technician. In fact, such "transcendental" knowledge possesses a material base in the needs of society and in the incapacity of

society to either satisfy or develop them. I would like to insist on the fact that the abolition of anxiety, the pacification of life, and enjoyment are the essential needs. From the beginning, the technical project contains the requirements of these needs: these requirements are part of the notion of world harmony, of physical laws, and of the mathematician God (the highest idea of universal equality throughout all inequality!). These requirements are intrinsic to the very notion of modem science, which demands the free play of intellectual faculties against repressive powers. If one considers the existential character of technicity, one can speak of a final technological cause and the repression of this cause through the social development of technology. The question is whether neutrality, in relation to values, is a scientific notion, that is to say, a requirement inherent in the structure of modem science. In my opinion, the neutrality of technology (which is a mere manifestation of the neutrality of science) is a political concept. Industrial society clearly developed a notion of technology which undercuts its inherent character. Indeed, as a historical project, technicity has an internal sense of its own: technicity projects instrumentality as a way to release man from labor and anxiety, as a way to pacify the struggle for existence. This is the ultimate purpose for that methodical transformation of the world implied in technicity. Developed as "pure" instrumentality, technology has rendered this concrete purpose into an abstraction. It has ceased to be the goal of technological

development. Consequently, pure instrumentality deprived of its ultimate purpose, has become a universal means for domination. Indeed, technicity requires domination: the control of nature as a hostile, destructive, and violent force; the control of man as part of that nature; the exploitation of natural resources for the satisfaction of needs. In these ways, industrial society appropriately exercises its technological domination; but insofar as society has made an abstraction of technology's ultimate purpose, technology itself perpetuates misery, violence, and destruction. The interdependence of productive and destructive forces, which characterizes technicity as domination, tends to suppress any difference between the "normal" and the abnormal "use" of technology. The difference between the use of "technology" and science by the Nazis and by democracy is dubious. A missile remains a missile whether it destroys London or Moscow, and Mr. von Braun remains Mr. von Braun whether he works for the Brown House or the White House. The absence of an ultimate purpose in technology manifests itself equally in politics, where it becomes open to suspicion and contestation. If the creation of the technical world did not abolish the domination of man over man, it was because a particular development of technicity which is more profound and more ancient than technique itselfcontinued to make out of life merely a means of living. Up to the present, technical progress remains the progress of an alienated labor, of a repressive

productivity. Technicity became the most efficient method, the most fruitful way, to subjugate man to his instrument of labor. Through technicity, society ensures the primitive repression of man by man enjoyment is sacrificed to the "reality principle." This repression must be exercised most efficiently and intensively, since it is more than ever threatened by technical progress itself. It seems, indeed, that the realization of industrial civilization diminishes the need for repression; confronted with the real possibility for the abolition of labor, however, industrial civilization appears even more irrational. I would like to stress here the immense political impact of Freud's work, as an analysis of the fatal dialectic of progress. Civilization is man's subjugation to work. In this process, the human organism ceases to exist as an instrument of satisfaction and instead becomes an instrument of work and renunciation: satisfaction is postponed, enjoyment sacrificed. The primary instincts of man naturally tend to immediate satiation and to rest, to tranquility through this appeasement; they oppose themselves to the necessity of work and labor and to the indispensable conditions of satisfaction in a world ruled by starvation and the insufficiency of goods. Society therefore must turn the instincts away from their immediate goal and subjugate them to the "reality principle," which is the very principle of repression. The human being therefore becomes an instrument of labor; he is productive. But this productivity is always

accompanied by suffering and by destruction, which are the marks of the violence done to humans in their biological constitution. The progress of civilization rests therefore upon this essential modification of the "nature" of human beings. Henceforth, individuals make repression their own project and their own enterprise (super-ego, guilt feelings,etc.). Their instincts themselves become repressive; they are the biological and mental bases which sustain and perpetuate political and social repression. To the extent to which the social reorganization of instincts represses spontaneity, eroticism, etc., the instincts of destruction and death become more powerful. Transformed by turn into aggressiveness, which is more or less controlled and useful, these instincts become an inherent force of the progress of civilization. Thus, the progress of civilization is a double process which dialectically intervenes as much in the biological and mental domain as in the domain of political economy; each supports and fortifies the other. All progress, all growth of productivity, is accompanied by a progressive repression and a productive destruction. The social division of labor engenders this fatal dialectic through which, one could say, all progress of reason contains its own irrationality, every gain of liberty contains a new form of servitude, and all production contains restrictions that are equally efficacious. Now, this dialectic becomes explosive in advanced industrial civilization. To the degree that society masters nature and increases the material and intellectual resources which individuals can put to use,

the double repression becomes less necessary as the condition of progress. The realization of technology and the productivity of labor could reduce considerably the gap that exists between needs and their satisfaction. A world truly pacified might emerge, where life would no longer be merely a means for living, but instead become a life in and for itself. Repression continues, however, and so it should continue, since without alienated work it would become impossible to increase that repressive productivity which has become the driving force of society. A few conclusions, whose speculative character should not be hidden, remain to be suggested. I admitted that the repressive tendencies in advanced industrial society have resulted from the development of technicity seen as a political project, as a project of domination. That domination implied by technicity is twofold: Control of nature: rational exploitation of natural resources, etc. Control of man: rational exploitation of natural resources, etc. According to its own internal logic, the technological project should have been accomplished while annulling itself: the necessity for domination was supposed to disappear. The triumph over misery and the insufficiency of goods should have made it possible to "abolish labor," to put productivity to the service of consumption, and to abandon the struggle of existence

in order to enjoy existence. Considerable forces conflict with such a future of technicity: within overall progress and the enhancement of conditions of life, domination and destruction continue. Furthermore: domination and destruction themselves become the conditions of progress. I have stressed that the social organization of instincts plays a major role in this process through which individuals perpetuate their own domination. All social repression rests on a "biological" repression. Consequently, all liberation presupposes a revolution, an upheaval in the order of instincts and needs: a new reality principle. This total transvaluation of values would affect the being of nature as well as the being of man. Man and nature will always remain the two terms of a dialectical relation, the factors of a dialectical totality. Social organization influences nature as well as man. There can be no liberation, no pacification of human existence, without the liberation and pacification of nature. There is a control over man which is repressive, and there is a control over man which is liberating.There is a control over nature which brings deliverance to nature, as far as its own misery is concerned, and which suppresses violence and destruction. Civilization realized the idea of such a control over nature, in its gardens, parks, and its "protected reserves"; outside the portions limited to the natural environment, it has treated nature as man was treated: as an instrument of repressive reproductivity. "This conquering aggression is characterized by the rape of nature. ,5 Yet this sentence is too often

perceived as a catch-phrase, as an old image of romanticism and utopia. As a matter of fact, it expresses the essential relation between the destruction of man and the destruction of nature. Man remains master and slave, subject and object of this domination, although domination is transferred to machines and directed against nature. "The machine is only a means; the end is the conquest of nature, the domestication of the natural forces through subjugation: the machine becomes a slave which produces other slaves. Such an inspiration can meet man's desire for liberty. But it is difficult to liberate oneself while transferring servitude to other beings, men, animals, or machines; to rule over an empire of machines which subjugate the entire world is still to rule, and any system of rule presupposes the acceptance of a schema of subjugation.6 Notes 1. See also Hegels Ontology und die Grundlegung einer Theorie des Geschichtlichtkeit (Frankfurt, 1932); Reason and Revolution (London, 194 1); Eros and Civilisation: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (Boston, 1955); Soviet-Marxism (New York, 1958). 2. Quine, From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge, 1953), p. 44 3. H. Dingle "Philosophy of Physics: 1850-1950" Nature, vol. 168 (195 1), p. 630.

4. Translator's Note: In contrast to the French technique, which refers to a particular activity within a particular sociohistorical construct, technicity refers to an entire system of technology, including its technical apparatus and scientific knowledge. The word technicity will be kept in the text. 5 .Gilbert Simondon, Du mode d'existence des objets techniques (Paris, 1958), p. 127. 6. Ibid.