Thanks, I think this narrows the disagreement productively! :)
On the reframed Frankfurt School argument: I strongly agree with the claim that modern societies can retain technical rationality while losing wisdom and ethical reflection (cf. the section “differential intellectual regress”).
Where I still disagree is with locating this tension inside Enlightenment reason. The decoupling of technological competence from moral reasoning isn’t something Enlightenment values produce. It’s what happens when Enlightenment values are abandoned while the technology remains. Nazi Germany didn’t gradually narrow Enlightenment reason into instrumental reason; it rejected Enlightenment values from the start and kept the trains running. It seems that the Frankfurt School framing suggests we need to be suspicious of reason itself, while the fanaticism framing suggests we need more reason, more epistemic humility, more willingness to revise beliefs—i.e., more Enlightenment values, not fewer.
On whether the decoupling of technological capacity from wisdom is “accidental or structurally enabled by modern forms of organization”: I think the empirical record makes this fairly clear. Barbarism long predates modernity, antiquity and the Middle Ages were full of it. Hunter-gatherers engaged in lots of tribal warfare. In contrast, most modern liberal democracies conduct far fewer wars, have far less poverty, and produce far better outcomes across virtually every metric of human flourishing than any pre-modern society (see footnote 9 on the huge drop in violence rates). So modern institutions are clearly neither necessary nor sufficient for producing barbarism.
What often leads to barbarism is the abandonment of core principles of liberal democracy like separation of powers, universal rights, and the rule of law—especially when ideologically fanatical or malevolent actors are in charge. Modernity gives you better tools, but the tools aren’t inherently the problem. That said, I agree that modernity results in great technological capacity which increases the stakes and increases the harm if bad things happen.
On the “productive version” of critical theory as methodological modesty (that reason operates within institutions and incentives that can distort it) I certainly agree with that! But I’d note that many Enlightenment thinkers themselves already understood this perfectly well. Adam Smith, for instance, warned that regulatory proposals from businessmen “ought always to be listened to with great precaution… It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public.” So you don’t necessarily need the Frankfurt School apparatus to get to “institutional incentives distort reasoning.”
Thanks, I think this narrows the disagreement productively! :)
On the reframed Frankfurt School argument: I strongly agree with the claim that modern societies can retain technical rationality while losing wisdom and ethical reflection (cf. the section “differential intellectual regress”).
Where I still disagree is with locating this tension inside Enlightenment reason. The decoupling of technological competence from moral reasoning isn’t something Enlightenment values produce. It’s what happens when Enlightenment values are abandoned while the technology remains. Nazi Germany didn’t gradually narrow Enlightenment reason into instrumental reason; it rejected Enlightenment values from the start and kept the trains running. It seems that the Frankfurt School framing suggests we need to be suspicious of reason itself, while the fanaticism framing suggests we need more reason, more epistemic humility, more willingness to revise beliefs—i.e., more Enlightenment values, not fewer.
On whether the decoupling of technological capacity from wisdom is “accidental or structurally enabled by modern forms of organization”: I think the empirical record makes this fairly clear. Barbarism long predates modernity, antiquity and the Middle Ages were full of it. Hunter-gatherers engaged in lots of tribal warfare. In contrast, most modern liberal democracies conduct far fewer wars, have far less poverty, and produce far better outcomes across virtually every metric of human flourishing than any pre-modern society (see footnote 9 on the huge drop in violence rates). So modern institutions are clearly neither necessary nor sufficient for producing barbarism.
What often leads to barbarism is the abandonment of core principles of liberal democracy like separation of powers, universal rights, and the rule of law—especially when ideologically fanatical or malevolent actors are in charge. Modernity gives you better tools, but the tools aren’t inherently the problem. That said, I agree that modernity results in great technological capacity which increases the stakes and increases the harm if bad things happen.
On the “productive version” of critical theory as methodological modesty (that reason operates within institutions and incentives that can distort it) I certainly agree with that! But I’d note that many Enlightenment thinkers themselves already understood this perfectly well. Adam Smith, for instance, warned that regulatory proposals from businessmen “ought always to be listened to with great precaution… It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public.” So you don’t necessarily need the Frankfurt School apparatus to get to “institutional incentives distort reasoning.”
On Cold War violence, it sounds like we agree! :)