I think your response raises important criticisms, but some of the disagreement comes from talking past what the theoritical argument is actually trying to do, and I also may be oversimplifying what I intend to convey for the sake of clarity but lost its nuances in the first place. It may help to narrow the disagreement rather than treat it as a choice between Enlightenment reason vs. its critics. (PS: I don’t think we’re disagreeing much here.)
OnNazism and Dialectics of Enlightenment
You are right that the movement was openly anti-liberal and hostile to many Enlightenment ideals. It rejected universalism, elevated myth and authority, and subordinated evidence to ideology. In that sense, describing Nazism as a direct product of Enlightenment thinking is historically misleading.
What thinkers like Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno were trying to claim however was different. They were not claiming that Nazis were faithful heirs of Enlightenment values. The argument is that Enlightenment reason contains an internal tension: the drive to master nature through calculation and control can, under certain historical conditions, narrow into what they call “instrumental reason”. This form of rationality focuses on efficiency and domination while detaching itself from ethical reflection and critical self-awareness. Their concern is that modern societies could retain technical rationality while losing emancipatory aims. Whether one agrees or not, the argument is about a tension inside modernity, not a simple causal claim that reason produces barbarism.
On technology, bureaucracy, and moral reasoning
Your distinction between technological efficiency and Enlightenment commitments to truth-seeking is correct. Yet the critical theory concern is precisely that these can become decoupled. A society may maintain scientific competence while weakening norms of criticism, pluralism, or moral restraint. The historical question is whether this decoupling is accidental or structurally enabled by modern forms of organisation. In other words, the disagreement is really about whether this separation is accidental misuse or something modern institutions make easier.
On Cold War violence.
Critics are usually making a narrower claim: that existential framing during the Cold War allowed liberal states to suspend their own norms in practice. Works like The Jakarta Method are less an argument against liberal philosophy than an attempt to show how geopolitical fear reshaped moral boundaries on the ground.
The concern about critical theory becoming unfalsifiable is also somewhat fair. Some versions do slide into treating every appeal to reason or universality as disguised power, which collapses into skepticism about knowledge itself.
But the stronger version of the tradition is closer to a warning than a rejection: that reasoning always happens inside institutions and power structures that can distort it. The productive version of this insight is methodological modesty: reason operates within institutions and incentives that can distort it. The unhelpful version is total suspicion.
The disagreement should be located between these two readings rather than framed as reason versus anti-reason. One reading treats reason primarily as a normative commitment: evidence, logical consistency, revisability of beliefs, and universal standards for justification. In this view, failures such as ideological violence occur when societies abandon reason or fail to live up to it. The problem is moral / institutional deviation.
The other reading treats reason as historically situated. It asks how particular forms of reasoning become dominant, which questions are considered legitimate, what kinds of evidence are prioritised, and how certain assumptions become invisible background conditions. The focus shifts from whether reasoning is used correctly to how epistemic frameworks themselves are formed and stabilized.
From that perspective, the issue is epistemological rather than anti-rational.
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.”
One more side note, I am actually glad that, you as one of the author of this post are aware of the existing body of scholarship and the broader historical reality of the world’s politics. My concern was whether you are trying to reinvent the wheel while substantial body of work has been produced about this topic. I apologize if I have been overly provocative.
The second generation of the Frankfurt School, particularly Jürgen Habermas, also addresses the totalizing tendencies in the first generation’s argument, though that is a separate discussion.
Hi there :)
I think your response raises important criticisms, but some of the disagreement comes from talking past what the theoritical argument is actually trying to do, and I also may be oversimplifying what I intend to convey for the sake of clarity but lost its nuances in the first place. It may help to narrow the disagreement rather than treat it as a choice between Enlightenment reason vs. its critics. (PS: I don’t think we’re disagreeing much here.)
On Nazism and Dialectics of Enlightenment
You are right that the movement was openly anti-liberal and hostile to many Enlightenment ideals. It rejected universalism, elevated myth and authority, and subordinated evidence to ideology. In that sense, describing Nazism as a direct product of Enlightenment thinking is historically misleading.
What thinkers like Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno were trying to claim however was different. They were not claiming that Nazis were faithful heirs of Enlightenment values. The argument is that Enlightenment reason contains an internal tension: the drive to master nature through calculation and control can, under certain historical conditions, narrow into what they call “instrumental reason”. This form of rationality focuses on efficiency and domination while detaching itself from ethical reflection and critical self-awareness. Their concern is that modern societies could retain technical rationality while losing emancipatory aims. Whether one agrees or not, the argument is about a tension inside modernity, not a simple causal claim that reason produces barbarism.
On technology, bureaucracy, and moral reasoning
Your distinction between technological efficiency and Enlightenment commitments to truth-seeking is correct. Yet the critical theory concern is precisely that these can become decoupled. A society may maintain scientific competence while weakening norms of criticism, pluralism, or moral restraint. The historical question is whether this decoupling is accidental or structurally enabled by modern forms of organisation. In other words, the disagreement is really about whether this separation is accidental misuse or something modern institutions make easier.
On Cold War violence.
Critics are usually making a narrower claim: that existential framing during the Cold War allowed liberal states to suspend their own norms in practice. Works like The Jakarta Method are less an argument against liberal philosophy than an attempt to show how geopolitical fear reshaped moral boundaries on the ground.
The concern about critical theory becoming unfalsifiable is also somewhat fair. Some versions do slide into treating every appeal to reason or universality as disguised power, which collapses into skepticism about knowledge itself.
But the stronger version of the tradition is closer to a warning than a rejection: that reasoning always happens inside institutions and power structures that can distort it. The productive version of this insight is methodological modesty: reason operates within institutions and incentives that can distort it. The unhelpful version is total suspicion.
The disagreement should be located between these two readings rather than framed as reason versus anti-reason. One reading treats reason primarily as a normative commitment: evidence, logical consistency, revisability of beliefs, and universal standards for justification. In this view, failures such as ideological violence occur when societies abandon reason or fail to live up to it. The problem is moral / institutional deviation.
The other reading treats reason as historically situated. It asks how particular forms of reasoning become dominant, which questions are considered legitimate, what kinds of evidence are prioritised, and how certain assumptions become invisible background conditions. The focus shifts from whether reasoning is used correctly to how epistemic frameworks themselves are formed and stabilized.
From that perspective, the issue is epistemological rather than anti-rational.
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! :)
One more side note, I am actually glad that, you as one of the author of this post are aware of the existing body of scholarship and the broader historical reality of the world’s politics. My concern was whether you are trying to reinvent the wheel while substantial body of work has been produced about this topic. I apologize if I have been overly provocative.
The second generation of the Frankfurt School, particularly Jürgen Habermas, also addresses the totalizing tendencies in the first generation’s argument, though that is a separate discussion.