The Concept of Power in the Philosophy of the Frankfurt School

The thesis is an attempt to apply the ideas of the Frankfurt School of critical theory to the concepts of power and authority. The paper sets two primary tasks. Firstly, to disclose the genealogy of power in order to connect human rationality as such with contemporary modes of political and social life. Secondly, to study the mechanisms of authority in Late Modernity. Two principal texts are employed as instrumental for accomplishing these tasks: Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s “Dialectic of Enlightenment” (1944) and Marcuse’s “One-Dimensional Man” (1964). The paper arrives at the following conclusions. Power and reason, genealogically connected, evolve into the technological mode of domination in the modern era. This kind of domination does not rely on the repressive apparatus, but rather supports its subjects’ welfare and creates collective needs. The latter are communicated via culture and authoritative discourse. Collective consciousness is shaped by productive forces, which enforce false needs on individuals as their own, producing ‘one-dimensional’ individuals. Power starts operating as alien consciousness. It relies less on direct coercion as long as it supports itself via ideology and administrative and technological apparatus. On the other hand, the scientific and technical might of modern instrumental rationality achieves such a formidable level that it tends to become autonomous and threatens its handler (the mankind). Today, the Enlightenment (in the broadest sense) returns back to its historical roots: myth and fear. Fear was the principal incentive which, according to Horkheimer and Adorno, gave birth to the mankind’s drive to comprehend and rule. A solution to the described situation may be found in employing the philosophical reason’s critical aspect in order to seek a better relationship of reason and nature — the one which would not oppress it, but rather liberate it.