INSTRUMENTAL REASON AND ETHICS IN THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY: A PERSPECTIVE OF CRITICAL THEORY

Abstract

This article investigates the foundations, limits, and possibilities of ethics in contemporary technological society, taking as its guiding thread the diagnosis of instrumental reason elaborated by the Frankfurt School. It argues that technical rationality as analyzed by Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse when established as the organizing principle of social life, empties ethical reflection and reduces politics to administrative management, with profound repercussions on the autonomy of the subject and the meaning of responsibility. The analytical path systematically reconstructs this diagnosis, examines its implications for ethics and political philosophy, and confronts it with the alternatives of Hans Jonas (principle of responsibility) and Jürgen Habermas (communicative rationality). Methodologically, the investigation adopts a hermeneutic-critical approach, grounded in conceptual analysis and the interpretation of primary sources. It concludes that the Frankfurtian diagnosis, although indispensable for understanding the pathologies of technology, proves insufficient as a foundation for a normative ethics, requiring the integration of an ethics of responsibility (Jonas) and a communicative rationality (Habermas) to consistently respond to the ethical dilemmas of technological civilization.