THE IMPLICATION OF INSTRUMENTAL REASON IN THE CULTURAL PARADOX

OF ENLIGHTENMENT

The Sleep of Reason produces Monsters

- Francisco de Goya1

What is reason? And what does it mean to be reasonable?

Man exults himself with his rational faculty, rightfully and solely innate to him. To have

this faculty makes man different from that of the genus of animals. But really, how faithfully

has he exercised this faculty of his?

Man now lives in an era of modern technological advancement, state of the art

inventions and innovations, mind-boggling discoveries and the ever expanding horizon of

knowledge available for the betterment and maximization of productivity. The modern era

boasts of its capacity to make human life, seemingly, easier and more productive. He

appears to have departed from a primitive state to an apparent progressive period, and it

is present anywhere - from the understanding of even the tiniest microscopic elements,

to the monumental structural constructions up to the ambitious search for a new home

1
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) is regarded as the most important Spanish artist of the
late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He was a Spanish artist whose paintings, drawings, and engravings
reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th- and 20th-century painters. The series
of etchings The Disasters of War (1810–14) records the horrors of the Napoleonic invasion.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Francisco-Goya (accessed April 6, 2018). Etching is a printmaking
technique that uses chemical action to produce incised lines in a metal printing plate which then hold the applied
ink and form the image. The plate, traditionally copper but now usually zinc, is prepared with an acid-resistant
ground http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/e/etching (accessed April 6, 2018). One of Goya’s masterpieces is
entitled The Sleep of Reason Produces monsters which depicts, In the image, an artist, asleep at his drawing table,
is besieged by creatures associated in Spanish folk tradition with mystery and evil. The title of the print,
emblazoned on the front of the desk, is often read as a proclamation of Goya’s adherence to the values of the
Enlightenment—without Reason, evil and corruption prevail
https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/becoming-modern/romanticism/romanticism-in-spain/a/goya-the-
sleep-of-reason-produces-
monsters?utm_campaignID=1338305937&utm_campaignname=humanities&utm_keyword=&utm_device=c&gclid
=EAIaIQobChMImKaludyk2gIVCiQrCh0pPAyHEAAYASAAEgLpafD_BwE (accessed April 6, 2018).
that humanity could colonize and occupy extending even to the farthest distance galaxies

throughout the whole expanse of the universe.

It seems that humanity has just made a quantum leap, not to mention the rise of nation

states, industrial societies, urbanization, emergence of socialist countries, mass literacy,

mass media, growth and tolerance of political and social beliefs, emergence of social

sciences and anthropology, beginning of modern psychology, and the seeming

irrelevance and disenfranchisement of faith and religion when faced in the evolutionary

thinking of geology, biology, politics and social sciences.2 From all these can be deduced

its common denominator- the disenchantment of the world3, and with it the progress of

reason, and the mastery of nature.4 Surely, Man did a good job as regards the exercise

of his rational faculty.

Ever since man made its first step toward progress, reason had been its driving force.

It accompanied progress, facilitated the realization of its potentials, regulated the

advances made and set the limits of innovations that might cause unwanted effects.

Progress is espoused to the very substance of reason. They are inseparable. Every act

of man that tends toward progress passes through the filters of reason. What he wills,

reason would classify, infer and then deduce from it that which makes the act reasonable5.

2
Cf. https://www3.dbu.edu/mitchell/modernit.htm ( accesed october 21,2107)

3
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenmet. Ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, Trans.
Edmund Jephcott (California: Stanford University Press, 2002), 1.

4
Ibid., 19.

5
Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, 3.
 Progress, however, is not only limited to the liberation of living conditions, but also the

emancipation of reason itself. As reason acquires more knowledge, every inch of

progress also sets into motion, toward another actuality; hence, as man progresses he is

also enlightened.

Max Horkhiemer and Theodore Adorno, both German philosophers from the Frankfurt

School: Institute of Social Research6 wrote, “Enlightenment understood in the widest

sense, is the advance of thought, and has always aimed at liberating human beings from

fear and installing them as masters.”7The more man knows the more he is enlightened.

He seeks to know. He seeks to disenchant nature, to rationalize it, and then dominate it.

As he is enlightened the more then that he imposes his sovereignty over nature. For him

to exercise fully this dominion he must first know for, as Horkheimer and Adorno puts it,

knowledge is power.8 Knowledge frees man from the universal feeling of fear and

6
The Institute for Social Research, or Frankfurt School, is an interdisciplinary research center associated
with the University of Frankfurt in Germany and responsible for the founding and various trajectories of Critical
Theory in the contemporary humanities and social sciences. Three generations of critical theorists have emerged
from the Institute. The first generation was most prominently represented in the twentieth century by Max
Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Leo Löwenthal, and also for some time Erich
Fromm. The so-called ‘second generation’ of the Institute is centrally represented by Jürgen Habermas, whose
work has functioned as the focal point of a wide range of critical theorists. The third generation of the Frankfurt
School is represented by Axel Honneth who emerged as a new center, with different strands or readings of who
else belongs to the third generation, some in Germany, some internationally, and some more in sociology and
social and political theory than philosophy.
Frankfurt School: Institute for Social Research. Available from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304183835_Frankfurt_School_Institute_for_Social_Research (accessed
Apr 06 2018).

7
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 1.

8
Ibid., 2.
disillusionment.9 He fears because he does not know, consequently, knowing establishes

him as masters over nature. Indeed “man’s sovereignty lies hidden in knowledge.” 10

This domination of nature can be best seen in the realm of science, although not

limited there. As biology discovers the mysteries of living creatures, astronomy, the outer

space, and physics, the laws and principle of the physical world, they developed the

capacity to manipulate it and even transform it as means to progress. This made man

lords over it.

However, as observed, neither the rational liberation nor domination of nature was

wholly beneficial to man. Time has proven that rational emancipation is also manifesting

itself on mere rationalization of means. The holocaust, for example, was a systematic

genocide of six million European Jews only because Hitler hated them and that he saw

them as an inferior race compared to Germans. It was a heinous act of murder and yet

the persons in authority did not deem it wholly an evil act, or if ever they did, they saw

that the act itself will produce a good greater than that of the act itself; hence the act

becomes reasonable for it served another purpose, and that is the elimination of ‘germs’.11

9
Max Horkheimer, preface in ‘Eclipse of Reason’.

10
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 1.

11
The first part or foundation of Hitler's ideology was his conception of Germany as a living organism, the
second part—source of all that followed—was his belief that the nation was suffering from a disease that might
prove fatal. From the earliest days of the National Socialist movement, Hitler and other Nazis were haunted by the
specter of a disease within the body politic that could lead to the death and disappearance of the German nation.
Hitler believed that his role as political leader was first to diagnosis or disclose the cause of Germany's illness; and
secondly to act to cure the disease. That disease are the Jews. Hitler identified the Jew as the source of Germany's
disease: a pathogen whose continuing presence within the nation would lead to its demise. It was necessary,
therefore—in order to cure Germany's disease—to eliminate the Jew from within the body politic. According to
Hitler's biological conception of politics, rescuing the life of Germany required removing from within the body
politic the source of her disease. The Nazi movement was conceived as a struggle of life against death: between
the healthy German organism, and the viral Jewish element. A German medical journal in June 1935 explained that
just as weak people were liable to succumb to tuberculosis more easily than strong ones, so only racially weak
The reason for that act is used merely as a tool for it derives its meaning through its

connection with other ends.12 Thus there is no such thing as reasonable in itself i.e.

“purged of any objective content, nor a particular reality seem reasonable per se.”13 Only

those actions which are in accordance to self-interest or of self-preservation can be

considered reasonable. This is because, according to Horkheimer, reason was emptied

of any objective content.14 That objective content, for him, is the type of reason that is

focused not on the co-ordination of behavior and aim, but on concepts -however

mythological they sound to us today- on the idea of the greatest good, on the problem of

human destiny, and on the way of the realization of ultimate goals… it is a principle

inherent in reality.”15 This is the foundation that supported the idea of justice, equality,

happiness, democracy and property.16 A view which holds that something is present in

reality that is universally true. A view which holds that such concept exists in extra-ego

and extra mental reality, Concepts that ought to direct man’s actions and decisions

indifferent to his subjective interests.

Aside from objective reason being mythological, furthermore it also denotes,

according to Max Horkheimer,

people would "fall victim to the bacilli of Jewish infection."

https://www.libraryofsocialscience.com/ideologies/resources/koenigsberg-ideology-perception/index.html
(accessed April 8, 2018).

12
Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, 37.

13
Ibid., 7

14
Ibid., 35

15
Ibid., 5.

16
Ibid., 20.
 “On the one hand, as its essence, a structure inherent in reality that
by itself calls for a specific mode of behavior in each specific case, be
it practical or theoretical. This structure is accessible to him who takes
upon himself the effort of dialectical thinking, or, identically, who is
capable of eros. On the other hand, the term objective reason may
also designate the very effort and ability to reflect such an objective
order.”17
It is clear in the above statement that objective reason was not meant to exist by

itself. It calls for the subject to reflect upon the reality which he is in. No wonder

Horkheimer stated, “…the general ascent of society as a whole …depends at least in part

on our ability to interpret accurately the profound changes now taking place in the public

mind and in human nature.”18 Hence, to reflect upon the profound changes happening in

the society, requires the subject to embark on a dialectical thinking to be able to interpret

whether reality is still in accordance with the objective order or not.

Horkheimer continues, that the proponents of this objective type of reason, “Held

to such ideas because they saw in them elements of truth, because they connected them

with the idea of logos, whether in the form of God, or of transcendental mind, or even of

nature as an eternal principle.”19 This view dates back from the ancient philosophical

forefathers even up until now in the contemporary world.

One particular proponent of this reason are the religions in the world. They

continue to hold on to the teaching that is founded on objective principles. Examples of

which are the ethical principles such as, killing is bad and that life is sacred and that it

should be preserved.

17
Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, 11.

18
Ibid., vi.

19
Ibid., 34.
 In contrast, the subjective reason is a “… reason as a subjective faculty of the mind

according to which… the subject alone can genuinely have reason… and ultimately

subjective reason proves to be the ability to calculate probabilities and thereby co-

ordinate the right means with the given end.”20This view relies on the subject as the one

who makes his acts or thoughts reasonable and not on whether his line of thinking or

actions conforms to the objective concepts, as the proponents of it propose. The changes

in reality and in the thinking of man paved the way to the line of reasoning that man is the

master of his self. There is no God, nor transcendental mind that will make man a better

version of himself except his own. He can live according to what he desires. His decision

will be affected by what he think will be of great contribution to his self-realization. The

subject now has the final say. He can manipulate reality accordingly. Having been

harnessed of its objective content, reason has become merely subjective, which

continues to push objectivity into the threshold of oblivion and irrelevance. Reality

becomes dependent on the decision of the subject which makes the objective order or

objective reason obsolete.

In turn, the alteration of reason, from the interplay of both subjective and objective, to

sheer subjectivity, caused anything to be rationalized according to, and by the subject.21

Instead of being reason in itself, reason can only be reasonable through its harmony with

man’s desires. It has given up its dignity as the measuring rod of man’s actions and

thought.

20
Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, 5.

21
Ibid., 35.
 “Having given up autonomy, reason has become an instrument.”22 It has been reduced

to that mere state, for self-preservation and servant of man’s self-interests. However, the

problem with the alteration of reason is that, with all the different self-interests, of self-

preservation, conflict arises. The diverse self-interests caused man at certain point to

enter into a crisis of reason or the incapability to conceive objectivity at all or begin to

negate it as a delusion.23

Max Horkheimer would express the negative implications of subjectivized or

formalized reason by stating that,

“The formalization of reason has far-reaching theoretical and practical

implications. If the subjectivist view holds true, thinking cannot be of
any help in determining the desirability of any goal in itself. The
acceptability of ideals, the criteria for our actions and beliefs, the
leading principles of ethics and politics, all our ultimate decisions are
made to depend upon factors other than reason. They are supposed
to be matters of choice and predilection, and it has become
meaningless to speak of truth in making practical, moral, or esthetic
decisions.”24

Reason was held to be the guiding the principles of reality. It was assumed to be

that which makes everything reasonable and meaningful. But because the subject has

been put to the position where he is the one who identifies what is reasonable and what

is not, it affects even the very foundation that affirms the reasonability of an act or thought.

The effect continues as he further states,

“What are the consequences of the formalization of reason? Justice,

equality, happiness, tolerance, and all the concepts that, as
mentioned, were in preceding centuries supposed to be inherent in or
22
Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, 21

23
Ibid.

24
Ibid., 7-8.
 sanctioned by reason, have lost their intellectual roots. They are still
aims and ends, but there is no rational agency authorized to appraise
and link them to an objective reality.”25

Again, since objective reason was meant to be the guiding principle of man’s

actions and decisions, it should have been the basis of what man ought to do. It is only

up to him to reflect on it and then decide whether an act or certain end is reasonable

enough to be pursued. However since objective reason was regarded obsolete and

irrelevant, nothing or no one has the authority to judge anything to be reasonable except

the subject alone.

Horkheimer adds that, “the progress of subjective reason destroyed the theoretical

basis of mythology, religious and rationalistic idea”26, from which the very idea of objective

concept of reason itself was deposited. “The more ideas become automatic,

intrumentalized the less does anybody see in them thoughts with meaning in their own.”27

The very project of enlightenment, the disenchantment of nature and the liberation

of reason from fear and myth, and even enlightenment itself, is in danger of reverting into

regression28, and “man instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind

of barbarism”.29 That Neo-Barbarism is not anymore sheer brutality or extreme cruelty

because of the drive for survival, but cruelty and brutality, coupled with an oppressive

rationalization of motives. Enlightenment failed to realize its goals to liberate man from

25
Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, 23.

26
Ibid., 34.

27
Ibid., 21-22.

28
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, xviii.

29
Ibid., xiv.
slavery to superstition and lack of progress in his way of life to a prosperous kind of life.

Even “in modern times, reason has displayed a tendency to dissolve its own objective

content.”30 Unfortunately, the supposed domination of the nature is turning into

domination of nature, and of man.

“The enemy is not reason, but the absence of it” or the wrong or abusive use of

it.31 Violence, oppression, extra-judicial killings, terrorism, war, persecution, corruption,

prostitution, euthanasia, assassination, cyber bullying, abuses in authority, and obsession

for authority, are just but some of the acts which seem unreasonable, yet they happen. If

man is a rational being, he must have thought about the act before doing it. He must have

weighed the reasons for doing such acts. If so, why do such things happen when in fact

even a common person could judge those acts as morally wrong? The author of those

acts must have thought the act served a higher purpose, more good than the act itself.

But, was it really good? From what ground can it be judged unjustifiable when reason

itself is devoid of any objective content so as to pass judgment to the irrationality of man?

As Horkheimer expressed, “Reason has been purged of any specific trend or

preference that it has finally renounced even the task of passing judgment on man's

actions and way of life.”32 “Reason was supposed to regulate our preferences and our

relations with other human beings and with nature”,33 but now with all the outward

irrationality of the world, reason has turned them over for ultimate sanction to the

30
Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, 12-13.

31
http://opinion.inquirer.net/106855/the-burden-of-philosophy ( accessed October 21,2017)

32
Max, Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, 9.

33
Max, Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, 9.
conflicting interests to which our world actually seems abandoned. 34 Indeed reason is

asleep and the sleep of it produces monsters.

Reason is having a disease, and that disease of reason is that reason that was

born from man’s urge to dominate nature and the recovery depends on insight into the

nature of the original disease rather than on the cure of the latest symptoms.35 It is needed

to be done because man have been so used to rationalizing means. They have even

managed to build logically constructed theories of persecution.36 This must have been

the reason why Horkheimer engaged in a self-crtique of reason,37 because what he meant

by insight is not merely to know something on that disease, but to engaged it in a

dialectical discussion to set it back again on its right course.

Enlightenment was supposed to liberate man and his rational faculty from myths

and superstitions. It sought to make man know more and understand more so that he

could maximize his full potentials and capacities. It was supposed to make man’s life

harmonious with what really is true, good and beautiful. Yet, the fully enlightened earth

radiates disaster triumphant".38 One particular example which Horkheimer is pointing out

to is the Nazi Death Camp. “For Horkheimer and Adorno, enlightenment reaches its limit

in the Nazi death camps. Here the process of the rationalization of means had come to

its extreme. The most enlightened techniques are needed to put as many people to death

34
Ibid.

35
Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason,176.

36
Ibid.

37
Ibid., 177.

38
Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment. 3.
as quickly and efficiently as possible.”39 The rationalization of man reached its threshold.

It has completely transformed man and nature into mere objects and means. Man is not

anymore considered an end in itself, rather as objects to be eliminated if it fails to qualify

as reasonable means to other’s self-interest. The genocide was merely a means and was

rationalized because it served another purpose. Everything was either useful or thrown

out. As objects, they are used as tools. These and other negative implications are the

cause of instrumental reason. The line of thinking that asks, “What is it good for? How is

that useful?”40and instead of having intrinsic value, anything can only have value in

relation to some external end.41

This project would discuss instrumental reason from the thoughts of Max

Horkheimer and its adverse effects on enlightenment. The effects could still manifest itself

even up until now. This work hopes to provide an understanding as to why violence,

exploitations, oppressions and other acts of the same degree happens, despite the fact

that man is rational.

39
Daniel Malloy, Dialectic and Enlightenment: The Concept of Enlightenment in Hegel and Horkheimer-
Adorno. Auslegung, Vol. 27, No. 2 (University of South Carolina), 43.

40
Ibid, 50.

41
Ibid.