A relação entre trabalho, racionalidade e tecnologia na obra de Herbert Marcuse

Abstract

The objective of the present research is to investigate the relationship between the concepts of labor, rationality and technology in the work of Herbert Marcuse between 1928 and 1964. Our aim is to contextualize the critique of technology he carried out in The One-Dimensional Man. To achieve this purpose, relevant works from three different moments in that particular time frame were selected for analysis. The first chapter examines the role of the notion of labor in the reinterpretation given to Heidegger’s phenomenology by Marcuse, who intended to use it to complement Marxism, and in the author’s own ontological conception of labor. The second chapter addresses the rationalist turning point in Marcuse’s thought after his affiliation with the Institute of Social Research. This movement sets rationality as a parameter for social organization oriented towards human fulfillment, but still criticizes some of its developments and assumptions. In that context, Marcuse writes his first critique of technology, which is here analyzed alongside his critique of rationality and of some excerpts of Marx on the development of industry. The third chapter shows how labor, rationality and technology converge in Marcuse’s analysis of the one-dimensional society. This study intends to show how the ambiguity of technology and of its effects on labor seems to be directly related to the ambiguity of rationality itself in Marcuse’s thought. Finally, some of his proposals to reconcile the realms of necessity and freedom are presented. In the lights of the content researched, this dissertation aims to contribute to the current debates on the relationship between technological development and social organization of labor, with the concept of rationality being essential to their connection.