My thinking is rather crude.
I juxtapose instrumental reason (utilitarianism) with practical reason (dialogic reason concerned with the good life.) I do so in an attempt to disclose a dimension of action and freedom that transcends the Weberian problematic of rationalization and its discontents.
That problematic takes the form of instrumentalizing the world; is motivated by a will to manipulate or control nature and society; operates in terms of a means/end rationality in which things only make sense as means to a pre-given end; makes usefulness and utility the standards of life in modernity; utility leads to meaninglessness or nihlism.
What is juxtaposed to this is a conception of the political life of citizen and citizenship which presupposes that not all politics is domination. The stuff of everyday contemporary politics is about administration and management instrumentalizes the political, and is concerned with, and presupposes, domination.
It seems that I'm inching my way to Arendt.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at July 7, 2005 12:01 AM | TrackBack