Postvarenje povijesnog svijeta
Reification of the Man-Made World

Structural Ideology of Instrumental and Teleological Rationality

Summary/Abstract: The central intention of this paper is to shed light on the contemporary ideological processes that lead to re-naturalization of the man-made world. These ideological processes are reductive forms that curtail human and historical possibilities of man. The first part of the paper discusses the concept of reification. Through the expansive power of capital as the basic form of sociability, all human relations are reduced to relations between things. Therefore the concept of reification, from the methodological perspective of concrete totality, is the starting point for understanding the social ontology of modern times. The second part of the paper deals with the ideological reduction of various faculties of the mind to the instrumental rationality. Both forms of structural reduction – reification and instrumental rationality – carry out ideological role of displacement: quid pro quo and pars pro toto. This denies: a) the role of the mind that sets the purposes of human activity; b) direct recognition of man as a person and holder of the sense; c) instances of generality and the public that is transformed in an aggregate of asymmetric partiality and privacy; d) the power of joint action and the maintenance and creation of human, temporal and historical open world. The third part outlines the three slogans of our time which illustrate the central thesis of the closing and re-naturalization of historical world. These are: a) the end of ideology, which challenges the political ideals and utopian consciousness, but itself becomes a mega-ideology of the quasi-unchangeable facts of life; b) the end of history, which in the form of teleological rationality advocates perfection of the human world and ideologically eliminates any reasonable alternative; c) the end of politics, which justifies non-political form of government and the power of joint action boils down to management, and the end of philosophy, which aims to scientistic disciplination and repression of humanist perspective. The conclusion summarizes the three-point resistance to the dominant spirit of the times: a radical reflection, pluralism of values, and humanistic philosophical perspective.

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