An Introduction to the Criticizability of Technology from the Perspectives of Marcuse and Feenberg

The critical school of Frankfurt has mainly dealt with criticizing the new society and its components. One can also trace this perspective in the critical response of this school to the impartial view of technology. This school emphasizes the need of any kind of knowledge for criticism and reform, and therefore argues that human-technology confrontation requires a critical insight and accordingly presents a critique of technology. Using an analytical-documentary method, this research studies the critical theory of technology from the point of view of Marcuse, a prominent scholar of this school, and his student, Feenberg. The results of the research suggest that there are commonalities and differences between the views of these two thinkers; both thinkers disapprove of the instrumental approach to technology, i.e. the separation of value from knowledge and technology, and the deterministic approach to technology, i.e., the unciticizability and the impossibility of changing technology, and consider technology as valuable and changeable. But they are different in the strategy toward change, i.e. the extension of art to politics and democratization of technology, the level of change, the creators of change i.e. the deprived and the suppressed classes, or the general public and the amount of hope for change.