#eclipse of reason

In the era of free enterprise, the so-called era of individualism, individuality was most completely subordinated to self-preserving reason. In that era, the idea of individuality seemed to shake itself loose from metaphysical trappings and to become merely a synthesis of the individual's material interests. That it was not thereby saved from being used as a pawn by ideologists needs no proof. Individualism is the very heart of the theory and practice of bourgeois liberalism, which sees society as progressing through the automatic interaction of divergent interests in a free market. The individual could maintain himself as a social being only by pursuing his own long-term interests at the expense of ephemeral immediate gratifications. . . . The bourgeois individual did not necessarily see himself as opposed to the collectivity, but believed or was prevailed upon to believe himself to be a member of society that could achieve the highest degree of harmony only through the unrestricted competition of individual interests.

An intelligent man is not one who can merely reason correctly, but one whose mind is open to perceiving objective contents, who is able to receive the impact of their essential structures and to render it in human language...

The more devices we invent for dominating nature, the more must we serve them if we are to survive.

Man has gradually become less dependent upon absolute standards of conduct, universally binding ideals. He is held to be so completely free that he needs no standards except his own. Paradoxically, however, this increase of independence has led to a parallel increase of passivity. Shrewd as man's calculations have become as regards his means, his choice of ends, which was formerly correlated with belief in an objective truth, has become witless: the individual, purified of all remnants of mythologies, including the mythology of objective reason, reacts automatically, according to general patterns of adaptation. Economic and social forces take on the character of blind natural powers that man, in order to preserve himself, must dominate by adjusting himself to them. As the end result of the process, we have on the one hand the self, the abstract ego emptied of all substance except its attempt to transform everything in heaven and on earth into means for its preservation, and on the other hand an empty nature degraded to mere material, mere stuff to be dominated, without any other purpose than that of this very domination.

The masses know that such freedom for contemplation crops up only occasionally. It was always a privilege of certain groups, which automatically built up an ideology hypostatizing their privilege as a human virtue; thus it served actual ideological purposes, glorifying those exempt from manual labor. Hence the distrust aroused by the group. In our era the intellectual is, indeed, not exempt from the pressure that the economy exerts upon him to satisfy the ever-changing demands of reality. Consequently, meditation, which looked to eternity, is superseded by pragmatic intelligence, which looks to the next moment. Instead of losing its character as a privilege, speculative thought is altogether liquidated—and this can hardly be called progress.

In the highly developed division of labor, expression has become an instrument used by technicians in the service of industry . A would-be author can go to a school and learn the many combinations that can be contrived from a list of set plots. These schemes have been coordinated to a certain degree with the requirements of other agencies of mass culture . . . A novel is written with its film possibilities in mind, a symphony or poem is composed with an eye to its propaganda value. Once it was the endeavor of art, literature, and philosophy to express the meaning of things and of life, . . . to endow nature with an organ for making known her sufferings, or, we might say, to call reality by its rightful name. Today nature's tongue is taken away. Once it was thought that each utterance, word, cry, or gesture had an intrinsic meaning; today it is merely an occurrence.

In this age of big business, the independent entrepreneur is no longer typical. The ordinary man finds it harder and harder to plan for his heirs or even for his own remote future. The contemporary individual may have more opportunities than his ancestors had, but his concrete prospects have an increasingly shorter term. The future does not enter as precisely into his transactions. He simply feels that he will not be entirely lost if he preserves his skill and clings to his corporation, association, or union. Thus the individual subject of reason tends to become a shrunken ego, captive of an evanescent present, forgetting the use of the intellectual functions by which he was once able to transcend his actual position in reality. These functions are now taken over by the great economic and social forces of the era. The future of the individual depends less and less upon his own prudence and more and more upon the national and international struggles among the colossi of power. Individuality loses its economic basis.