摘 要： 现代社会通常被说成是合理社会，但作为这种说法之核心的“社会合理性”（social rationality）概念，值得作进一步澄清。社会合理性是不能够以科学方法的理想化形象作为模式来理解的。科学和社会两者都不符合这种图景。然而，新自由主义和技术统治论的那些诉诸科学之社会幻影的论证，却总是使批判沉默无语。有必要提出一条新的批判策略，它能够对理性之抵制本身进行理性的批判。与那些把现代人工制品、系统和组织理解为是理性确定程度不足（rationally underdetermined）的策略相比，对理性的浪漫主义拒绝被证明是不那么有效的。前者首次出现在马克思对资本主义经济学的分析当中，尽管马克思没有用到“不充分确定”（underdetermination）的概念，但他依然能够在讨论工作日长度的时候，在面对某种非常像社会合理性的东西的时候，避开社会合理性的沉默效应。法兰克福学派的批判理论随后以一种富有启发但又模棱两可的方式将浪漫主义因素和马克思主义混合起来。在当代科学和技术研究中，“不充分确定”的概念重新出现，并在哲学和社会学上得到清楚而详细的阐释。但是在这过程中，批判的力度却有些弱化。技术批判理论尝试恢复原初的批判力量，并把它的进路推广到社会合理性的三种主要形式。
关键词： 合理化； 技术； 科层制度； 市场； 批判理论
From Critical Theory of Technology to the Rational Critique of Rationality
Andrew Lewis Feenberg
Abstract： This paper explores the sense in which modern societies can be said to be rational. Social rationality cannot be understood on the model of an idealized image of scientific method. Neither science nor society conforms to this image. Nevertheless, critique is routinely silenced by neo-liberal and technocratic arguments that appeal to social simulacra of science. This paper develops a critical strategy for addressing the resistance of rationality to rational critique. Romantic rejection of reason has proven less effective than strategies that conceptualize modern artefacts, systems, and organizations as rationally underdetermined. This approach first appears in Marx’s analysis of capitalist economics. Although he lacks the concept of underdetermination, Marx gets around the silencing effect of social rationality with something very much like it in his discussion of the length of the working day. Frankfurt School Critical Theory later blended romantic elements with Marxian ones in a suggestive but ambiguous mixture. The concept of underdetermination reappears in contemporary science and technology studies, now clearly articulated and philosophically and sociologically elaborated. But somewhere along the way the critical thrust was diluted. Critical theory of technology attempts to recover that thrust. Here its approach is generalized to cover the three main forms of social rationality.
Key words: rationalization; technology; bureaucracy; markets; critical theory
