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ing to Marcuse, lies the root of conformist scepticism in modern ra-tionalism which restricts reason to a technical relationship with naturę. Typical bourgeois philosophers — Leibnitz, Kant, Fichte — make a compromise between their philosophical rationalism and the obvious irrationality of social relationships, because they make reason and freedom a private matter of the individual which can be reconciled with a contrary social environment. Hegel, in contrast, sees the vin-dication of reason in social and political institutions, above all in the State.⁴² Without disputing the bourgeois character of these conceptions of reason, Marcuse explains why they are not just a mere ideology. They express concern for the rights of the individual who protests against the existing reality, because in his thoughts we sees himself free and rational. Demanding that the world should be shaped freely by men who are capable of thought, the classical philosophy aspires toward a social order in which individuals would jointly organize their life, according to their needs. Beside safeguarding the rights and freedom of individuals, they would also care for their happiness and resist the subjection of the individual to apparent collectives.⁴³ Hence reason, that basie category of philosophical thought, connotes the idea of a true being which incorporates all the basie contradictions (between subject and object, essence and appearance, thought and being) with the conviction that the existing world is not inherently rational but can be madę so.⁴⁴

In his interpretations of philosophical tradition, where he challenges the positivist limitation of reason to intellectual ability, as evidenced in the search for a technically usable knowledge and its efficient tech-nological application, in other words in a functional rationality which considers only the efficiency of means for the achievement of deter-mined goals, detached from a rational judgement and evaluation, Habermas also emphasizes the integral theoretical and at the same time practical meaning of reason in philosophical tradition. Since po-sitivism does not deny that intellectual abilities and theoretical think-ing are characteristics of reason, but on the contrary defines reason as such, in his criticism of positivist conceptions Habermas dicusses the consequences of separating intellect from practical motivations and impulses in which intellect may develop into reason. Reason in philosophical tradition, according to Habermas, is eąually inseparably re-lated with the collective endeavour to remove ideative obstacles (pre-judices, errors, delusions, dogmatism, ideological illusions and apolo-getical manipulation with ideas), which hamper progress toward a juster society, and with the craving for a subjective maturity and autonomy of the individual. Reason therefore invariably thrives in social resistance, and boldness is one of its indispensable psychical prerequisites. »Reason subsists from this temerity to be rational, from that sapere aude which Kant put forward as a motto to his answer

⁴¹ H. Marcuse, Reason and Revolution, Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory, (1941), Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1963, pp. 256-257.

⁴⁵ H. Marcuse, »Philosophy and Critical Theory« (Negations, Essays in Critical Theory), Beacon Press, Boston 1969, pp. 138-141.

⁴⁴ Ibid., pp. 135-136.

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