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course of European history, which will be referred to a little later, whereas his notions about what is positive in philosophical tradition are less elear and freąuently morę problematic.⁴⁰ We shall therefore take a look at Marcuse’s and Habermas’s viewpoints.

Reason, according to Marcuse, has been sińce the seventeenth century the critical device of the bourgeoisie which was in ascendance against the feudal-absolutist order. It assumed various meanings in the course of time, but it always implied a rational structure of the world which can be known, and the possibility of changing reality to suit human needs through practical action based on knowledge. The relationship to naturę and social organization in which reason realizes itself should permit a rational satisfaction of human wants and a free development of human abilities. Through education man can become a rational being in a rational world, so that all the laws of individual and social life may develop from a free and autonomous judgement of individuals, independent from any external authority. The idea of reason infers the principle of universality in a twin sense - epistemo-logical and social. The thinking subject is capable of penetrating through the accidents and secrets of naturę to the universal and sub-stantive laws and of expressing them in abstract concepts which are not arbitrary constructions of the imagination, and thus can become the instruments of world changing practice. Universality in a social sence is the conviction that reason is a common feature of all men.⁴¹ Consequently the freedom of thought is a part of man’s essence; it is a prerequisite of morał and political freedom, sińce reason is not con-ceived of contemplatively, but its idea implies that one must act according to its apprehension. However, reason was modelled on natural Sciences and technical order based on their application. Here, accord-

⁴⁰    There are some highly controversial passages in the interpretation of the cha-racter of the objective reason where Horkheimer identifies it with the compre-hensive forms of official ideology which at different historical periods siKceeded in imposing themselves upon society and in successfully performing socio-intcgrative functions. irrespective of its epistemological value. Only thus was it possiblc to equatc the official religion and metaphysics and the objective reason. (»Functions which had prcviously been performed by the objective reason, official religion or metaphysics have now been taken ovcr by the mechanisms of a namcless economic system which reifics*. The Eclipse of Reason [Serbo-Croatian translation], p. 40). In the same book, Horkheimer States that »separation of reason from religion rneant a further step toward9 the weakening of its objective aspect*, (p. 19) having in mind the 16th and 17th century in Western Europę, without at the same time exa-mining the epistemological value of the Roman Catholic and Protestant theologies at the time, and without a historically objcctive assessment of the significance of the differentiation of philosophy and Sciences from the official theology - for this is in fact what is primarily the case - for the dcvelopment of the European thought.

⁴¹    This idea is very resolutely supported by Descartes in his book, A Discourse on Method, which begins with the words: »Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly providcd with is, that thosc even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess. And in this it is not likely that all are mistaken: the conviction is rather to be held as testifying that the power of judging a right and of distinguishing truth from error, which is properly what is called good sense or reason, is by naturę equal in all men;...« (R. Descartes, A Discourse on Method, Everyman’s Library, J. M. Dent and Sons, London 1924, p. 3.)

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