Biopolitics, ecology and instrumental reason: considerations on Max Horkheimer y Michel Foucault

Abstract

In this essay, the author argues that from the critique of the instrumental reason done by Max Horkheimer, it is possible to observe an environmentalist protest, against the irrational advance of technique and modern society, a vision that is opposed to the ones that are traditional in environmentalism. To approach this subject, the author uses the biopolitics theoretical framework; this is because it gives an explanation to social and environmental issues of today by putting the “life of the world” at the center of the analysis. Therefore, the critique of the instrumental reason offers analytical tools that are able to explain the environmental crisis, a philosophical argumentation to certain resistances to the oppressive capitalism of life, and shapes an affirmative biopolitics, in charge of redefining the relations between men and nature.