Habermas splits of communication from instrumentality and thereby neglects that in capitalism communication just like technology, the media, ideology or labour is an instrument that is used by the dominant system to defend its rule. Communication is not pure and left untouched by structures of domination, it is antagonistically entangled into them. For Horkheimer (based on Marx), critical theory’s goal is man’s ‘emancipation from slavery’ (Horkheimer 2002, 249) and ‘the happiness of all individuals’ (248). Horkheimer has the emancipation of communication just like the emancipation of work, decisionmaking and everyday life, in mind. His notion of critical rationality is larger than Habermas’ notion of communicative rationality that risks becoming soaked up by non-critical approaches that use Habermas’ stress on communication for instrumental purposes. The concept of communication can be critical, but is not necessarily critical, whereas the concept of a critique of domination is necessarily critical.
1.5. The Frankfurt School and Martin Heidegger’s Philosophy<sup>7</sup>
Martin Heidegger has influenced some critical theorists, such as Herbert Marcuse, Günther Anders, Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, Giorgio Agamben, Bernhard Stiegler, or Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Because he was not just a philosopher, but also a philosopher of technology, he has influenced studies of media and culture and continues to today influence the study of digital media, including critical studies. At the same time, many critical scholars, including Adorno, Marcuse, Anders and Habermas, have always been very sceptical of Heidegger because of his membership in the Nazi party.
The publication of Heidegger’s philosophical notebooks, the Black Notebooks, as the final volumes in the collected Heidegger works, has since 2014 resulted in heavy debates about anti-Semitism and Heidegger. As a result, for example the President of the Heidegger Society Günter Figal stepped down. Explaining this move, he argued that he was shocked and that the revelations meant the end of Heideggerianism.8 Given that Heidegger remains influential in critical theories of digital media, I want to discuss why I think his approach is highly problematic and that Heidegger scholarship can after the Black Notebooks not simply continue as it did before.
Introduction: Critical Theory of Communication
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