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"Instrumental reason" as a book category gathers works that examine and critique the dominance of means‑end, efficiency‑driven thinking in modern life—how rationality becomes a tool for control, calculation, and technical optimization rather than a guide to human values or ends. It encompasses philosophical and critical‑theoretical texts (drawing on figures like Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas), sociological and political analyses of bureaucracy, technocracy, and market rationalization, as well as literary and dystopian fiction that dramatizes the dehumanizing effects of purely instrumental thinking. Typical books explore themes such as the colonization of moral and social spheres by scientific and economic logic, the loss of deliberative and communicative reason, ethical consequences for democracy, environment and culture, and possible forms of resistance or alternative rationalities.

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