Today’s society is governed – borrowing the terminology from Slavoj Žižek and his text Leninova izbira (Lenin’s choice, 2010) – by the unwritten denkverbot, or a “prohibition” of critical thinking. Its historical illustration is found in the notorious statement by Margaret Thatcher: “There is no alternative to neoliberalism.” The neoliberal economic and social contra revolution started in the 1960s at the department of economics of the university of chicago. Its most important proponent was american economist and winner of the noble prize in economics Milton Friedman. His programme was extremely conservative: “Firstly, the governments must do away with all the provisions and regulations that prevent accumulation of profit. Secondly, they must sell all the assets that are owned by them and could be managed with profit by corporations. And thirdly, the funding of welfare programmes must be decreased dramatically.” Milton friedman “carefully” concealed this completely inhumane ideology, which “matched the interests of big multinationals completely”, by formulating it through the academic “language of mathematics and science”, and thus “transformed” it into impartial economic science. Neoliberal managing of the economy was thus supposedly freed from human subjectivity and became “solely” the fulfilment of scientifically determined natural laws. It therefore became impossible to either doubt it or think critically about it. It is assumed that what enabled neoliberal ideology to parasitize science is the fact that under neoliberalism science itself became “ideology”. The Swiss-Canadian sociologist and philosopher Michel Freitag (1935– 2009), in his book le naufrage de l’université (1995), named it technoscience: “Science is not concerned with studying the world anymore, but with predicting the effects caused in the world by our practically justified interventions.” Technosciences focus on issues that are not results of scientifically-theoretical research but are externally and ideologically forced upon them by scientific politics (in slovenia, for example, tenders for scientific projects dictate the topics). Technoscientific research must avoid theoretical thinking and is at the same time also absolved from self reflection. Science – with honourable exceptions – therefore ceased being creative. The institutions of scientific politics cut science from scientific and social criticism. Science became incognizant, apolitical and inhuman. At the same time, scientific politics deprived scientists of their professional and human dignity, as well as their purpose. This essay attempts to examine the universal neoliberal destruction of thinking.Današnjo neoliberalno avtoritarno družbo obvladuje – če uporabimo besednjak Slavoja Žižka iz besedila Leninova izbira (2010) – nezapisani Denkverbot, »prepoved« kritičnega mišljenja, ki jo zgodovinsko ponazarja znamenita izjava angleške ministrske predsednice Margaret Thatcher: »Neoliberalizem nima alternative.« Neoliberalna ekonomska in družbena kontrarevolucija se je v 60. letih spočela na Oddelku za ekonomijo Univerze v Chicagu, njen najpomembnejši zagovornik pa je bil ameriški ekonomist in Nobelov nagrajenec za ekonomijo Milton Friedman. Friedmanov program je bil skrajno konservativen: »Prvič, vlade morajo odpraviti vsa določila in regulativo, ki preprečuje kopičenje dobička. Drugič, odprodati morajo vse premoženje, ki ga imajo v lasti in bi ga korporacije lahko vodile z dobičkom. In tretjič, financiranje socialnih programov morajo dramatično zmanjšati.« To popolnoma nečloveško ideologijo, ki se je »točno ujemala z interesi velikih multinacionalk«, je Friedman »skrbno « skril v akademizacijski »jezik matematike in znanosti« in jo s tem »preoblikoval« v nepristransko ekonomsko znanost. Neoliberalno urejanje gospodarstva tako naj ne bilo več stvar subjektivnih človeških odločitev, ampak »le« še izpolnjevanje znanstveno ugotovljenih naravnih zakonov. O njem zato naj ne bi bilo več mogoče »dvomiti« niti naj ne bi bilo več »smisla« o njem kritično razmišljati. Predpostavka je, da neoliberalna ekonomska ideologija lahko parazitira na znanosti le zato, ker so v neoliberalizmu tudi znanosti same postale »ideologija«. Švicarsko-kanadski sociolog in filozof Michel Freitag (1935–2009) jih je v svoji knjigi Brodolom univerze (1995, v slovenskem prevodu 2010) imenoval tehnoznanosti: »Znanost se ne ukvarja več s spoznavanjem sveta, temveč z napovedovanjem učinkov, ki jih bodo v svetu povzročili naši praktično smotrni posegi.« Tehnoznanosti se ukvarjajo torej s problemi, ki niso plod znanstvenoteoretičnega preučevanja, ampak so jim jih od zunaj ideološko vsilile znanstvene politike (pri nas teme vsiljujejo na primer razpisi za znanstvene projekte). Tehnoznanstveno raziskovanje se mora izogibati teoretskemu razmišljanju, razmišljati pa mu tudi ni treba več o svojem lastnem početju. Znanost – izjeme seveda obstajajo – tako ne ustvarja več ničesar novega. Ustanove znanstvene politike so znanosti preprečile njeno znanstveno in družbeno kritičnost. Znanost je postala nemisleča, nepolitična in nečloveška. Znanstvenike pa so take znanstvene politike oropale poklicnega in človeškega dostojanstva in smisla. Pričujoči esej skuša vsesplošno neoliberalno uničevanje mišljenja misliti
