It is precisely the acceptance of political, ethical, and religious heteronomy which leads Hegel to label Judeo-Christian culture a slave culture. - Merold Westphal

Hegel’s lack of charity toward the instrument metaphor is not arbitrary. It represents his disenchantment with the assumption that knowledge is power and that method is the means to this end… Descartes’ conception of method, like Bacon’s, is linked to this idea of knowledge as an instrument of power… The same could be said of Locke. Hegel can rightly claim that the instrument metaphor pervades the epistemological tradition he is seeking to transcend.

Kierkegaard seeks to un-socialize the individual in order to un-deify society.

Knowledge conceived as an instrument is a means to the end of power. The goal of philosophy, however, is not to gain power over the Absolute but to know it as it truly is.