Dialectic of Enlightenment
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- ISBN13: 9780804736336
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Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. “What we had set out to do,” the authors write in the Preface, “was nothing less than to clarify why humanity, as a replacement for of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism.”
Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle against natural forces, as represented in myths, are connected in a wide arch to the most threatening experiences of the present.
The book consists in five chapters, at first glance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes. The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative scenery of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that inscription the limits of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the trend toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning. Using past analyses to elucidate the present, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization.
Adorno and Horkheimer see the self-destruction of Western reason as grounded in a past and fateful dialectic between the domination of external scenery and society. They trace enlightenment, which split these spheres apart, back to its mythical roots. Enlightenment and myth, therefore, are not irreconcilable opposites, but dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life. “Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology.” This paradox is the fundamental thesis of the book.
This new translation, based on the text in the perfect edition of the works of Max Horkheimer, contains textual variants, commentary upon them, and an editorial discussion of the position of this work in the development of Critical Theory.
Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle against natural forces, as represented in myths, are connected in a wide arch to the most threatening experiences of the present.
The book consists in five chapters, at first glance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes. The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative scenery of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that inscription the limits of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the trend toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning. Using past analyses to elucidate the present, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization.
Adorno and Horkheimer see the self-destruction of Western reason as grounded in a past and fateful dialectic between the domination of external scenery and society. They trace enlightenment, which split these spheres apart, back to its mythical roots. Enlightenment and myth, therefore, are not irreconcilable opposites, but dialectically mediated qualities of both real and intellectual life. “Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology.” This paradox is the fundamental thesis of the book.
This new translation, based on the text in the perfect edition of the works of Max Horkheimer, contains textual variants, commentary upon them, and an editorial discussion of the position of this work in the development of Critical Theory.
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Wow. A must read by any student of critial thought
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
This book is of course rubbish of the first order.
As a single, simple example, I quote from another review, which accurately summarizes chapter 4.
“The fourth chapter is called “Limits of Enlightenment”, and addresses directly the theme of anti-semitism and fascism more generally. Fascism is posited as Enlightenment turned against itself (it must be noted Adorno & Horkheimer were among the first to state this, even if it is to some extent of a cliche now). Enlightenment’s all-purpose instrumental reason knows only power as a measure of behavior. Therefore, it cannot tolerate the being of groups that thrive, yet never have power, such as Jews and women. Whenever Enlightened society fails to satisfy the needs of its members, their rage is turned against such groups.”
In synopsis: Fascist anti-semitism was the result of the Enlightenment’s “instrumental reason”.
But this is of course absurd. German Christianity has a long history of anti-semitism extending much farther back than the 18th century, at least to Martin Luther’s well-known violent anti-semitism. Hitler attacked the Jews in the name of Christianity, not in the name (say) of Enlightenment deism. His world-view and rationale were drawn from the theories of distinct national or cultural “races”, theories that sprouted and flourished as part of Optimism’s rejection of the rationality and trans-jingoism of the Enlightenment.
So Germany’s (and in fact, Christianity’s) long history of anti-semitism, along with the trend of *any* society in distress to vent its anxiety by attacking a vulnerable minority, is a sufficient and historically adequate explanation for Nazi anti-semitism.
But Adorno and Horkheimer invite us to attribute Fascist anti-semitism to “Enlightenment’s” inability to tolerate groups that are (ironically) both powerless and (despite being powerless) thriving. “Enlightenment” doesn’t like powerless people because it supposedly “knows only power as a measure of behavior”. Basically, “Enlightenment” wants to kill you because it doesn’t like the way you part your hair.
The book is full of this kind of fake, grave nonsense, wrapped up in sweeping generalizations couched in vague terms such as “reason”, “power”, etc. So, as a work of philosophy or history or social analysis, it is, well, rubbish. In terms of philosophical merit, as well as authorial rage and despair, its most recent contemporary equivalent is the Unibomb Manifesto.
But it is also historically vital rubbish. This book is the seminal work of (philosophical) post-modernism. If, for whatever reason, you are looking for the place where “Critical Theory” and post-modern epistemic relativism first emerged into the light of day, then this is the book you are looking for.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Marxist politics aside, Adorno and Horkheimer’s staggering critique of post-enlightenment thought takes everything we “civilized” people take for granted and burns it—in front of your kids.
The examination of the oft-overlooked philosophy of the Marquis de Sade is especially significant, as it critiques the rogue philosopher while paying him his long-overdue respect as a right man of philosophy.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Perhaps the single most vital book that I’ve ever read. Adorno & Horkheimer note the way that reason, which was supposed to be a means of attaining freedom for man, has dovetailed with power and done the exact opposite of that. If you’re a lover of liberty — real liberty involving self determination and freedom from delusion — read this book.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
This was required reading for a graduate course in the history of the French Revolution. In their book “Dialectic of Enlightenment”, one of the most influential texts of the Frankfurt School (which has a Marxist bent), written by Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, both German Jews who fled Nazi Germany and immigrated to Los Angeles. As Postmodernist Counter-Enlightenment critics, they argued that the eighteenth century did not usher in the Age of Enlightenment. Since, “In its bourgeois form, the Enlightenment had lost itself in its positivistic aspect long before Turgot and d’Alembert. It was never immune to the exchange of freedom for the pursuit of self-preservation.” Thus, “Enlightenment is totalitarian.” The enlightenment phenomenon in turn made a “one size fits all’ manufacturing society which Horkheimer’s philosophical soul mate, Theodor Adorno, railed against in his chapter The Culture Industry: Enlightenment As Mass Deception. “Industry is interested in people merely as customers and employees, and has in fact cut-rate mankind as a whole and each of its fundamentals to this all-embracing formula.” Horkheimer argued that the modern manufacturing society dominated by mathematics and machines, had robbed humankind of its enlightenment ideals. Manufacturing advancement demanded conformism, “which also made the suppressed men dumb and separated them from truth.” Most alarming for Horkheimer was the fact that the Enlightenment adopted strict scientific and algebraic precepts to shape philosophical reasoning. “Proper logic was the major school of unified science. It provided the Enlightenment thinkers with scheme of the calculability of the world….The same equations dominate bourgeois justice and commodity exchange.” In the end, both philosophical knowledge and scientific knowledge led to nothing. Thus for Horkheimer and Adorno, the Enlightenment resulted in no improvement in terms of people’s personal lives and no improvement in terms of distressing larger social change.
Recommended reading for anyone interested in political philosophy, Enlightenment history, and the French Revolution.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5