Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical FragmentsThis new translation of the Frankfurt School’s seminal text includes textual variants and discussion of the work’s influence on Critical Theory. 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 explain why humanity, instead 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. Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer trace a wide arch that connects the birth of Western history—and of subjectivity itself—to the most threatening experiences of the present. The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limits of enlightenment. Adorno and Horkheimer see the self-destruction of Western reason as grounded in a historical and fateful dialectic between the domination of external nature and society. They show why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization. |
From inside the book
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... In the discussion of this contradiction the culture industry is taken more seriously than it might itself wish to be. But because its appeal to its own commercial character, its confession of its diminished truth, has long.
... In the discussion of this contradiction the culture industry is taken more seriously than it might itself wish to be. But because its appeal to its own commercial character, its confession of its diminished truth, has long.
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... prefigured in it. If the tree is addressed no longer as simply a tree but as evidence of something else, a location of mana, language expresses the contradiction that it is at the same time itself and something other than itself,
... prefigured in it. If the tree is addressed no longer as simply a tree but as evidence of something else, a location of mana, language expresses the contradiction that it is at the same time itself and something other than itself,
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... contradiction that lies in making a profession of reconciliation, is the reason why honesty in believers has always been a sensitive and dangerous affair. The horrors of fire and sword, of counterReformation and Reformation, were ...
... contradiction that lies in making a profession of reconciliation, is the reason why honesty in believers has always been a sensitive and dangerous affair. The horrors of fire and sword, of counterReformation and Reformation, were ...
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... contradictory propositions, only one can be true and the other false. The formalism of this principle and the entire logic established around it stem from the opacity and entanglement of interests in a society in which the maintenance ...
... contradictory propositions, only one can be true and the other false. The formalism of this principle and the entire logic established around it stem from the opacity and entanglement of interests in a society in which the maintenance ...
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Contents
Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment | |
Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality | |
Enlightenment as Mass Deception | |
Limits of Enlightenment | |
Notes and Sketches | |
Editors Afterword The Position of Dialectic | |
The Disappearance of Class History in Dialectic | |
Cultural Memory in the Present | |
Common terms and phrases
Adorno advertising already animals anti-Semitism become behavior blind bourgeois capitalism Christianity civilization commodity compulsion concept consciousness contradiction Critical Theory critique culture industry Dialectic of Enlightenment domination economic edition element everything expression fascism fate fear film finally Frankfurt am Main freedom Friedrich Pollock function German Gesammelte Schriften Hays Office Homer Horkheimer Horkheimer's human Ibid idea identity ideology individual intellectual Jews judgment Juliette knowledge labor language liberal logic longer magic material Max Horkheimer means mediated merely mimesis monopoly moral myth mythical nature Nietzsche object Odysseus Odysseus’s once one’s organized philosophy pleasure political posthumous papers powerlessness praxis prehistory principle production rackets radio rational reality reason reflection relationship religion replaced represented rulers sacrifice Sade self-preservation social society sphere subjugated takes tendency terror Theodor W theoretical things thought totalitarian truth unity universal victim violence whole Wilamowitz word