Dialectic of EnlightenmentTheodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer are the leading figures of the Frankfurt School and this book is their magnum opus. Dialectic of Enlightenment is one of the most celebrated works of modern social philosophy that continues to impress in its wide-ranging ambition. Writing just after the Second World War and reflecting on the bureaucracy and myths of National Socialism and the inanity of the dawn of consumerism, Adorno and Horkheimer addressed themselves to a question which went to the very heart of the modern age: 'why mankind, instead of entering into a truly human condition, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism'. Modernity, far from redeeming the promises and hopes of the Enlightenment, had resulted in a stultification of mankind and administered society, characterised by simulation and candy-floss entertainment. Tracing humanity's modern fall to the very rationality that was to be its liberation, the authors exposed the domination and violence that underpin the Enlightenment project. |
Contents
PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION | |
THE CONCEPT OF ENLIGHTENMENT | |
EXCURSUS | |
EXCURSUS | |
ENLIGHTENMENT AS MASS DECEPTION | |
LIMITS OF ENLIGHTENMENT | |
END NOTES | |
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absolute actual advertising alien allows already animal anti-Semitism apparatus appears becomes behavior blind bourgeois bourgeoisie Christianity chthonic Circe civilization cognition commodity concept consciousness contradiction culture industry Cyclops death Dialectic of Enlightenment domination economic element Enlightenment epic escape everything evil existence expression fact Fascist fate fear film force freedom Friedrich Pollock Führer happiness hatred Hegel Homer human idea identical ideology illusion individual injustice intellectual Jews judgment Juliette Kant labor liberal logical longer magic man’s mankind mass MAX HORKHEIMER means merely mimesis modern moral myth mythic mythology nature Nietzsche object Odysseus one’s organization paranoiac philosophy pleasure Polyphemus Poseidon practice prehistory principle production progress radio rational reality reason reflection religion represents resistance rulers sacrifice Sade self-preservation social society spirit suffering super-ego survival theory things thought totalitarian transformed truth unity universal weak whole wholly Wilamowitz word