Dialectic of EnlightenmentDialectic 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. 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 nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limits of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the tendency toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning. Using historical 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 historical and fateful dialectic between the domination of external nature 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 complete 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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Other editions - View all
Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments Max Horkheimer,Theodor W. Adorno,Gunzelin Schmid Noerr No preview available - 2002 |
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Adorno advertising already animal anti-Semitism become blind bourgeois capitalism Christianity civilization compulsion concept consciousness Critical Theory critique culture industry Dialectic of Enlightenment domination economic edition element escape 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 ical idea identity ideology individual intellectual Jacques Derrida Jews Juliette knowledge labor language liberal logic longer magic mass material Max Horkheimer means mediated ment merely mimesis monopoly moral myth mythical nature Nietzsche nomic object Odysseus Odysseus's once organized philosophy pleasure political posthumous papers praxis prehistory principle production psychological rackets radio rational reality reason reflection relationship religion replaced represents rulers sacrifice Sade schema self-preservation social society subjugated tendency terror things thought tion totalitarian trans truth unity universal victim violence whole Wilamowitz word