Dialectic of Enlightenment

by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0804736332
• ISBN13: 9780804736336
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.97 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Gather the Fragments...

"Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts back to mythology" (xviii). This statement is likely one of the most explosive philosphical theses penned in the 20th century, for not only did it give expression to much of the suspicion and pessimism that people experienced in the early 20th century, particularly under the Nazi regime, but this statement set into motion much of the later suspicion concerning the Enlightenment project and its relation to not just freedom, but domination under freedom's guise. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments is the most important work ever written by any of the members of the Frankfurt School; it stands as a type of manifesto really for the possibility of Critical Theory as a post-positivistic discipline. It is easy to miss, but this is not just a work of philosophy - it is not a work written by old men with elbow patches on their jackets pondering various ideas in a scientific and socio-historical philosophical vacuum. Quite the opposite: this is a book that drew upon then-current sociology and anthropology (particularly pertaining to religion), in addition to the history of philosophy and philosophical currents such as Marxism (Western Marxism, to be specific). This is a book that draws - obviously - on history; it is a book that has much to say about media and the effects of what Adorno called "The Culture Industry". Several authors, such as Jurgen Habermas and Leszek Kolakowski, have noted the the structure of the book - what we might call its "poetics" - is quite abnormal for a work of philosophy. The subtitle of the book comes well into play here as a means of understanding the book; "Philosophical Fragments" very much describes what it is like reading this work. The genuinely fragmentary nature of the book - it begins with an essay titled "The Concept of Enlightenment" before two excurses (one on Odysseus and the other on Marquis de Sade), the chapter "The Culture Industry", a series of theses titled "Elements of Angi-Semitism: Limits of Enlightenment", and the closing section "Notes and Sketches" (which is anything but smooth) - only adds to the sense of urgency. The attempt to ascertain "why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism" (xiv) animates the work. This regression ultimately has to do with the very nature of myth, which is "obscure and luminous at once" (xvii). It is with positivism that science believes it can banish all mystery from the world such that humans become masters of it (1); art itself has fallen prey to this myth (14). Perhaps surprisingly, this does not begin in the 18th century European Enlightenment, but with one of our most ancient of founding myths: Odysseus. The deceptive nature of the sacrifice in Odysseus is the beginning of our journey towards enlightenment, for it places us on a similar footing with the gods. The attempt of persons such as Sade to advocate a world without superstitio

The Black Book of Western Philosophy

The dialectic of Enlightenment is a history of false appearances. For Adorno & Horkheimer, trying to explain the world in its totality is equal to try to dominate it. Totality becomes totalitarianism. The authors present history as a tool of domination. Myth and reason both hide the deception of trying to make all things equal. By this logic -of identity/identification- everything is not, but must be the same. Knowledge is mythical because it promises a happiness that can never be achieved in knowledge's terms. The central argument of this wonderful book is that myth is already enlightenment because it tries to explain the world and gain utility from it; and enlightenment is already myth for it tries to exclude anything that is different or contradicts Enlightened Reason. As Adorno & Horkheimer put it: "Enlightenment has a mythical horror to myth." Enlightenment obsessively tries to free itself from myth, but in doing so it becomes also mythical. This obsession takes the form of a saturating, technical rationality that ends in the horror of ethnic genocide. This is, as Habermas said, "the black book of Western philosophy."

Rebuilds critical intellects twelve ways

One of the more important, and somewhat more readable, founding texts of the Frankfurt school of critical thought, this book (probably because of the influence of Max Horkheimer) is more readable than Negative Dialectics (by Theodore Adorno) but less readable than Adorno's book of short essays, Minima Moralia. Its orange cover, and alarming, intellectual, title, make Dialectic of Enlightenment somewhat of a chick magnet :-).The unreadability of Frankfurt School texts is an artifact of the very phenomena they criticize. Educated people in America at the time Dialectic of Enlightenment was written were influenced, directly and indirectly, by the pragmatism of John Dewey and English Logical Positivism as mediated by Bertrand Russell and A. J. Ayer. A bit later, the Continental school of Logical Positivism came to America fleeing Fascism.Pragmatism is the homegrown American philosophy that the useful is the true and the true, useful. Logical Positivism in Britain and on the Continent is the view that the meaningful is only the verifiable statement of natural science. Both traditions are completely inimical to the older Continental views of Adorno and of Horkheimer, based as they are on those of Hegel, Freud and Marx.Adorno would probably see straight through the question begging that goes on in both Pragmatism and Logical Positivism. Both these philosophies fail to self-apply, in a logical failure which is also a failure to exhibit the intellectual virtue of humility. If we ask the Pragmatist about the utility of his view that truth is utility he cannot answer. Similarly, Logical Positivism's own claim, that meaningful statements are either verifiably true or verifiably false using the procedures of science, fails, even less than Pragmatism, to self-apply, because we simply can't verify the nonexistence of a meaningful but unverifiable statement. This result, which conclusively has shown nearly all major-league philosophers that Logical Positivism is deep nonsense, has been generalized in recent years to show that there are even apparently scientific statements, such as statements as to what transpires inside black holes, which are not verifiable.However, the nonsense of Pragmatism and of Logical Positivism had in the period 1930 to about 1980 much influence, again direct and indirect, on educated Americans. Directly, they were exposed to it in undergraduate survey courses and of course as philosophy specialists. Indirectly the ideas were in the air, and they have had strong influence on the management, and the mismanagement, of America's economy and its foreign policy. For this reason, and because of the deconstruction of a decent educational system, contemporary post-moderns in America find actual post-modern classics including Dialectic of Enlightenment tough going. But to be constructive. "Dialectic" in the title refers to a form of logic which commencing with the early 19th century German philosopher Hegel. It is presented, superficially, in sur

Handy volume, rich in content and weaved with legthy words

Review by A.Prabaharan, Centre for the Study of sSocial Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India - 110 067. Beyond one's imagination, the consequences of enlightenment and modernity were visualised by Adorno and Horkheimer in a briliant piece named "Dialectic of enlightenment". It is a handy volume , rich in content and weaved with lenghthy sentences. It was an outcome of shock given by the Nazi forces. Nevertheless a thought about direct results of extreme reasoning, radical socialization and discovery of motives behind humanity's retrogression instead of progressive civilization. The urge to reach the technological zenith started in that crucial period. Demonstration of destruction of masses with atom bomb was yet to kick off. But the terror started shaking the two intellectuals. Again and again they questioned themselves. Conclusion was insight - social freedom is inseparable from the enlightened thought. The need for enlightenement was to create a civil society with rationalised idea grows in individuals and institutions. Not just the rational consciousness. What was needed that time is to deparate fear from fate. But with modern science , commerece and politics, it endd in a fear of social deviation. Enlightenement is as equally destructive as that of romanticism. The self of enlightened being itself comes in to life only when it surrender to its enemy. It refuses to transcend the false absoulte in reality. The book is clearly classified in to five simple segmental chapters which deal with the metamorphosis of modernity. It is a critical study with myth is already an enlightenment and enlightenment reverts to mythology as the basic premises. For the authours, Homerian odyssey is the main target to show the dialecic of myth and enlightenment. Odyssey was accused as the earliest representative testimonies of western bourgeois civiliztion. Kant, Sade and Nietzsche were not spared. Adorno and Horkheimer show how the submission of everthing natural to the autocratic subject finally culminates in the mastery of the blindly objective and natural. Kant and Sade's idea were branded 'bourgeois thought' and accused of morality mixd with amorality. First chapter deals with how myth is already an enlightenment. Second one shows the reverse of enlightenment to mythology. Third, projects the submission of subject which makes the object a master. Fourth, "culture industry" brings out the process where enlightenment is ideaogized. Fifth chapter traces the movement of humanity to barbarism. It is a thorough thrasing of enlightenment. They understand that extreme enlightened self is as dangerous as that of fully radiant earth which radiates disaster triumphant. One have to undergo an intellectual torture to read this book. But it is a must for any mind which have urge to know the other side of modernity.