12 Dialectic of Enlightenment

Recapitulation

“There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.” Benjamin’s (BEN-yah-meen; /ˈbɛnjamiːn/) last testament, “On the Concept of History,” left Horkheimer (HORK-hy-mer; /ˈhɔʁkhaɪ̯mɐ/) and Adorno with an image of history as catastrophe: the angel of history, his face turned to the past, blown backward into the future by the storm we call progress. (Quotations 1–3.) They took it with them to California.

Horkheimer and Adorno in Los Angeles, 1940–1949

Weimar on the Pacific

Southern California in the 1940s was full of refugees from fascism: Bertolt Brecht (BREKHT; /bʁɛçt/), Kurt Weill, Arnold Schoenberg (SHURN-bairk; /ˈʃøːnbɛʁk/), Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Fritz Lang, Peter Lorre, Erich Maria Remarque. People called it “Weimar (VY-mar; /ˈvaɪ̯maʁ/) on the Pacific.” Dislocation, a new language, a strange culture: all of it marked Adorno and Horkheimer.

The Institute in California

Horkheimer directed the series Studies in Prejudice, working with the American Jewish Committee. Adorno collaborated with Thomas Mann on the novel Doctor Faustus (1947), advising on its music, and with a research team in social psychology on The Authoritarian Personality (1950).

Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (1944/1947)

Origins and structure

The book began as Horkheimer’s plan, in New York, for a “dialectical logic.” Adorno joined him as co-writer, and they moved to Los Angeles. Horkheimer’s wife, Rose (“Maidon”) Riekher (REE-ker; /ˈʁiːkɐ/), sat in on the sessions and helped transcribe them; the book was dictated, argued out aloud.

Its structure:

• Preface
• The Concept of Enlightenment
• Excursus I: Odysseus, or Myth and Enlightenment
• Excursus II: Juliette, or Enlightenment and Morality (on de Sade)
• The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception
• Elements of Anti-Semitism: Limits of Enlightenment
• Notes and Sketches

The argument in general

“Enlightenment” here is a trans-historical category, not the name of the eighteenth-century movement. It means the ideal of reason as emancipatory, and the ironic betrayal of that ideal. The preface insists that freedom is inseparable from enlightenment: the book indicts enlightenment, but it also aims at its rescue, its Rettung (RET-oong; /ˈʁɛtʊŋ/).

What is the “dialectic” of enlightenment?

There is an irony in human reason: enlightenment’s promise has had catastrophic consequences. The book’s opening sentences state it. Enlightenment, in the widest sense of the advance of thought, has always aimed to free human beings from fear and to install them as masters; “yet the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity.” (Quotation 4.)

The preface sums up the first essay in two paired theses:

Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology.

A key question: is this a predetermined denouement, or an ironic outcome that might have been avoided? Everything hangs on a distinction between two kinds of reason. Instrumental reason is means–end reasoning: it calculates the best means to a given end and does not ask about the end. Self-reflective or “substantive” reason can ask what ends are worth pursuing, and can reflect on itself. You can hear in this an echo of Horkheimer’s early distinction between traditional and critical theory.

Myth and enlightenment

Myth was already enlightenment. The myths that enlightenment destroyed were its own products: primitive efforts to explain threatening natural phenomena. Myth sought to report, to name, to tell of origins, and so also to narrate, record and explain. (Quotation 5.)

Then enlightenment turns against myth. It assaults animism and anthropomorphism: “the disenchantment of the world means the extirpation of animism” (quotation 6), and enlightenment has always regarded anthropomorphism, the projection of subjective qualities onto nature, as the basis of myth (quotation 7).

Concepts and the subject

As enlightenment advances it evacuates every substantive norm and reduces all difference to concepts and rules. The subject, unrestrained, dominates nature without reflection. Human beings buy the increase in their power with estrangement from what they have power over. Enlightenment relates to things as the dictator relates to people: he knows them to the extent that he can manipulate them, and the scientist knows things to the extent that he can make them. Their “in itself” becomes “for him,” and the essence of things turns out to be always the same: a substrate of domination. (Quotation 8.) Hence the book’s most notorious sentence: “Enlightenment is totalitarian.”

Enlightenment reverts to myth

Enlightenment in turn becomes compulsive, repetitive, and it promotes unfreedom. Its principle of immanence, explaining every event as a repetition, is the principle of myth itself. The arid wisdom that there is nothing new under the sun, that every thought has been thought and every discovery can be construed in advance, that human beings are defined by self-preservation through adaptation, just reproduces the mythic doctrine of fate it set out to reject. Whatever might be different is made the same. (Quotation 9.) Modern capitalism is a cycle of domination, unfreedom and thoughtlessness.

The Odyssey is the book’s great example. The epic hero defeats the mythic creatures, but only by distorting himself. Odysseus has himself bound to the mast so that he can hear the Sirens and survive; his oarsmen, their ears stopped with wax, row on. Self-preservation through self-denial, enjoyment as powerless contemplation, labor that cannot hear: the prehistory of the bourgeois subject.

Concluding questions

• The critique of Hegel (HAY-gel; /ˈheːɡl̩/). With the concept of determinate negation, Hegel gave thought a way to criticize without simply rejecting. But by finally declaring the known result of the whole process, totality in the system and in history, to be the absolute, he violated the prohibition and himself fell into mythology. (Quotation 10.) Determinate negation, or “the absolute”?
• Is this an exhaustive, “totalizing” critique of reason? If reason is so compromised, with what are we criticizing it?
• How can reason survive such an indictment?
• Is the book a description, an exaggeration, or a warning? That question carries us to fascism after 1945, next time.

Handout outline (Professor Gordon)

I. Recapitulation

• Benjamin’s dialectical dictum: “There is no document of culture which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.”
• the memory of Benjamin and his last testament: history as catastrophe [quotes 1, 2, 3]

II. Horkheimer and Adorno in Los Angeles, 1940–1949

• A. Weimar on the Pacific
  • refugees from fascism in Californian exile
  • Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill, Arnold Schoenberg, Thomas and Heinrich Mann, Fritz Lang, Peter Lorre, Erich Maria Remarque, etc.
  • challenges of dislocation, language, culture: general impact on Adorno and Horkheimer
• B. The Institute in California
  • Horkheimer as director of the series “Studies in Prejudice” and work with American Jewish Committee
  • Adorno’s collaboration with Thomas Mann on the novel Doctor Faustus (1947)
  • Adorno’s collaboration with research program in social psychology, The Authoritarian Personality (1950)

III. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (1944/1947)

• A. Origins and structure
  • Horkheimer’s plans for a “dialectical logic” in New York; Adorno joins as co-writer; move to L.A.
  • Horkheimer’s wife Rose (“Maidon”) Riekher assists in sessions and transcription
  • structure of the book: Preface; The Concept of Enlightenment; Excursus on the Odyssey; Excursus on de Sade’s Juliette; The Culture Industry; Anti-Semitism; Notes and Sketches
• B. The argument in general
  • enlightenment as a trans-historical category (not as name for the eighteenth-century movement)
  • enlightenment as the ideal of reason as emancipatory and the ironic betrayal of this ideal
  • the preface: freedom as inseparable from enlightenment
  • indictment of enlightenment but also its “salvation” (Rettung)
• C. What is the “dialectic” of enlightenment?
  • an irony in human reason: the enlightenment’s promise and the catastrophic consequences [quote 4]
  • the two paired theses of the book (as stated in the preface): “The critical part of the first essay can be broadly summed up in two theses: Myth is already enlightenment, and enlightenment reverts to mythology.”
  • a key question: a predetermined denouement or an ironic outcome that might have been avoided?
  • the distinction between instrumental (means–end) reason and self-reflective (or “substantive”) reason
  • an echo of Horkheimer’s early distinction between traditional and critical theory
• D. Myth and enlightenment
  • myth was already enlightenment: primitive efforts to explain threatening natural phenomena [quote 5]
  • enlightenment turns against myth: assault on animism and anthropomorphism [quotes 6, 7]
• E. Conceptuality and subjectivity
  • evacuation of all substantive norms and reduction of all difference to concepts and rules
  • the subject unrestrained: unreflective domination over nature: “Enlightenment is totalitarian.” [quote 8]
• F. Enlightenment reverts to myth
  • enlightenment becomes compulsive, repetition, promotes unfreedom
  • modern capitalism as a cycle of domination, unfreedom, thoughtlessness [quote 9]
  • the Odyssey: an epic hero vanquishes mythical creatures but only through self-distortion

IV. Concluding questions

• the critique of Hegel: determinate negation or “the absolute”? [quote 10]
• is this an exhaustive or “totalizing” critique of reason?
• how can reason survive such an indictment?
• description, exaggeration, or warning? Fascism after 1945 [next lecture]

On the back: (1) Benjamin, “On the Concept of History” (1940); (2)–(3) letters between Adorno and Horkheimer (1941); (4)–(10) Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944/47).