Dialectic of Enlightenment

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Dialectic of the Enlightenment is acollection of essays by Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno from 1944,called Philosophical Fragments in the subtitle,and is considered to be one of the fundamental and most widely received works of critical theory of the Frankfurt School .

In view of the triumph of fascism and monopoly capitalism as new forms of rule that society did not oppose effective resistance, the authors subjected the Enlightenment concept of reason to a radical criticism. They formulated the thesis that already at the beginning of human history, with the self-assertion of the subject against a threatening nature, an instrumental reason had established itself as rule over external and internal nature and finally in the institutionalized rule of people over people. Based on this “dominant character” of reason, Horkheimer and Adorno observed an upswing in mythology , the “return of enlightened civilization to barbarism in reality”, which manifests itself in different ways in contemporary society. This "intertwining of myth and enlightenment" (Habermas) did not set a process of liberation, but rather a universal self-destruction process of the Enlightenment in motion. To put a stop to this process through "self-reflection" and self-criticism of the Enlightenment was a central motive of the authors.

Origin and addressee

The book was written in the years 1939–1944 with the help of Gretel Adorno , who recorded the conversations between the two authors and - in the words of Horkheimer - “helped them in the most beautiful way” in developing their theory. The context of the creation is the exile of the authors in Los Angeles , while the end of National Socialist rule in Germany was already becoming apparent in the main phase of their work .

In a memorandum from 1938, Horkheimer had outlined the plan for a comprehensive work on "dialectical logic". The planned book should understand logic in a similar way “like Hegel in his great work”, not as a list of abstract forms of thought, but as a “determination of the most important categories of the most advanced consciousness of the present”. Originally, he had intended, as he explained in a letter to Felix Weil , that Weil and Pollock should be involved “in shaping the more fundamental parts”. "[Our] interpretation of the current phase [...] must be filled to the point with historical and economic material, otherwise it acts as a reasoning." However, this cooperation did not occur. Until the end of 1941, in addition to Adorno, Herbert Marcuse was also under discussion as a possible employee of Horkheimer. Adorno and Horkheimer always emphasized their joint authorship, but some parts of the text can be assigned to one of the two: The first excursus clearly comes from Adorno, the second from Horkheimer. For other chapters, Horkheimer created the first drafts on the "Concept of Enlightenment" and Adorno on the "Culture Industry", which both authors revised with equal proportions. The “Notes and Drafts” of the last chapter are a collection of Horkheimer's aphorisms.

The texts identified as “fragments” in the subtitle refer to the micrological method that Adorno in particular adopted from Walter Benjamin . In one of the preparatory discussions with Horkheimer, Adorno emphasized that the “fragmentary concrete” contained the “possibility of the whole”. The Dutch philosopher Jan Baars interprets the fragmentary character of the book, which is present on every page, as Adorno's dominance over Horkheimer, who was originally aimed at a systematic complete work.

In order to relieve the institute financially, Horkheimer had raised funds from the American Jewish Committee (AJC) for an "anti-Semitism project". In addition to working together on the Dialectic of Enlightenment , he and Adorno also dedicated part of their work on the west coast to this project. While Horkheimer primarily performed management and organizational tasks for the AJC-financed series of publications Studies in Prejudice , Adorno prepared content analyzes of public speeches by anti-democratic agitators . In the chapter "Elements of Anti-Semitism" of the Dialectic of Enlightenment , the interlinking of her work on both projects was reflected. They completed their joint project in the spring of 1944; With the title “Philosophical Fragments” and the dedication “Friedrich Pollock for his 50th birthday”, they presented it to the honoree as a typescript. After that, Adorno was able to devote himself fully to research on the anti-Semitism project. In cooperation with the Berkeley Public Opinion Study Group led by the social psychologist R. Nevitt Sanford, he developed the F-Scale (F stands for fascism) to measure the attitudes and characteristics of authoritarian personalities by means of projective questions. The later publication The Authoritarian Personality emerged as the first of the five studies in Prejudice from the cooperation with Sanford and his two colleagues, Else Frenkel-Brunswik (a psychoanalyst who emigrated from Austria) and Daniel J. Levinson .

The authors named an "imaginary witness" as the addressee of their joint work:

"If the speech can address you today, it is neither the so-called masses nor the individual who are powerless, but rather an imaginary witness to whom we leave it so that it does not go under with us."

For this image, the metaphor of the “message in a bottle” has become established, which was used by the theorists of the Frankfurt School for self-characterization, even before its first printed version in Adorno's Philosophy of New Music (1958), like Willem van Reijen and Gunzelin Schmid Noerr know how to prove, and forty years later no longer have any doubt that it has found its addressee.

publication

The first edition appeared in 1944 in the production process of mimeography under the title Philosophical Fragments with the dedication "Friedrich Pollock on the 50th birthday" in the New York Institute of Social Research . In 1947 the work in its final version was published in print form by Querido Verlag in Amsterdam. The changes made in the book version replaced some Marxian terms (such as capital, monopoly, profit) with "less burdened terms", e.g. B. Capital becomes “economy”, production relationships “forms of economy”. In 1966 an Italian edition appeared with 29 text changes compared to the 1947 edition, which Pollock had suggested because of concerns about an overly open Marxist sociolect .

Robbery of Horkheimer's and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment , published by Verlag Zerschlagt das bürgerliche Copyright

In the 1960s, the text circulated in pirated prints in German student circles, where it was widely received. After a Frankfurt student newspaper published the changes in the Italian edition and commented them critically, an official German new edition appeared in 1969 with minor changes in content compared to the 1947 edition, which already contained the aforementioned replacement of Marxist terms and formulations.

The dialectic of the Enlightenment is considered to be a major work of critical theory . Adorno's and Horkheimer's “later writings can be read as attempts to further consider the analyzes and discussions of the joint work”. For example, Adorno later reported:

“The chapter 'Elements of Anti-Semitism' in the 'Dialectic of Enlightenment', which Horkheimer and I wrote together in the strictest sense, namely literally dictated together, was binding for my part in the studies later carried out with the Berkeley Public Opinion Study Group. They found their literary expression in the ' Authoritarian Personality ' [1950]. "

Basic thesis

Horkheimer and Adorno rated their joint work as "self-assurance about the premises of a critical theory under the given historical and social conditions", which included first and foremost the conditions in which fascism came into being. They tell "the story of the splendor and misery of the Enlightenment". The authors justify the thesis that the failure of the Enlightenment is based on the "unity of formal and instrumental reason" of their thinking. The authors trace this “specifically occidental type of rationality aimed at self-preservation and domination” back to the beginning of human history. The once mythical access to the world is explained rationally, but with the gradual perfection of the mastery of nature, the Enlightenment strikes back as "rule over an objectified external and the repressed internal nature" even in mythology. "Just as myths already enlightenment, so enlightenment becomes entangled with each of its steps deeper in mythology", in a mythology that culminates in the positivism of the factual, which portrays the existing social conditions as necessary and which the "individual [...] versus the economic powers completely annulled ”. With their writing, Horkheimer and Adorno reacted to the "puzzling readiness of the technologically educated masses" to surrender themselves to the despotism of totalitarian ideologies and forms of rule, and they rated this behavior as the "collapse of bourgeois civilization" and sinking into a "new kind of barbarism" . In spite of all their radicalism, they do not make the "liquidation of enlightenment their own particular cause". The criticism of the Enlightenment in no way rejects its idea, but rather wants to "prepare a positive concept of it that will free it from its entanglement in blind rule". According to Rahel Jaeggi , it remains controversial whether the authors succeed in doing this and not Albrecht Wellmer's assessment that the dialectic of the Enlightenment has become a "theory of a finally eclipsed modernity, from whose vicious circle [...] there [seems] no way out" .

Place in the development of critical theory

According to the editor of Horkheimer's Collected Writings , Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, the work of the two authors on the Dialectic of Enlightenment reveals divergent paths in their theoretical development with regard to their theoretical physiognomy: For Adorno, the work fits in largely seamlessly with his thinking, while it for Horkheimer the most exposed expression of a theoretical departure from his essays from the thirties in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung . These were still carried by the confidence that the ideas of the philosophical and political Enlightenment could be translated materialistically and put into practice, an assumption that radically called into question the thesis of the “universality of the context of delusion ”. With the political experiences of expanding fascism, the manipulative power of monopoly mass society in the west and Stalinist state socialism in the east, hope of a revolution in social conditions dwindled, with the result that critical theory became “theoretically more radical and practically more conservative”.

Influences

In their critique of the Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno adopt motifs from Friedrich Nietzsche , the “relentless finisher of the Enlightenment”, as well as from Max Weber , Siegfried Kracauer and Georg Lukács . You find Nietzsche's “ruthless teachings” of the “identity of rule and reason more merciful than those of the moral lackeys of the bourgeoisie”. Nietzsche anticipated the idea that "behind the objectivity ideals and the truth claims of positivism, behind the ascetic ideals and the correctness claims of universalistic morality [...] imperatives of self-preservation and domination" are hidden. Nietzsche was the first to bring "the ethos of aesthetic modernity to the concept" with the "rebellion against everything normative". Without Nietzsche, according to Schmid Noerr, the dialectic of the Enlightenment with its basic thesis of the entanglement of rationality and myth would not have been possible. According to Andreas Hetzel, Max Weber's influence can be seen in the adoption of his theorem of the occidental disenchantment of the world through rationalization and the associated loss of coherence, meaning and freedom. In the 1920s, Kracauer demonstrated the “intertwining of reason and myth” using the example of mass ornaments, which he called a “mythological cult”. They adopted the term “mimesis” (le mimétisme) from the French philosopher and sociologist Roger Caillois . The early Lukács provided the critical concepts of “ second nature ” and the reification of human relationships in the capitalist world of commodities with devastating consequences for the consciousness of the masses. The historian and Pollock biographer Philipp Lenhard also attributes a lasting influence to the state capitalism theory of the dedicatee of the book, Friedrich Pollock. The changes compared to the hectographed edition of 1944 (see above) make it clear that the authors, in the sense of Pollock's analysis, “finally distance themselves from a form of Marxism that assumes a primacy of the economy ”.

structure

The book is divided into a preface, five essayistic treatises and subsequent “notes and drafts” that were written before the essays were finished.

preface

  • It explains the reason for the book's creation - Friedrich Pollock's fiftieth birthday - in view of the “collapse of bourgeois civilization” and the “self-destruction of the Enlightenment”, which the following fragments are intended to help understand. The criticism exercised on the Enlightenment is intended to “prepare a positive concept of it that will free it from its entanglement in blind rule”.
[1. Chapter:] Concept of enlightenment
Here the theoretical foundations of the concept of "Enlightenment" are discussed, the dialectic of nature and the domination of nature, of myth and the Enlightenment, and the hypothesis is formulated as to how the enlightened rationality is linked to social reality - a reality of the rulers and the ruled .
[2. Chapter:] ( Excursus I) Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment
Using the “ Odyssey ”, an early testimony to western civilization, the dialectic of myth and enlightenment is interpreted as a premodern confrontation with a mythically understood nature through elementary pre-forms of an enlightened control of nature.
[3. Chapter:] (Excursus II) Juliette or Enlightenment and Morals
In a comparison of Kant with de Sade and Nietzsche, it is argued that enlightened reason, through the "subjection of everything natural to the autocratic subject" caused by it, cannot be moral, as Kant wished, but amoral .
[4. Chapter:] Culture Industry - Enlightenment as mass fraud
Here it is asserted that the increase in economic productivity progresses into an economization of all areas of life and thus ultimately ends in a “sell-out of culture”, where meaning is replaced by the calculated stupidity of amusement and economic events are glorified unreflectively as the outflow of the objectified power of logical processes of rationalization will.
[5. Chapter:] Elements of anti-Semitism. Limits of the Enlightenment
On the basis of the history of ideas of anti-Semitism , theses are presented that the ruling reason is inherently irrationalism, which in fascist thought gained anti-civilizational expression. Therefore, the return to barbarism is seen as an integral part of modernity that cannot simply be split off.
[6. Chapter:] Records and Drafts
The final chapter brings together unfinished thoughts, some of which are derived from the previous sections, most of which refer to a “dialectical anthropology ”.

The structure emphasizes the fragmentary character of the investigations and shows that Horkheimer and Adorno were not interested in a logically structured and closed work.

The publication of the book in Adornos Gesammelte Schriften Volume 3 from 1981 is attached as an appendix to the thirty-page text from 1942 found in his estate: “The scheme of mass culture” with the subtitle “Culture industry (continued) ”.

Concept of enlightenment

In the first half of the 20th century, Horkheimer and Adorno recapitulated that under the sign of the Enlightenment, mankind was unable to “enter a truly human condition”. They discussed the question of how the belief in rationality in the form of “instrumental reason” could act as a delusion on the subjects of thought.

The opening sentences of the first treatise devoted to "the concept of enlightenment" are as follows:

“Enlightenment in the broadest sense of advancing thought has always pursued the goal of removing fear from people and using them as masters. But the fully enlightened earth shines in the sign of triumphant calamity. The program of the Enlightenment was to disenchant the world. She wanted to dissolve the myths and overthrow imagination with knowledge. "

The treatise is summarized in the foreword: "Even myth is enlightenment, and: Enlightenment strikes back in mythology."

It just seems as if the enlightened worldview is superior to the mythical. In truth, these two approaches are very closely related. The ideal of the Enlightenment is the rational explanation of the world in order to rule nature. In it the term is replaced by the formula. The argumentative defense of the mythical interpretation of the world already recognizes the principle of the rationality of the Enlightenment. This makes her more powerful in every argument. “The Enlightenment only recognizes as being and happening that which can be grasped through unity; their ideal is the system from which everything and everything follows. ”All gods and qualities are to be destroyed. In doing so, she overlooks the fact that myths are already a product of the Enlightenment. “As rulers of nature, the creative God and the ordering spirit are alike.” They have the same roots, because “Myths and magical rites mean repetitive nature.”

According to Horkheimer and Adorno, abstraction is the tool with which logic is separated from the bulk of things. The manifold is quantitatively placed under an abstract size and unified in order to make it manageable. What is symbolically named is formalized; In the formula it becomes calculable and therefore subject to a usefulness aspect, to be available and manipulable. The scheme of predictability becomes the system of explanation of the world. Everything that eludes instrumental thinking is suspected of being superstitious . Modern positivism banishes it to the sphere of the non-objective, of appearance.

But this logic is a logic of the subject, which acts on things under the sign of domination, the domination of nature . This domination now confronts the individual as reason, which organizes the objective worldview.

Applied to humans in the unification of thinking, social subjects become a collective that can be manipulated . The scientific world domination turns against the thinking subjects and reifies people into objects in industry, planning, the division of labor, and the economy . Under the rule of the general, the subjects are not only alienated from things, but the people themselves are objectified. The general confronts them as a totalitarian form of rule that prepares the individual according to their own measure. The progress is destructive; Instead of liberation from the constraints of overwhelming nature, adaptation to technology and market events is required; instead of the liberating enlightenment from immaturity, there is economic and political interest in manipulating people's consciousness. Enlightenment becomes mass fraud.

Excursus I: Odysseus or Myth and Enlightenment

"No work [...] bears more eloquent testimony to the intertwining of Enlightenment and myth than the Homeric, the basic text of European civilization." In their now famous reading of the Odyssey , Horkheimer and Adorno reconstruct the story of renunciation. Odysseus appears on his wandering across the Aegean Sea and in the encounter with figures and natural forces of Greek mythology "as the archetype [...] of the bourgeois individual" who cleverly keeps himself alive and self-assertion through self-denial. “The wandering from Troy to Ithaca is the path of the bodily, infinitely weak in the face of the force of nature and only developing in self-confidence through the myths. The pre-world is secularized in the space it measures through, the ancient demons populate the distant edge and the islands of the civilized Mediterranean ”.

The means of surviving one's journey and asserting oneself as a subject is cunning, deceiving the initially overpowering forces, but also at the cost of a form of self-surrender: “The moment of deception in the victim [to the gods of nature] is the archetype the odyssey ruse ”. "The seafarer Odysseus takes advantage of the gods of nature just as the civilized traveler once did the savages, to whom he offers glass beads [...]". However: “The cunning survives only at the price of his own dream, which he abandons by disenchanting himself like the forces outside. He can never have the whole, he must always be able to wait, be patient, renounce, he must not eat of the lotus and not of the cattle of St. Hyperion , and when he steers through the strait, he must take into account the loss of his companions, which Scylla tears from the ship. "

In this doing and becoming, the “instrumental spirit” develops in the subject, which will determine western civilization. “The cunning loner is already the homo oeconomicus , to whom all reasonable people are like. [...] At the mercy of the swell, helplessly isolated, their isolation dictates the ruthless pursuit of atomistic interests. "

The oppressive relationship between women and men in Western civilization, which is accompanied by various renunciations, also takes on a visible shape in the Odyssey. Odysseus' journey is that of returning home to his estate and to his wife. It has to or he wants the lure of Kirke and sirens resist; meanwhile his wife fends off the intrusive suitors. It takes “the double meaning in the relationship between man and woman, longing and commandment, already in the form of an exchange protected by contracts. Renunciation is the prerequisite for this. Odysseus resists the magic of the church. "And:" Whore and wife are the complements of female self-alienation in the patriarchal world: the wife betrays pleasure in the fixed order of life and property, while the prostitute, [...] again subordinates the property relationship [ is] and sells lust. "

In the essay Odysseus or Mythos and Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno span the historical arc from dealing with the mythological gods of nature as a proto-enlightened act to the present day: “Humanity has had to do terrible things to itself until the self, the identical, purposeful , male character of man was created, and something of it is repeated in every childhood. "

Excursus II: Juliette or Enlightenment and Morals

The Marquis de Sade was only discovered as a philosopher in the 1930s. He was assigned to the Enlightenment , more precisely: to "French materialism". Erich Fromm , as an employee of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research founded by Horkheimer, drew attention to the "very fruitful thoughts of de Sade" in 1934 when the representatives of critical theory gathered there saw themselves as the avant-garde of the Enlightenment. But Sade's thoughts were only useful to them when Horkheimer and Adorno wrote their book Dialectic of Enlightenment . In it both stated in 1944: "The fully enlightened earth shines in the sign of triumphant calamity". This perception led them to revise their previous position and to reflect critically on the Enlightenment idea. De Sade's ideas played an essential role in this.

In the chapter Juliette or Enlightenment and Morals, Horkheimer and Adorno deal in detail with the views of de Sades and Nietzsche in their Dialectic of Enlightenment with reference to de Sade's novel Juliette or the advantages of vice and contrast them with the philosophical thoughts of Immanuel Kant .

In Kant's work the answer to the question: What is Enlightenment? it says: "Enlightenment is the exit of a person from his self-inflicted immaturity". The enlightened person needs no authority, no tradition, no God, but uses his understanding independently and independently. In his scientific worldview he appeals to the laws of nature , which he constructs in the harmony of his thinking with the sensually perceived phenomena . The wrong is revealed in the lack of systematic thinking when things don't work, the spark in the laboratory doesn't ignite, the bridge collapses, the warrior is killed by the opponent's better-functioning weapon. Only at the age of majority does the citizen follow the principle of self-preservation in society ; in the form of “the slave owner , free entrepreneur , administrator” he is “the logical subject of the Enlightenment”. The moral teachings of the Enlightenment that the weakened as superstition Religionslehre a rational morality sought to oppose, should fail to agree in which everyone a general principle, when the self-preservation interests preclude this. The citizen who agrees with the Kantian categorical imperative from the Critique of Practical Reason - "Act in such a way that the maxim of your will can apply at any time as the principle of general legislation" - does not follow scientific reason, but foolishness, if he himself therefore misses a material gain. Inanimate and living things, including humans, become material for the ruler. What counts is “cunning self-preservation” in the struggle for power and, for the subjugated individual, “adapting to injustice at any cost”.

With de Sade, as with Nietzsche, the “scientific principle is increased to the point of destruction”. Juliette "demonizes Catholicism as the youngest mythology and with it civilization in general". Nietzsche formulates the quintessence in his work The Antichrist : “The weak and failures should perish: first sentence of our human love . And one should help them too. ”But while Nietzsche has the great goal of the doctrine of the“ superman ”in view, the enlightened Juliette is free from“ prejudice for the great ”, with her pure nihilism reigns . Everything remains senselessly attached to the arbitrariness of the criminal pleasure principle . “Even injustice, hatred, and destruction become a business, since all goals have lost the character of necessity and objectivity as a blind work through the formalization of reason .” So Sades Juliette dismantles all conventions and values ​​- family, religion, law, morality - nothing can remain what used to hold society together, everything falls victim to business operations and the uninhibited economy of the enlightened criminal gangs.

According to Horkheimer and Adorno, Juliette anticipates the “public virtues” of the totalitarian era of the 20th century with her “private vices” : “The impossibility of using reason to put forward a fundamental argument against murder is not covered up, but shouted around the world has kindled the hatred with which the progressives pursue Sade and Nietzsche today. [...] In that the merciless teachings proclaim the identity of rule and reason, they are more merciful than those of the moral lackeys of the bourgeoisie. "

Culture industry - enlightenment as mass fraud

A contemporary diagnostic core point of the dialectic of the Enlightenment is the "Enlightenment as mass fraud". The culture industry means the commercial marketing of culture; the branch of industry that specifically deals with the production of culture. In contrast to this is the authentic culture.

According to Horkheimer and Adorno, industrially produced culture robs people of the imagination to develop their own ideas and takes over the thinking for them. The “culture industry” delivers the “goods” in such a way that humans only have the task of the consumer. Due to mass production, everything is the same and only differs in small details. Everything is pressed into a scheme and it is desirable to imitate the real world as well as possible. Shoots are stoked to such an extent that sublimation is no longer possible.

They mention the movie as an example. In principle, all films are similar. They are designed to reflect reality as well as possible. Fantasy films that claim not to be realistic also do not meet the requirements. No matter how extraordinary they want to be, the end can usually be foreseen very quickly, as there are many films that were produced according to the same scheme. Furthermore, z. E.g. instincts are strengthened by erotic representations to such an extent that they can no longer be overturned to other things.

The goal of the culture industry is - as in every branch of industry - economic. All efforts are aimed at economic success.

The authentic culture, on the other hand, is not purposeful, it is an end in itself. It encourages people's imagination by giving them suggestions, but unlike the culture industry, it leaves room for independent human thinking. Authentic culture does not want to reproduce reality, but rather go far beyond it. It is individual and cannot be pressed into a scheme.

Horkheimer and Adorno cite the reasons for the emergence of the culture industry that companies can be found that market culture and thereby pursue the economic goal of profit maximization. Because of this, culture does not remain what it is or should be, but becomes a commodity like any other.

Elements of anti-Semitism

Horkheimer and Adorno describe the chapter on the elements of anti-Semitism as the draft of a "philosophical prehistory of anti-Semitism". “Its 'irrationalism' is derived from the essence of the ruling reason itself and the world corresponding to its image.” (DdA 7) The causes of anti-Semitism cannot be grasped one-dimensionally. Rather, there is an array of intertwined reasons why the Enlightenment is reversed. In order to demonstrate this, Horkheimer and Adorno developed seven theses in which they investigate the various aspects.

  1. The demarcation of the Jews as a homogeneous group takes place in fascism in the same way as in liberalism, even if the motives are extremely different. While for fascism the Jews are biologically the “counter-race, the negative principle as such”, who are “branded as absolutely evil by absolute evil”, with whom one only treats as an object and exterminates them “like vermin” (DdA 177 ), the Jews also form a special community for liberalism, which is defined by religion and tradition and which requires special protection. By exposing the Jews as “protective Jews”, their marginalized position in society is manifested. (DdA 178)
  2. "The anti-Semitic behavior is triggered in those situations in which deluded people, deprived of subjectivity, are let go as subjects." (DdA 180) This form of anti-Semitism is blind and unintentional. He is then a valve for the masses, with which they can process their aggression pent up by the restrictive limits of civilization. To relieve such aggression, anti-Semitism is supported and cultivated by the rulers, for example by stirring up the myth of the Jewish banker who finances Bolshevism. (DdA 181)
  3. Because of their history of exclusion, the Jews are a symbol of capitalism and its negative consequences. They are “burdened with the economic injustice of the whole class”. (DdA 183)
  4. Anti-Semitism contains a fundamentally religious motif, with which Christianity is jealously demarcated from the “father religion” in a 2000 year history of anti-Judaism. This religious moment is transposed into fascism with mass culture and marches. (DdA 185)
  5. The fifth thesis deals with the psychological effect of the foreign. Through imitative behavior ( mimesis ), humans create a familiar basis for encountering the world. This original clinging to nature is broken by civilization. “Those blinded by civilization only experience their own taboo mimetic traits in certain gestures and behaviors that they encounter in others, and as isolated remnants, as shameful rudiments in the rationalized environment. What repels as foreign is all too familiar. It is the contagious gesture of immediacy suppressed by civilization: touching, snuggling, appeasing, persuading. What is offensive today is what is untimely of such impulses. ”(DdA 190) By working out particular mimetic properties of the Jews, the distance from what is different arises. As examples of mimetic ciphers, Adorno / Horkheimer name gestures, the singing tone of voice or the nose as a metonymy of “smelling lust” (DdA 193). The demarcation then enables you to strengthen your own self-confidence. “As the person rooted in his difference from the Jew preserves the equality, the human, the feeling of opposition, of alienation, is induced in him. In this way, the tabooed impulses that run counter to work in its ruling order are converted into conforming idiosyncrasies . "(DdA, 194)
  6. Anti-Semitism is also based on a false projection that ultimately leads to social paranoia . “The one chosen as the enemy is already perceived as an enemy. The disruption lies in the subject's inadequate differentiation between his or her own part in the projected material. ”(DdA 196) The problem is that in (fascist) society there is no reflection on this projection. “The penetrating look and the looking past, the hypnotic and the ignoring look, are of the same type, in both the subject is obliterated. Because such looks lack reflection, those without reflection are electrified. "(DdA 201)
  7. In contrast to previous forms of anti-Semitism such as the liberal anti-Semitism of the late 19th century, contemporary anti-Semitism is ultimately supported by the fact that it is only one “ticket”, one of several components that make up a totalitarian ideology. Followers accept anti-Semitism without questioning it because the affirmation of rule is based on the affirmation of the system as such. The responsibility no longer lies with the individual, as in the Enlightenment, but has been assigned to the rulers. "What the individual should do in each case, he no longer needs to wrestle from himself in a painful inner dialectic of conscience, self-preservation and instincts." (DdA 213) Such thinking does not matter whether it is still "the Jews" in the fight Gives shape.

reception

Originally, the fragments were intended as “messages in a bottle” that might be found in the distant past and recognized as useful. A broader reception of the dialectic of the Enlightenment did not materialize until 20 years after the book's publication, brought about by the 1968 movement , which, however, ignored the book's politically resigned tendency and, in its political pronouncements, relied more on Horkheimer's early essays ( Die Juden und Europa , Authoritarian State ). Nevertheless, since then it has been regarded as a fundamental work of the Critique of Rationality and, according to Günter Figal, as the “programmatic writing” of Critical Theory, which, according to Schmid Noerr, “is one of the most intensely received and most frequently discussed works of Critical Theory”. Gerhard Schweppenhäuser sees in it a "negative universal history of Western civilization" with a "problematic tendency towards isolation", without " Benjamin's 'messianic revolutionary hope'". Albrecht Wellmer calls it "the blackest book in the Frankfurt School". Jan Philipp Reemtsma interprets the motif and the analytical framework to the effect that the authors analyze the current historical calamity, the totalitarian Nazi regime, "from its historically most distant - myth - and its most recent - cultural industry - sources" and show how the two combine.

In the Philosophical Discourse of Modernism , Jürgen Habermas reproaches Horkheimer and Adorno for having "abandoned themselves to an unrestrained skepticism of reason instead of considering the reasons that cast doubt on this skepticism itself" in the early 1940s. From Habermas' point of view, they ignore the reasonable contents of the Enlightenment such as the differentiation of law, morality and science and the institutionalization of democracy. Their leveling representation also disregards essential features of “cultural modernity”, such as “the productivity and the disruptive power of basic aesthetic experiences, which a subjectivity freed from imperatives of purposeful activity and conventions of everyday perception gains from its own decentration”.

"How can the two enlighteners, who they still are, so underestimate the reasonable content of cultural modernity that they perceive only an amalgamation of reason and domination, power and validity?"

- Jürgen Habermas : 1985, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Twelve Lectures, p. 146.

Habermas also points out an aporia : In view of the alleged total delusion, the authors cannot justify their criticism of the Enlightenment with the means of the dialectic of Enlightenment. As the philosopher Anke Thyen concludes, this requires "interpretation patterns that ultimately do not stem from her own argumentation". According to Habermas, they practice “ad hoc the particular negation ”.

Michel Foucault is one of the most notable of the foreign philosophers who paid their respects to the dialectic of the Enlightenment . One of the theoretical similarities between them is the thesis that rationality and structures of rule or power mechanisms are closely linked. In 1978 Foucault expressed his appreciation as follows:

“When I acknowledge the merits of the philosophers of the Frankfurt School, I do so with the guilty conscience of someone who should have read their books earlier, understood them sooner. If I had read her books I would not have had to say a lot of things and I would have been spared errors. Perhaps if I had met the philosophers of this school in my youth, I would have been so enthusiastic about them that I could have done nothing more than comment on them. "

- Michel Foucault : 1996, Man is an animal of experience. Conversation with Ducio Trombadori. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1996, p. 82.

One of the critical voices is that of the Polish philosopher Leszek Kołakowski . He primarily criticizes the Enlightenment concept used by the authors and their elitist concept of culture:

“Generally speaking, the term 'Enlightenment' is a fantastically patched up, unhistorical bastard made up of everything that outrages the authors: positivism, logic, deductive science, empirical science, capitalism, the rule of money, mass culture, liberalism, and fascism. Your cultural criticism, as much as it contains various [...] striking remarks about the harmful effects of the commercialization of art, is clearly filled with a melancholy longing for a time when only an elite participated in the reception of art [...] "

- Leszek Kolakowski : The main currents of Marxism. Origin - development - decay. Third volume. Piper, Munich and Zurich 1978, p. 409

Stefan Breuer criticizes the “naturalistic interpretation of rule” made by the authors, which they identified with power and violence and thus ignored the differentiation gains made by early German sociology. Georg Simmel had already explained rule as a social form of superiority and subordination, and Max Weber's concept of rule presupposed a social relationship between rulers and ruled, which is why a term such as "control of nature" is contradictory. The “world-historical generalization of the terms 'citizen' and 'bourgeois'”, which goes back to Adorno and which encompasses a historical span from the slave-holding society to the administered world , also met with opposition . For example, the authors formulated: "The citizen in the successive forms of the slave owner, free entrepreneur, administrator, is the logical subject of the Enlightenment". Stefan Breuer attributes the interpretation of the mythical figure of Odysseus as the archetype of the bourgeois individual to a modernizing reading to which Hans-Georg Gadamer attested a “lack of historical reflection”.

The current reception takes place in the conflict between criticism and defense of the criticism of reason with the protagonists Habermas on the one hand and French post-structuralism on the other.

literature

Text output

Dialectic of the Enlightenment (1947)
  • Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of the Enlightenment. Hectographed manuscript 1944 (on the occasion of Friedrich Pollock's 50th birthday ).
  • Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of the Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments . Friedrich Pollock on his 50th birthday. Querido, Amsterdam 1947 [expanded version, 2000 copies].
  • Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of the Enlightenment. S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1969, reprinted as paperback 1988, ISBN 978-3-596-27404-8 .
  • Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of the Enlightenment. Philosophical fragments (collected writings, volume 3. Ed. By Rolf Tiedemann ). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1981, ISBN 978-3-518-07493-0 (no longer included in the paperback edition).
  • Max Horkheimer: Dialectics of the Enlightenment and Writings 1940–1950. (Collected writings, 19 volumes, edited by Gunzelin Schmid Noerr , Volume 5), S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1987 (3rd edition 2003), ISBN 978-3-596-27379-9 .
    • Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer: To the dialectic of the Enlightenment. Guest article in: Frankfurter Rundschau , 1968. [1]

Secondary literature

  • Clemens Albrecht : The dialectic of failure. Clarification with Horkheimer and Adorno . In: Zeithistorische Forschungen / Studies in Contemporary History, online edition . No. 2 , 2004 ( zeithistorische-forschungen.de ).
  • Stefano Cochetti: Myth and “Dialectic of the Enlightenment” . Königstein im Taunus 1985, ISBN 3-445-02452-9 .
  • Georg Dörr: Mother myth and rule myth. On the dialectic of the Enlightenment at the turn of the century among the Cosmists, Stefan George and in the Frankfurt School . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-8260-3511-1 ( Epistemata Series Literaturwissenschaft 588, English-language review from: Focus on German Studies ).
  • Manfred Gangl, Gérard Raulet (ed.): Beyond instrumental reason. Critical studies on the “Dialectic of Enlightenment” . tape 3 . Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-631-33184-3 ( series of publications on the political culture of the Weimar Republic 3).
  • Rolf Grimminger: Order, chaos and art. For a new dialectic of the Enlightenment. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986
  • Jürgen Habermas : The intertwining of myth and enlightenment. Horkheimer and Adorno . In: The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Twelve lectures . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-518-28349-3 , p. 130-157 .
  • Heidrun Hesse: Reason and self-assertion. Critical theory as a critique of modern rationality. Frankfurt am Main 1984.
  • Andreas Hetzel: Interpretation. Max Horkheimer / Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of the Enlightenment . In: interpretations. Major works of social philosophy . Reclam, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-15-018114-3 , pp. 148-172 .
  • Andreas Hetzel: Dialectics of the Enlightenment . In: Richard Klein, Johann Kreuzer, Stefan Müller-Doohm (eds.): Adorno manual. Life - work - effect. JB Metzler, Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-476-02626-2 , pp. 389-397.
  • Harry Kunnemann, Hent de Vries (ed.): The topicality of the "Dialectic of Enlightenment". Between modern and post-modern . Campus, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1989, ISBN 3-593-34012-7 .
  • Marc-Pierre Möll: Is Enlightenment Totalitarian? On the “Dialectic of Enlightenment” by Horkheimer and Adorno . In: Enlightenment and Criticism . No. 2 , 2003, p. 12–22 ( gkpn.de [PDF; 45 kB ]).
  • Willem van Reijen , Gunzelin Schmid Noerr (ed.): Forty years of message in a bottle. Dialectic of the Enlightenment 1947–1987 . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, ISBN 3-596-26566-5 .
  • Gunzelin Schmid Noerr: How the "dark writers of the bourgeoisie" illuminate the dialectic of the Enlightenment . In: Uwe H. Bittlingmayer, Alex Demirović , Tatjana Freytag (eds.): Handbook of Critical Theory . Volume 1. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2019, pp. 211-234.
  • Gunzelin Schmid Noerr, Eva-Maria Ziege (ed.): On the criticism of regressive reason. Contributions to the "Dialectic of Enlightenment" . Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2019.
  • Gerhard Schweppenhäuser: At the end of the bourgeois philosophy of history. Max Horkheimer / Theodor W. Adorno: 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' (1947). In: Walter Erhard, Herbert Jaumann (Ed.): Century books. Great theories from Freud to Luhmann. Beck, Munich 2000.
  • Helmut Seidel : Enlightenment and the present. On the criticism of the "Dialectic of Enlightenment" by Adorno and Horkheimer . In: UTOPIE Kreativ . No. 109/110 (November / December), 1999, pp. 101–110 ( rosalux.de [PDF; 75 kB ] Lecture at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation ).
  • Heinz Steinert : The fate of society and the happiness of knowledge. Dialectic of Enlightenment as a research program . 1st edition 2007, ISBN 978-3-89691-710-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments. In: Max Horkheimer: Collected writings. Volume 5. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, p. 6.
  2. ↑ Cf. Jürgen Habermas: The intertwining of myth and enlightenment: Horkheimer and Adorno. In: ders .: The philosophical discourse of modernity. Twelve lectures. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1985, pp. 130 ff.
  3. ↑ Gunzelin Schmid Noerr : How the "dark writers of the bourgeoisie" illuminate the dialectic of the Enlightenment . In: Uwe H. Bittlingmayer, Alex Demirović , Tatjana Freytag (eds.): Handbook of Critical Theory . Volume 1. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2019, pp. 211-234, here p. 215. Andreas Hetzel dates the creation to the years between 1940 and 1944. S. Andreas Hetzel: Dialektik der Aufklerung . In: Richard Klein, Johann Kreuzer, Stefan Müller-Doohm (eds.): Adorno manual. Life - work - effect. Metzler, Stuttgart 2011, pp. 389–307, here p. 389.
  4. ^ Rolf Tiedemann : Gretel Adorno farewell. In: Frankfurter Adorno Blätter III. Munich 1994, p. 150.
  5. ^ Max Horkheimer: Collected writings . Volume 12: Legacy writings 1931–1949. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1985, p. 156 f.
  6. ^ Letter from Horkheimer to Felix Weil, March 10, 1942. In: Max Horkheimer: Gesammelte Schriften. Volume 17: Correspondence 1941–1947. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1996, p. 275.
  7. ↑ Stefan Breuer : Critical Theory. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2016, p. 169.
  8. ^ Gunzelin Schmid Noerr: Afterword by the editor. In: Max Horkheimer: Collected writings. Volume 5. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, pp. 423-452, here p. 430.
  9. ^ Gerhard Schweppenhäuser: At the end of the bourgeois philosophy of history. Max Horkheimer / Theodor W. Adorno: 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' (1947). In: Walter Erhard, Herbert Jaumann (Ed.): Century books. Great theories from Freud to Luhmann . Beck, Munich 2000, pp. 184–205, here p. 197.
  10. ↑ Quoted from Dimitrij Owetschkin: Traces of Reconciliation. On theological motifs in Theodor W. Adorno . In: Études Germaniques 2008/1, pp. 29–47. here p. 47.
  11. ↑ Jan Baars: Critique as anamnesis: The composition of the 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' . In: Harry Kunneman, Hent de Vries (ed.): The topicality of the 'Dialectic of Enlightenment'. Between modern and post-modern . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1989, pp. 210–235, here p. 211.
  12. ^ Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel J. Levinson, R. Nevitt Sanford: The Authoritarian Personality . Harper and Brothers, New York 1950. - The four other studies were:
    • Dynamics of Prejudice , Studies in Prejudice Series, Volume 2
    • Anti-Semitism and Emotional Disorder , Studies in Prejudice Series, Volume 3
    • Rehearsal For Destruction , Studies in Prejudice Series, Volume 4
    • Prophets of Deceit , Studies in Prejudice Series, Volume 5
  13. ↑ Max Horkheiner, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialektik der Aufklerung In: Max Horkheimer: Gesammelte Schriften. Volume 5. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, p. 288.
  14. ↑ Cf. Horkheimer in a letter dated June 10, 1940 to Saskia Viertel: “our current work […] a kind of message in a bottle”. In: Max Horkheimer: Collected writings . Volume 16: Correspondence 1937–1940 . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1995, p. 726.
  15. ^ Willem van Reijen, Gunzelin Schmid Noerr: Foreword by the editors . In this. (Ed.): Forty Years of Message in a Bottle. "Dialketics of the Enlightenment" 1947–1987 . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, p. 8 f.
  16. ^ Willem van Reijen, Jan Bransen: The disappearance of class history in the 'dialectic of the Enlightenment'. A comment on the text variants of the book edition from 1947 compared to the first publication from 1944. In: Max Horkheimer: Gesammelte Schriften. Volume 5. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, pp. 453-457, here pp. 456 f.
  17. ^ Gunzelin Schmid Noerr: Afterword by the editor. In: Max Horkheimer: Collected writings. Volume 5. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, pp. 423-452, here pp. 449-451.
  18. ^ Gunzelin Schmid Noerr: Afterword by the editor. In: Max Horkheimer: Collected writings. Volume 5. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, pp. 423-452, here pp. 451 f.
  19. ^ Günter Figal : Dialectic of Enlightenment . In: Franco Volpi (ed.): Large world dictionary of philosophy . Volume 1: AK, Kröner, Stuttgart 2004, p. 8 f.
  20. ^ Theodor W. Adorno: Scientific experiences in America. In: Theodor W. Adorno: Gesammelte Schriften. Edited by Rolf Tiedemann, Volume 10.2, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2003, pp. 702-738, here pp. 721 f.
  21. ^ Stefan Müller-Doohm: Theodor W. Adorno. a biography. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2003, p. 431.
  22. ^ Albrecht Wellmer: Adorno, lawyer for the non-identical. In: ders .: On the dialectic of modernity and postmodernism. Critique of reason according to Adorno. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1985, p. 137.
  23. ↑ a b Andreas Hetzel: Dialectic of Enlightenment. In: Richard Klein, Johann Kreuzer, Stefan Müller-Doohm (eds.): Adorno manual. Life - work - effect. JB Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart 2011, p. 390.
  24. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: The intertwining of myth and enlightenment: Horkheimer and Adorno. In: ders .: The philosophical discourse of modernity. Twelve lectures. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1985, p. 134.
  25. ↑ Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. In: Max Horkheimer: Collected writings. Volume 5. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, p. 34.
  26. ^ Quotes from the preface by Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialektik der Aufklerung. In: Max Horkheimer: Collected writings. Volume 5. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, p. 16 f.
  27. ↑ Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. In: Max Horkheimer: Collected writings. Volume 5. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, p. 69.
  28. ↑ Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. In: Max Horkheimer: Collected writings. Volume 5. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, p. 21.
  29. ^ Gerhard Schweppenhäuser: At the end of the bourgeois philosophy of history. Max Horkheimer / Theodor W. Adorno: 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' (1947). In: Walter Erhard, Herbert Jaumann (Ed.): Century books. Great theories from Freud to Luhmann . Beck, Munich 2000, pp. 184-205, here p. 193.
  30. ↑ Rahel Jaeggi: Dialectic of Enlightenment . In: Heinz Ludwig Arnold: Kindlers Literature Lexicon . 3. Edition. Metzler, Stuttgart 2009, pp. 104–106, here 105.
  31. ^ Gunzelin Schmid Noerr: Afterword by the editor. In: Max Horkheimer: Collected writings. Volume 5. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, pp. 423-452, here p. 430 f.
  32. ^ Gunzelin Schmid Noerr: Afterword by the editor. In: Max Horkheimer: Collected writings. Volume 5. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, pp. 423-452, here p. 434.
  33. ↑ Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. In: Max Horkheimer: Collected writings. Volume 5. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, p. 22.
  34. ↑ Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. In: Max Horkheimer: Collected writings. Volume 5. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, p. 142 f.
  35. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: The intertwining of myth and enlightenment: Horkheimer and Adorno. In: ders .: The philosophical discourse of modernity. Twelve lectures . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1985, p. 147.
  36. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: The intertwining of myth and enlightenment: Horkheimer and Adorno. In: ders .: The philosophical discourse of modernity. Twelve lectures . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1985, p. 148.
  37. ↑ Gunzelin Schmid Noerr: How the "dark writers of the bourgeoisie" illuminate the dialectic of the Enlightenment . In: Uwe H. Bittlingmayer, Alex Demirović , Tatjana Freytag (eds.): Handbook of Critical Theory . Volume 1. Springer VS, Wiesbaden 2019, pp. 211–234, here p. 224.
  38. ^ Gerhard Schweppenhäuser: At the end of the bourgeois philosophy of history. Max Horkheimer / Theodor W. Adorno: 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' (1947). In: Walter Erhard, Herbert Jaumann (Ed.): Century books. Great theories from Freud to Luhmann . Beck, Munich 2000, p. 190.
  39. ^ Roger Caillois: Le Mythe et l'homme . Gallimard, Paris 1938, p. 125 ff.
  40. ^ Philipp Lenhard: Friedrich Pollock. The gray eminence of the Frankfurt School . Jüdischer Verlag im Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin 2019, p. 248.
  41. ^ Willem van Reijen, Jan Bransen: The disappearance of class history in the 'dialectic of the Enlightenment'. A comment on the text variants of the book edition from 1947 compared to the first publication from 1944. In: Max Horkheimer: Gesammelte Schriften. Volume 5. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, pp. 453-457, here 457.
  42. ^ Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments . In: Theodor W. Adorno: Gesammelte Schriften . Volume 3. 2nd edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1984, p. 16.
  43. ^ Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment . In: Theodor W. Adorno: Gesammelte Schriften Volume 3. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 11.
  44. ^ Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment . In: Theodor W. Adorno: Gesammelte Schriften Volume 3. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 19.
  45. ^ Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment . In: Theodor W. Adorno: Gesammelte Schriften Volume 3. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 16.
  46. ↑ Cf. Max Horkheimer: Collected writings . tape 5 : Dialectic of the Enlightenment and writings 1940–1950. . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, p. 29 .
  47. ^ Max Horkheimer: Collected writings . tape 5 : Dialectic of the Enlightenment and writings 1940–1950. . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, p. 31 .
  48. ^ Max Horkheimer: Collected writings . tape 5 : Dialectic of the Enlightenment and writings 1940–1950. . Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, p. 39 .
  49. ↑ Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. Verlag S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1969, limited special edition 2003, ISBN 3-596-50669-7 , p. 52.
  50. ↑ Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. Verlag S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1969, limited special edition 2003, ISBN 3-596-50669-7 , p. 50.
  51. ^ Gerhard Schweppenhäuser: At the end of the bourgeois philosophy of history. Max Horkheimer / Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of the Enlightenment (1947). In: Walter Erhard / Herbert Jaumann (ed.): Century books. Great theories from Freud to Luhmann . Beck, Munich 2000, p. 194 f.
  52. ↑ Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. Verlag S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1969, limited special edition 2003, ISBN 3-596-50669-7 , p. 53.
  53. ↑ Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. Verlag S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1969, limited special edition 2003, ISBN 3-596-50669-7 , p. 57.
  54. ↑ Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. Verlag S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1969, limited special edition 2003, ISBN 3-596-50669-7 , p. 55.
  55. ↑ Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. Verlag S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1969, limited special edition 2003, ISBN 3-596-50669-7 , p. 65.
  56. ↑ Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. Verlag S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1969, limited special edition 2003, ISBN 3-596-50669-7 , p. 69.
  57. ↑ Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. Verlag S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1969, limited special edition 2003, ISBN 3-596-50669-7 , p. 79.
  58. ↑ Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. Verlag S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1969, limited special edition 2003, ISBN 3-596-50669-7 , p. 81.
  59. ↑ Erich Fromm: Review of Geoffrey Gorer: The revolutionary Ideas of the Marquis de Sade . In: Journal for Social Research. 3, 1934, pp. 426-427.
  60. ↑ Immanuel Kant: What is Enlightenment? (1784; in Wikisource).
  61. ↑ All quotations (unless otherwise stated): Horkheimer, Adorno: Dialektik der Aufklerung. Frankfurt a. M. 1969, ISBN 3-436-01487-7 , pp. 74 ff.
  62. ↑ Immanuel Kant: Critique of Practical Reason. Stuttgart 73, § 7 Basic Law of Pure Practical Reason, ISBN 3-15-001111-6 , p. 53.
  63. ^ Friedrich Nietzsche: The Antichrist , KSA 6, p. 170.
  64. ↑ Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment . 1988, p. 127.
  65. ↑ The individual references in this section are based on the paperback edition: Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno: Dialektik der Aufklerung. S. Fischer, Frankfurt 1988 = DdA
  66. ↑ Wolfgang Kraushaar: Authoritarian State and Anti-Authoritarian Movement . In the S. (Ed.): Frankfurt School and Student Movement - From the message in a bottle to the Molotov cocktail . Volume 3: Articles and Commentaries, Index . Rogner and Bernhard in Zweiausendeins, Hamburg 1998, pp. 15–33.
  67. ^ Günter Figal: Dialectic of Enlightenment . In: Franco Volpi (ed.): Large world dictionary of philosophy . Volume 1: AK, Kröner, Stuttgart 2004, p. 8 f.
  68. ^ Gunzelin Schmid Noerr: Afterword by the editor. In: Max Horkheimer: Collected writings. Volume 5. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1987, pp. 423-452, here p. 424.
  69. ^ Gerhard Schweppenhäuser: At the end of the bourgeois philosophy of history. Max Horkheimer / Theodor W. Adorno: 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' (1947). In: Walter Erhard, Herbert Jaumann (Ed.): Century books. Great theories from Freud to Luhmann . Beck, Munich 2000, p. 200.
  70. ^ Albrecht Wellmer: On negativity and autonomy of art. The topicality of Adorno's aesthetics and blind spots in his music philosophy. In: Axel Honneth (Ed.): Dialektik der Freiheit. Frankfurt Adorno Conference 2003. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-518-29328-1 , p. 240.
  71. ↑ Jan Philipp Reemtsma: Not Köstein's paradox. On the 'Dialectic of Enlightenment'. In: Theodor W. Adorno Archive (Ed.): Frankfurter Adorno-Blätter IV . edition text + kritik, Munich 1995, p. 95.
  72. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: The philosophical discourse of modernity. Twelve lectures . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, p. 156.
  73. ↑ Andreas Hetzel: Dialectic of the Enlightenment. In: Richard Klein, Johann Kreuzer, Stefan Müller-Doohm (eds.): Adorno manual. Life - work - effect. JB Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart 2011, p. 395.
  74. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: The philosophical discourse of modernity. Twelve lectures . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, p. 138.
  75. ↑ Anke Thyen: Negative Dialectics and Experience - On the Rationality of the Nonidentical in Adorno . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1989. p. 159.
  76. ↑ Jürgen Habermas: The philosophical discourse of modernity. Twelve lectures . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1981, p. 154.
  77. ↑ Stefan Breuer: Critical Theory . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2016, p. 71 f.
  78. ↑ Jan Baars: Critique as anamnesis: The composition of the 'Dialectic of Enlightenment' . In: Harry Kunneman, Hent de Vries (ed.): The topicality of the 'Dialectic of Enlightenment'. Between modern and post-modern . Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1989, pp. 210–235, here p. 216.
  79. ^ Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno: Dialectic of Enlightenment. Philosophical Fragments . In: Theodor W. Adorno: Gesammelte Schriften . Volume 3. 2nd edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1984, p. 102.
  80. ↑ Stefan Breuer: Critical Theory . Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2016, p. 72 f.
  81. ↑ Hans-Georg Gadamer: Truth and Method. Basic features of a philosophical hermeneutics. 6th edition. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen. 1990, p. 270.
  82. ↑ Andreas Hetzel: Dialectic of the Enlightenment . In: Richard Klein, Johann Kreuzer, Stefan Müller-Doohm (eds.): Adorno manual. Life - work - effect. Metzler, Stuttgart 2014, pp. 389–397, here p. 396.
  83. ↑ Dedication on page 4 of the 1947 edition.
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