5. Enlightened illusions

2017 ◽  
pp. 53-64
Author(s):  
Stephen Eric Bronner
Keyword(s):  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Instrumental Rationality ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Scientific Reason ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

‘Enlightened illusions’ examines Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment. The work shows how scientific (or instrumental) rationality expels freedom from historical process and enables reification to permeate society. The work connects the growth of instrumental rationality with a totally administered society, and calls for resistance against it. Scientific reason was originally intended to destroy superstitions, but it turned on all non-scientific precepts. This perversion of autonomy has been blamed for the rise of anti–Semitism and fascism. However, these phenomena were due to the conflict of real organizations, and to ignore that is to engage in the very reification processes that the Frankfurt School sought to combat.

scholarly journals VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN Y LA RACIONALIDAD INSTRUMENTAL = VICTOR FRANKENSTEIN AND THE INSTRUMENTAL RATIONALITY

2020 ◽  
pp. 223
Author(s):  
Ana Pinel Benayas
Keyword(s):  
Instrumental Rationality ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

<p>En este artículo se pretende hacer una relectura de <em>Frankenstein o el moderno Prometeo</em> (1818) desde la tesis planteada en la <em>Dialéctica de la Ilustración</em> (1944) de los filósofos Adorno y Horkheimer, intentando mostrar que Victor Frankenstein es un esclavo de la racionalidad instrumental.  </p><p>This article is intended to make a rereading of Frankenstein; o, The Modern Prometheus (1818) from the thesis presented in Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944) and Eclipse of Reason (1947) of the philosophers Adorno and Horkheimer, trying to prove that Victor Frankenstein is an instrumental´s rationality slave.</p>

Human Nature, Non-human Nature, and Needs

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Biro
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Instrumental Rationality ◽  
Communicative Rationality ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Needs

This chapter assesses the relevance of Frankfurt School critical theory for contemporary environmental political theory. Early Frankfurt School thinkers such as Adorno, Horkheimer, and Marcuse developed a critique of instrumental rationality that provides a powerful framework for understanding the domination of nature in modernity, including an inability to articulate and defend human needs. Habermas subsequently attempts to mitigate this totalizing critique, countering instrumental rationality with a focus on communicative rationality. This Habermasian turn both provides new openings and forecloses certain possibilities for environmental political theory; deliberative democracy is emphasized, but with a renewed commitment to anthropocentrism. The chapter then explores whether Habermas’s communicative turn could be “greened,” either through an expansion of the subjects of communicative rationality, or by critically examining the extent to which human beings themselves can articulate their genuine needs.

Bernays, Horkheimer, and Adorno

2020 ◽  
pp. 114-135
Author(s):  
William Sipling
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Mass Communication ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Content Creation ◽  
Max Horkheimer ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

Social media and 21st century mass communication have changed the technological landscape of marketing and advertising, enabling instant content creation, content curation, and audience feedback. The thought of Edward Bernays can be useful in examining and interrogating today's media, especially through the lens of Frankfurt School social theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. Further, the works Crystalizing Public Opinion and Propaganda are critiqued through ideas found in Dialectic of Enlightenment to give business and PR professionals ethical concepts that may be applied to modern trends in communications.

scholarly journals Nationalism and Anti-Semitism in an Independent Romania

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 14-26
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Motta
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Political Integration ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Cultural Framework ◽  
History Of

Abstract The history of antisemitism in Romania is strictly connected to the religious and cultural framework of those territories, as well as to their political integration from the age of emancipation and independence to the establishment of a Greater Romania after World War I. This article aims to analyse the different intersections of this historical process and the continuity between the old forms of anti-judaism and their re-interpretation according to modernist dynamics during the first half of the Twentieth-Century. The Romanian case illustrates the transformation and re-adapting of old religious prejudice in new doctrines of xenophobia, nationalism and antisemitism.

Dialectics of Classicism: The birth of Nazism from the spirit of Classicism

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 152 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-37
Author(s):  
Harry Redner
Keyword(s):  
18Th Century ◽  
Developmental Trajectory ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
The One ◽  
Cultural Movement ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

This article is an attempt to revise and extend two prior conceptions: Adorno and Horkheimer’s dialectic of Enlightenment and Murphy and Robert’s dialectic of Romanticism. It traces a developmental trajectory within German Kultur, starting around the mid-18th century, that goes through three moments or phases: the Grecophilia of Goethe and Schiller, the Grecomania of Hölderlin, Schelling and early Hegel, and the Grecogermania of Wagner, Nietzsche and Heidegger. The latter provided the ideological underpinning of Hitler’s Nazism. Thus the paper aims to show that Nazism had deep roots within the soil of German Kultur, for almost from the very start Classicism and anti-Semitism were integral aspects of the one cultural movement. Furthermore, this movement was the one surrogate form of a Neo-Pagan and anti-Christian trend in German modernity.

Distruzione delle appartenenze e caos organizzato. Aspetti della critica del liberalismo e della democrazia nella cultura politica antisemita

2009 ◽  
pp. 141-151
Author(s):  
Francesco Germinario
Keyword(s):  
Racial Differences ◽  
Liberal Society ◽  
Historical Process ◽  
Cross Breeding ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Theoretical Synthesis ◽  
Political Statement ◽  
Xix Century

- The ideological pattern of anti-Semitism sprung in the second half of the XIX century, and it moved against Liberalism and Democracy as its defining theoretical and political statement. From Toussenel to Drumont, up to Maurras and Hitler, the anti-Semitic theory revolves around the idea that liberal society leads to the end racial differences and fosters an historical process of homologation and cross-breeding epitomized by the Protocols of the Elders of Zion there is a recurrent theory that the Jewish rule will ultimately establish a One- Nation world, where national and racial differences are abolished. In such an apocalyptic view on history, the criticism of egualitarianism and cospiracy theory blend in a particular and theoretical synthesis.

Cruciale Teksten: Theodor W. Adorno und Max Horkheimer, Dialektik der Aufklärung, Philosophische Fragmente (1947)

2014 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 322-329
Author(s):  
Lucien van Liere
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
National Socialism ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Culture Industry ◽  
European History ◽  
Max Horkheimer ◽  
Ongoing Process ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

In 1947, Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer, two members of the so-called Frankfurt School of Sociology published The Dialectic of Enlightenment. The book, written in exile, did not study national-socialism as an accident or exception in European history, but rather as the result of an ongoing process of rationalization. The authors included a fierce critique of the capitalist modus of (re-)production as ‘culture industry’ that would in the end eliminate rational individuality. Although in the 1940ies the book did not receive very enthusiastic receptions, in the revolutionary sixties of the 20th century, the analytical frame developed in the book received more and more attention. Thinking about theology and religious studies in the 21st century, questions about perceptions of human dignity and individuality cannot go without relating these perceptions to the cultural context in which these are produced.

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