Two Versions of Voltaire: W.H. Auden and the Dialectic of Enlightenment

PMLA ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 120 (2) ◽  
pp. 388-403
Author(s):  
Susannah Young-Ah Gottlieb
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Max Horkheimer ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
Free Thought ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, W. H. Auden and the authors of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, ask themselves, in independent reflections, why attempts to free thought from oppressive schemata result in more-insidious forms of oppression: as clerical establishments go into decline, modernity creates new forms of mythological consciousness. For all three authors, the emergence of fascism in the early part of the twentieth century is proof of this and gives urgency to their inquiries into enlightenment. For all three, Voltaire is a pivotal figure, for his struggle against the unity of apologetic discourse and ruthless power allows them to discern an element of enlightenment that survives the most rigorous critique of its oppressive tendencies. This essay examines Horkheimer and Adorno's fragment “For Voltaire” alongside Auden's poem “Voltaire at Ferney” and shows how the latter both anticipates and reveals the limits of the former.

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.

Two Dialectics of Enlightenment

2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (02) ◽  
pp. 54-73
Author(s):  
William Maker
Keyword(s):  
Family Resemblance ◽  
Crucial Aspect ◽  
Phenomenology Of Spirit ◽  
Max Horkheimer ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

In 1807 Hegel published the Phenomenology of Spirit which calmly asserted that philosophy had, at long last, ceased to be merely the love of knowing and had finally consummated its lust for truth, giving birth to ‘strenge Wissenschaft’ in logic and the system (Hegel, 1807: 3). In 1944, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno circulated mimeographed copies of Dialectic of Enlightenment, ominously asserting that the same process of reason's self-clarification which Hegel described brings us, not, as he claimed, to truth and freedom, but to barbarism. Somehow critical reflection's efforts to liberate humanity from superstition, darkness, and oppression has lead instead to Auschwitz.A crucial aspect of Horkheimer and Adorno's critique of enlightenment is the notion that enlightenment and its seeming antithesis, myth, are inextricably linked. In the Phenomenology Hegel had already investigated the underlying link between the rationality of the Enlightenment period and faith, its ostensible arational other, in Chapter VI. In various places Horkheimer and Adorno acknowledge the influence of Hegel, and they make suggestive passing references to the Phenomenology. Obviously, their connecting of enlightenment and myth bears more than a family resemblance to Hegel's pairing of enlightenment and faith. Just as Hegel disclosed that enlightenment and faith have more in common than usually thought, Horkheimer and Adorno aim to show that there is an important aspect of enlightenment already in myth and further, that enlightenment has itself fallen back into the essential features of myth it purports to be have overcome.

A EDUCAÇÃO EM GEORGE HERBERT MEAD, JÜRGEN HABERMAS E A TEORIA HERMENÊUTICO-CRÍTICA: tendências, desafios e perspectivas para uma prática pedagógica emancipatória

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Shirlene Santos Mafra Medeiros ◽  
Rita Maria Radl-Phillipp ◽  
José Gilliard Santos da Silva
Keyword(s):  
Rio Grande ◽  
George Herbert ◽  
Jürgen Habermas ◽  
George Herbert Mead ◽  
Max Horkheimer ◽  
Jurgen Habermas ◽  
Theodor Adorno

O artigo em questão apresenta a construção coletiva de uma proposta pedagógica para a Escola Estadual Joaquim José de Medeiros, localizada na cidade de Cruzeta, no Estado do Rio Grande do Norte, e possui como base epistemológica a teoria social de George Herbert Mead, Jürgen Habermas e a teoria crítica da educação da Escola de Frankfurt, nas perspectivas de Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno (2003), Jürgen Habermas (2012); e, atualmente, de pesquisadores contemporâneos como Freire (2009), Radl-Philipp (1996, 1998, 2014), Bannell (2006), Pucci (2006), Santos (2007), Medeiros (2010-1016), Casagrande (2014) dentre outros autores que estudam Mead e as teorias críticas numa perspectiva emancipatória.

Levantine Art in the “Orientalizing” Period

2019 ◽  
pp. 369-383
Author(s):  
Marian H. Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Relations ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
The West ◽  
False Dichotomy ◽  
First Millennium

The “Orientalizing period” represents a scholarly designation used to describe the eighth and seventh centuries bce when regions in Greece, Italy, and farther west witnessed a flourishing of arts and cultures attributed to contact with cultural areas to the east—in particular that of the Phoenicians. This chapter surveys Orientalizing as an intellectual and historiographic concept and reconsiders the role of purportedly Phoenician arts within the existing scholarly narratives. The Orientalizing period should be understood as a construct of nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship that was structured around a false dichotomy between the Orient (the East) and the West. The designation “Phoenician” has a similarly complex historiographic past rooted in ancient Greek stereotyping that has profoundly shaped modern scholarly interpretations. This chapter argues that the luxury arts most often credited as agents of Orientalization—most prominent among them being carved ivories, decorated metal bowls, and engraved tridacna shells—cannot be exclusively associated with a Phoenician cultural origin, thus calling into question the primacy of the Phoenicians in Orientalizing processes. Each of these types of objects appears to have a much broader production sphere than is indicated by the attribute as Phoenician. In addition, the notion of unidirectional influences flowing from east to west is challenged, and instead concepts of connectivity and networking are proposed as more useful frameworks for approaching the problem of cultural relations during the early part of the first millennium bce.

scholarly journals Enlightenment and Repression: A Comparison of Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment and Herbert Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elliott Buckland
Keyword(s):  
Max Horkheimer ◽  
New Form ◽  
Reality Principle ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

This paper offers a comparison of Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment and Marcuse’s Eros and Civilization. It is my contention that although the content of these two works differs, there is an underlying argument which is remarkably similar. Drawing mainly on the early chapters of Dialectic and the first half of Eros, I plan to demonstrate that each text explores, the intertwining and cyclical nature of progress and regression; the manner in which liberating tendencies emerge which challenge present conditions, but upon their ascension become a new form of repression; for Horkheimer and Adorno this is the development of subjectivity in the movement from myth to enlightenment, which becomes the new myth; for Marcuse, it is the instinctual repression, under the guise of ‘civilization’, required of individuals in the interest of self-preservation and propagation. Furthermore, in both cases neither enlightenment, nor the reality principle are ever fully victorious, hence this cycle is self-perpetuating.

Narratives of Decadence in Post-Kantian Philosophy

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Huddleston
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Friedrich Nietzsche ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
Max Horkheimer ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
European Philosophy ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Kantian Philosophy ◽  
Point Of Reference

Decadence is a perennial theme in philosophy. But tracing the arc of decline becomes an especially prominent focus of attention in European philosophy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This article explains and contrasts several “narratives of decadence” in the post-Kantian tradition. The article first lays out briefly the basics of G. W. F. Hegel’s optimistic view of progress and history as a foil and point of reference, then turns to expounding several narratives of decadence from other canonical philosophical figures in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—specifically, from Friedrich Nietzsche, from Martin Heidegger, and from Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer. All of these thinkers see modern humanity as being, in some (often quite nuanced) sense, in a decadent state, but all have a rather different diagnosis of what that fallen state consists of, and of how (or whether) we might be able to extricate ourselves from it.

Incentives Then and Now

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth W. Grant
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Control ◽  
Social Engineering ◽  
Scientific Management ◽  
Historical Account ◽  
Ethical Aspects ◽  
Behavioral Psychology ◽  
The Social

This chapter presents a historical account of the use of the term “incentives” and of the introduction of incentives in scientific management and behavioral psychology. “Incentives” came into the language in the early part of the twentieth century in America. During this period, the language of social control and of social engineering was quite prevalent, and incentives were understood to be one tool in the social engineers' toolbox—an instrument of power. Not coincidentally, incentives were also extremely controversial at this time and were criticized from several quarters as dehumanizing, manipulative, heartless, and exploitative. When incentives are viewed as instruments of power, the controversial ethical aspects of their use come readily to the fore.

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