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.

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 Post-Enlightened Poe: Analysing the Pathologies of Modernity in "The Purloined Letter" and "The Colloquy of Monos and Una"

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 109-123
Author(s):  
Sofía Martinicorena
Keyword(s):  
Edgar Allan Poe ◽  
Max Horkheimer ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Modern Project ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

This paper delves into the long-debated tensions that critics have found in Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849)’s writings, which have placed him as a liminal figure between the Enlightenment and Romanticism. In particular, I will maintain that these tensions are representative of the contradictions inherent in the modern project, which I will argue are present in Poe’s writings and which situate Poe’s texts as both a symptom of and a reaction to the pathologies of modernity. To this end, I will consider Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944), arguing that the problems addressed in the volume were foreshadowed by Poe’s writings a century earlier. After a brief introduction, I will analyse the widely-discussed “The Purloined Letter” (1844) and the attitudes towards rationality that Poe presents in the story. I will then explore the lesser-known “The Colloquy of Monos and Una” (1841),2 where Poe anticipates some of the problems that Horkheimer and Adorno voiced, most notably the confusion between progress and technification.

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.

Daughters of the Enlightenment: Reconstructing Adorno on Gender and Feminist Praxis

Hypatia ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 784-800
Author(s):  
Rochelle Duford
Keyword(s):  
Preliminary Evidence ◽  
Max Horkheimer ◽  
Gender Regime ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Present Complex ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

This article offers a reconstruction of Theodor Adorno's work as it concerns sex/gender and feminist praxis. Although the prevailing interpretation of Adorno's work conceptualizes its relationship to women as one of either exclusion or essentialism, I argue that both the reading of Sade's Juliette inDialectic of Enlightenment, as well as a number of Adorno's aphorisms inMinima Moralia, present complex feminist claims and commitments. Max Horkheimer and Adorno position Juliette as a subject of the Enlightenment, forestalling the possibility that womenquawomen are potentially utopian figures. I utilize Adorno's work inMinima Moraliato show that he—far from excluding or essentializing women—was interested in metaphorically capturing the subjective conditions developed by a system of binary sex/gender within a heteropatriarchal society. Indeed, one can find an iteration of queer theoretical commitments inMinima Moralia. As a result, I argue that he displays a number of straightforwardly feminist commitments: that a liberated society requires the disambiguation of sex from gender, affirming the nonnaturalness of our social sex/gender regime, and claiming that all subjects as gendered subjects are damaged by living within a heteropatriarchal society. Lastly, I provide preliminary evidence of Adorno's critique of (neo)liberal feminist praxis.

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.

scholarly journals Ekologiczna wymowa dialektyki oświecenia

2010 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-135
Author(s):  
Zbigniew Łepko
Keyword(s):  
Human Freedom ◽  
Max Horkheimer ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The World ◽  
Bioethical Issues ◽  
Dialectic Of Enlightenment

The title of this paper relates directly to the celebrated work of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno: Dialektik der Aufklärung. Philosophische Fragmente. It shows as dialectical because of the ideas associated with engaging the rational mastery of the world from the degeneration of the practical ideas in increasingly sophisticated forms of man's dominion over man. Ecological interpretation of such understanding of the dialectic of Enlightenment gives it a modern expression in the sense that it points to one of the most pressing contemporary problems, born of the mythical inspiration functioning of enlightened reason, and today, in the name of being a man claiming to be his task to demythologize reality. Broadly speaking, in the name of human freedom the idea is to overcome the enlightenment tradition of freedom or its’ degeneration in more subtle forms of practical denial. This study follows this line of reasoning and expresses the conviction that today appears to illustrate the dialectic of enlightenment in environmental and bioethical issues.

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