Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer's 'The Dialectic of Enlightenment' (Part 1/2)

In this episode, I present the first half of Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer's "The Dialectic of Enlightenment."

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[VTLille]

Hey everyone,

Just thought I’d add a little to this excellent summary by sharing some insights that I got by listening to an interview of Detlev Claussen, a social theorist and former student of Adorno. For those of you that speak German, I’ll share the link at the end. The following few paragraphs is a brief summary of what I gleaned from it.
In 1966, when Claussen went down to Frankfurt am Main to study sociology, politics and science, he was active in the Socialist German Students Federation (SDS). He was told that if he wanted to be able to even take part in discussions he had to read two books: “History and Class Consciousness, ” by Georg Lukacs and “The Dialectic of Enlightenment, ” by Adorno and Horkheimer. But at the time “The Dialectic of Enlightenment” was no longer in print. Just some old copies lying around in Amsterdam at the Querido publishing company where it first came out in 1947. So Claussen and other students had to buy pirated/street-printed copies from a guy called “Der Marburger” that came around to the student housing to sell them.
Outside of student activist circles, the book was relatively unknown. But all that changed after the massive student demonstrations of June 2nd 1967 in Berlin. People started wondering what kind of philosophical and political theory was behind the student movement, and it became evident that Horkheimer and Adorno’s work was key.
So pressure mounted for a new edition of “The Dialectic of Enlightenment” to be published. But although Adorno wanted to go ahead with a new edition, Horkheimer was against it. Finally, Horkheimer succumbed to the pressure, but only if Adorno would write a historically relevant forward for the new edition. The new edition was published in 1969.
According to Claussen, it’s important to note the historical context of the original edition of the book. It was written in 1944 in a pre cold-war world, during the time of Auschwitz. But it was written far away from Germany in California. And this is important. In California at that time one had the impression that life could transform into paradise. But at the same time, the worst kind of barbarism was taking place in Europe and Asia. They saw this constantly in the news reels shown before films. News of horrible atrocities, contrasted with the grandiose Hollywood films shown directly afterward. This contradiction, this contrast between unbelievable potential and unbelievable barbarism, greatly influenced Horkheimer and Adorno’s work, especially the chapter on the culture industry. This gave their work relevance at the time, and also predictive power for the future.
Claussen explains that life in California was like an ever-present background theme for Horkheimer and Adorno. On the one hand, they saw that post-industrial capitalist production had become so powerful that one might imagine a future free from physical labour. But on the other hand, they saw that the resultant “happy consciousness” could become the new chains of humanity - become its own bad luck.
*They realised that Enlightenment is the power that allows us to free ourselves from the chains of nature, and at the same time becomes itself the chains of humanity, in turn suppressing human nature.
This American side of the book is important and often overlooked. It’s a theory of totalitarianism before theories of totalitarianism were developed. Before 1948, the theory of totalitarianism was simple : The Nazis were totalitarian, and Soviets are totalitarian. Moreover, it was thought that neither has anything to do with the modern society that we actually live in.
But Adorno and Horkheimer show that Enlightenment is a universal phenomenon. Not only intellectual, but also a real phenomenon which, in practical terms, means the cvilising of the world (bürgerlichung der Welt) or the global time of bourgeois civilization. The Enlightenment began circa 1600 and ended in our modern era. But the self-destruction of the Enlightenment means the self-destruction of bourgeois civilization. And the Nazis and Bolsheviks are both products of this bourgeois civilization. That’s the problem!
*How is it possible that the Enlightenment, which should free humanity from the chains of nature, sets loose forces that cuase its own destruction?!
The Nazis and Soviets loved technical progress and saw themselves as a progression of the Enlightenment. But this progression led to the perfection of the domination of humanity.
The Enlightenment contains its own contradiction.
It replaced the traditional control/domination of people by kings and the church, with the control (rule) of law. But rule of law still means the domination of people. It’s a little bit of freedom (from the old powers), but also a little bit of control. For we are chained to human laws, and part of these human laws means to surrpress our natural urges in order to be able to work in society. Human nature must be “civilized” and this is also a process of domination. The individual can now decide for himself, but cannot decide to go against the laws. As Hegel said “Die Straffe ist das Recht der Verbrechers” (punsihment is the criminals right).
So modernity means that these two things are always together and that there is a tension between them: The increasing ability to control nature and the increasing ability to control people.
*”The Dialectic of Enlightenment” is not an irrational critique of the Enlightenment. It is an attempt to transform the optimism ot the early Enlightenment thinkers into a consciousness of reality. For Enlightenment is not just a good thing; it must reflect upon itself (the dialectic).
This new form of domination in civil (bourgeois) society is anonymous. No one is responsible for it. The chapter on anti-semitism is an attempt to explain how the modern system of domination is re-personalised in the imagination of the oppressed.
*Vernunft und Mythos - Reason and Myth
Adorno and Horkheimer interpret the Odyssey as the first step of the Enlightenment and Odysseus its first “citizen.”
This is something very unusual, and they got a lot of flack for it! Why is it that students the Western world over must study and learn about Odysseus? Because Odysseus is a civil subject: He controls himself and he controls hature, which is the centerpiece of Enlightenment humanism. So the Odyseey is like a kind of Bourgeois origin story - a story of control of nature and people. And this is why these myths are important to civil education in the modern world.
*Philosophische Fragmente - Philosophical Fragments.
Also written as “critical fragments.” Why is this included in the title of the book? Because it means to formulate something intellectually demanding, something that aims at truth, without having the confidence that it can still appear in the bigger system. This is the critical theory. For the Romantics this system was the Hegelian system; the development and crowning of German idealism in Hegel.
It’s not about absolute knowledge, which we can never have because it’s shattered, but pieces of absolute knowledge that we can actually obtain. These are the fragments!
*The critique is that in Western societies the Enlightenment has become its own system. A system of domination of nature and human control. Therefore breaking up this system is system critique. But one can’t exercise a system critique when one replaces the old system with a new one.
And this is the bitter experience of the 20th century:
from the Marxian critique of civil/bourgeois society in the 19th century came Soviet communism - a system of human domination that can only be likened to that of National Socialism. How is it possible that Marxian theory, a force of the late Enlightenment and socially critical, turns into a system of domination that no longer has anything to do with emancipation? Politically, the Enlightenment turns back into myth : the myth of Stalin the Great Leader.
This is the political side of the critique. The real experience of the Enlightenment as a system of domination becomes the living experience of those that survived Stalinism. For them, the modern scientific system is no longer a force of Enlightenment, but of a self-evident Enlightenment that serves to provide the means of improved domination.
This is what Adorno and Horkheimer experienced in America, which was at the time several decades ahead of Europe. The rationalized scientific enterprise (especially in universities) makes the emancipatory forces of the Enlightenment disappear. Thoughts themselves become products. And this in turn changes thoughts! And none of us are innocent in this process. That’s what’s so amazing!
Many people have read the culture industry chapter as a type of accusation written by high-brow Europeans that only go to the opera, but nothing is further from the truth. Remember, Adorno and Horkheimer were avid movie goers and went to weekly parties in the Hollywood scene. They drank cocktails with Chaplin and Laughton!

At the end of the interview, he talks a bit about how the dialectic of Enlightenment translates into lived experience. He uses sports as one example, noting that the control over the body encompasses the dialectic - to create something beautiful (the perfect play, for exampple) means domination over the body. And through this domination comes into being something that wasn't there before; something that's fun and makes one happy. Here, too, enters the dialectic. What are the prices that we pay for these positive results? Then he uses the example of reading a book by a Chinese intellectual in the comfort of your home with a nice cocktail. What is the price of the free time necessary to do this? What is the wealth that we enjoy built upon? When this Chinese intellectual spent a big part of his life in prison, for example, the price is tremendously high.

[littératoure]

Hey ! Greetings from France. Thanks for the video, it's very useful for my high-school philosophy class

[swarnashlokechakraborty]

Happy belated birthday. Hope this is as good as you are.

[kriddz]

Quality channel - thanks for sharing the content.

[roberth]

Wonderful content! Thank you very much.

[nickpharoah]

Nice video. By the way, Kant wasnt talking about brains.

[maxstirner]

And you put Tzar Bomba footage as the image.

[nathanielramdeen]

gotta have the next one soon, feed my desire for intellectual capital

[JohnathandosSantos]

I'm very interested in reading the book, but German philosophy isn't the easiest to read!

[piezoification]

Vexing portrayal of Kant esp. Critique of Judgement. difficult to believe that murderous acts are without emotion or enlightened per Kant and that Ankerning or seeing that the other like yourself is existentially an end in themselves supports the persona of a Juliet. Not willing to defer to Adorno's reading of Kant his fame at doing so notwithstanding.

[gepgep]

This wasnt your primary focus, but I'd be pretty critical of reducing the history of christian appropriation and desecration of the Tanakh to a "movement from the old to the new testament"
I would suggest that even characterizing it as a "movement" or as chronological takes for granted and reaffirms christian hegemony.

[jasoncrow]

I don't get it, what is their critique?