Adorno and Horkheimer: The Identity of Intelligence and Idiocy

Media and philosophy, part 2.
#Horkheimer #media #Adorno

Media theory series:
----
Outro Music:
Carsick Cars - You Can Listen You Can Talk:
----
Hans-Georg Moeller is a professor at the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department at the University of Macau, and, with Paul D'Ambrosio, author of the recently published You and Your Profile: Identity After Authenticity".
(If you buy professor's book from the Columbia University Press website and use the promo code CUP20 , you should get a 20% discount.)

Thanks a lot to Nemo Li for providing the Chinese subtitles!

[johnshaplin]

Adorno shared Nietzsche’s epistemological aim to demonstrate that the apparent fixity of the world or values arises from the systematic debasement of dynamic aspects of reality in our thinking and philosophy. 4:45

[mostlytranslucent]

I think you do a great job of explaining the culture industry analysis in clear terms without dumbing it down too much. The clarification of dialectics at the beginning really helps.

Look forward to the rest of the series. You are a great teacher, I really enjoy this kind of content from you the most

[opinion]

These authors are a bit idealistic and maximalist? Aren't they?

I think a CG Jung quote is in palace: "Modern man can't see God because he doesn't look low enough"

[FAS]

This is super well done and you certainly deserve more recognition. I think the world desperately needs to gain a better understanding of media overall. Will be super interesting to hear what you have to say about Mcluhan and co. Thanks!

[cosmoline_aesthetic]

This is an excellent series and i look forward to each new entry! Thank you Prof Moeller!

[marshall]

Thank you for making these videos. They’re really interesting and you break ideas down to where someone like me can understand it. I appreciate your efforts and time.

[RichInk]

This is a great series. I even love the qualifier at the end. These are some of the thinkers I use in my Advertising as Art and Ideology course. You keep at it and I won't need to teach the course. I could simply point students to the series. Onward.

[lillithdavidson]

Thankyou for a no nonsense clear explanation - like others have said I feel less crazy in reading things the way I did - That horrible feeling that lecturers and books are not teaching this right or that they are only giving a small piece of the story - - Huge thankyou- it makes more sense now

[seberry]

Excellent work. You make Adorno significantly clearer than does Adorno.

[njumera]

These analysis seem to point to a past where authenticity and individuality were actually authentic and that it only became inauthentic and pseudo-individualistic precisely because of the prescribed autonomy of the rational individual coupled with technology.

But was there really an age where (unintentional?) authenticity was authentic? Or is it simply the case that industries and mass media has made a pre-existing tendency toward uniformity more effective and extensive?

[kimfreeborn]

"dialectic is making sense of all sides" this seems doubtful. While I would agree that this might be a goal of dialectic, the process itself is one of paradox and contradiction. This is inherent in the analysis of part/whole relations: dialectic. The Frankfurt school disparages the whole as the status quo. The capitalist status quo imposes itself on the part: the individual. Yet it would seem that the entertainment industry as a hedge against boredom cannot be entirely repetitive. So there must be non-capitalist individuals that escape the status quo -which would seem impossible.

[KyleClements]

I am really enjoying this series.
I read a bunch of this in art school, but it was all broken up into isolated bits and pieces, and some of the instructor's interpretations did not match what I found in the text. Thank you for providing some 'connective tissue' for these ideas, and making me feel like I'm not crazy for interpreting it the way I did.

[grubfoot]

I don't understand how you can have art without some degree of standardisation because it seems to me that nothing could be communicated without some shared language between the artist and audience. When these structures are rejected (for example in free jazz, abstract art e.t.c) isn't what is a significant the rejection of the structure and through that the structure still exists.

[RedSpark_]

Excellent video, thanks for sharing. I'm looking forward to the next episode.

[zzzzoot]

I enjoy all your videos. Looking forward to part 3.

[anasfk]

great, extremely enlightening video! re:Adorno's criticism of jazz, which he attacks as being inauthentic compared to artists like Picasso, do you think he was being fair?

[BombusMonticola]

I so enjoy your videos bringing me as they do out from the anaesthetic of my ordinary and disorganised life. An antidote to all the nonsense around me giving me opportunities to think about how things are. Though this video has little to do with him I enjoy your references to Peterson. A man whose large ego always precedes some of the interesting things he has on occasion to say. Probably it is that such a thing is a prerequisite for an equally large bank balance. I'd rather listen to your informative lectures any day. Thanks

[Lelantaria]

Your videos help me so much with my philosophy courses at uni, so thank you for this

[seberry]

Really enjoyed this talk. Adorno's work continues to delight and propose avenues down which we may fine-tune our instincts for intellectual rigor and vigilance. For example, if you haven't read THE AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY, you're likely going to be surprised at how the book feels as if it were written last week. Adorno's exploration of the psychologies of individuals who are excited by "commands issued under Fascism from the dumb to the silent" (Minima Moralia, 20) has a sibylline quality to it that is haunting. Here in the United States, reading Adorno is like getting on a tour bus of the MAGA psychopathologies that we see playing out every day.

[lsobrien]

Thank you for this, the outline *and* the concluding critical remarks are very helpful. It speaks to our collective problem just how much of Adorno and Horkheimer's work is painfully relevant - and I must admit theorists from that era are about the only ones I read (Günther Anders, Karl Polanyi, Schmitt, etc. too. Mostly Germanic come to think about it).

But I'll continue to watch this series, and no doubt you'll introduce me to more contemporary theorists worthy of my time.