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Dialectic of Enlightenment
Overview
Dialectic of Enlightenment (German: Dialektik der Aufklärung) is a work of philosophy and social criticism written by Frankfurt School philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. The text, published in 1947, is a revised version of what the authors originally had circulated among friends and colleagues in 1944 under the title of Philosophical Fragments (German: Philosophische Fragmente).
One of the core texts of critical theory, Dialectic of Enlightenment explores the socio-psychological status quo that had been responsible for what the Frankfurt School considered the failure of the Enlightenment. They argue that its failure culminated in the rise of fascism, Stalinism, the culture industry and mass consumer capitalism. Rather than liberating humanity as the Enlightenment had promised, they argue it had resulted in the opposite: in totalitarianism, and new forms of barbarism and social domination.
Together with Adorno's The Authoritarian Personality (1950) and fellow Frankfurt School member Herbert Marcuse's One-Dimensional Man (1964), it has had a major effect on 20th-century philosophy, sociology, culture, and politics, especially inspiring the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Nothing else is being attempted, whether admitted or not, than the complete transformation, even the weakening and suppression of the individual: the supporters of the majority never tire of enumerating and anathematising all that is bad, hostile, lavish, expensive, and luxurious in the form of individual existence that has hitherto prevailed; they hope that society may be administered in a cheaper, less dangerous…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, The Dawn of Day
States what Dialectic of Enlightenment is; the author is tied to Dialectic of Enlightenment in the knowledge graph.
Hence they push their doctrine, in practice, to its merciless conclusion, that there is always a secret guilt in isolation. Poor Schopenhauer had this secret guilt too in his heart, the guilt of cherishing his philosophy more than his fellow-men; and he was so unhappy as to have learnt from Goethe that he must defend his philosophy at all costs from the neglect of his contemporaries, to save its very existence: for…
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thoughts Out of Season, Part II
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Dialectic, it may be added, is no novelty in philosophy. Among the ancients Plato is termed the inventor of Dialectic; and his right to the name rests on the fact, that the Platonic philosophy first gave the free scientific, and thus at the same time the objective, form to Dialectic. Socrates, as we should expect from the general character of his philosophising, has the dialectical element in a predominantly…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Logic of Hegel
States what Dialectic of Enlightenment is.
Philosophers who discussed Dialectic of Enlightenment
Related ideas
- Ritual
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- History
- Antisemitism
- Fascism
- Political freedom
- One-Dimensional Man
- Productive forces
- Philosophy
- Analytic philosophy
- Jürgen Habermas
- Karl Marx
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
- Logical positivism
- Modernity
- Conscience
- Sociology
- Marxism
- Culture
- Liberalism
- Max Horkheimer
- University of Chicago Press
- The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity
- Superstition
Place in the tradition
Part of German philosophy.
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