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Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments
Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of ...more
Paperback, 304 pages
Published
March 13th 2007
by Stanford University Press
(first published 1947)
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Karl Steel
rated it
Recommends it for:
People able to endure an annoying prophetic, circular kind of prose
Shelves:
theory
Three things I love here, above all else: a) the collaboration, and the refusal to disentangle themselves from it when others demanded that Horkorno coalesce into two identities: of course reminds me of Deleuze and Guattari, but, for a medievalist, also Marty Shichtman and Laurie Finke; b) the refusal to update the text to reflect the current moment: in this insistence on preserving the text as an intervention into a particular historical moment, Adorneimer refuse to pretend to speak from a posi...more
Here we have it, folks: the worst book ever written. Well, the worst I've read. But it just has got to be up there with the worst I haven't read.
I would give proper reasons for that pronouncement, but I shouldn't like to be regarded as a fascist.
I don't know whether or not to give points for creativity; Adorno and Horkheimer manage to provide some of the most astonishingly ridiculous readings and ideas I've ever encountered, and indeed some of the funniest, as a result. The...more
I would give proper reasons for that pronouncement, but I shouldn't like to be regarded as a fascist.
I don't know whether or not to give points for creativity; Adorno and Horkheimer manage to provide some of the most astonishingly ridiculous readings and ideas I've ever encountered, and indeed some of the funniest, as a result. The...more
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I think my favorite part of this essay is where the authors critique Homer's "Odyssey" by arguing that it is the very first historical appearance of the bourgeoisie. Odysseus is the bourgeois man and the men on his ship who stuff the wax in his ears to protect him from the song of the sirens are the proletariat. In they end, they are sacrificed for the salvation of the cunning hero. Silly, but very creative.
Who's one of my greatest forms of literary/critical theoretical solace? Theodor Adorno (and let's not forget Max Horkheimer). Minima Moralia is still my favorite of his, but this fine volume is chock full of fantastic discussions. Just a few talking points and/or clever observations:
* On Odysseus' reaction to Penelope's test to see whether the guy she thinks is her husband really is so: "... her husband answers her with a detailed account of his longlasting piece of woodwork. He i...more
* On Odysseus' reaction to Penelope's test to see whether the guy she thinks is her husband really is so: "... her husband answers her with a detailed account of his longlasting piece of woodwork. He i...more
Don't fight it: let the dialectic carry you along, since you have no chance at pinning it down as a power point. And thank goodness.
Television, the Gesamtkunstwerk: "aims at a synthesis of radio and film, delayed only for as long as the interested parties cannot agree. Such a synthesis, with its unlimited possibilities, promises to intensify the impoverishment of the aesthetic material so radically that the identity of all industrial cultural products, still scantily disguised tod...more
Television, the Gesamtkunstwerk: "aims at a synthesis of radio and film, delayed only for as long as the interested parties cannot agree. Such a synthesis, with its unlimited possibilities, promises to intensify the impoverishment of the aesthetic material so radically that the identity of all industrial cultural products, still scantily disguised tod...more
This, I feel, is a statement superlative to the Minima Moralia in the Adorno catalog. The classist overtones that damage so much of that book are less ingrained here, and we get what I feel to be a much more open philosophy. Whenever I read these old Frankfurt School dudes, there's this weird sense of tragedy, as if they were the last line of defense against the brutal forces of late capitalist alienation. And I've never felt that stronger than in here. That said, this is also the Frankfurt ...more
fascinating reassessment of the Enlightenment in the face of the Second World War. sections on the culture industry & the commodification of, well, everything remain true today. class driven analysis that has been glossed over in other editions:
'...even by the measure of the existing order, the bloated entertainment apparatus does not make life more worthy of human beings. The idea of "exploiting" the given technical possibilities, of fully utilizing the capacities for aesthetic m...more
'...even by the measure of the existing order, the bloated entertainment apparatus does not make life more worthy of human beings. The idea of "exploiting" the given technical possibilities, of fully utilizing the capacities for aesthetic m...more
never again. i'm really glad i read this as a class assignment, because the resulting discussion was what made this comprehensible to me. some really interesting points about the enlightenment's focus on reason and scientific knowledge; how the resulting objectification of the world around us eventually led to the reification of one another, and then genocide. but their critical reading of the odyssey was for me literally unreadable, and i feel like the ideas should have been summed up cohere...more
Jedna z nejlepších knih o paradoxech osvícenství.
Tzv. (post)levicové myšlení má mj. základ v Adornových úvahách, a když vás neuspokojují Havlovy knížecí ekoagitky, záměrně synkretické a nevyhraněné socialisticko-liberální moralitky zhrzených členů Strany zelených, banální nebo vulgární levicoví komentátoři a různé mišuge existence v Britských listech, sáhněte přímo po nebanálním zdroji všech jejich prosťáckých úvah.
I když levici nemáte rádi, stále platí, že je dobré znát své ne...more
Tzv. (post)levicové myšlení má mj. základ v Adornových úvahách, a když vás neuspokojují Havlovy knížecí ekoagitky, záměrně synkretické a nevyhraněné socialisticko-liberální moralitky zhrzených členů Strany zelených, banální nebo vulgární levicoví komentátoři a různé mišuge existence v Britských listech, sáhněte přímo po nebanálním zdroji všech jejich prosťáckých úvah.
I když levici nemáte rádi, stále platí, že je dobré znát své ne...more
The enlightenment wasn't all that. You think science replaced magic and religion? Not so fast. Isn't science, at a certain point, based on faith just as much as religion? Horkdorno (Horkheimer and Adorno) views the achievements of the enlightenment with a gimlet eye, refusing to accept that a forward movement in history equates to positive progress. You can just as easily move forward while descending. If you believe in progress, concomitantly, you must believe in decline. Many of the things th...more
Comments:
Critical Theory really was always in danger of giving birth to postmodernism, thanks to its critical and close reading of -and thus being influenced by- Heidegger and Freud. No, Foucault wasn't just wishing (dreaming) when he drew parallels between himself and the Frankfurt School. But this affinity to the likes of Heidegger and Freud came at a price; the pessimism of these two thinkers became inextricably entwined within critical theory itself. Critical Theory is the greate...more
Critical Theory really was always in danger of giving birth to postmodernism, thanks to its critical and close reading of -and thus being influenced by- Heidegger and Freud. No, Foucault wasn't just wishing (dreaming) when he drew parallels between himself and the Frankfurt School. But this affinity to the likes of Heidegger and Freud came at a price; the pessimism of these two thinkers became inextricably entwined within critical theory itself. Critical Theory is the greate...more
I hate writing reviews. However, this book is brilliant: one of the very few books I've ever read - along with Nietzsche's On The Genealogy of Morality - that offers a paradigmatic shift in thinking about the history of ideas and literature. Reread the Odyssey, ground yourself in Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind, and go to town.
I'm rereading this after first encountering it in college ten years ago. I love Adorno, for all his curmudgeonly elitism, and this text is indispensable for any cultural critic. Granted, much of it is quite dated. The famous chapter "The Culture Industry," not only displays Adorno's prejudices against all forms of pop culture at their worst, it is also painfully obvious that his critique is not easily applied in succeeding revolution of "new media." But perhaps it is. After a...more
In a world... where the geist is pure evil... and the Fasshou System lurks right around the corner... two unlikely German Jew friends dare... to frighten enlightenment/mythology back into its box.
This summer....
DIALECTIC
OF
ENLIGHTENMENT
This summer....
DIALECTIC
OF
ENLIGHTENMENT
All that I can say about this book, is that it is completely amazing! These ideas reawakened my interest in philosophy and shifted the paradigm encompassing my mind and views on media and culture.
The most poorly written, ego-maniacal, self-important, masturbatory piece of shit that I have ever read. Horkheimer and Adorno? If you were alive, I would punch you both in the testicles.
A classic that is sometimes amazing and sometimes not - definitely uneven. However, at least the tone is unremittingly pessimistic.
I can't believe they spent 80 or so pages using Odysseus to talk about the failure of the Enlightenment project. I mean, seriously... how stupid do you think intellectuals are?
I was not at all impressed. Elitist tone and turgid writing. Although the 'founders' of the Frankfurt school of critical theory were very influential to the New Left I couldn't draw much inspiration from this. Marcuse's 'One Dimensional Man' is a better and more insightful read than this with more precise ethi...more
I was not at all impressed. Elitist tone and turgid writing. Although the 'founders' of the Frankfurt school of critical theory were very influential to the New Left I couldn't draw much inspiration from this. Marcuse's 'One Dimensional Man' is a better and more insightful read than this with more precise ethi...more
Horkheimer's and Adorno's musings from their time hanging out in L.A. during/after the War.
At times incredible; at other times it sounds like my grandfather yelling at the television.
Proof that nothing gets pseudo-intellectuals salivating more quickly than non-sensical rants.
Risa
added it
Dialectic of Enlightenment (Cultural Memory in the Present) by Max Horkheimer (2007)
Horkheimer and Adorno expose the internal contradictions of the Enlightenment.
Sam
added it
"Mass culture as deception" is that fire.
Dry. Yep. Gimme a drink of cool cool water, dry. But really very incisive critiques of society. I was recommended the "Culture Industry" essay, which is awesome. But Horkheimer & Adorno can be snarky as hell and seem very doomsday about how to progress in modern thought and culture. Jazz..."mocks the art of stumbling while elevating it to the norm." (?!?) Snarky and snotty. Jazz has soul, and that just seems to be such a mystery of mankind I want to remain a mystery....more
This translation, by John Cumming, is tough sledding - the textual equivalent of chopping onions, reducing the pungent-yet-aesthetically-Kremlinesque whole bulb into little blocky niblets that scatter and stick to the cutting board whilst still making your eyes water. Edmund Jephcott did such a lovely job with Walter Benjamin's Reflections and Adorno's Minima Moralia that I have little doubt his more recent rendering of DOE into English would be well worth spending the extra bucks.
Eliane
added it
Great book.
good
very dense reading, but worth the effort. an indispensable work of the frankfurt school.
Spicy T AKA Mr. Tea
rated it
i enjoyed some of adorno's other writing more than the dialectic. in this essay he's co-authoring with horkheimer and i haven't read a lot of his work. adorno's other work i found very interesting though dense. this book was equally dense and as i kept reading through it i did get glimpses of things but on the whole i think i need to read it again. i also finished it two weeks ago and without it in front of me, im recognizing that ive retained little of what ive read.
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| The Culture Industry. | 1 | 10 | Feb 02, 2010 08:01pm |
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Max Horkheimer was a German-Jewish philosopher-sociologist, famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the 'Frankfurt School' of social research. His most important works include The Eclipse of Reason (1947) and, in collaboration with Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment (1947). Through the Frankfurt School, Horkheimer planned, supported and made other significant works possib...more
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